Angela Standhartinger has written about the so-called “house-hold code in Col. 3:18-4:1.” Her introductory paragraph is illuminating.
The household code in Col. 3.18-4.1 is the earliest text in the New Testament that calls on women, children and slaves to submit to men, fathers and masters. In many respects this text has justified and continues to justify oppressive structures in the family as well as in societies that tolerate slavery, which thus are assumed to be the unquestioned will of God.1
After such a confident introduction to a scholarly article, it would be pedantic, of course, for a reader like me to actually peruse the text in Colossians and compare it to what she says. But, for the sake of fairness to Paul, let’s be overly precise.
In fact, there is nothing in Paul’s epistle — which Standhartinger does not regard as from Paul but from a group of his disciples for whom there is no historical evidence but of whose existence she seems assured — that speaks of women submitting to men. What do I mean? I mean that Paul spoke of wives and husbands, and it should be apparent that in the ancient world as now also that not all women are wives and not all men are the husbands of all women (indeed very few men are the husbands of all women). In other words, Paul is obviously not talking about an oppressive structure defining relationships between women and men. I hope I do not really need to explain, but husbands and wives is an entirely different sort of category.
Also, we should note that children are not commanded to submit to fathers. The distinction may be lost on some, but in Colossians 3:20 Paul commands children to submit to their parents — fathers and mothers. Call to mind the book of Proverbs and that Solomon includes the teaching of the mother (Proverbs 1:8; 4:3; 6:20; 31:1) and that Wisdom itself is a woman (Proverbs 8). When Paul speaks specifically of fathers, he “imposes” limits on authority and places them in a position in which they must answer to God. The question of slavery is more complicated, but we need to remember that the two most well-known slaves in the New Testament were Jesus and Paul.
Standhartinger is certain that “Most of the exhortations in Col. 3.18-4.1 represent conventional formulations.”2 It is true, of course, that she can show that there are “law codes” which show similarities to Paul’s instruction in Colossians. The example she cites reads as follows.
61.1 Elders should lead and instruct the young to shun evil and be ashamed of it, so that they feel visibly ashamed and flee. For the shamelessness of elders in the cities lets their children and grandchildren grow up in loose-living.
61.5 No one should be devoid of shame, rather, a person should be prudent, since he will find mercy and salvation from the gods; for no wrongdoer is loved by God…
61.9 For this reason a person should grow accustomed from childhood onwards to punishing friends of the lie and loving friends of the truth, in order that the best and most wholesome of virtues may be cultivated…
61.16 A person should take great pains to be well-disposed toward the authorities, so that they are voluntarily obeyed as fathers and held in esteem. Whoever is not so minded receives punishment from the guardian gods for his bad will…
61.20 The authorities should equitably lead those under them as guardian gods were their own children, so that enmity, friendship and partiality do not play a role in judging . . .
62.30 Every man should love his wife who lawfully belongs to him and beget children with her. He should not waste his seed on any other. He may not squander or mistreat that which is his natural and lawful glory. For nature produces seed for bearing children and not for licentiousness.
62.34 A wife must be prudent and may not desire an illicit relationship with another man, because those who forsake their own house and establish enmity encounter the wrath of the gods.3
She emphasizes the similarities: “socially inferior” groups are exhorted first, a specific group is addressed and admonished, which is followed by an exhortation to a corresponding group. Reasons are given for the exhortations. She notes “some differences,” especially the lack of direct address in the law codes of Ps.-Charondas and Ps.-Zaleukos.4
In response, it is important to note that direct address is much more important than she seems to recognize, for Paul’s whole epistle is addressed directly to the “saints and faithful brethren in Christwho are in Colosse” (Colossians 1:2). In singling out wives, husbands, children, fathers, slaves and masters, he is speaking to groups who belong to the same family in Christ. They are defined as “in Christ” — everything else is secondary.
In addition to the deeper significance of direct address, two issues stand out, in my opinion. One: she hypothesizes about the “household code” of Colossians in terms of a speculatively constructed literary, theological, and cultural background that is foreign to the text of the New Testament as we have it and as it has been understood from as far back as we can reckon until the 18th century. Two: she seems blithely indifferent to the most important expressions of the household code, words that do indeed place its instruction within the context of the whole book of Colossians and the apostle Paul’s teaching. Let’s consider these two issues.
1) As for the first issue, she denies Paul’s authorship and confidently asserts the existence of a school of disciples who would not only borrow Paul’s name, but also fabricate relationships and circumstances, naming his friends and explaining how the fictitious Paul got his information about the church in Colosse. In addition, she is also apparently quite certain that, “The first known readers of the epistle to the Colossians, the authors of Ephesians, were well aware of these difficulties and made decisive changes when they adapted the household code for use in Eph 5.22-6.9.”5
Why are there differences between the household instructions in the Colossian and Ephesian epistles? Because, she suggests, the epistle to the Colossians was not done well, so its first readers — the authors (plural) of Ephesians — had to make corrections.
Apart from the fact that there is no historical or literary evidence for the existence of all these “authors” — not really a problem, so long as we can eliminate Paul! — the actual text of the New Testament offers a much better explanation. In the New Testament, there was a man, Tychicus who visited both the Ephesian and the Colossian churches to deliver the epistles that Paul wrote and to report to them “all the news” about Paul (Ephesians 6:21; Colossians 4:7). This means, of course, that just as the epistle to the Colossians would have been read to the Laodiceans (Colossians 4:16) — and presumably also to the church in Hierapolis (Colossians 4:13) — so also the epistle to the Ephesians would have been read to the Colossians and the epistle to the Colossians to the Ephesians. Different epistles having different emphases would not mean that any church would be deprived of Paul’s teaching to other churches, especially when the epistles are written from the same place at the same time and delivered by the same Tychicus! Indeed, Paul’s assurance that Tychicus would inform the churches of all they needed to know of him would also include — here is my wild speculation! — that he would also answer any questions they might have about what Paul had written.
