Household Baptism in the New Testament: Assessing the Debate 50+ Years Later

Paper presented at the Evangelical Theological Society Annual Meeting in San Diego, November 19, 2014.

1. Household Baptism: The New Testament Data

The New Testament records three household baptisms – two in the book of Acts and one in 1 Corinthians. In Acts 16, Luke gives us the account of Paul’s visit to the city of Philippi, a Roman colony in Macedonia. On the Sabbath day, Paul and his co-workers went outside the city gate, where as expected they found a Jewish place of prayer by the river.¹ They found some women there, one of whom was a Gentile God-fearer named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira and a seller of purple cloth. Luke tells us that Paul’s preaching of the gospel was instrumental in her conversion. “The Lord opened her heart to pay attention” to Paul’s message, and consequently “she was baptized, and her [whole] household² as well (ἐβαπτίσθη καὶ ὁ οἶκος αὐτῆς)” (Acts 16:14-15).³

The second household baptism is recorded by Luke later in the same chapter, while Paul and Silas were still in the city of Philippi. This is the baptism of the household of the Philippian jailer (Acts 16:33). The story begins when Paul casts out a demon from a slave girl. This upset the girl’s owners, since they saw that their divination business was now over. So they dragged Paul and Silas before the city magistrates, who then had them beaten with rods and thrown in jail. Luke tells us that around midnight, as Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns, suddenly there was a great earthquake. It was so violent that the doors of the jail were opened and all the shackles that held the prisoners came loose. This alarmed the jailer. He assumed that all the prisoners had escaped and was about to commit suicide, when Paul cried out, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here” (v 28). The jailer fell down before Paul and Silas and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household (σωθήσῃ σὺ καὶ ὁ οἶκός σου).” 32 And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house (σὺν πᾶσιν τοῖς ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ αὐτοῦ). 33 And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds; and he was baptized at once, he and all his family (ἐβαπτίσθη αὐτὸς καὶ οἱ αὐτοῦ πάντες). 34 Then he brought them up into his house (εἰς τὸν οἶκον) and set food before them. And he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God (ἠγαλλιάσατο πανοικεὶ πεπιστευκὼς τῷ θεῷ). (Acts 16:31-34)

Household language is used throughout this paragraph (οἶκος [2x], οἰκία [1x], πανοικεί [1x]), but the household baptism itself is stated in these terms: “he was baptized, he himself and all his” (ἐβαπτίσθη αὐτὸς καὶ οἱ αὐτοῦ πάντες) (v 33).

The third household baptism is reported by Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. The context is Paul’s rebuke to the Corinthians for their divisions and quarreling. Some say, “I am of Paul,” others say, “I am of Apollos,” others, “I am of Cephas,” and still others, “I am of Christ.” Paul points out the silliness of this way of thinking, since neither Paul nor Apollos nor Peter was crucified for anyone, and we were all baptized in the name of Christ, not in the name of an apostle or other servant of Christ. Paul then writes these words:

I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15 so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. 16 (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas [ἐβάπτισα δὲ καὶ τὸν Στεφανᾶ οἶκον]. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else). (1 Cor 1:14-16).

Those are the three explicit household baptisms in the New Testament. The number may be increased to six if we include three cases where a household context is implied. Paul records that he baptized Crispus and Gaius (1 Cor 1:14). From the parallel with the baptism of the household of Stephanas in the immediate context (v 16), we may reasonably suspect that these were household baptisms too. Comparison with Luke’s account in Acts 18 strengthens the suspicion, since Luke informs us that “Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord, together with his entire household; and many of the Corinthians hearing Paul believed and were baptized” (Κρίσπος . . . ἐπίστευσεν τῷ κυρίῳ σὺν ὅλῳ τῷ οἴκῳ αὐτοῦ, καὶ πολλοὶ τῶν Κορινθίων ἀκούοντες ἐπίστευον καὶ ἐβαπτίζοντο) (Acts 18:8). So the baptisms of Crispus and of Gaius give us two more household baptisms.

