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Scripture evokes the sorts and conditions" of numerous families, but does it
actually propose any theology of the family?! That question is the object of this
article, but before approaching it properly, an invisible obstacle must be
dismissed. Between the modern reader and the Bible there stands a twenty
century ideological usage of several scriptural texts. The submission of women,
the image of the father, and the obedience of childrenin short, the traditional
image of the familyhave all developed progressively according to a particular
interpretation of certain biblical passages. In modern times other readings of
scripture have become possible that can allow other images to emerge from the
shadows. Furthermore, it is worth noting that various definitions of celibacy,
chastity, and asceticism held authoritatively by some Christians are virtual
caricatures of the positions of Jesus or Paul.
A Given
What strikes the reader oftheNew Testament is the absence of any normative
definition of family. One might say that God must have accepted whatever
family God found.2 Christian revelation enlightens certain personal or social
situations, but it does not create ex nihilo one family model destined to serve
This article was first published in Les Cahiers protestants, new series, 6 (1974): 6172.
Many books and articles have been published since then. See, for example. Constructing
Early Christian Families: Family as Social Reality and Metaphor, ed. Halvor Moxnes (London
and New York: Routledge, 1997), and Common Life in the Early Church: Essays Honoring
Gro^donF. Snider, ed. Julian V.Hillsetal. (Harrisburg:Trinity Press International, 1998).
1 See JeanJacques von Allmens article Famille, in Vocabulaire Biblique, ed... von
Allmen (Neuchtel, Paris, 1954), 1002; and Georges Crespy, Thologie biblique de
la famille, Choisir 14:162 (May 1975): 1822.
2 Even the texts on the indissolubility of marriage (e.g., Mark 10:112 )offer neither
a doctrine of family nor a dogmatic definition of what constitutes a couple. They are
responding to concrete ethical problems.
128 FRANOIS BOVON
as an example to later centuries. And as the new being comes from the old,
the regenerating family emerges from the ancient family and from the societies
of other times.
For example, in the New Testament there are families of Jewish, Greek, or
Roman types. Each has its good qualities and its fatilts. The freedom allowed by
the Greeks to women, clearly a relative matter, allows to Lydia (a merchant of
purple dye) an autonomous existence permitting her to transform her house
into a Christian "commune" (Acts 16:1415). At Corinth, however, the same
liberty leads to an apparently sarcastic equalizing of the sexes (1 Cor. 11:2-6).
The cohesion of the Jewish family, rooted in the Israelite faith in a God who
is "husband" of his community, served as example to the early church. The
bonds between Christ and his church are presented in conjugal terms (see Eph.
5:25 and 2 Cor. 11:2). Jewish and early Christian tradition, however, both
protect the woman and humiliates her: the wife is seen as a fragile vase in the
hands of her husband (1 Thess. 4:4 see 1 Peter 3:7) or as a body for whom the
male does all the thinking and has all the authority (1 Cor. 11:3). The rabbis
and Christian teachers, furthermore, are wary of the fragile woman, who is easily
swayed.3 Two exegetical traditions, one based on the story of the fall (Gen. 3)
and the other on that of the fallen angels (Gen. 6:14), attribute to women
original sin on the one hand and the inevitability of death on the other. From
these faults woman is cursed to redeem herself through the labor of bringing
children (preferably male) into the world (see 1 Tim. 2:1315).
Looking more closely at the examples of families, it becomes evident that the
gospels. Acts, and epistles do not cite a single family that is complete and happy.
In one case a woman and her only son (Luke 7:1117), in another a father and
his daughter (Mark 5:21-23, 35-43), here some brothers and sisters without
parents or children (John 11), there a father and his sons (where is the
mother?Luke 15:11-32), an instance of a mother and her two sons (where is
the father?Matt. 20:20-28), or the case of jealous brothers (Luke 12:1315),
and so forth. The single appearance of the classic triangle is found (signifi-
cantly) in the New Testaments account of some pre-Christians: Zachary, the
father, Elizabeth, the mother, and John the Baptist, the son (Luke 1). This
observation, obscured for most readers by traditional family theology, can be
explained in two ways, inverse and yet complementary.
As we shall see, Jesus proclaims (referring to the apocalyptic tradition),
a message so audacious that it will actually break apart the members of family
units: Yes, I have come to separate the man from his father, the daughter from
her mother, the daughter inlaw from her motherlnlaw: members of the same
household will be enemies (Matt. 10:35-36 see Luke 12:51-53).
In other passages the New Testament demonstrates the sad state of the people
of Israel, the world in general, and families in particular, so that it is no surprise
when it tells of broken couples and variously separated families. In his own
waya way shocking to partisans of family unity founded on hierarchy and
fearJesus binds up the broken ties of a couple, returns a son to his father,
a child to its mother. He does not triumphally cure the woes of families, but he
enables related people, even though they remain the victims of suffering, to
become more sensitive and more authentic.
