The New Testament household code (German: Haustafeln) are New Testament exhortations that set reciprocal duties for wives and husbands, children and parents, and slaves and masters. They occur in Colossians 3:18–4:1, Ephesians 5:21–6:9, and 1 Peter 2:13–3:7, with Ephesians elaborating Colossians; related "congregational" guidance appears in 1 Timothy and Titus. The term originates from Haustafel which derives from Martin Luther's Small Catechism (1529), which popularized the idea of divinely ordered roles within the home.
Scholars trace the form to Greco-Roman and Hellenistic-Jewish instruction on oikonomia ("household management"), including Aristotle’s analysis of master/slave, husband/wife, and father/child relations, and parallels in Philo and Josephus. Similar Christian lists appear in early writings such as 1 Clement 21:6–8, Polycarp's Philippians 4:2–3, the Didache 4:9–11, and the Epistle of Barnabas 19:5–7.
Many read the codes as pastoral and apologetic: they present Christians as orderly while constraining household heads and addressing subordinate members as moral agents (e.g., mutual submission in Eph 5:21, sacrificial love in 5:25–33, non-provocation in 6:4, and a ban on threats in 6:9). Modern debate centers on gender, authority, and slavery.
Name The term itself derives from the loose translation of the heading Haustafel used by Martin Luther in the second appendix of his Small Catechism (1529), which helped popularize the concept of divinely ordained social roles within the household.Hull, R. F., Jr. (2001). The family of flesh and the family of faith: Reflections on the New Testament household codes. Leaven, 9(1), Article 6.Standhartinger, A. (2001). The Origin and Intention of the Household Code in the Letter to the Colossians. Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 23(79), 117–130.
The concept finds its linguistic and cultural antecedent in the Greek notion of οἰκονομία (household management), a compound of οἶκος (house) and νέμω (to manage).Silva, M. (Ed.). (2014). οἰκονομία. In The new international dictionary of New Testament theology and exegesis (Vol. 3, p. 466). Zondervan. In Greco-Roman society, the household (oikos) was widely regarded as the fundamental building block of social and political order, and numerous ancient writers produced literature on its proper management. New Testament household codes are thus seen as early Christian engagements with this larger Hellenistic conversation, reinterpreted "in light of the Gospel."Lookadoo, J. (2019). Categories, relationships and imitation in the household codes of 1 Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp: a comparison with household codes in the Pauline corpus. Neotestamentica, 53(1), 31–52.
Similar codes appear in early Christian writings outside the New Testament, including the 1 Clement (21:6–8), the Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians (4:2–3), the Didache (4:9–11), and the Epistle of Barnabas (19:5–7), though these have received less scholarly attention.Crouch, J. E. (1972). The origin and intention of the Colossian Haustafel (Publication No. 109, pp. 84–119, 147) [Doctoral dissertation, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen]. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
In contemporary discussion, the New Testament household codes have become a subject of intense debate among Christians, serving as a focal point for controversies concerning the roles of men and women within the family, and especially the interpretation of submission in modern contexts.
Appearance
New Testament text New Testament household codes (Haustafeln) first appear in Colossians 3:18–4:1, 1 Peter 2:13–3:7, and Ephesians 5:21–6:9, with Ephesians elaborating on Colossians. The Pastoral Epistles, notably 1 Timothy and Titus, later serve as "congregational codes" for house-church communities.Crouch, J. E. (1972). The origin and intention of the Colossian Haustafel (Publication No. 109, pp. 84–119, 147) [Doctoral dissertation, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen]. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. (pp. 84–119, 147).
Colossians Often treated as the earliest concise Christian code, presents the three dyads in brief: wives "as is fitting in the Lord" (3:18), husbands loving and not embittered (3:19), children obeying because it pleases the Lord (3:20), fathers not provoking (3:21), slaves serving with sincerity "fearing the Lord" and "from the soul" (3:22–25), and masters granting what is "just and fair" (4:1) because they too have a Master in heaven. Theocentric motives and fairness language reframe familiar Roman expectations and provide the template Ephesians elaborates.Ellison, M. D. (2019). Family, marriage, and celibacy in the New Testament. In L. H. Blumell (Ed.), New Testament history, culture, and society: A background to the texts of the New Testament (pp. 35–52). Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Deseret Book.
1 Peter In the household instructions are embedded in a broader call to public peaceability, honor everyone and the emperor (2:13–17). Slaves are exhorted to endure unjust suffering patterned on Christ (2:18–25), linking household ethics to Christology. Wives are urged to conduct that might win unbelieving husbands "without a word" (3:1–6), counter to the custom that wives adopt their husbands' gods; husbands must live considerately, honoring wives as co-heirs, lest their prayers be hindered (3:7). The tone is apologetic and integrative: respectable conduct aims to reduce suspicion toward Christian communities.