Additionally, the baptism of Cornelius in Acts 10 has all the marks of being a sixth household baptism. When Cornelius is first introduced in the narrative, we are informed that he was “a devout man who feared God with all his household” (φοβούμενος τὸν θεὸν σὺν παντὶ τῷ οἴκῳ αὐτοῦ) (Acts 10:2), so we are primed at the outset for his conversion to Christ along with his house. A household conversion is exactly what happened. In the following chapter, when Peter explains how Cornelius and his household became some of the first Gentiles to convert to Christ, Peter says that Cornelius had seen an angel telling him, “Send to Joppa and bring Simon who is called Peter; he will declare to you a message by which you will be saved, you and all your household” (ὃς λαλήσει ῥήματα πρὸς σὲ ἐν οἷς σωθήσῃ σὺ καὶ ὁ οἶκός σου) (Acts 11:14). When Peter arrived at the house of Cornelius we are told that Cornelius had been expecting him and had called together “his relatives and close friends” (Acts 10:24). The gathered company therefore includes more than his immediate household. When we come to the actual baptism itself, the recipients of baptism are identified in very general terms as “these people” (τούτους) and “them” (αὐτούς) (Acts 10:47-48). In view of the gathering of relatives and friends, it is likely that those baptized included more than Cornelius’ household – but surely not less. The promise that he would be saved, he and all his household, gives us reason to suppose that when Cornelius believed, he and his household were also baptized.

In addition to the six household baptisms, we must also note the texts which speak of an adult believing along with their household or being saved along with their household. I have already quoted two of the texts which speaks of an adult believing along with their household (Acts 16:34; 18:8). In the case in Acts 16:34, the syntax is ambiguous (ἠγαλλιάσατο πανοικεὶ πεπιστευκώς), since it is not clear if the adverbial dative “with his entire household” (πανοικεί) modifies the verb “rejoiced” or the verb “believed.” My suspicion is that Luke intends the adverb to modify both verbs at least implicitly. It is not that the family rejoiced over the father’s conversion as an individual, while they themselves remained in their pagan state (in which case, why would they rejoice?), but that the whole family was rejoicing because the whole family had become a Christian family. The third instance is a verse in John’s Gospel about the royal official who begged Jesus to heal his son who was sick with a fever. After realizing that Jesus had healed his son from a distance at the exact hour we are told that “he himself believed, and all his household” (καὶ ἐπίστευσεν αὐτὸς καὶ ἡ οἰκία αὐτοῦ ὅλη) (John 4:53).

The three texts which speak of an adult being saved along with their household are as follows. I have already quoted two of them (Acts 11:14; 16:31). These two verses are nearly identical – promises given to Cornelius and the Philippian jailor. Third instance is Hebrews 11:7, which alludes to the oikos phrase in Genesis 7:1 (LXX: εἴσελθε σὺ καὶ πᾶς ὁ οἶκός σου εἰς τὴν κιβωτόν). The author of Hebrews states that Noah built an ark “for the saving of his household” (εἰς σωτηρίαν τοῦ οἴκου αὐτοῦ).⁴

2. The Jeremias-Aland Debate

We have surveyed the New Testament data. Now we must ask what scholars have made of these references to household baptism, household faith, and household salvation. In a 1949 article in a journal for German pastors, Ethelbert Stauffer was the first to suggest that the phrase “he and his (whole) household” should be identified as a cultic technical phrase which he called “the oikos formula.”⁵ Stauffer not only noticed the use of the formula in the New Testament, but also showed that this formula is rooted in the Old Testament. Stauffer argued that when this formula was used in the Old Testament it “not only referred to the children in addition to the adults but had quite special reference to the children, and not least to any small children who might be present.”⁶ He based this statement on several Old Testament passages where the household language is used, followed by contextual references to the ṭāph, a Hebrew word that can be translated “small children, infants, little ones,” but can sometimes be used in an enlarged sense: “those of a nomadic tribe who are not … able to march,” i.e., children, the elderly, and sometimes women.⁷ Stauffer’s emphasis on the word ṭāph, and his claim that the term oikos has the ṭāph specifically in mind, had the unfortunate effect of focusing scholarly attention in the wrong direction, setting them off on a rabbit trail that we have yet to fully recover from.

