How Shall He Take Care of the Church of God?

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It's the Lord's Day; let's focus on other things and if folks still think this thread can go anywhere further, take it up on Monday.
 
Another key requirement for the Office of Elder is that he be able to rightly teach the word of God. It's been alluded to repeatedly, but this is one of the most wooden interpretations of the notion of oikos that I've read. I'm rather shocked at the way this idea is being interpreted without any grammatico-historical reference to the context in which Paul was writing.

This is a very good book for any who wish to take the topic up: https://mwc.warhornmedia.com/

I would not normally recommend something that Warhorn Media produced but, in this case, they republished a work by (of all things) a Roman Catholic. I was initially skeptical of the work when someone else recommended it but is (surprisingly) one of the most comprehensive looks at the social roles of men and women not only in the Scriptures but in ancient and modern contexts.

Toward that end, there are multiple chapters on the context of households prior to the advent of our technological age.

The notion that, when Paul refers to oikos as measuring how a man would deal with with wife and his kids is a modern concept of oikos. It's so much more comprehensive than that. In fact, due to the changes in the way households and work are, if the OP's insistence that one would have to rule his "oikos" well meant that we all had to do what a man would need to do to meet that requirement in the context of an ancient household then no modern person (or very few) could meet that requirement.

In other words, there are things that were so symbiotic with work and the home and the economy that the social structures do not exist for a man to meet the "exact" sense that would be required at the time Paul peened the words.

Thus, the person making the post is, himself, not qualified if he insists on a wooden understanding that ruling one's "oikos" in the precise sense of what everyone would understand at the time of Paul's writing would entail.

What is required of stable and learned Pastors of the word (not unstable and unlearned as evidenced by the inability to apply an appropriate grammatico-historical exegesis) is to apply the principle that Paul is aiming at to the context in which any Church finds itself. Since there will be no men in a technological age that are ruling an "oikos" in exactly the same manner at the time of Paul's writing, it requires us to look at how a man serves as an exemplar to the spiritual community he will govern. He no longer works in a trade that exists as an extension to his home training his sons in that trade. His wife no longer helps in the same way to sustain the other elements of the household economy or the extended community that is an extension of other households involved in common commerce and social interactions. She would be absorbed not in simply sustaining a small home with a plot of land and making dinner or changing diapers but, with her daughters or servants, in a variety of activities. She, along with other women, will have very limited contact with other men due to the divisions of labor. Likewise, many of the modern notions that men spend a lot of time with their kids and wife doesn't deal with the realities of ancient households in how they trained their sons in the work of the household once they were old enough.

There is so much discontinuity in the way households operate that it is breathtakingly idiosyncratic and anachronistic to conceive of "oikos" as the author of this thread avers. The reason why ancient commentators (and even Calvin) don't struggle with this notion as much as the author does is because they still lived in a time when the "oikos" concept was intact and it's shocking to me that someone would try to force a modern concept and miss this obvious characteristic difference in the character of the household concept.
 
@Semper Fidelis
Brother, I am not getting my notion of oikos from modern or ancient culture, but from the words Paul uses in his instructions. There are enough clues in the verses themselves to catch on to Paul's working definition of oikos.

A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife [...] one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; (for if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?) 1 Timothy 3

My insistence that men be examined on the upright governance of their actual wives and dependents is my best to adhere to what I see as Paul's obvious expectation in these verses. You and others can call it overly wooden, but don't say I am shoehorning a modern conception of oikos where it doesn't belong. That has nothing to do with it.

What is required of stable and learned Pastors of the word [...] is to apply the principle that Paul is aiming at to the context in which any Church finds itself.

We agree completely, on everything except for the actual principle in question. If I'm understanding you correctly, you see Paul aiming at a "not a novice" principle in regard to governance in general. I see Paul quite clearly aiming at a "not a novice" principle in regard to governance of family. Again, you and others can say I am being overly wooden, but please do not treat me as if I am being contemptably wooden or incorrigibly wooden; as if I am seeing something that I wish was in the text but isn't, or as if I am deliberately shutting my ears to irrefutable proofs against my interpretation from other parts of Scripture. I am not.
 