2) With regard to the second issue, in the epistle that modern New Testament scholars complain has too high a Christology to have been written by the apostle Paul — a perverse perspective at best — is it not odd to ignore the most profound difference between Paul’s household code and the others Standhartinger refers to?
Contrast the literary and theological sensitivity of her reading with that of Eric Auerbach! Auerbach — who was not a professing Christian — noted with profound insight the differences between the literature of antiquity and the Bible.6 Discussing a passage in Tacitus, one that includes an eloquent speech by a rebellious soldier, Auerbach points out that Tacitus has no interest in the complaints of a soldier. The passage is included for rhetorical purposes. Aristocrats and commoners share no life together. As Auerbach writes:
Everything commonly realistic, everything pertaining to everyday life, must not be treated on any level except the comic, which admits no problematic probing. As a result the boundaries of realism are narrow. And if we take the word realism a little more strictly, we are forced to conclude that there could be no serious literary treatment of every day occupations and social classes — merchants, artisans, peasants, slaves — of everyday scenes and places — home, shop, field, store-of everyday customs and institutions — marriage, children, work, earning a living — in short, of the people and its life.7
One would think that a scholar writing after Auerbach would pick up on the kind of things he so famously emphasized.8
In Colossians, the Lord is Jesus, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, the purpose of all history and the meaning of life itself because He is the beloved Son of God who became man to deliver us from the power of darkness (Colossians 1:13, 15 ff.). Paul eloquently expounds this profound Christology throughout the book of Colossians and insists that this Cosmic Lord is the sphere in which Christians are to live (2:6-7).
When he offers a household code, the most important word that is repeated with pregnant emphasis is “Lord.” In the context of the book of Colossians, the meaning of “Lord” is unmistakably overwhelming. Wives, children, slaves and masters all are to do all things in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks unto God the Father by Him (3:17).9
No household code in all the ancient world even begins to compare with Paul’s instruction here. To miss the differences because of superficial similarities is nothing less than blindness, but it is an affliction that is common in the world of New Testament scholarship.
The household code is not about oppression nor does it condone the ancient world’s hierarchical social structures — certainly not slavery. Paul’s household code offers instruction in daily life that liberates those who have been delivered from the power of darkness. His words are revolutionary. Building Christian homes that served the Lord Jesus in word and deed changed the world. If we take Paul’s words — God’s words! — seriously, we will continue to change the world and build the kingdom of God.
- Angela Standhartinger, “The Origin and Intention of the Household Code in the Letter to the Colossians,” The Journal for the Study of the New Testament, no. 79 (2000), p. 117. ↩︎
- Ibid., p. 122. ↩︎
- Ibid., pp. 120-21. ↩︎
- Ibid., pp. 121-22. ↩︎
- Ibid., p. 128. ↩︎
- I am thinking now especially of his chapter titled “Fortunata” in which he wrote: “If the literature of antiquity was unable to represent everyday life seriously, that is, in full appreciation of its problems and with an eye for its historical background; if it could represent it only in the low style, comically or at best idyllically, statically and ahistorically, the implication is that these things mark the limits not only of the realism of antiquity but of its historical consciousness as well.” Auerbach shows how very different the Bible’s historical consciousness is, both as literature and as theology. That finds most wonderful expression in the book of Colossians and its household code. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 33. ↩︎
- Ibid., p. 31. ↩︎
- She does take note of the fact that Colossians, like Galatians, sees baptism as initiation into the body of Christ in which there are no distinctions of race, gender, or social position — no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or free. However, for Standhartinger, that suggests that the household code is subverted by the instruction on baptismal equality. Wayne Meeks held a similar opinion: “Among the topics I posed for my class was the dissonance between two passages in the letters attributed to the apostle Paul. In the Letter to Galatians (3:27–28) the apostle writes: “For all of you who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ (like a garment): there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no ‘male and female,’ for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Against this vision, which sounds so exhilaratingly egalitarian to modern ears, there stood another group of texts, also attributed to Paul: “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord; . . . children, obey your parents in every way; . . . slaves, obey in every way your masters according to the flesh . . . ” (Col 3:18–22; cf. Eph 5:22–6:9). In the history of Christian moral formation, it is clearly the latter set of texts that have had the greater influence; it was the former that excited me. But how to make sense of that revolutionary vision — and of the suppression of its subversive potential?” In Search of the Early Christians (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), p, xiv. Perhaps when confronting issues that seem to so utterly contradict our way of thinking, we should question ourselves. Perhaps, too, like Auerbach, we should make the effort to fully enter the worldview that made their literature what it was. ↩︎
- Paul’s exhortation in 3:17 is not at all to be separated from the household code of the following verses. On the contrary, 3:17 is a hinge between what goes before and follows. In fact, John Paul Heil goes further. He sees 3:17-4:1 as an identifiable unit within the “macrochiastic structure” of the book of Colossians. Colossians: Encouragement to Walk in All Wisdom as Holy Ones in Christ (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010), p. 163, etc. ↩︎