Less than a decade later, in 1958, Joachim Jeremias took up Stauffer’s suggestion and included it in a book on the historical origins of infant baptism in the early church. The title of the English translation was Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries.⁸

A few years later, in 1961, Kurt Aland responded in German with a book titled Infant Baptism in the New Testament and in the Ancient Church: An Answer to Joachim Jeremias (my rendering of the original German title).⁹ For the English translation, the title became a question, Did the Early Church Baptize Infants? Aland answered the question posed in the title with a firm “No.” He investigated afresh each of the household baptisms in the New Testament and his conclusion was: either they are under-determined, leaving us in the dark as to the ages of the people in the household, or they have in mind “adults exclusively.”¹⁰ By the way, it is noteworthy that the Baptist theologian, G. R. Beasley-Murray, author of the well-known book, Baptism in the New Testament,¹¹ was responsible for translating Aland’s critique of Jeremias into English.

In 1962, Jeremias responded to Aland’s critique with The Origins of Infant Baptism: A Further Study in Reply to Kurt Aland (the title of the English translation).¹² The English translation appeared the following year. In his second volume, Jeremias delves more deeply into the oikos phrase (all of Chapter Two, which is 21 pages long), and cites a large number of Old Testament references and passages from Second Temple Jewish literature where the phrase occurs.¹³

Thus, in the five-year period from 1958 to 1962, over the course of three monographs, Jeremias and Aland had a spirited exchange on the topic of infant baptism. It should be noted that the debate over the oikos formula was only one part of a broader historical inquiry as to whether the early church baptized infants. For the purposes of this paper I will set to one side the arguments over how early (or late) infant baptism was practiced in the post-apostolic church. I leave that debate to the church historians. As a New Testament scholar, my focus here is strictly on the New Testament evidence.

3. Subsequent Commentary

Subsequently, various scholars have picked up the argument between Jeremias and Aland and have continued to debate the merits of the oikos formula as part of the polemics over infant baptism. In 1963, Peter Weigandt published an article in German in Novum Testamentum titled “The So-Called Oikos Formula.”¹⁴ His primary attack was to point out that the Hebrews terms bayit and ṭāph are not synonymous in the Old Testament.

In the same year, August Strobel wrote a lengthy 63-page article attempting to adjudicate the debate between Jeremias and Aland, including the historical question of the evidence for infant baptism in the early church. The oikos formula itself he discussed relatively briefly for three pages.¹⁵ He concluded that Aland got the better of the argument against Jeremias. Here is my translation from the original German of Strobel’s key conclusion:

Certainly there can be no talk of a fixed formula. The term “house” is used so imprecisely and so broadly that no particular deductions can be drawn from it … We conclude on the basis of these circumstances that infants and small children are not specifically in mind when the term “house” is used … It is indisputable that “house” can signify elders, near-relatives, children and household servants.¹⁶

As a result of the forceful critical responses by Aland, Weigandt, and Strobel, it would appear that something of a stalemate has been reached. Those New Testament scholars that espouse believer’s baptism follow Beasley-Murray in thinking that the oikos formula is basically a “myth” that ought “to be buried, unlamented.”¹⁷ But skepticism about the oikos formula is not restricted to Baptist scholars. David F. Wright (d. 2008), an elder and theologian in the Church of Scotland and confessionally a paedobaptist, was widely regarded as the church historian of infant baptism. Wright made the pronouncement that “the so-called ‘oikos-formula’ has not survived critical scrutiny,” citing the article by Strobel.¹⁸

On the other hand, many scholars who espouse infant baptism continue to think that there is something here, but have been hesitant to rest too much on this particular argument, knowing that the oikos formula has received such strong criticism. See, for example, the essay by Jonathan M. Watt in a multi-author book by Presbyterians defending covenantal infant baptism.¹⁹ My aim in this paper is to provide a sketch of how I believe the oikos argument can be rehabilitated. But before I attempt that rehabilitation, I need to concede some points to the critics of the oikos argument. After reviewing the anti-oikos scholarship, I see three legitimate criticisms of the oikos argument as it was originally formulated.

