The Power of Children

The Construction of Christian Families in the Greco-Roman World

Margaret Y. MacDonald

• Publisher: Baylor University Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781481303170
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Études bibliques

The Power of Children examines Christian teaching about children in the context of family life in the Roman world. Specifically, author Margaret Y. MacDonald measures the impact of the New Testament's household codes (Colossians 3: 18-4: 1; Ephesians 5: 21-6: 9; the Pastoral letters) for understanding the status and role of children in Christian homes and assemblies. By allowing children to frame her analysis, MacDonald demonstrates that the rigid social divisions of the period (wives-husbands, children-parents, slaves-masters) were far more complex and overlapping within the Christian context--highlighting the way in which Christian families challenged the prevailing imperial ideology. From curbing sexual abuse to the practice of pseudo-parenting and the teaching roles of both men and women in the family, MacDonald documents the development of an early Christian perspective that valued children as members in the household of God.

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INTRODUCTION

The Codes and Children

In the middle of the first-century CE, in ancient Colossae or Laodicea, a group of believers in Christ is gathered in the house of a woman named Nympha (Col 4:15). Her house is a modest peristyled house or domus (a building with a colonnade), but the interior courtyard is large enough for an assembly of about fifty people to gather. It is the same space where earlier in the day children had been practicing their singing of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Newcomers have listened eagerly to the rejoicing and are eager to be taught this spiritual wisdom (Col 3:16). But now people are making an effort to listen quietly, with a slave caregiver doing her best to settle the toddlers in her charge. A letter from the Apostle Paul is being read aloud in the midst of the assembly (Col 4:16). Slave and free children are sitting side by side and are addressed directly, being told that they must obey their parents in everything, for this is their acceptable duty in the Lord (Col 3:20). Older slave children, already aware of the confines of their servitude and constantly reminded of the authority of their masters (Col 3:20-23), are nevertheless surprised to hear a comforting message: like freeborn sons and daughters, they will receive their inheritance from the Lord (Col 3:24).

Not too far away in ancient Ephesus, a father is teaching scriptural traditions (Eph 6:2-3) to his children, along with the stories he knows about Jesus (Eph 6:4). But these children are not only those born to his wife; they also include the slave children who live in the house and children who are playmates from the neighborhood. Some are orphans—street children with very uncertain futures. Not only is he a father and head of the household, he has become a pseudo-father, bringing up all of his children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Eph 6:4).

A few decades later, one of these well-raised children is being recognized as an overseer/bishop in the community (1 Tim 3:1-7). His deep roots in the church traditions are celebrated, for he is no recent convert (1 Tim 3:6). An apt teacher (1 Tim 3:2), he is emulating the household leadership he learned from his own father. He too will keep his children respectful and submissive in every way.

At the same time, one of the most prosperous women in the community is hosting a group of girls and young women in another household (1 Tim 5:16). Her teaching and mentoring influence has also been recognized in helping younger women make the transition from childhood to married life, motherhood, and the management of believing households (Titus 2:3-5). The young women are quick learners and are eager to discuss some of the new community teachings that place limits on their activities. A widow herself, the woman has considerable sympathy for the young widows who wish to remain unmarried and devote themselves to ministry (1 Tim 5:11-15). Perhaps, she thinks, community leaders are overreacting to some of the tension with neighbors that has resulted from efforts to win new members.

Today the topic among the gathering of older and younger women is the young male evangelist (1 Tim 4:12) who addressed a group of children, including many adolescent boys awaiting their teacher on the steps of the theater. He claimed to be following the example of Timothy (2 Tim 4:1-5) but may have been imprudent. He encouraged the children to go along with him to the shops adjacent to the house owned by the wealthy widow in the community where they could meet other believing children and learn more about the Lord. Since then, rumors have been flying that the community is overrun with foolish women and slaves who corrupt children and encourage the disobedience of legitimate figures of authority—fathers and schoolteachers.¹ The women are worried that this young evangelist is actually making it more difficult to reach out to the children in need.

