
Trajectory application is typically accused of going beyond the text and “modernizing” or “making relevant” the bible’s ancient (and antiquated) sense of things. However, forming outcomes relevant and appropriate to fulfill the meaning of a text should have some biblical foundation to them. In this last section, we will focus two trajectory applications of the household gathered-church found in the New Testament itself: Paul’s Ephesians household-table and his appeal to Philemon concerning the runaway slave, Onesimus.
The seditious Ephesian church-household (table). The household was the venue of the NT gathered-church, which is significance, for the Roman household was the foundational institution for the Roman Empire. Aristotle provides the framing of the household we are to imagine in the NT world: “. . . the first and fewest possible parts of a family are master and slave, husband and wife, father and children.”[1] Note the priority of the master-husband-father in his description. Although seemingly inconsequential, recreating the household “in Christ,” changed everything. The belief that a man is “intended by nature to rule as husband, father, and master, and that failure to adhere to this proper hierarchy is detrimental not only to the household but also to the life of the state.”[2] Outside the free male, all others lessened in value and any behavior (i.e., social, civil, or religious) that opposed the centrality of the male head of household was inappropriate, even seditious to the empire.
In the Ephesians household-table (Eph 5:21–6:9), Paul tears up the encultured tiered human hierarchy household habitus, and thus, the household-gathered habitus of the worshiping community became the paradigm for believing households. The Ephesians household-table presents three seditious elemental changes to the status quo of the Roman household: 1) the lesser household member (i.e., wives, children, slaves) is addressed first—contrasted with the male head of household who always heads in such tables; 2) a reorientation of the metanarrative for each relationship pair—a contrast to the ordering of life that relies on the centrality of the male in social institutions; and, 3) the reciprocity called upon for each relationship-pair—contrasted with no such male corresponding reciprocity toward the other lesser household members in typical household tables. These three elements are subversive to the culturally embedded view of women, children, slaves, and husbands-fathers-masters. There is a reorientation toward a horizontal rather than a vertical assertion in these relationships.[3] This would have had systemic implications felt in concentric circles out from households to all the nooks and crannies of the social and institutional world.
[2] Lincoln, “The Letter to the Colossians,” 653; also A. T. Lincoln, “The Household Code and Wisdom Mode of Colossians,” JSNT 74 (1999): 93–112.
[3] Note Spencer, “From Poet to Judge”; also, Lisa Marie Belz, “The Rhetoric of Gender in the Household of God: Ephesians 5:21–33 and Its Place in Pauline Tradition,” <ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/502>, accessed 7/13/15 (Diss: Loyola University Chicago, 2013): 217–18.
[4] Aristotle, Politics, Book One, Part V, p. 9.
[5] Dudrey, “‘Submit Yourself to One Another.’”
[6] Ibid.
[7] Kathleen E. Corley, “Were the Women Around Jesus Really Prostitutes? Women in the Context of Greco-Roman Meals,” SBL 1989 Seminar Papers, ed. David J. Lull (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 487-521.
[8] O. M. Bakke, When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity (trans Brian McNeil: Minneapolis: Fortess, 2005), 21–2.
[9] Bakke, When Children Became People, 54–5, quoting Suzanne Dixon, The Roman Family (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 130–31.
[10] Dudrey, “‘Submit Yourself to One Another’’’ and see Bakke, When Children Became People, 22–47.
[11] Bakke, When Children Became People, 24.
[12] Chip M. Anderson, Destroying Our Private Cities, Building Our Spiritual Life (Xulon, 2003), 113.
Part 1 | Part 2a | Part 2b | Part 2c | Part 3 | Part 3a | Part 3b | Part 4a | Part 4b | Part 5
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