First, it must be conceded that there is no evidence that it was a ritual or liturgical formula connected with the Jewish rite of circumcision. Jeremias himself conceded the point to Aland and said it was better to speak of “the oikos phrase.”²⁰

Second, it was a mistake to claim that bayit/oikos is equivalent to ṭāph in the Hebrew Old Testament. Stauffer’s attempt to treat the terms bayit and ṭāph as synonymous was a mistake. There are many examples where the two are not synonymous. In fact, the term ṭāph refers to an entire category of people that cuts across age groups – all who are not fit to march on foot – rather than to a specific age group such as “infants” in English.

Third, and related to the second point, Stauffer made the strategic mistake of claiming that the oikos formula does not simply have children in view but “the children quite especially, and … any little children who might be present.” The critics were quite right to pounce on this point. Aland called it “an exaggeration arising out of the heat of combat.”²¹

On these three points, the critics were right. But I maintain that these are superficial criticisms, mere flesh wounds. The oikos argument itself has not been completely dispensed with. But surely there are weightier arguments against it? Yes, there are. We turn now to the more substantive argument against the oikos phrase.

4. The Substantive Argument Against the Oikos Phrase

The more substantive argument against the oikos phrase is a two-pronged attack, and the two prongs of the attack are tightly connected. The first prong of the attack is lexical semantic, and the second prong is literary and looks at its usage in the New Testament contexts.

The first prong of attack, the lexical semantic argument, is to cast doubt on the claim of Stauffer and Jeremias that the phrase has an Old Testament background and significance. Aland expresses his doubts about whether there is such as a thing as an oikos formula to begin with. He is particularly unhappy with the way the term has been elevated to a theological status. Οἶκος, says Aland, is an ordinary word that has essentially the same meaning in biblical Greek as it does in profane Greek from Homer onward. It possesses no special “theological aura.”²² It is an ordinary Greek word with an ordinary, secular Greek meaning. Now, Aland does recognize that the claim of Stauffer and Jeremias is not that the word οἶκος by itself always has a special theological aura, but that the entire phrase, “he and his (whole) house,” which is derived from the Septuagint, has a specialized biblical meaning focused on the concept of family solidarity with regard to religion. Aland’s response to this is that the word οἶκος occurs some 1,600 times in the Septuagint and that its occurrence in the phrase “he and his (whole) household” is a very small percentage of the whole, occurring only about 40 times, or 2.5% of the occurrences.²³ Therefore, Aland contends, it is hazardous to build a claim of general validity on such a relatively rare phrase.

The second prong of attack depends on the first. The second prong is to claim that the word “house” in the household baptism passages does not include infants or small children but focuses primarily on adult members of the household. For example, Aland takes the account of the conversion of Cornelius and his household, and points to the description of the group gathered to hear Peter in Acts 10:24: “Cornelius was expecting [Peter and his companions] and had called together his relatives and close friends.” Aland concludes from this that “we are not dealing here with an assembly of the οἶκος with parents, children and domestic servants, but with a meeting of like-minded adults.”²⁴ He points out that there is no hint of children or of infants in this narrative.

In a similar way, in his analysis of the account of the conversion and baptism of the household of Lydia, Aland makes the argument that Lydia was probably either unmarried or a widow. Her conversion to Christ and her inviting Paul and Silas into her home are her own actions, and hers alone, taken independently as the head of the household. Luke makes clear that the household was under her authority: she was baptized “and her household” (ὁ οἶκος αὐτῆς), and she invited Paul and Silas to “come to my house” (εἰς τὸν οἶκόν μου).²⁵ Aland thinks this proves that there is no husband in the picture. From her husband-less status, Aland draws the conclusion that therefore there were no little children or infants in Lydia’s household. And from her child-less status, he draws the next conclusion, namely, that the baptism of “her household” must have been a baptism of the other adults in that household, such as domestic servants or slaves who assisted her in her purple-selling business, who were led by her example to confess their faith and be baptized along with her.²⁶ Aland concludes that all of the oikos passages have in view “adults exclusively.”²⁷

English-speaking Baptist scholars have followed the trail blazed by Aland. I am thinking of scholars like Beasley-Murray, Paul Jewett, and more recently Bruce Ware. They argue that oikos basically has adults in view and if there were any children in these houses, they all “heard” the gospel and “believed” before being baptized. In the case of Cornelius, the baptisms are preceded by the statement that “while Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word” (Acts 10:44). In the case of the Philippian jailer, Luke says that Paul and Silas “spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house” (Acts 16:32). And in the case of Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue at Corinth, he “believed in the Lord, together with his entire household” (Acts 18:8).

