A closer look at the references to households is needed for three reasons: they are associated with worship, with evangelism and with baptism.
We need to be clear first what is meant by a household, because the word does not mean the same in the New Testament as it means in today's society. With us, it rarely means more than one family - mother, father and their children; what sociologists today refer to as the nuclear family. In the Roman world, it meant considerably more than that.
It is worth saying, first, that the Greek word for it used in the New Testament - 'oikos' - means both the building and the people who lived in it - sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both, just the way we use the word 'church' today: sometimes we mean the building, sometimes the congregation, sometimes both.
(1) Even as a building, the word 'oikos' meant more than we mean by a house. It housed not just the family, but the servants or slaves belonging to it, and any family they had; it was a business premises because most business men and women ran their businesses from their home; they did not go to the office each day as we do. Many wealthier pagan homes had a religious sanctuary in them too, a chapel if you like, dedicated to whatever Roman or Greek god the family favoured. (I have a slide of one in a house at Pompeii.)
(2) But when the word 'oikos' was used to refer to those who lived in the house, it referred, not just to the immediate family, but rather to a whole company of diverse folk who were involved in the family and its business: that would mean the master of the house, with his wife and the children (and, if they were old enough, with their wives and children), all their slaves, the old folks, employees who might be given living quarters in the house, and even clients who voluntarily joined themselves to a household sometimes for the sake of shared benefits from the arrangement. That is why, when Luke records in Acts 10 how Cornelius gathered his entire household to hear Peter, he says that Peter "found many persons gathered." (v. 27) How many were there in Caesar's household? We might think of an 'oikos' as being much like an English Victorian household from which the master ran his business with its 'above stairs' and 'below stairs' personnel, and sometimes a private chapel.
(3) There is one more factor of very great importance we need to know if we are to understand the New Testament references to such households, and that is the position the master of such a household occupied - the authority and influence he exercised in it. In Roman times, it was absolute. His women and his children were hardly permitted to have any mind of their own. A father's authority was unquestioned. He could even beat his slaves to death for insubordination and not be answerable in law for it.
It is really quite difficult for us to conceive how powerful was the group mind that such an association of diverse persons shared, and which bound them together in such a strong solidarity. As the master thought in matters domestic, political, social and religious, so they all thought ... and sincerely; it was normally no sham. To be sure, there were exceptions, when sons or slaves seethed inwardly with secret rebellion. But where the master's rule was even reasonably benevolent, they thought and felt and believed in a way you could only describe as tribal - the way African tribes used to be ruled by their chiefs, so the whole tribe had only one mind, the chief's, on any issue. Households therefore were converted in New Testament times in much the same way that, in pioneering missionary days, whole tribes became Christian when their chief was converted. Their faith was not the less real or personal because they all imitated their chief in it. His repentance carried their repentance with it; his faith communicated to them through the dynamics of the group mind they all shared. It really did. Their conversion was as real as his.
The implications of all this for the formation of household churches in the New Testament become immediately obvious. With the conversion of the head of the household, what you had - immediately - was not just one convert, but a Christian congregation.
In all fairness, it should be admitted that by the first century AD the father's sole individual authority (the 'pater familias' as it was known) was giving way to the growth of family councils. Even so, the family council consisted only of the few senior menfolk: the women, children and slaves had no voice in it. The group mind still applied - only its source was rather more of a shared thing among the males than it had once been when the lord (kurios) or master (despotes) of the household ruled the roost.
But even allowing for that, it will be appreciated what a congenial setting for the house church of the New Testament such a converted household supplied. A whole range of problems we often face when we are trying to establish a new church were all solved at a stroke - a building to meet in, a congregation large enough to provide vital fellowship, a variety of gifts, an impact on outsiders, for example - and of course, finance! It will be appreciated, too, how geared to the household setting the ethical teaching of the epistles regularly is - to parents and children, husbands and wives, slaves and masters. But it is not the implications for worship we are so concerned with now as the implications for evangelism and baptism.
It explains many statements in the New Testament that might otherwise present a puzzle to us. Let me list a few of them.
Luke 19:9 When Zacchaeus had repented of his greedy, racketeering ways, and had, through the friendship of Jesus, experienced God's forgiveness, Jesus said, "Today salvation has come to this household."
Acts 11:14 Cornelius was promised by the angel who appeared to him in a vision that when he sent for Peter, Peter would declare to him a message, "by which he would be saved, and all his household."
Acts 16:15 In Philippi, the Lord opened Lydia's heart to the Gospel, "and she was baptised, with her household." Of particular interest here is that it shows that in Greek society it was possible for a woman (whether unmarried or widowed we are not told) to be head of an oikos.
Acts 16:31 Still in Philippi, Paul declared to his gaoler, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household." Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all that were in his oikos, with the result the "he rejoiced with all his household that he had believed in God."
Acts 18:8 Crispus the ruler of the synagogue in Corinth, "believed in the Lord, together with all his household." Paul subsequently tells us in 1 Cor. 1:14-16 that he baptised him, and also the household of Stephanas.
(a) Baptism
The baptismal issue first. There are those who claim that these passages give us New Testament authority to baptise infants, since there must surely have been infants in these households whom Paul baptised entire.
But that is pure presumption, mere guesswork. The Scriptures simply do not say; they are silent on the matter; and a convincing case cannot be built from silence. How can a doctrine be built on evidence which is not given? Supply all the guesswork and presumption in the world, and in the end that is all you are left with - guesswork and presumption. They are just not enough to build a doctrine on, and any doctrine that is can carry no authority.