These early church scenarios are fictional, but they are nevertheless based on the research in this book. New Testament (NT) ethics contained in the rule-like statements about family relations that have come to be known as household codes (e.g., Col 3:18–4:1; Eph 5:21–6:9) reveal that the presence of children was valued in early church communities. Set within the context of family life in the Roman world, brief references to children in Colossians, Ephesians, and the Letters to Timothy and Titus gain new significance. Moreover, the treatment of slaves in early Christianity should not be examined in isolation from the treatment of children. Slave children and slave parents and caregivers were members of the early Christian audience and played a role in the development and growth of early Christianity. Early church literature reveals an interest in the socialization of children as a means of preparing the community for the future and as part of efforts to articulate its identity. More and more, this concern for socialization became an explicit interest in education. Moving children to the center of the interpretation of household ethics in the NT brings one to the heart of church communities; these groups combined elements of household and school existence. Ultimately, a focus on children leads to greater understanding of how early Christians combined their faith commitment with family life; they challenged but also adopted many features of the society in which they lived.

At the outset, however, it will be necessary to discuss the nature of the evidence and how it should be approached. What difference does it make to the interpretation of household code texts when the neglected children are considered? What new questions should be asked?

Historical Questions: The Codes and Children

Probably no passages of the NT elicit such a strong set of emotions as the direct teaching about family life contained in the household codes (Col 3:18–4:1; Eph 5:21–6:9; 1 Pet 2:18–3:7; 1 Tim 2:8-15; 3:4-5; 6:1-2; Titus 2:1-10; 3:1; cf. Ign. Pol. 4.1–5.1; Pol. Phil. 4.1–6.1). These texts illustrate the importance of family matters in NT times—for some, no doubt a welcome correction to the Paul of 1 Corinthians 7, who seems a little too ambivalent about marriage and the survival of the household. These same texts have seemed to others to be the most obvious sign of an emerging patriarchy that would overshadow the spirit-filled egalitarianism of an earlier time. Perhaps above all, the household codes offer unmistakable evidence of the acceptance of the institution of slavery as a reality of early church communities and, more generally, of the shaping of early Christianity by its Roman context. Such teaching embarrasses and offends contemporary sensibilities no matter what spiritual values can be detected as infusing the rule-like statements. But to understand the meaning and legacy of these ethical codes, it is important to understand as fully as possible how they would have been heard in their own time by a diverse audience that included children. It is not possible to erase the patriarchal and oppressive effect of these codes throughout history. The main goal of this study is to read the codes with an approach that allows for awareness of the interaction of the ethical instructions with the complexities of family life in the Roman world.

The first thing to notice about the household codes is that they contain rules that in their purest form refer reciprocally to three pairs of hierarchical relationships: wives-husbands, slaves-masters, and children-parents. While the Letters to the Colossians and Ephesians offer the earliest and most succinct example of the genre (Col 3:18–4:1 and Eph 5:21–6:9), 1 Peter, the Pastoral Epistles, and the Apostolic Fathers also reflect the same type of household code material, usually displaying a rule-like structure, even if interpreted more freely.² The exhortations concerning marriage and slavery have received an enormous amount of attention in the past, probably because at first glance they seem more relevant to contemporary debates.³ No doubt partially because of the brevity of the exhortations, children and the child-parent relationship have played a very small role in interpretation of the household codes. But the neglect has also been fostered by a very narrow and incomplete understanding both of childhood in the Roman world and of the relevance of familial teaching for the lives of children in church groups. Children play a more important role in these texts than is usually acknowledged. Children were more greatly valued in certain early church groups than is often recognized.

There are no simple explanations for why this type of ethical teaching emerged at a specific period of time: from approximately 60 to 150 CE (from the time of the final stages of Paul’s life or shortly after his death to the period of the Apostolic Fathers, the first church authors to write after the NT).⁴ This was a key era for transition and construction of identity in the ekklēsia, the community of believers in Christ, in the decades immediately following the disappearance of the first apostles and witnesses. At the same time, this was the era when members began to be recognized as a distinct group, apart from Jews and Gentiles. Historians have rightly pointed out, however, that overlapping identity persisted for a long time among Jews and early Christians and manifested itself in a variety of ways in different geographical regions.⁵ With emerging visibility and distinctiveness came increasing hostility at the hands of outsiders. And, with increasing hostility came the need for apology: a need to explain and defend the way of life of these first Christians. In particular, these believers wished to illustrate that their familial life matched and even exceeded the best of Greco-Roman ideals. In so doing, they were following the example of their Jewish contemporaries. Little attention has been paid, however, to how children figured in this endeavor.⁶ In this book, one new question that will be asked is how a focus on children can influence perception of the household codes as an apologetic response.