Beasley-Murray, Paul Jewett and others argue that in these passages, every single member of the household, without exception, hears the word of the Lord and believes before being baptized. Therefore, these cannot be infants but must be individuals who are old enough to understand and believe.²⁸ Bruce Ware writes: “If there were children in the jailer’s house … they were likely not infants. Since all heard the word spoken, the most likely inference is that all were capable of understanding what was spoken.”²⁹

Examples could be multiplied from other Baptist scholars, but those are the two prongs of the attack on the oikos argument. One thing that is rarely noted is that for the second prong to work, the first prong must be accepted. That is, one has to disconnect the oikos phrase from any Old Testament “theological aura” and see it as a secular term that simply denotes the adults or mature children who happened to be present that day.

5. Rehabilitating the Oikos Argument

It seems to me that the debate over the oikos formula was sidetracked by unhelpful attempts on both sides to prove that infants were either included in or excluded from these household baptisms. Stauffer got the whole discussion started on the wrong track by speaking of the oikos formula as if it were a fixed technical term in which the word oikos refers specifically to infants. But the reaction on the other side was equally overstated. They thought that all they needed to do was to show that the term oikos means adults or older children, and that it excludes children too small to hear and understand.

It is my contention that a more helpful approach is to ask not to whom does the oikos phrase refer (infants or adults), but what it implies with respect to the basis on which baptism was administered. My thesis is that the phrase is rooted in the Old Testament as mediated by the Septuagint, and as such points to the Hebraic principle of household solidarity in regard to religion, that is, that the children are included in the religious community on the basis of the confession of faith of the head of the household. Jeremias put it well:

If we wish to understand biblical texts rightly, we must radically free ourselves from modern individualistic thinking, and in particular keep before our eyes the fact that the family represented by the father of the household was in old times much more strongly experienced as a unity than today … All important questions were decided by the father of the household and his decision was binding on all. In particular in its relation to God the household was a unity.³⁰

The New Testament’s use of oikos phrase suggests that baptism was administered in the apostolic age not only to adults on the basis of their profession of faith, but also to the children of believers on the basis of parental authority and household solidarity. Here I quote Oscar Cullmann, who made the same point:

The solidarity of the family in Baptism is the decisive consideration, and not the individual decision of the single member … This is certain, quite independently of the insoluble question whether there were infants in these ‘houses’ or not. The story of the conversion of the gaoler of Philippi is instructive in this connection. Acts 16.31 imposes the demand to believe upon the gaoler alone, but the salvation is promised to him and his house.³¹

Old Testament scholar and covenant theologian Meredith G. Kline thought the oikos phrase supported the paedobaptist view as well. He appealed to what he called “the parental authority principle,” which he saw as originating in the Old Testament and carried forward into the New. Even though we do not know whether small children were actually present in any of these cases of household baptism, “these households had to consist of somebody in the category of household subordinates.” In other words, if not children, then at least household servants were present and baptized. Kline uses this to make a compelling a fortiori argument:

[W]ith respect to the narrower question of whether parental authority is honored in the administration of the New Covenant, it would not matter whether conclusive evidence could be adduced proving that there were no children in any of these households; for if there were no children, then surely the households consisted of servants; and if it could be shown that servants were received into the church on the basis of the authority principle, it would follow a fortiori that the continuity with Old Testament practice included infants too.³²

Kline takes the recurring use of the oikos phrase in connection with faith, conversion and baptism as terminological evidence in the New Testament of “a standard missions policy according to which the covenant community would regularly be enlarged through the accretion of household authority units.”³³

The key is “the household authority principle,” that is, the principle that the head of the household has authority in the sphere of religion over the household subordinates under his or her authority. The oikos phrase then need not be taken as specifically pointing to the inclusion of infants, as Stauffer originally argued in his “exaggeration arising out of the heat of combat.” Rather, it need only be taken as having a “theological aura” pointing to the principle of household solidarity and parental authority.