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Brother, I am not getting my notion of oikos from modern or ancient culture, but from the words Paul uses in his instructions. There are enough clues in the verses themselves to catch on to Paul's working definition of oikos.

Paul got his understanding of oikos from his culture. If he didn't, his use of the word would have been meaningless to his audience.
 
Paul got his understanding of oikos from his culture. If he didn't, his use of the word would have been meaningless to his audience.

So, if Paul were to be transported through time to 21st century America, he would come to a church, be invited to some homes, learn a little bit about how the families operate and, maybe after a few weeks, someone would ask him what he thought about this or that oikos, Paul would look at him with a deeply puzzled expression and say, "Oikos? You mean Mr. Donaldson and his family? They are a nice family and everything, but I never would have thought of them as an oikos. That's crazy!"
 
So, if Paul were to be transported through time to 21st century America, he would come to a church, be invited to some homes, learn a little bit about how the families operate and, maybe after a few weeks, someone would ask him what he thought about this or that oikos, Paul would look at him with a deeply puzzled expression and say, "Oikos? You mean Mr. Donaldson and his family? They are a nice family and everything, but I never would have thought of them as an oikos. That's crazy!"

No one here said that a natural family isn't an oikos. Rather, as we have noted many times, oikos is much larger than that.
 
No one here said that a natural family isn't an oikos. Rather, as we have noted many times, oikos is much larger than that.

Is it because the ancient understanding of oikos is much larger than the modern conception of household that it would be a somewhat paltry measure of a man to examine his care of his household for evidence of his competence in governance, today?
 
Is it because the ancient understanding of oikos is much larger than the modern conception of household that it would be a somewhat paltry measure of a man to examine his household for evidence of his competence in governance?

Don't fully understand what you are asking. I am simply saying that the ancient semantic range of oikos didn't necessarily limit itself to married with children.
 
We agree completely, on everything except for the actual principle in question. If I'm understanding you correctly, you see Paul aiming at a "not a novice" principle in regard to governance in general. I see Paul quite clearly aiming at a "not a novice" principle in regard to governance of family. Again, you and others can say I am being overly wooden, but please do not treat me as if I am being contemptably wooden or incorrigibly wooden; as if I am seeing something that I wish was in the text but isn't, or as if I am deliberately shutting my ears to irrefutable proofs against my interpretation from other parts of Scripture. I am not.
I'm stating that you are unlearned in your handling of the text. Just so we're clear.

Your handling of the grammatico-historical use of the word "oikos" is embarrassing. If you were a member of my Presbytery I would consider you unfit for ordination as you don't know how to handle the Greek and understand words in their historical context.
 
I'm stating that you are unlearned in your handling of the text. Just so we're clear.

Your handling of the grammatico-historical use of the word "oikos" is embarrassing. If you were a member of my Presbytery I would consider you unfit for ordination as you don't know how to handle the Greek and understand words in their historical context.

It's embarrassing to think that there is enough correlation between what Paul described as oikos and the households of today, that a presbytery examining a man's care of his wife and children are holding to Paul's requirement regarding the examination of a man's oikos?
 
It's embarrassing to think that there is enough correlation between what Paul described as oikos and the households of today, that a presbytery examining a man's care of his wife and children are holding to Paul's requirement regarding the examination of a man's oikos?
You seem to be incapable of exegeting what others are writing in plain English. I'll say this once as a warning to you, but you either acknowledge what others have stated or you will receive infraction and suspension if you refuse to note what has already been acknowledged.

You have misrepresented me as averring that a man's wife and children are not to be taken into consideration Your considerable error is that you have not established what an "oikos" is. You will not receive further warnings so tread carefully.
 
I think that we can all agree that oikos had a different signification in the time of Paul than it later came to assume in Western history, especially in and after the Industrial Revolution. If one had a wife and children, as was quite common then and now (perhaps with extended family as well then: think of the Roman family and the paterfamilias), whatever family one had would ordinarily be part of the oikos. Additionally, one's whole way of life and livelihood was included in that word/concept oikos (see Kittel).

