YOUTH EDUCATION IN 4TH CENTURY BETWEEN PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN ASCETIC EXPERIENCES. TESTIMONIES AND APPLICATIONS
YOUTH EDUCATION IN 4TH CENTURY BETWEEN PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN ASCETIC EXPERIENCES. TESTIMONIES AND APPLICATIONS

Summary/Abstract: I propose to analyze in this study several important historical and patristic texts which testify the way the Church in the 4th century confesses the main educational principles dedicated to youth pastoral. From several textswritten by Saints Basil of Caesareea, Gregory the Theologian (of Nazianzus) and John Chrysostom, I propose a theological pattern in the way the Church make use of pagan and philosophical education as a first insufficient level, which needs tobe developed within a personal, well ascetically assumed and ecclesial anchored youth education. My thesis consists in the idea that the pagan educational background was without exception doubled by a consistent and assumed asceticand monastic experience. This ascetic experience never canceled the pagan and philosophical paideia, but recalibrated it as a tool for Christian theological complete education. The last one was mainly centered on the Bible and of the school of prayer. It implies participation, asceticism and direct search of God through knowledge of Scripture and prayer, with deep ontological dynamic perspectives. In the last part of the exposé I demonstrate that this pastoral pattern inspired by the patristic texts and biographies from the 4th century can (and must)be developed and applied in present Christian pastoral dedicated to youth.

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