6. Luke’s Septuagintal Style

But does the oikos phrase have such a theological aura? The final step of my rehabilitation of the oikos argument is to make a brief argument that it does indeed have such a theological aura due to its origin in the Septuagint, the Old Greek Bible. I appeal at this point to the evidence that Luke’s Greek style was influenced by the Septuagint and that at times he even engaged in conscious imitation of Septuagint syntax and vocabulary. The classic study on this subject was a pair of essays published in 1940 by the Swedish classical scholar, Albert Wifstrand.³⁴ In the first essay, “Luke and Greek Classicism,” Wifstrand demonstrated that while Luke’s Greek was certainly more refined than Mark’s more vulgar Koiné style, yet Luke most certainly does not display the artificial Greek style known as Atticism that became very popular in literary circles in the second century. This can be seen in his choice of vocabulary and in his Hebraizing style. In the second essay, “Luke and the Septuagint,” Wifstrand picked up and developed the point about Luke’s Hebraizing style. He demonstrated that, at various points in his two-volume work, Luke consciously imitates the style, vocabulary, and syntax of the Septuagint. Luke uses a number of words and constructions borrowed from the Septuagint’s Hebraizing Greek, such as …

the use of the word ῥῆμα with the Hebraic meaning “thing, matter,” as in the apostles’ assertion that “we are witnesses of these things” (Acts 5:32);
the word λαός in reference to “the people of God,” a word “as good as wholly unknown”³⁵ in extra-biblical Greek;
the words ἀγαλλιάομαι and ἀγαλλίασις, which are only attested before Luke in the Septuagint;
prepositional uses of ἐνώπιον and πρόσωπον;
the “and it came to pass” construction (καὶ ἐγένετο [+ καί] + finite verb);
the ἐν τῷ + infinitive construction; and many others.

In total, Wifstrand identified some 46 words, phrases, collocations, and constructions that were not typical in extra-biblical Greek but which could be found in the Septuagint. He called these “Septuagintalisms,” that is, conscious imitations of the Septuagint, and argued that they lent “a certain solemn and hieratic tone to Luke’s diction, dignifying it and raising it above everyday life” and gave “his narrative an aura of sacred history, making it appear as the sequel and fulfilment of the Old Testament.”³⁶

Given Luke’s Septuagintal style and given the clear evidence of the oikos phrase in the Septuagint, as Stauffer and Jeremias demonstrated, it is reasonable to think that Luke is using the phrase in conscious imitation of the Septuagint and therefore with a “theological aura.” More work needs to be done, but I claim that Luke’s use of the oikos phrase is rooted in the Old Testament concept of parental authority and household solidarity with regard to religion. His use of the phrase in connection with baptism is an intentional theological statement signifying that baptism was administered not on the basis of the individual confession of faith of each member of the household but on the basis of the confession of faith of the head of the family.

In many of the instances of the oikos phrase in the Septuagint, the principle of parental authority and household solidarity in regard to religion is present explicitly or implicitly. To give but a few examples:

We see it, for example, in the account of Noah and his family being saved from the flood (εἴσελθε σὺ καὶ πᾶς ὁ οἶκός σου εἰς τὴν κιβωτόν [Gen 7:1]).
The principle of household solidarity with regard to religion surfaces in the Lord’s comment that he knew Abraham would engage in the covenant nurture of his sons and his household after him (ᾔδειν ὅτι συντάξει τοῖς υἱοῖς αὐτοῦ καὶ τῷ οἴκῳ αὐτοῦ μετ’ αὐτόν [Gen 18:19]).
The high priest’s responsibility to make atonement for himself and for his household (καὶ ἐξιλάσεται περὶ αὐτοῦ καὶ τοῦ οἴκου αὐτοῦ [Lev 16:11, 17]).
The Hebrew father’s duty of making the annual trek to the central shrine to rejoice with his family before the Lord (καὶ εὐφρανθήσῃ σὺ καὶ ὁ οἶκός σου [Deut 14:26; 15:20]).
An example of the preceding is Elkanah’s going up to the tabernacle along with his family to offer sacrifice (καὶ ἀνέβη ὁ ἄνθρωπος Ελκανα καὶ πᾶς ὁ οἶκος αὐτοῦ θῦσαι [1 Kgdms 1:21]).
Family piety is evident in Obed-Edom and his family’s receiving God’s blessing because the ark was housed on his property (καὶ εὐλόγησεν κύριος ὅλον τὸν οἶκον Αβεδδαρα καὶ πάντα τὰ αὐτοῦ [2 Kgdms 6:11]).

