Category: Sermons

I Timothy 3 Honor widows who are really widows. 4 But if any widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show piety at home and to repay their parents; for this is [a]good and acceptable before God. 5 Now she who is really a widow, and left alone, trusts in God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day. 6 But she who lives in [b]pleasure is dead while she lives. 7 And these things command, that they may be blameless. 8 But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

So we pick up again this theme of the centrality of the family that we are being taught here by the Holy Spirit.

This is not the first time that we have taken up this theme over they years and it will not be the last. We take up this theme repeatedly because it is one of the main themes in the Scriptures. It is a driving element in the whole idea of God being in covenant with families. It provides the foundation of the great analogy for the Church being “the family of God.” Four out of the 10 commandments deal directly with family matters. God is God to us and our seed. When the patriarchs die in Scripture often the language that is used is familial as it is said that “they were gathered to their Fathers.” The well-known passage in Romans 11 regarding branches cut off and grafted back in is a passage that deals with families of men as the branches. The relationship of the incarnate Jesus Christ with God is of a Son to the Father. Indeed it is not to much to say that should we get the matter of family wrong, if we should not pay attention to the voice of God in Scripture as it pertains to the family we will so far amiss on what it means to be Christian that it is doubtful that our Christianity will have any lasting power.

It is in this context that St. Paul deals with the issue of family in I Timothy 5 as he writes to Timothy. If you recall, there are problems with issues surrounding widows among the Church for which Timothy is responsible.

It seems that the widow’s list is a mess. There are widows on it that should not be there because they should be being taken care of by their families (5:4, 16). There are widows on it that should not be because they are apparently too young so that some are living in “pleasure,” and/or are being busybodies (11-13)which is perhaps hinting at the fact that some are loose women (6). There may well be widows among Timothy’s flock who are not being provided for by the Church which explains why the Holy Spirit says to “Honor widows who are really widows,” and goes some lengths to explain who qualifies for the widows list (9, 11).

And so because matters are a bit of a mess St. Paul writes in order to set things decent and in order touching the matter of widows.

And the passion by Paul on this subject is one of continuity that one finds throughout the Scripture. I offer just a Whitman’s sampler of text to sustain that observation;

Ex. 22:22 “You shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child. 23 If you afflict them in any way, and they cry at all to Me, I will surely hear their cry;

Dt. 10:18 God administers justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing.

Dt. 27:19 ‘Cursed is the one who perverts the justice due the stranger, the fatherless, and widow.’ “And all the people shall say, ‘Amen!’

Dt. 14:29 And the Levite, because he has no portion nor inheritance with you, and the stranger and the fatherless and the widow who are within your gates, may come and eat and be satisfied, that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hand which you do.

Job 24:3 The wicked drive away the donkey of the fatherless;
They take the widow’s ox as a pledge.

Job 24:21 For the wicked[d]preys on the barren who do not bear,
And does no good for the widow.

Psalm 68:5 – A father of the fatherless, a defender of widows,
Is God in His holy habitation.

94:6 – They slay the widow and the stranger,
And murder the fatherless.

Psalm 146:9 The Lord watches over the strangers;
He relieves the fatherless and widow;
But the way of the wicked He [a]turns upside down.

You can find this same theme repeated in Proverbs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah and Malachi.

Then the same concern bleeds into the NT because God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

There we find it front and center in Acts 6 w/ the early Church. How and who will take care of the widows of the Church.

Then in James 1 it hits us right between the eyes:

James 1:27 Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

So, this providing for Christian widows is elemental to Christianity and where it is absent so is basic Christianity.

But as we began to learn last week it is elemental not only to the jurisdictional responsibilities of the Church, it is also elemental to the jurisdictional responsibility of the family. Indeed, financially providing for widows is not a concern of the Church when the extended family are being Christians to their widows.

This sets the context for vs. 8 where we left off last week.

8 But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

Here the Apostle, writing the very voice of God takes up the issue of familial responsibility and by doing so demonstrates the centrality of the family in its proper jurisdiction.

Before we begin to unravel vs. 8 let us note first, once again, that when dealing with the Church as a Elder, Paul & Timothy and faithful heralds through the generations have to speak not only on Justification, sanctification, regeneration, Redemption, new creation, Kingdom, and covenant but also on matters such as taking care of widows. Christianity is a faith that has social implications and those social implications should be taught from the pulpit despite what the R2K heretics teach.

