Seeing and Experiencing Things Differently: How the Theologizing of Children Can Contribute to Theology

In this article, we provide a conceptual clarification of the terms “child theology” and “children’s theology” on the basis of a literature review. This allows us to position our question “how children’s theology can contribute to theology” well within the academic debate on the subject. We take up the social constructivism that is the underlying paradigm of children’s theology, and we do so in a way that explicitly includes God as an actor. It is our argument that, due to their developmental stage, they are capable of offering perspectives that are complementary to those of expert theologians. The perspectives they offer depend on the context in which they grow up. Two examples of a practice illustrate the argument as to how children can contribute to theology.