Often those Church Fathers most concerned to press the new ascetic elitism of
the fourth and fifth centuries might also produce surprisingly “profamily”
interpretations of biblical texts that otherwise supported an ascetic agenda.
Through analysis of patristic interpretation of Luke 14.26 (an arguably “antifamily”
passage of the New Testament), this article seeks to explore the intersection
of ascetic and family values in the scriptural interpretation of ascetic
late antiquity. Through exegetical strategies (intertext and context) that emphasized
at once the multiplicity and the unity of biblical meaning, the most
ascetic of Church Fathers might also become the most productive proponents
of particularly distinctive notions of Christian family life.