Turning Christianity into a faith that is merely a empty profession of faith that by itself can secure the hopes and promises of that faith is and always has been a delusion. Christianity requires a self-denial that blossoms and flourishes both in church and family. Self denial seems to be the problem here as St. Paul puts his finger on head knowledge Christians who were absent of good works towards those the good works should most be expected to be found. There were Christians here in Ephesus attached to the Church who could calmly look on while their relations and friends languished in the deepest poverty.

In vs. 8 St. Paul makes it very clear the issue at hand.

When the Holy Spirit speaks of “provide for his own,” the pronoun is masculine thus pointing us toward the responsibility of the paterfamilias – the Father of the family. This would fit what we spoke about last week in terms of the Trustee family. The Father is especially responsible for those whom today we might call the nuclear family but per the voice of God the Father is responsible even for those of the household.

The Greek verb for “provide” (προνοεῖ (pronoei) here has a meaning to “consider in advance…. or to look out before hand.”

So what is laid upon the head of the Trustee family is that he is to think beforehand of the probable needs of his own family and make arrangements to meet them.

Father’s did you just feel the world laid on your shoulders? Father’s did anyone tell you this when you were growing up? I know I wasn’t.

Here, implicitly the role of the paterfamilias is being taught. The Father is the head of the family. He is responsible to have foresight, to lay up provision, he is to consider the future rainy day. He is the protector and defender of that flock that is his family.

It is a great Christian responsibility to be a Christian man, husband, and father.

How far have we fallen in the West on this score?

Now there are barriers here to Christian men being Christian men. The FEDS and State take in taxes take what amounts to the inheritance that belongs to the first born that was used to meet these responsibilities of providing for his own and his household.
Secondly, there is the barrier of both nuclear and extended family embracing a worldview/faith in defiance of Christianity. It is hard to tell a Christian head of home that he has responsibility for someone who hates Christ and the Christian faith.

In keeping with this line of thought there is the barrier of a child who has gone wayward. How long does a Christian Father keep bailing that kind of child out? The Father of the prodigal in Luke 17 waited for his wayward child but did not bail him out.

There is the barrier of exorbitant costs and manpower that it can require to take care of a relative who is very sick.

So, as obvious as this responsibility is it is not without its conundrums and difficulties and while we may not be able to answer all these perplexities we can at least embrace the principle that we have a unique responsibility for our people… our kin.

Vs. 8 also teaches what we have taught here before and that there exists concentric circles of unique responsibilities. We have a unique responsibility to our kith and kin in terms of providing for them. There is no sending money to Africa or Asia to feed them when our own family members or people are in genuine need. To do so is not Christian behavior.

The Early Church Father Chrysostom had this to say. Chrysostom first quotes the passage and then demonstrates that it is consistent with the OT

And so says Isaiah, the chief of the Prophets, “Thou shalt not overlook thy kinsmen of thy own seed.” (Isa. lviii. 7, Sept.)

For if a man deserts. those who are united by ties of kindred and affinity, how shall he be affectionate towards others? Will it not have the appearance of vainglory, when benefiting others he slights his own relations, and does not provide for them? And what will be said, if instructing others, he neglects his own, though he has greater facilities; and a higher obligation to benefit them? Will it not be said, These Christians are affectionate indeed, who neglect their own relatives?

And Calvin chimes in with,

“It is therefore a proof of the greatest inhumanity, to despise those in whom we are constrained to recognize our own likeness.”

Of course what this teaches is that there is a proper partiality and so that partiality is not sin. We are to be partial to our family.

Another truism that Paul is teaching here is that grace does not erase nature but restores nature. Family relations are natural. The pagan/ heathen even commonly recognizes them. However, for the Christian the natural relations are cleansed and lifted so that, at least, ideally, it is Christian families where you find the greatest harmony of interest, the greatest amount of filial love, the greatest amount of care and provender.

We know this is taught here because the Holy Spirit can say to fail in this regard of looking after the family makes one worse than even the infidel who at least do this much in terms of family care.

Turning to Chrysostom

(2) “He is worse than an infidel.”

Wherefore? Because the latter, if he benefits not aliens, does not neglect his near kindred. What is meant is this: The law of God and of nature is violated by him who provides not for his own family. But if he who provides not for them has denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel, where shall he be ranked who has injured his relatives? With whom shall he be placed? But how has he denied the faith? Even as it is said, “They profess that they know God, but in works they deny Him.” (Tit. i. 16.) What has God, in whom they believe, commanded? “Hide not thyself from thine own flesh.” (Isa. lviii. 7.) How does he then believe who thus denies God? Let those consider this, who to spare their wealth neglect their kindred. It was the design of God, in uniting us by the ties of kindred, to afford us many opportunities of doing good to one another. When therefore thou neglectest a duty which infidels perform, hast thou not denied the faith?”