Necessary Rupture
Neither Jesus nor his apostles had an explicit social or political program. To
break the yoke of family and to reject the authority of princes would have
required a rejection of the world that Christians were not in conscience ready
to make. On the other hand, to impose a specific form of family or to pledge
unconditional allegiance to a given political system would likewise have been
repugnant to Christians.
Paul demonstrates this attitude when he recommends that Christians be
satisfied with their condition (klesis; 1 Cor. 7:20). He is not encouraging
Christians to approve the status quo, nor does he suggest they practice a religion
disconnected from real life. His emphasis is rather on their accepting from the
start the historicity of the existence and the incarnation of the new life. Even
if believers live "in the Spirit," they remain "in the flesh" (see Rom.89 and Gal.
2:20). They retain their identities as wives or husbands, children or parents,
masters or slaves.
What, then, is changed in the moment of decision, the moment of realizing
a call, whether stunningly sudden or long in maturing? Personal decisions of
faith do have implications for ones relationship to family, to society, and to
politics, but such implications are not stipulated in any advance detail. There
is still no precise ethical code choices abound in life, and believers remain free
to choose in what direction and in what fashion they will act.
However, the call of Christ in the gospels and the apostolic preaching in the
Acts and epistles do advance a specific requirementa kind of rupture, a kind
of deathnamely, the realization of the command "Go!" which was once
addressed to Abraham (Gen. 121). The manner of living out this separation
varies. Jesuss disciples realized it literally.. Paul lived it more spiritually, almost
doctrinally, because on the outside his life changed little he continued to
travel, often at the expense of others. The object of his travels, however, was
reversed: from being a persecutor, he became a proselytizer.
Whether concrete or spiritual, this rupture implies particularly a break from
family ties. That is what lies behind certain astonishing sentences of Jesus,
largely (and significantly) neglected by Christian tradition
In truth I tell you, no one will have left house, brothers, sisters, mother,
father, children, or fields for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel
without receiving a hundredfold now, in these times, of houses, brothers,
sisters, mothers, children, and fields, with persecutions, and in the world
to come eternal life.5 (Mark 102930)
Jesus is not inciting Christians to a carefree droppingout from society (which
would cause great scandal of its conservative members). Rather, this remarkable
declaration is focused entirely on the kingdom of God, for which total sacrifice
is fitting.^ Gospel criticism of the family grows from the new reality and the new
norm of the kingdom.
In the gospels it is the marginal people who are found to be best disposed to
accepting this new reality and norm. Children, sinners, eunuchs, and prosti'
tutes serve paradoxically as role models in a society led by men sure of their own
rights. "In truth, I tell you, if you do not change and become like children, you
will not enter into the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 18:3). And some there are
who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 1912).
As a theologian in whose mind faith and life are totally integrated, Jesus lives
out the very rupture that he proclaims. He breaks with his own family, lives
a celibate life, and does not depend on his social milieu (see Mark 33 ,21'20l
35). There exist Essene sources with an apparently similar ascetic approach, but
that of Jesus can be explained better by the influence of the future than by that
5 This saying of Jesus was sufficiently important to the early Christians that it survives
through two distinct channels the Markan tradition (Mark 10:28-30 Matt. 19:27-39 and
Luke 18:2930) and that of the source of the logia (Q), common to Matthew and Luke
(Matt 1037 and Luke 14:26).
One never tires of reading Kirkegaards searing criticism of official Christianity for
proclaiming sacrifice without living it. See particularlythestory ofthe young pastor Ludvig
From who, at his installation, preaches on the text Seek ye first the kingdom of God"
(Matt. 633), all while personally seeking first the worldly advantages and privileges
available to him. See also spren Kierkegaard, VInstant, translated into French by ..
TisseauiBazogesenTareds, Vende, 1948), 11215. Professor Gabriel Widmer has drawn
my attention to this reference, for which I am much indebted.
Jesus follows other prophets of the Last Times in proclaiming that the parousia will
bring about divisions in the very hearts of families.
FAMILYAND COMMUNITY IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 131
of the past.8 The kingdom of God renders traditional family structures precipi'
tously precarious: In fact, when one rises from the dead one takes neither wife
nor husband, but one becomes like the angels in heaven (Mark 12:25).
The same may be said for Pauline celibacy. Neither Paul nor Jesus bases his
position on a theology of duty, as though God required suffering as a condition
for access to salvation. On the contrary, it is for Jesus the joy of the kingdom,
and for Paul the joy of justification, which opens up the ways of celibacy, of
renunciation, of the cross.
8 Besides, it was more John the Baptist who may be considered ascetic, since Jesus clearly
knew how to live joyously (see Matt. 11:1819).
132 FRANOIS BOVON
Sharing space
Regenerated by Christ, the natural family offers its space to the Christian
community when it is needed. Anecdotes in the Acts of the Apostles describe
how converted families put their properties at the disposal of the local commu
nity. Rather than deciding to build in common an edifice that will serve as
a holy place, these families perceive all their profane realities, houses included,
as having been sanctified by God in Christ. Conversion has transformed the
relationship between people and their goods. Prior to conversion individuals
were the fearful defenders of their space and goods after conversion they are
sharers of all. And where space is shared, there bread can be broken. This
transformation, a question of economics in every sense, threatens the old
partitioning of space with its undertones of violence, as operated by secular
society. Social and political systems tend whether by will or by force to hold
people in their place, however low or narrow that may be. With conversion,
changes come about and a movement of community takes over.