My last Septuagint example is an obscure passage where Elisha commands the Shunammite woman to depart from the land, with her household, and sojourn in a foreign land to escape the famine that God was about to bring upon the land (ἀνάστηθι καὶ δεῦρο σὺ καὶ ὁ οἶκός σου [4 Kgdms 8:1]). This last case is particularly interesting, since we know the Shunammite woman had a husband (2 Kings 4:9, 16-22). So it is surprising that she is nevertheless treated by Elisha as the head of her household. Could this perhaps indicate that she was the spiritual head of the family because her husband was not a believer in YHWH? I wonder if the Shunammite woman sheds light on the similar case of Lydia (Acts 16:14-15), who was also the spiritual head of her household. Perhaps Lydia’s role as the spiritual head of her household is due, not to the fact that she is unmarried, but to the fact that her husband was a pagan and not a God-fearer as she was (σεβομένη τὸν θεόν). This is admittedly speculative, but it is no less speculative than Aland’s argument that she was unmarried and childless.

When we come to the New Testament, we might expect to find that the principle of the religious authority of the head of the household over his children would be one of the areas of discontinuity from the Old to the New Covenant. This might seem to comport with the stress of the Jeremiah 31:31-34 promise on the interiority of the New Covenant. Yet in fact we find continuity at precisely this point. For example, in 1 Timothy 3:4 and Titus 1:6, it is one of the qualifications of an elder or overseer that he has his oikos in subjection and that his children must be believers. In his Haustafeln in Ephesians and Colossians, Paul addresses Christian parenesis to the children of believers in a way that presumes that they are members of the household of God just like anyone else, and exhorts Christian parents to raise their children in the instruction of the Lord (Eph 6:1-4; Col 4:20-21).

7. Conclusion

I must now draw this paper to a close. Various leads need to be followed up to make the case tighter. Recent social-scientific approaches to the Greco-Roman family need to be examined. But the sum of the matter is that the oikos phrase has gotten a bad rap because of the exaggerations of Stauffer and Jeremias in the way they initially launched the argument. But once the argument is rehabilitated along the lines of parental authority and household solidarity – an angle that was actually present at the beginning but not emphasized enough – combined with the appeal to the recognition of Luke’s Septuagintal style, I believe the oikos argument remains valid as part of a broader New Testament case for covenantal or household baptism.