Chrysostom
Homilies on 1st Timothy XIV

So all this means our churches, ideally speaking, should provide the grandest display of family love. Further, as we consider that the Church is called the family of God, a large measure of this attitude must fall over into caring for one another. We know this because elsewhere Paul can say, “Do good to all men, but especially unto the household of faith.”

Now all this is monumentally important in our age where we are being told by nearly everyone in Evangelicaldom thinks like the need to

And I quote from a pop-star on the Evangelical scene

“That we Christians hate all forms of partiality.”

But that is exactly what St. Paul is calling for here. A Biblical partiality for our family. We can’t provide for everyone but we can have biblical partiality and provide for our own family.

[Rushdoony] “We have an obligation of decency, and of honesty, integrity towards all men. But we are not obligated to take care of all men. Now of course you talk with anyone, but in a crisis your obligation is to help whom? Yourself, your husband, your family. This is the basic obligation we share. We cannot be bleeding hearts towards all men.”

Now, briefly we consider the obstacles that we face in terms of this view of family;

III.) Recent & Current Opposition

Ideologically and philosophically the most threatening worldview to Christianity knows if it can destroy the family it will destroy Christianity.

“Only when we have led every woman from the home into the workplace will complete equality be achieved, by the destruction of the institution of the family, which is the basis of capitalist society.”

Friedrich Engels,
Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State

“Feminism offered corporations an excuse (what the political philosopher Nancy Fraser called a “legitimation”) for breaking the implicit contract to pay any full-time worker a wage he could raise a family on. It was feminism that provided, under pressure of the recessions of the 1970s, a pretext for re-purposing household and national budgets. Instead of being used for reproduction (understood as both family-forming and investment), those budgets would now be consumed. The increment in the family wage that had been meant for the raising of children was withdrawn. Families were no longer entitled to it—mothers would have to enter the workplace to claim it. But they wound up getting only a small part of it, and their competition drove down their husbands’ wages into the bargain.”
Christopher Caldwell
The Age of Entitlement

“We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.”

Black Lives Matter — Website
What we Believe

Francis Nigel Lee understood the importance for Marxism to destroy the Christian family;

The earthly family, then, roots in the Holy Family in heaven, and although Marx inverted the primordiality of the Holy Family to the earthly family, he well realized their relationship. This is why Marx stated in his famous Theses on Feuerbach that “once the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, the former must then itself be destroyed in theory and in practice.”~
However, precisely because the relationship is the very reverse of what Marx believed (the Holy Family being the secret of the earthly family. in actual fact), and precisely because the Holy Family is eternally indestructible, all Marxist attempts to destroy the earthly family (which is the image of the indestructible Holy Family)87 must fail….”

So, philosophically, the modern state which is the incarnation of the Marxist worldview is the enemy of the Christian family and so the enemy of Christianity. That modern state is programming the children of the West to hate Christian families. Public school teachers who are not epistemologically self-conscious regarding their professed Christian faith, no matter their good intentions are the enemy of the Christian faith.

What can be done?

Now the question arises… “Our families are not like this what can we do.”
This is the question of the Psalmist asks;

if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (11:3)

There are no easy answers here.

1.) Collect the flotsam and jetsam in your families and extended family who share your general Christian worldview and have conversations down this line.

2.) Parents teach these principles to your children from very young and teach them to look for a spouse that share these convictions.

3.) In the years to come once I’m off the scene look for churches and ministers who share these convictions. A church that embraces this will go along way towards helping stabilize you and your family on these matters.

4.) Realize the necessity to build, if you can, generational wealth that can be used as the glue that can help in these matters.

Ill. – Texas family (Chronicles Magazine)

5.) If possible keep family local. The kind of family dynamics that are presupposed in Scripture are served a great deal if the family is more or less local to one another. The geographic fracturing of family has led to the weakening of the strength of the family.

6.) Attend the same church. Of course this can’t be done if you don’t share a common confession/worldview but if you are local to one another and share a common faith the church you attend should be filled with people who share your last name. This is implied in the text. These widows and the families who were to provide for them were obviously in the same Church.

