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Article Review - Paul as a Child: Children and childhood in the letters of the Apostle

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Reidar Aasgaard, “Paul as a child: Children and childhood in the letters of the Apostle”. Journal of Biblical Literature126, No.1 (2007):129-159.



In this article, Reidar Aasgaard, from the University of Oslo, aims to bring out systematically the terminology associated with children in Paul and to show the unique features and nuance of usages of such terminology. Terminology associated with children, according to Peter Muller, may be classified as follows: (a) Kinship: In antiquity, children bring up as successor and heir of property and culture. This motif could be seen in Paul and such texts illustrate adoption, heritage of Christians and Paul’s own, his spiritual fatherhood and case of children in the context of diverse. (b) Social position: This semantic group gives attention to the place of children in the society and family. Paul uses such elements to explain issues with spiritual maturity, his parental loving and caring relationship, his own humbleness and greatness of his message, obedience, purity, and his own gentleness and helplessness. (c) Formation: In antiquity, the process of formation of a child includes development of the personality, teaching, training, discipline and following current ideals. Similar elements in Paul illustrate Paul’s encouragement to believers to attain maturity through teachings, discipline and following models of maturity such as Paul himself and Jesus. (d) Belonging: This group talks about religious association, faithfulness and identification and relationship with the community. These elements are evident in Pauline usage of Child of God and descendant of Abram and in his view on children in mixed marriage.



The extensive use of childhood terminology reveals weight of this metaphor in Pauline thought. In fact, Paul talks little about real children. Further, Paul conforms contemporary notions about children and uses such elements for his theological articulation by seeing them in a different perspective. Moreover, Paul uses such terminologies to shape his relationship with co-Christians. Furthermore, the texts that contain the picture Paul as a child may be viewed from the rhetorical situation of the writing or from the angle of the general strategy of the letter. The later view interprets childhood metaphors as a means to show Paul’s authority. Though the author accept the later view, having considered the socio-cultural context, he brings another interpretation, that is, metaphor shows Paul as vulnerable and subject of mercy of his audience[1]. Thus, Pauline usage of childhood terminology is unique and such usages have variety of meaning with slight difference.



The author presents his thesis systematically by considering socio-cultural setting seriously to understand childhood metaphors of Paul. The main appreciable contributions of this article are that Aasgaard could bring out a new aspect of the meaning of these metaphors and he could be identified some of the elements of antiquity in Pauline writings. It seems that author tends into a generalization of the meaning of childhood metaphors. He might be drawn such generalization basically from Paul as a child metaphor. I think such generalization by ignoring other aspects of the usages of childhood metaphor is needed to be judged through further study.






[1] Reidar Aasgaard, “Paul as a child: Children and childhood in the letters of the Apostle”. Journal of Biblical Literature126, No.1 (2007):159.



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