Household: Household Code in Review

A month and a half ago, I introduced this series on household codes. I noted five themes related to using the fictive family metaphor in the New Testament by Jesus, Paul, and others: identity, unity, mission, inheritance, and affection. Yet scattered throughout the New Testament, we see instruction about how to live in actual households that seems to contradict this. Indeed, the presence of these instructions in some books of the New Testament is primary evidence to some of their late authorship by other than the identified authors.

I showed that Greco-Roman teachers frequently instructed how the paterfamilias should rule his household for the benefit of the community. We saw how, in some ways, the biblical household codes mimicked this kind of instruction. (1 Peter 2-3, Titus 2, Ephesians 5-6, and Colossians 3-4) Prior to our discussion of the household codes, we saw how Jesus' teachings in the fourth discourse in Matthew (Chapters 19-20) appear to be organized with a rudimentary household code in mind. Yet as we looked at each of these codes, we found consistent differences between the biblical and Greco-Roman codes. In the New Testament:

1. The codes were not based on a desire to protect the social order or gain conformity to some ordained order of the world.
2. Nowhere is the paterfamilias told to rule his household.
3. Members of the household, like women and slaves, were treated as free moral agents who could choose how to behave within the household.

Having now reviewed the codes, I think we can add an addendum to the third item: Household members were free moral agents, but a common mission united them, and that mission became the compass that directed their decisions.

In closing my second post introducing the household codes, I wrote:

“I do not believe the New Testament household codes articulate a culturally transcendent ordering of the family and household. I do not think the household codes are a departure from earlier teaching by later authors. I also reject the idea that the objective of these codes was to equalize the decision-making authority between husbands and wives. Their objective was to exhibit the new creation ethos of the coming kingdom without creating needless obstacles to hearing the good news. These household codes gave instruction about appropriate relational attitudes among members of temporal households who were siblings in the Household of God, responding to God's mission in the world.”

I hope that this review of the household codes has brought my initial claim into focus and clarified it. But this review raises some additional questions about the missional strategy of the first-century Church.

At one level, it seems fair to say that Paul and New Testament authors were unconcerned about the social structures of their time. They did not endorse a separatist movement that sent people into the wilderness to be apart from the evil of the world. They did not organize a revolution. They did not organize a reform movement with street protests to "speak truth to power." Instead, they entered the structures of the society and observed the surface appearances of those structures. Yet they utterly redefined their identity in terms disconnected from these structures and lived by values of other-centered love.

Christians were simultaneously free from the world and free to the world. They were free from the world's status domination system because their identity was now located in God as royal sons and daughters of God. Nothing in the world could change that. But this freedom meant they could adapt to the world and tolerate all manner of injustice and abuse, even to the point of death. They were free to do mission in the world because nothing could touch their identity or immortality.

Indeed, Rodney Stark suggests that the big explosions in the Church's growth came in the wake of two plague outbreaks in the second and third centuries. Each plague took one-quarter to one-third of the population. Romans fled the cities in terror, but the Christians stayed behind joyously caring for the sick and dying, some succumbing to the plague. This utter fearlessness in the face of death and loss of family legacies was very compelling to the people of the empire. Their action demonstrated that their identity was not entangled with status markers found in this world.

Yet at least by the third century, moving into the fourth, there seems to be evidence of the Roman Empire influencing the Church away from its complete identification with God and the coming Kingdom. Roman status and power structures seeped their way into the institutional life of the Church. However, that phenomenon is beyond the scope of our current discussion. It is pertinent to grasp how the first-century Church understood their strategy regarding the social structures of the time (though speaking of "social structures" in this way is anachronistic.) The outcome during the plagues seemed precisely what the New Testament writers envisioned.

It is impossible to be certain about what exactly was in the mind of the New Testament authors as they implemented this strategy of conforming to societal structures with a radically new identity and mission. Some have claimed that New Testament writers were expecting an immediate return of Christ and were, therefore, uninterested in structural reform. I am doubtful about this. I suspect they understood social structures emanating from the people within them. Change the people, and the structures will conform themselves to the people. I would be like yeast working its way through the dough and leavening the bread. (Matthew 13:33)

What I am sure could not be seen by New Testament writers was the freedom that would rise within democratic societies in recent centuries and the opportunities to make decisions about social institutions collectively. However, I suspect they would have seen this opportunity as a wonderful adjunct to, not a replacement for, deep personal transformation in the lives of individuals and small communities who become the yeast in the dough of social institutions. We must work to create the best institutions we can. But we must also have people living in transformational and missional communities giving witness to the coming New Creation and the Household of God.

Series Index

Comments

[Ruud Vermeij]

Great series! Great review post too!

(Note, you didn't update the series index with this post yet.)

[Michael W. Kruse]

Thanks Ruud. Good to hear from you.

Yes, I can't link a post until it is published. I get the post ready and then set it to post at a future hour, which has been 5 a.m. for most of these. Later in the day (if I remember) I go back and link the post to the index.

Only three or four more posts to go!

[kerryn]

Michael

thanks for all your efforts on this series.
i have read each idividual post and learned a lot.

I think one of the most powerful messages that has come through is the MISSIONAL focus of texts you have looked at.

I believe THIS is the constant "trans-cultural" challenge for us as we do 'life' and are 'church' today. How as Christians are we revealing God's love and grace and power (the gospel) to those who 'watch' our lives...

Many thanks
Kerryn