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  • The Power of Children: The Construction of Christian Families in the Greco-Roman World by Margaret Y. MacDonald
  • David M. Csinos
Margaret Y. MacDonald. The Power of Children: The Construction of Christian Families in the Greco-Roman World. Waco, tx: Baylor University Press, 2014. Pp. 239. Hardcover, us$49.95. isbn 978-1-4813-0223-4.

Children change things. Welcoming new children into families, congregations, and communities challenges us adults to radically shift our perspectives and practices in order to account for their participation. The same is true for children in the Bible; their presence in its pages, although often overlooked, opens new avenues for interpreting Scripture. [End Page 139]

In The Power of Children, Margaret Y. MacDonald focuses on children in the household codes within New Testament epistles, seeking to come to a richer understanding of the ways in which early Christian communities blended family life and faith against the backdrop of their ancient Roman society. To accomplish this goal, MacDonald poses four key questions to the household codes: When one focuses on children, how does this shape a view of the codes as apologetic responses to society? How do these passages relate not only to educating and socializing children, but also to integrating family life into the church? Do the household codes affirm or re-envision familial and parental norms of Roman society? And how do interpretations of these codes shift when instructions to children are seen as intertwined with those for other groups? By placing the household codes within the broader context of Roman family life, MacDonald makes significant inroads on her quest to respond to these four questions.

MacDonald has arranged The Power of Children around three major sections of the household codes. An introductory chapter outlines the goals and key questions of the book, as well as background material about household management in the Greco-Roman world, exhortations to children, and material surrounding children in the New Testament. There follow three key chapters of the text, each of which is an in-depth exploration of a particular household code pericope: Colossians 3:18–4:1, Ephesians 5:21–6:4, and material in the Pastoral Epistles. The author rounds out the book in a brief concluding chapter that synthesizes her analysis.

Throughout the text, MacDonald offers new insights on family life, education, and other matters that are raised when the household codes are considered in light of children. For example, when examining the material in the Pastoral Epistles, her focus on children reveals a concern with education, with mothers and fathers both playing vital roles in the formation and education of their children. The author goes on to evaluate the ekklesia as a kind of school concerned with education that spans the whole of its members' lives, with pedagogical approaches for adults that parallel those of philosophical schools as well as methods that were more reminiscent of those used to educate children in the home (137, 140). Such insights are possible when the presence of children acts as an interpretive lens.

The Power of Children is a welcome addition to the expanding field of childhood studies and religion. It joins a growing number of studies (such as John Wall's Ethics in Light of Childhood) that shift the issues surrounding children and childhood from the bottom shelf of religious studies and theology. Rather than being a text about children and therefore of interest only to scholars of childhood studies and religion, this is a book that is first and foremost about early Christian families and is thus firmly situated within Greco-Roman and biblical studies. As such, it would be a helpful text for scholars and students of ancient Greco-Roman culture, New Testament studies, and family life, as well as those in childhood studies and religion more generally. Although it is rich with connections between family life and education in the early ekklesia and contemporary faith communities, it is left to readers to draw their own conclusions in this regard. However, such connections would shed new light on the practice of ministry among families in today's congregations and parishes. [End Page 140]

David M. Csinos
Atlantic School of Theology

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