Endnotes

“In places with no official synagogue, Jewish people preferred to meet in a ritually pure place near water.” IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (ed. Craig S. Keener; Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 1994), 368. ↩
The Western text of Acts (D, corroborated by the Old Latin of Acts in Codex Gigas) has καὶ πᾶς ὁ οἶκος αὐτῆς. ↩
Note the second half of the verse: “By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.” This suggests that the author of Hebrews sees the temporal deliverance of Noah and his household from the flood as typological of eschatological salvation in Christ. ↩
Ethelbert Stauffer, “Zur Kindertaufe in der Urkirche,” Deutches Pfarrerblatt 49 (1949): 152-4. ↩
Quoted by Joachim Jeremias, Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries (The Library of History and Doctrine; trans. David Cairns; London: SCM, 1960), 20. ↩
HALOT 378. ↩
Joachim Jeremias, Die Kindertaufe in den ersten vier Jahrhunderten (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1958); ET: Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries (The Library of History and Doctrine; trans. David Cairns; London: SCM, 1960), see 19-24 for the oikos formula. ↩
Kurt Aland, Die Säuglingstaufe im Neuen Testament und in der Alten Kirche: Eine Antwort an Joachim Jeremias (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1961); ET: Did the Early Church Baptize Infants? (The Library of History and Doctrine; trans. G. R. Beasley-Murray; Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1963), see Chapter Eight (pp. 87-94) for Aland’s criticism of the oikos formula. ↩
Aland, 93 (ET). ↩
G. R. Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973; originally published 1962). ↩
Joachim Jeremias, Nochmals: Die Anfänge der Kindertaufe (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1962); ET: The Origins of Infant Baptism: A Further Study in Reply to Kurt Aland (Studies in Historical Theology; trans. Dorothea M. Barton; London: SCM, 1963), see Chapter Two (pp. 12-32) for Jeremias’s most extensive treatment of the oikos phrase. ↩
Jeremias, Origins, 19-20 (ET). ↩
Peter Weigandt, “Zur sogennanten ‘Oikosformel,’” NovT 6 (1963): 49-74; idem, “οἰκία,” “οἶκος,” EDNT 2.495, 500-3. ↩
August Strobel, “Säuglings- und Kindertaufe in der ältesten Kirche: Eine kritische Untersuchung der Standpunkte von J. Jeremias und K. Aland,” in Begründung und Gebrauch der heiligen Taufe (ed. Otto Perels; Berlin: Lutherisches Verlagshuas, 1963), 7-69; his critique of the oikos formula is on pp. 43-45. ↩
Ibid., 43, 45. ↩
Beasley-Murray, 316. ↩
David F. Wright, Infant Baptism in Historical Perspective: Collected Studies (Studies in Christian History and Thought; Milton Keyes: Paternoster, 2007), 20 n49. ↩
E.g., see the cautious and tentative language of Jonathan M. Watt, “The Oikos Formula,” pp. 70-84 in The Case for Covenantal Infant Baptism (ed. Gregg Strawbridge; Phillipsburg: P&R, 2003). ↩
Jeremias, The Origins of Infant Baptism, 20. ↩
Aland, 93. ↩
Aland, 91-92. ↩
Aland, 93. ↩
Aland, 91. ↩
Aland, 89; cp. Paul K. Jewett, Infant Baptism and the Covenant of Grace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 49. ↩
Aland, 90; cp. Jewett, 49. ↩
Aland, 93. ↩
Beasley-Murray, 315; cp. Jewett, 48-50. ↩
Bruce A. Ware, “Believer’s Baptism View,” in Baptism: Three Views (ed. David F. Wright; Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2009), 31. Robert Stein makes a similar point: “It is highly selective, on the one hand, to include infants in the baptism of the ‘entire family’ of the jailor and then, on the other hand, to exclude them from the ‘entire family’ that believes and rejoices in their new faith (16:34). This would be a clear case of special pleading.” Robert H. Stein, “Baptism in Luke-Acts,” in Believer’s Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in Christ (NAC Studies in Bible & Theology; ed. Thomas R. Schreiner and Shawn D. Wright; Nashville: B&H Academic, 2006), 63. ↩
Jeremias, Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries, 22. ↩
Oscar Cullmann, Baptism in the New Testament (Studies in Biblical Theology; trans. J. K. S. Reid; London: SCM, 1950), 45, 53. ↩
Meredith G. Kline, By Oath Consigned: A Reinterpretation of the Covenant Signs of Circumcision and Baptism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 96-97. ↩
Kline, 97. ↩
Albert Wifstrand, “Lukas och den grekiska klassicismen,” Svensk Exegetisk Årsbok 5 (1940): 139-151; and idem, “Lukas och Septuaginta,” Svensk Tealogisk Kvartalskrift 16 (1940): 243-262. ET: “Luke and Greek Classicism” and “Luke and the Septuagint,” in Epochs and Styles: Selected Writings on the New Testament, Greek Language and Greek Culture in the Post-Classical Era (ed. Lars Rydbeck and Stanley E. Porter; translated from the Swedish Originals by Denis Searby; WUNT 179; Τübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 17-27, 28-45. See also Loveday C. A. Alexander, “Septuaginta, Fachprosa, Imitatio: Albert Wifstrand and the Language of Luke-Acts,” in Acts in Its Ancient Literary Context: A Classicist Looks at the Acts of the Apostles (LNTS 298; London: T&T Clark/Continuum, 2005), 231-53. ↩
Wifstrand, “Luke and the Septuagint,” 40. ↩
Ibid., 30, 42. ↩