Early Pastoral Theology: Patristic Family Counseling Structures within First and Second Century Christianity

This thesis explores the concept of care and counsel for the family within the early Christian movement of the first and second centuries. Following an introduction into the placement of the inquiry within the broader scholarly scene, methodology, and scope of research, a background into ‘family’ within the broader Greco-Roman culture of the period is detailed. Next, early Christian sources from the first and second century are examined with a view towards ‘family’ and familial instruction. Then, two subsequent chapters are given where the larger Greco-Roman rhetorical structure for counsel and care known as psychagogy (soul guidance) is examined followed by a description of the themes of psychagogic content related to family observed within the Christian literature of the period. “Paraenetic-psychagogy” becomes a particular paradigm coined within the thesis for placing the structure of Christian counsel and care for the family.
First, the broader data regarding family within the Greco-Roman culture of the period is given alonside the data available regarding Christian expectations for family. Secondly, forms of rhetoric used in giving counsel are examined wherein concepts like paraenesis, protrepsis, and psychagogy are detailed. Thirdly, the pastoral care discussions are demonstrated, one example being that of Ignatius. Lastly, early Christian familial psychagogy is compared to that of contemporary Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus wherein a divergence of telos is noted within the psychagogy. These all serve as a broader background upon which a detailed examination of the early Christian primary source documents can occur. In the end, the focus will be on the ideals or expectations of the various Christian writers in the sources versus a claim of fact about what all supposed Christian households definitively looked like.
Ultimately, the thesis argues that Christian care for the family was a part of the larger psychagogic enterprise. This argument is augmented by the conclusion that this psychagogy had a theocentric trajectory which dominated the paraenesis and in which the paraenesis was founded; it had a telos shaped by an eschatological reality versus the temporal aspects of human relationships, and as such it was given within the typical relational structures of the culture and focused on the character of the Christian family without a call to change those larger relational structures.