The point here is that, then and now, a wife and children may or may not be part of any given man's oikos. He had one, and governed it well or not, with or without wife and family. Again, most men have a wife and family and they are to be taken into account as part of his oikos in presbyterial assessment. There is, however, for all the reasons adduced in this thread, no apostolic requirement that a candidate for office must be married and have children. He must be a "one woman man," however, in any case, and successfully manage his oikos. Many of us have sought to explain how that may be done without a wife and family.

You, Blake, @Parakaleo, do not think that any proper positive assessment can be rendered without a wife and family. I still don't think that you've answered these considerations:
  1. Paul was not married in the Pastorals and an apostle would not list consideration for office that he himself could not meet.
  2. As an apostle he was everything an overseer and presbyter were; they were not everything that he was. An apostle lacks no qualification.
  3. Paul also commends in I Cor. 7 an unmarried state: it is inconceivable that he would be advising men otherwise qualified to disqualify themselves from office.
  4. Our Lord himself was not married, though he lacked no virtues whatsoever in either nature or in the integrity of his theanthropic person.
  5. This is because marriage is not a state possessing any inherent virtue(s).
  6. You mention "not a novice." The reason one cannot be a novice is that no graces or gifts are ascertainable in one untested. Soon enough that will give way to discernable experience.
  7. But not for you: if a man never marries, no matter how qualified he may otherwise seem in terms of gifts and graces, he is not qualified to be a minister, ever. Even if he gets married, that's not enough. If he can't have children or somehow come up with them (is he required to adopt?!), he is not qualified, according to you--all of which seems like an exercise in reading something out of the text that something has led you to read into the text.
Blake, you've also cited a few, and I've added others, both publicly and privately, who speak about the minister's wife and family and the importance of assessing his effectiveness as a minister by gauging his household management. I do not believe, however, that one of those you've quoted asserts that Paul in the Pastorals required a man to be married and to have a family in order to be considered for the ministry. I agree that some few might hold this, but no authority that has been cited in this thread requires such, to the best of my knowledge.

Peace,
Alan
 
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@Semper Fidelis
Brother, after some time thinking through everything and carefully re-reading what was said above, I think I see what has happened. I wrongly took your comments (and Jacob's comments) regarding the ancient oikos to mean something to the effect of:
  • A man's oikos in ancient times was so different from what we would call a man's household today, that it's quaint to think evaluating a man's care of his wife and family today would satisfy what Paul required as far as examining a man's oikos.
This is why I was pushing back against the idea that it would be some kind of a fool's errand to try and evaluate a man's oikos in the year 2022 and that we examine a man's care of his wife and family under a different principle than examining his governance of his oikos. Upon further reflection, I am now understanding your comments (and Jacob's comments) regarding the ancient oikos to mean something to the effect of:
  • A man's oikos in ancient times was so expansive and varied compared to what we would call a man's household today, Paul's requirement to examine a man's governance of his oikos need not be limited to how he cares for a wife and children.
I apologize for my misunderstanding and can see how it would have been somewhat annoying. However, I did not misrepresent you as averring it is unnecessary to examine a man's wife and children. I was pushing back against what I saw was the terminus of an argument as I (wrongly) understood it, without ever saying I was pushing back against your actual position; much less your stated position! Maybe that's a distinction with a difference you won't appreciate, but all I can say is that it never entered my mind that you really see examining a man's care of his wife and children as unneeded. It certainly never "proceeded from my fingers" that you are, in fact, someone in that boat. As such, I can't help but feel that you have misrepresented me.
 
My insistence that men be examined on the upright governance of their actual wives and dependents is my best to adhere to what I see as Paul's obvious expectation in these verses. You and others can call it overly wooden, but don't say I am shoehorning a modern conception of oikos where it doesn't belong. That has nothing to do with it.

The "you and others" portion and following was not said to imply you see no reason to ever examine a man's governance of his wife and children, but that you disagree with my reading that all men presenting themselves for office in the church must be examined on how they care for their own wives and dependents. Surely you see that?
 
Where have I done this?

The "you and others" portion and following was not said to imply you see no reason to ever examine a man's governance of his wife and children, but that you disagree with my reading that all men presenting themselves for office in the church must be examined on how they care for their own wives and dependents. Surely you see that?
One would have to be completely incapable of wisdom and knowledge to *exclude* how a man manages his wife and children when considering his fitness for the office. It goes without saying that a man's wife and children need to be considered. This thread wasn't started by the "equal and opposite" silliness of some Pastor arguing that we shouldn't examine such. You started a thread making the notion of "oikos" co-extensive with the idea that the only way to judge a man as meeting the qualification is to have a wife and children with which to judge him.