To view the household codes as apologetic, however, does not completely explain their origin and function. This ethical teaching also plays a key role in integrating various family members within the community. Household codes created organizational structures that facilitated relations within the community, with an eye to the outside world, to varying degrees.⁷ Various factors were at play. For example, against a rising tide of asceticism involving measures to control physical appetites and contain sexuality (which can be detected especially in Colossians and the Pastoral Epistles), the household codes offered community integration to married members within the house church.⁸ While some early church teachers called for the rejection of marriage altogether, in contrast, the codes concretized a stable family identity that supported the rearing of children. Admirable family identity—one of the marks of respectable citizenship—was lived out in a group whose societal alienation had been replaced by citizenship with the saints and membership within the household of God (Eph 2:19; 1 Tim 3:15).⁹ Thus, a second new question has to do with integration: How does the inclusion of the address to children in the household codes of Colossians and Ephesians, together with various references to the child-parent relationship in the Pastoral Epistles, help to stabilize identity in the family and ekklēsia? How is an emerging concern with the socialization and education of children related to integration?

Closely connected to the issue of why NT household codes emerged in the middle to latter decades of the first century CE is the matter of the cultural roots of this teaching. The references to the three pairs of relationships dealing with marriage, parenting, and slavery represent an adoption and adaptation of common advice found in discussions of household management (oikonomia) from ancient Greek times to the Roman imperial era.¹⁰ Like other discussions of household management, which envisioned the relationship between household and civic welfare (involving state, economy, and religion), the NT household codes were shaped by a perspective that linked the household to broader social entities, including the welfare of the community. This is especially clear in Ephesians, wherein marriage becomes a metaphor for the community’s identity and ultimate commitment to Christ (Eph 5:22-33). The pure bride stands for much more than the inviolability of her own home, embodying the holiness of the whole ekklēsia.¹¹ Beyond recognition of basic thematic similarities, however, it is sometimes difficult to judge whether parallels with Jewish and Greco-Roman sources mean that the household codes merely reproduce conventional ethics or whether the directives are in any way shaped by a distinctive early Christian vision.¹²

In analyzing the household codes, one might distinguish between external influences and early Christian developments. On the one hand, the theme of household management and instructions about superior-subordinate relations appear to reflect wholesale borrowing from the outside. On the other hand, there is an internally developed Christian teaching framework. The specifically Christian framework includes such elements as “justification clauses” referring to “the Lord” or “in the Lord.” Thus, both Colossians (3:20) and Ephesians (6:1) call children to obey their parents “in the Lord.”¹³ Yet, in emphasizing these phrases, it is important not to overplay Christian uniqueness.¹⁴ Jewish Wisdom literature and Hellenistic writings offer striking parallels that can be deeply structural and/or content-specific and not just thematic. In considering the structure of the NT codes, for example, one might consider the fact that Sir 3:1-16 also contains an address, instruction, and motivation in its teaching concerning fathers, mothers, and children (and their bearing on relations with God).¹⁵ In a manner reminiscent of the codes in Colossians and Ephesians, Philo of Alexandria (Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, ca. 20 BCE to ca. 50 CE) attempts to moderate the authority of masters and addresses both masters and, unusually, slaves (albeit indirectly) at one point.¹⁶ There have been a striking range of materials from the Gentile world as well, which have been compared with the household codes in an effort to identify specific parallels in form and content. Examples from Hellenistic street philosophy,¹⁷ inscriptional evidence from family-based religious associations,¹⁸ and the agricultural handbooks (offering advice on farming practice and the management of estates) from the Roman world have all been presented as offering a context for understanding the domestic codes.¹⁹ When children are brought to the center of interpretation, a third question must be asked: While acknowledging the infusion of “Christian” elements, such as references to the authority of the Lord, do any of the household codes reveal evidence of significant change or challenge to the status quo? Do the household codes simpl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: The Codes and Children
• 2 Small, Silent, but Ever Present: Slave Children in Colossians 3:18–4:1
• 3 Socialization and Education: The Nurture, Teaching, and Discipline of Children in Ephesians 5:21–6:4
• 4 The House Church as Home School: The Christian Assembly and Family in the Pastorals
• 5 Conclusion: How Remembering the Little Ones Changes Things
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index of Ancient Sources
• Index of Modern Authors
• Subject Index