Dr. Margaret Macdonald

Professor of Early Christianity, New Testament, Women and Christianity
Saint Mary's University

Educating the Children of God, Infants to Elders: Rediscovering an Inclusive Communal Vision from Ancient Times

Because early Christian evidence concentrates so directly on beginnings, conversions, and the establishment of communities, we have reflected too little on the first believers as learners. This presentation takes the learning audience as its starting point. We will discuss how people of all ages grew in their commitment to Christ through various educational experiences. When we think of religious education, our first thought might be of “school”-like settings, designated teachers, or the reading of theological texts. But this presentation will consider how the first Christians learned and absorbed traditions through a variety of activities involving many different people. The goal of the lecture is to rediscover an inclusive instructional commitment that was much more subtly expressed because it often presumed an understanding of the happenings of the everyday, especially the dynamics of family life. We have not paid enough attention to the importance of intergenerational learning as revealed, for example, in the Pastoral Epistles (1Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus). It will be argued that to understand education in the early Christian era we must consider the life of the extended family and think about how formation began with child care and extended to include elders in the community who took on the role of mentors. We will discuss how the teaching of scripture may have been combined with modes of practical instruction concerning virtue and domestic duties, examining both contexts where marriage was encouraged and early ascetic traditions. Finally, we will examine the educational significance of oral performance and repetition for learning, which would often have involved liturgical practices such as song and prayer.

Biography

Margaret Y. MacDonald is Professor of Religious Studies at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax. She was Dean of Arts at Saint Mary’s University from 2014 to 2020 and previously taught at St. Francis Xavier University (Nova Scotia) and the University of Ottawa. In the winter of 2018, she held the McCarthy Chair in Biblical Studies at the Pontifical Biblical Institute (the Biblicum) in Rome.

She received her doctorate from the University of Oxford where she held a Commonwealth Scholarship.

In addition to numerous essays and journal articles, her publications include five books: The Power of Children: The Construction of Christian Families in the Roman World (2014); Carolyn Osiek and Margaret Y. MacDonald (with Janet Tulloch), A Woman’s Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity (2006); Colossians and Ephesians (Sacra Pagina; 2000); Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion: The Power of the Hysterical Woman (1996); The Pauline Churches: A socio-historical study of institutionalization in the Pauline and Deutero-Pauline Writings (1988).