One of the problems with idiosyncratic views is that idiosyncratic views have to multiply in order to sustain them. The fact that, in Church history your take is absent is no hindrance to you. In order to sustain it, then, when the fact that Paul is unmarried is brought up you actually undermine another basic Reformed tenet that Paul was an Elder. As Alan points out (and is well-known), an Apostle is a special class of Elder but the office of Elder is still inherent in the office even as Diaconal work is inherent in the office of Elder in the absence of the same. In order to sustain your idiosyncratic view, you need to aver that Paul's qualifications don't apply to himself because his class is sui generis. By your own reasoning, Paul (having never ruled an oikos) is not qualified to rule over the house of God.
Again, returning to the point that was sharpened above by Alan, the "oikos" concept is all-encompassing in terms of how a man manages all the affairs surrounding his household. As everyone understands, Paul is not providing an exhaustive list of qualifiers/disqualifiers. When he is giving instructions to men in an ancient context he is arguing from the lesser to the greater. Everyone understand the pattern of life he will need to have lived in order to re responsible for the household of God. He points at the man's oikos and states that it is one of the things that needs to be examined.
The wise application of this is to see Paul giving some examples of the kinds of things that would naturally be considered. He excludes, for instance, that even if his oikos is sound (successfully managed), if he is not a "one-woman" man or his children are not under subjection then he's not qualified.
The aiming point is not some simple formula to say that if a man is faithful to his wife and has children under subjection that he is managing his oikos well. It is much broader than that. Furthermore, in the case of the man with the gift of singleness, there are no wife and children to consider (whether they support the notion that he manages his household well or they disqualify him). There are other factors.
The bottom line is that everyone agrees that a novice should not be ordained to the office and the strongest statement in the whole is that he manages his oikos well given how expansive that term is.
The very frustrating thing for me is your simultaneous certainty that you are just following what Paul is commanding while simultaneously failing to show any regard for establishing the oikos concept. The other thing I would find disqualifying in your view if you sought ordination in my Presbytery is your further idiosyncratic idea that an Apostle didn't have to meet the qualifications of an Elder and that Paul could not be one to be imitated by other Elders but would positively not be imiatatable because he never met the qualifications of that office.
 
From observing this thread, the argument that men must have wife and children to be qualified for eldership is made on one of two grounds, and there does seem to be some shifting between the two grounds as arguments have been both made and responded to.

Either,

1) It is being argued that a person cannot be fit to govern God's house unless a person has first governed their wife and children. This argument is about something akin to ontology: a person simply cannot be fit to govern without having governed wife and children. If this is the case though, then the Apostle Paul and Jesus would be disqualified from office: it doesn't matter if there was an extraordinary call, they simply did not learn what they needed to learn to govern well. There is also the counter-argument mentioned by Strange and others that the Apostles lacked no ordinary qualification and other counter-arguments, which would also answer a separate, distinct objection that Paul was given extraordinary gifts (and another problem arises that these alleged extraordinary gifts are actually just natural gifts of goverance, so we again have a single man Paul having ordinary qualifications for office; and also, that being the case, although objections could be raised to the following, a person could pray for and receive these natural gifts without being granted them in an extraordinary manner, since we can always pray for increase of natural gifts and do receive them as the Lord sees fit).

Or

2) It is being argued that a session cannot know if a person is fit to govern God's house unless a person has first governed their wife and children. This argument is about epistemology. In this case, a person could in fact be fit to govern God's house without having first governed wife and children, but a session and congregation would not be able to judge whether that is the case. In this case, the argument would be that Paul's extraordinary call cleared the problem of epistemology: God knew that Paul was fit and so his extraordinary call was made.