Ephesians frames the entire code with mutual submission (5:21), from which the wives' exhortation in 5:22 syntactically depends. Wives are addressed "as to the Lord" (5:22–24, 33), while husbands are commanded to love self-sacrificially "as Christ loved the church" (5:25–33), making Christ–church and marriage mutually interpretive; this union is called a "great mystery" (5:32), influential in later sacramental reflection. Children obey "in the Lord" (6:1–3), fathers must not provoke but nurture (6:4), slaves serve "as to Christ" (6:5–8), and masters must "do the same" and cease threatening (6:9), explicitly curbing coercive power. Subordinate members are addressed first as moral agents, while heads of household receive constraints grounded in Christ.
New Testament household codes
Background Over the past century, scholars have traced close parallels, especially for Colossians, to Greco-Roman moralists and Hellenistic-Jewish writers. Martin Dibelius emphasized the influence of Stoicism, while others highlight similarities to authors such as Philo and Josephus.Henderson, S. W. (2006). Taking liberties with the text: The Colossians household code as hermeneutic paradigm. Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology, 60(4), 420–423. https://doi.org/10.1177/002096430606000405 Stagg argues that women's public roles in the time of Jesus were more restricted than in the Old Testament period,Stagg, E., & Stagg, F. (1978). Woman in the world of Jesus. Westminster John Knox. (p. 52). and he locates the codes' stress on reciprocal duties within Jewish moral tradition, read against Paul's tension between "freedom" and "order" and his vision of the "new creation" in which ethnic, social, and gender distinctions do not ground status in Christ (; ).Stagg, F. (1962). New Testament theology. Broadman Press. (pp. 187–190).
Commentators frequently set the New Testament "household codes" beside Aristotle's analysis of the oikos (family unit) in Politics I, which structures household management around three dyads: master/slave, husband/wife, and father/child.Cere, D. M. (2004). Marriage, subordination and the development of Christian doctrine. In D. Blankenhorn, D. S. Browning, & M. S. Van Leeuwen (Eds.), Does Christianity teach male headship? The equal-regard marriage and its critics. Eerdmans. p. 94. Balch argues that Ephesians and Colossians intentionally use Aristotle's pattern as a way to organize Christian moral advice. Stagg traces the basic principles behind the New Testament Household Codes to Aristotle’s discussion of the household in Politics and to the Hellenistic-Jewish moral tradition, especially Philo's Hypothetica 7.14. Stagg reads the New Testament passages as attempts to preserve church and social order against unrestrained or excessive uses of Christian "freedom," especially among groups previously restricted by household hierarchies, such as women and slaves.
Proposed purposes and functions MacDonald argues that the use of the household code, especially in Ephesians, was meant to ease tensions between members of the Christian community and outsiders.MacDonald, M. (1988). The Pauline churches: A socio-historical study of institutionalization in the Pauline and Deutero-Pauline writings (SNTSMS 60). Cambridge University Press. p. 109. Gombis reviews scholarship on the Ephesian code and notes a common view that its main purpose is apologetic: Paul presents Christians as following proper social order to avoid suspicion that the movement threatens the stability of the Roman Empire.Gombis, T. R. (2005). A radically different new humanity: The function of the Haustafel in Ephesians. Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 48(2), 317–330. He cites Keener, who notes that groups accused of undermining Roman morals sometimes created "household lists" to show they followed traditional values and fit into accepted social norms. This was a way to defend themselves against accusations and prove their respectability within Roman society.Keener, C. S. (1992). Paul, women and wives: Marriage and women’s ministry in the letters of Paul (pp. 145–146). Hendrickson.
Stagg explains that much of the household code material appears in the Pauline tradition because, following Paul's statement in Galatians 3:28 about unity in Christ beyond social distinctions, early Christian communities were working out how to balance freedom and social order. On this reading, the household instructions reflect a recurring effort to balance law and grace, gift and demand, freedom and responsibility, a tension felt acutely among those (women and slaves) most constrained by prevailing hierarchies. Gombis refers to Balch’s study, which shows that Philo and Josephus used similar ways to respond when Jews were accused of trying to convert people and cause problems in Roman society. They defended themselves by showing respect for Roman rules and social order.Balch, D. L. (1981). Let wives be submissive: The domestic code in 1 Peter (p. 54). Scholars Press.
Talbert, from a socio-historical view, says the oikos was an estate economy, more like a farm/plantation or family firm than a modern nuclear home. The codes worked like an organizational chart to keep the estate running, setting rules for wives/husbands, parents/children, and masters/slaves. On this reading, Eph 5:22–6:9 is not a model for modern marriage but guidance for managing a Christian household-business within the norms of its time. Talbert sees two views in the household codes: first, in the short term, Christians lived under patriarchy and slavery but gave these relationships a Christian touch with less threat and more shared duties. Second, looking long term, the whole Bible story—creation, fall, redemption—points toward equal standing and the end of slavery. He also says Paul’s goal is to build character, not make detailed laws, so the codes give broad examples rather than exact rules.Talbert, C. H. (2007b). Ephesians and Colossians (Paideia: Commentaries on the New Testament). Baker Academic. (pp. 136–157)