Household: Recovering the Biblical Image

You will notice we say "brother and sister" 'round here,
It's because we're a family and these are so near;
When one has a heartache, we all share the tears,
And rejoice in each victory in this family so dear.

Chorus
I'm so glad I'm a part of the Family of God,
I've been washed in the fountain, cleansed by His Blood!
Joint heirs with Jesus as we travel this sod,
For I'm part of the family,
The Family of God

(From "Family of God" by William Gaither, 1970)

What do you think of when you hear "family" and "household?" If you are like most people in post-industrial Western nations, you think of something resembling a nuclear family living in a house closed off from the world. You likely do not picture the home as a workplace but rather as a haven from work and the pressures of the outside world. Family and home are where you receive nurture, emotional support, and companionship. In other words, you view family from a perspective that has been foreign to human existence until the past century or so.

Before the Industrial Revolution, the family was not merely a unit of economic consumption. It was an economically productive entity. As late as 1885 in the United States, the average family produced 85% of everything consumed. Just thirty years later, in 1915, it produced 15% of everything it consumed. Historically most people have worked in agriculture, working as families out of their homes. Even the artisans and craftsmen in the towns worked out of their homes. Now the family and the household are almost exclusively a unit of economic consumption. Wealth is earned outside the family and brought home for personal consumption and fulfillment.

Over the past century, we have read our modern notion of family back into the metaphor of "family of God" or "household of God." Church is where we go to get our needs met, be nurtured, and receive emotional support and companionship. The idea that the church is engaged in a mission that "produces a product" has been lost on us. In Paul's Idea of Community, Robert Banks points out that the word koinonia has different connotations than we frequently give it today. We frequently interpret it as fellowship and view it as an end we are trying to achieve. Banks claims that every time the New Testament uses koinonia, it refers to something that develops out of joint participation in some object or activity. "Paul's emphasis is upon their participation alongside one another in such things, not in one another as the term "fellowship" suggests." (57) The pre-industrial idea of household readily symbolized how koinonia develops. But reading our twenty-first-century Western notions of family into the scripture severely distorts the church into an entity that serves our personal needs. 

We need to rediscover the Hebrew hayitt, Greek oikos, and Latin domus to recover the biblical notion of the household of God. While these are all similar, they do not translate directly into our modern idea of household. A male householder (called the paterfamilias in Latin) ruled each household, and everything was said to be "under his hand." This meant his wife, children, slaves, animals, tools, physical structures, and land were under his near total control, with him possessing the power of life and death over those in the household. The householder even exercised control over his sons and their households until his death. (This was true in Rome throughout most of the Roman Republic era, which ended a few years prior to Christ's birth. As we will see, there were considerable regional differences among the Greeks in these matters. There was considerable liberalization underway in the Roman Empire by Christ's time that continued throughout the first century C.E., including the rise of single or widowed women householders.) Some households could include dozens of people. Furthermore, each household was engaged in a household business.

Therefore, the "household" of biblical times was not the sentimental inward-looking family of the Gaither song. We cannot appreciate what the image of the "household of God" signifies, nor understand what the biblical teaching is given concerning households conveyed unless we get a better sense of what the household of biblical times was. We begin this rediscovery in the next post by first getting a handle on what the physical surroundings may have looked like.

Series Index

Comments

[Ken Klewin]

Great post Mike - looking forward to reading more. I've been thinking about a related topic: how Jesus used the metaphor of family, and especially the parent/child relationship, in refering to the new community he was creating. For example, his use of Father/Son references, his frequent use of parents and children in parables, and also in telling his disciples how to behave: “Therefore, whoever takes a humble place – becoming like this child – is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven” (Mt. 18:2-4). To be childlike – humble, meek – was a characteristic of those in the community. The question for us is how to translate and use these metaphors in our time.

[Michael W. Kruse]

Ken, I hope to touch on some of this in later posts. I hope you will keep checking back. I would love to know more of your thoughts on the topic.

[Alan]

Very timely as this week's passage in Acts 16 deals with Lydia's household believing and being baptized.

Peace,
Alan

[Michael W. Kruse]

Be sure to check my post on Friday. It has pictures!

:)

[Michael W. Kruse]

Also Alan, if you are looking at Lydia, be sure to see my post from last week:

The Significance of Paul, Lydia and the Church at Philippi