However, in this case, one is going further than the exact words of the text (the claim that is being made in favor of the view that the church officer must have wife/children) and instead going with a principle that is claimed to be taught by the text, and this position must also admit that a person could be qualified without having wife and children. In this case then it needs to be shown that there is no other way to know (beyond an extraordinary call) that a person could be qualified without having wife and children and that the proposed solutions for finding this out do not work: governing a wife and children (or even servants) is dissimilar to governing a congregation in a great many ways (no physical coercion, no one-flesh union with a promise of submission and provision in all things, more limited authority than one has as a parent or husband or master, dealing with those who have other authorities over them--such as their husbands and parents, no family worship and teaching them all day every day, no promise of financial or other material reward for obedience, no physical/material dependence on you and no physical/material obligation to them, governing by means of a church court, and so on), so it is not immediately obvious that the session's knowledge of a person's fitness to govern God's house must and can only arise from how they govern their wife and children. Furthermore, once a person admits this is a principle--rather than a qualification of nature/ontology given by the text's exact wording--and that a person could be fit without a wife and children, other considerations (such as have been mentioned in this thread by officebearers) have bearing on whether a single person could be admitted to office.



It is also interesting that, as has been pointed out in this thread and by standard commentators, the text nowhere says the officebearer must have a wife and children but instead states how wife and children/house must be governed. Surely that must be a significant point for arguments that claim to be dealing with the text's wording in a straightforward manner, in addition with other points the officebearers in this thread have mentioned about the text concerning the meaning of oikos and spiritual qualifications.
 
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@Alan D. Strange, @Afterthought, and @Semper Fidelis

Thanks, all of you, for the thoughtful responses. Much here to think about. Ramon, you have actually come closest to something that challenged me when discussing this same issue with a friend last week. His line of questioning was similar to yours in that he pressed me to explain the telos of Paul's "one wife..." and "having his children..." requirements in the relevant passages. My answers then were leaning more toward the epistemology side. My friend remarked that it's fine if I want to say that the requirement is arbitrary, but I'm not sure I am prepared to say that much. However, I told him there would be nothing wrong in principle with us aligning our practice with a requirement set down by Paul in the word of God, even if we suspected it was totally arbitrary.

If Paul, for example, had said it is necessary that a man have type O blood in order to take up office in the church, and left it at that with no further explanation, would we hear commentators and preachers throughout the centuries mounting defenses for why this requirement can't really mean offices in the church are only open to men with type O blood? Would we hear men say Paul was aiming at a principle that doesn't really rule out men with type A or B blood? Would we hear that men who have type A or B blood by birth, but show themselves to be exemplary in every other area for ordained service in the church, are to be accounted as men with type O blood for some reason? I would expect, in the world of my completely hypothetical example, that the men here would confidently stand upon Paul's requirement and test every man's blood before admitting him to any church office.

Bringing it back into the real world, what do we have? Paul issuing instructions to Titus, "Ordain elders in every city [...] if any be [...] the husband of one wife, having faithful children..." Titus 1:5-6. Paul issuing instructions to Timothy, "A bishop must be [...] the husband of one wife [...] having his children in subjection..." 1 Timothy 3:2-4. Furthermore, we have v. 5, "For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?" Paul's fairly practical challenge would seem to clinch the whole argument, yet it's like men read that and say within themselves, "Ah, a principle." They then begin to assume they can deduce the true telos of Paul's earlier requirements, understanding them to be situational. What's really ironic (if you're me) is that the very challenge Paul used to put an end to the question is the springboard from which all the exceptions leap. Could it really be that Paul intended his challenge in v. 5 to serve as a way to open the question for the possibility of exceptions?
 
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If Paul, for example, had said it is necessary that a man have type O blood in order to take up office in the church...
This is not an appropriate analogy since Paul does not say that a minister must have a wife and children. He says he must be a one-woman man, and that his household must be in order. You still have not logically demonstrated that these qualifications entail the command to have a wife and children. You just keep asserting such as "the plain words of the Apostle Paul." Apparently, the words are either not all that plain, or they are that plain and you are the only man on Puritan Board who is intelligent and pious enough to understand and obey them.
 
If Paul, for example, had said it is necessary that a man have type O blood in order to take up office in the church
I think this absurd question underlines how you handle issues of wisdom so I'll close the thread at this point to memorialize how *not* to handle issues of the application of wisdom in the Scriptures.
 
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