That really is all that can be usefully said on the matter ... except perhaps that if the evidence leans in one direction rather than another, it leans away from the idea that infants were included in these household baptisms. For consider:
(1) The Philippian gaoler, like most civil servants in a Roman colony such as Philippi, was in all probability a retired army officer, too old to be fathering infants any more. And Crispus being a ruler of the synagogue, would presumably be of comparable age.
(2) Among both the Jews and the Romans children were not regarded as being responsibly committed to religious belief until they came of age: the Jewish boy at twelve years of age when he came under "the yoke of the law" as they expressed it, and the Roman youth at about 16 years of age.
(3) In Luke's account of the Philippian gaoler's conversion, he plainly says that Paul and Silas spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all that were in his house; and that he rejoiced with all his household that he had believed in God. Of Crispus, too, it is said, "that he believed in the Lord together with all his household."
Again let it be said, the evidence is not specific enough to argue convincingly one way or the other, only that if it leans one way or the other, it leans away from the idea that infants were involved.
It is simply a fact that wherever baptism is specifically mentioned in the New Testament, is only ever refers to believers. That is the only foundation on which any doctrine of Baptism can be built.
(b) Evangelism, and the application today
Turn now to the connection between evangelism and house churches. We have seen how the salvation of a whole household was wrapped up in the conversion of its head, usually the father. In the sort of household you had in the world of New Testament times, it necessarily followed; in ours, it does not. So what relevance can household evangelism in the New Testament have for us?
Just this: we all of us do still live in 'households.' We all have an 'oikos' not unlike theirs. Ours is not as structured or as tight-knit as those in the world of New Testament times, but it is still very much part of our lives. And it is important to see this if we are to plan evangelistic strategies like theirs. For the Scriptures we have quoted make it clear that it was the household they targeted. It was adults they evangelised, not children (or at least not children outside their family setting). It was families they won to Christ. It is because they won whole households to faith in Christ that the Gospel spread so rapidly. When a household was baptised and began to live the Gospel way, it made a much bigger impact than a lone individual did. That is one of the forgotten factors in our study of New Testament evangelism; it is one of the big reasons why they succeeded so well, and spread so rapidly.
Now we too live in households; not in quite the same way, and not to such an intense degree. The group mind that was so much a feature of household communities then is not as strong today. Our emphasis on the freedom of the individual has weakened it (though heredity and environment still shape our attitudes to a greater extent than we realise.). Fathers, too, of course, no longer exercise the authority they did then.
But there were other features of the oikos then that do apply today.
The oikos then was a social unit, a network of relationships rooted in three soils, so to speak, that will always hold people together.
1. family - the ties of kinship;
2. shared interests - primarily those of work, recreation and education;
3. physical proximity.
Family ties held them together, shared interests held them together, and locality held them together. Ties, tasks, and territory, if you like.
Any anthropologist or sociologist will tell you that cultural anthropology has identified three cultural universals in humanity's history. The three basic units of all societies, the three factors that hold groups together in association are ...
1. kinship
2. interest
3. neighbourhood (community)
In Roman society, all three were packed tightly together in the household, the oikos. In our society, they are much looser, more spread about.
1. Families are more scattered.
2. The folk we associate with because we share an interest with them in the area of work - trades unions, chambers of commerce, Apex and Lions, etc.; or in the area of recreation - sports teams, gymnasiums, local drama groups, car clubs etc.; or in the area of education - P.C.A.'s, Scouts and Guides, Boys' and Girls' Brigades etc. - all these folk are no longer gathered under one roof with us as they were in an oikos in the Roman world.
3. And our neighbourhoods, especially in Australia, are not tight-packed like houses were in a street in, say, Pompeii or Philippi.
Nonetheless, all of us live in an oikos. That is to say, we all of us have our place in a network of relationships that includes family, interests and neighbourhood. For most of us, it numbers something like 20 to 30 people among our relations, our work and recreation associates and our neighbours - folk of whom it could be said that we spend an hour at least in close company with them, on average, every three weeks or so. They are our oikos; they are the network of relationships in which we find a meaningful place; they are our 'people-park.' It is out of that group that we discover sooner or later "who our friends are." When we are in trouble, our oikos shrinks ... down to a dozen or less; when we are really hurting, it shrinks even more ... down to 2 or 3 perhaps!
Now that is where our sphere of influence is; so that is where our witness is going to count. They are the folk whose ear we have. They are the ones we can gossip the Gospel to, or teach it to, or argue it with. This is a field for evangelism each of us has.
If only one of those folk is converted, then the transformed life of that one new Christian is going to have an effect in his or her oikos. Each of the 20 or so folk in my oikos belongs in an oikos of his or hers with 20 or so people in it. So each of us really has a bridge into 400 lives ... and all by way of natural connections. For this reason I believe house groups of one kind and another are a necessary way for us to go, because they fit the pattern of our oikos's. A house group is the easiest place to get a member of our oikos to, to meet Christians and share the Gospel with them.
I end with a quotation from Thomas Wolf's chapter in a book Ralph Neighbour edited, "Future Church."
"The apostolic church used the interlocking social systems of common kinship/interests/community - the oikos - as the backbone for communicating the Gospel. The chief thrust of New Testament evangelism was not individual evangelism, not mass evangelism and definitely not child evangelism ... it was oikos evangelism. It is the God-given natural means of sharing the Supernatural Message.
The early church spread vibrantly through oikos evangelism, captivating those who say, before their own eyes ...
• the old sinner of the family become a new saint;
• their old friend in the neighbourhood invaded by such peace and joy and love;
• their associates in the trades association or the gymnasium or the public baths so transformed.
For the key to oikos evangelism was life transformation ... where it counted!" (Ralph Neighbour, "Future Church" Broadman Press, p. 166)
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