Such space is called in the New Testament oikoSy the word "house," which
becomes virtually synonymous with family. The household, this dimension
between the individual and the town, becomes symbolic: it is not a fortress of
last resort or a place of refuge nor is it a vague terrain of anarchy wherein
members behave however they please. Comparing the people of God to sheep
in their herd, biblical tradition holds that happiness comes about when each
person feels sufficiently free and sufficiently protected to go and come, to
approach or depart, to enter or leave without the risk of suffocation within or
perdition without.io
The household of God is so disposed and so ordered that it can be at once the
source of freedom and of communion. The first Christians organized their world
See the fine book by Gaston Bachelard, La potique due Vespacey 2nd ed. (Paris: Presses
universitaires de France, 1958).
1See John 10:9 and Ezekial 34:116.
FAMILY AND COMMUNITY IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
with the community in mind,!! a community that was not an end in itself but
that tried to be open and welcoming. Salvation of the city was to come about
through the conversion of the house.
Free Time
To organize space is to organize time. Christians have their work to do. Livings
have to be earned. "If some among you do not want to work, let them not eat"
(2Thess.3:10).Formost people work was not chosenfor historical orincamational
doctrine. It was imposed by outside social forces (some were bom slaves ) and
by nature itself (like anyone else, a Christian must eat). But the sense of work
has changed. Through their faith, believers are freed from the imposed and
oppressing character of work. They therefore manage to have a certain amount
of free time, and this they will share and redistribute. Nighttime is a time both
of freedom and of C0mmunity,12 thus the breaking of the bread during the night
of Saturday-Sunday. Just as the family space came to be one with the community
space, so family time tended to coincide with community time.
Ministel Structure
These ideas find confirmation in the organization of ministries proposed in
the New Testament. There are in the epistles and the Acts two types of
institutional ministries. One is itinerant (for the apostle, the evangelist),
responding to the order of rupture made by Jesus and reflecting the criticism of
the closed and self-sufficient family. The other is local (the elder, the bishop,
the deacon), which thereby witnesses obedience to the gospel command of
engagement in immediate reality, in historical existence. In this manner
primitive Christianity thought it could restrain on the one hand the enthusiasm
of those who, desirous of letting go, wanted to suppress the difference between
the sexes, and on the other the rigorism of harsher types who dreamed of
dominating the flesh and condemning marriage.^
Conclusion
The New Testament establishes double restrictions that should be reviewed
before concluding. It refuses, for one, to promote family values at the expense of
the kingdom of God and of the church community (Jesus warns that, in extreme
" See w. Rordof, Was wissen wir ber die christlichen GottesdienstraUme?" Zeitschrift
fur neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 55 (1964): 110-28.
*See A. Cabaniss, "Early Christian Nighttime Worship," The Journal of Bible and
Religion 25 (1957).0-
Whence the apologia ofmarriage found in laterwritingsoftheNewTestament(lTim.
4: and Heb. 14).
134 FRANOIS BOVON
cases, getting married (Luke 14:20), burying ones father (Luke 9:59-60), or even
pausing to take leave of family (Luke 9:6162) can close access to the kingdom.
For another, it does not transform criticism of the family, which draws its
strength from eschatological joy, into a Manichean distrust of the created order,
of the couple, or of sexuality.
Scriptural witnesses show that within the community of the people of God
these double limitations have not always been respected. Thus the theocratic
ideal as found in certain texts of the Law identifies abusively Gods people and
civil community in attributing to each tribe its territory and to each family its
place. Inversely, the unfocused asceticism that in the first century could be
found throughout the near eastboth Greek and Jewishleft its trace in the
New Testament. Sexual activity and the couple practicing it, if not actually
condemned, were sometimes little more than tolerated.
It can be said, then, that Christians are faithful to revelation if they refrain
from either holding the family sacred or doing away with it entirely. They will
discover that family is something of relative importance. The kingdom of God
as already sown in the churchs community relativizes the family and transfigures
it at the same time.
To live within this concept, it will be necessary to dare, after the example of
the Apostle, to think about the problems, to discern them in common, and to
drawfrom them original solutions. In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul employsfour criteria
for the resolution of family problems specifically present in the community.
Christians are to consider: one, whatever is in conformity with Christ, espe
cially with the sense of a destiny leading to the cross*, two, whatever aims at the
good of the community, particularly the harmonious relation between the
strong and the weak within the faith; three, whatever corresponds to the
eschatological situation in which the community finds itself (Paul refuses to
make decisions according to abstract and timeless norms); four, whatever
appears to be inspired by the Spirit of God. Augustine of Hippo clearly
understood the position of the Apostle and paraphrased him well when he
proposed, "Love, and do what you like.14
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