I Timothy 5:4 But if any widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show piety at home and to repay their parents; for this is [a]good and acceptable before God. 5 Now she who is really a widow, and left alone, trusts in God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day. 6 But she who lives in [b]pleasure is dead while she lives. 7 And these things command, that they may be blameless. 8 But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

I.) Form

As we begin with our consideration of this text let us first speak briefly about the form of the passage.

The form of this passage takes the form of what is called a Hebrew Chiasm. We have talked about this in the past but it has been quite some time since we have raised the issue. The Hebrew mind was constructed by God so that it thought in what we might call connected parallelisms.

A Chiasm is when a series of statements are made elongated to different lengths whereupon a counter series of statements are made that correspond in a mirror like fashion to the first series of statements that were made.

Paul does that here in this passage but before we look at that let’s consider a couple Chiasms elsewhere in Scripture so you can get an idea of what I am talking about.

Isaiah 6:10 A. Make the heart of this people fat, B. and make their ears heavy, C. and shut their eyes; C1. lest they see with their eyes, B1. and hear with their ears, A1. and understand with their heart, and return, and be healed.”.

Another common form of parallelism is the use of negatives, where two opposing ideas are stated as we see in Proverbs 11:19-20.

A1. Righteousness brings one to life B1. Pursuit of evil brings one to his death B2. a twisted heart is an abomination of YHWH A2. a mature path is his pleasure

You find this all over Hebrew poetry – Psalms, Proverbs, Job, portions of the Prophets but you also find it in didactic parts of Scripture and we find that here. Paul employs a Chiasm starting in verse 4 of I Timothy 5

A1 – Words to the Relative vs. 4
B1 – Words to the Widows vs. 5
B2 – Judgment on disobedient widows vs. 6
A2 – Judgment on disobedience Relatives vs. 8

Chiasms are all over the Scripture because, as I said, this is the way the Hebrew mind whirred. I’ve seen scholars take whole books of the Bible and demonstrate how those books were one long Hebrew Chiasm.

Think of this methodology as starting and ending with matching bookends so that the ending corresponds to the beginning. Meanwhile the bookends continue on through the passage so that with each initial statement there is some kind of corresponding echoing statement – perhaps in a parallel fashion and perhaps in an antithetical fashion – that will be made.

Well, I’ve introduced you to this Hebraic technique. If you want to know more you can find all kinds of examples on line. If you can’t find them just ask me. But the reason I bring this up here is so that you can read the Scripture in a more informed manner and so you can listen to sermons in a more informed manner. For example, it is a mistake for a minister to make two different points when Scripture is using a parallel Chiasm. It would be error to take the passage “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path,” and try, in a sermon, to make two points out of that since it is communicating the same idea in a parallel fashion.

Practice finding a Chiasm in Psalm 1 –

https://www.chiasmusxchange.com/2018/03/23/psalm-1/

Well, that gives us the form of the text and also offers a little lesson on hermeneutics. It is good thing to keep in your back pocket.

Now let us turn to the meaning of the text;

II.) Meaning

A.) Words to the Relatives

In vs. 4 the Holy Spirit is direct in the responsibility of family to take care of their aged. St. Paul clearly says that there is an obligation on the part of children to care for their parents who can’t take care of themselves even saying that in caring for them that those children are repaying them.

Now, this obviously implies that the parents had been responsible and had taken care of their adult children when they were children. This is something that we can’t automatically assume as occurring in our culture of broken homes. But the assumption here on the part of the Apostle is that children owe a debt of honor to their parents.

The problem here that the Holy Spirit is addressing is apparently there were deadbeat children who were fobbing their responsibility in this regard off on the Church.

5:16 If any believing [e]man or woman has widows, let them [f]relieve them, and do not let the church be burdened, that it may relieve those who are really widows.

Here the Apostle is communicating what should be a “Captain Obvious” statement that each Christian family bears the primary responsibility of caring for their own.

And in doing so, the Holy Spirit limns out the truth that distinctions are to be made as to what the family realm is uniquely responsible for and what the Church realm is responsible for, while at the same time teaching that where there is no family to care for a widow there the Church must be the family of God to those family-less widows.

I Timothy 5:3 Honor widows who are really widows.
And the idea of “honoring widows” there per the instruction of the Holy Spirit, is to financially provide for them. By calling the Church to “honor widows who are really widows” St. Paul is teaching that the Church must care for those who are really widows.

Verse 3. – Honor (τίμα). The use of the verb τιμάω in the comment on the fourth commandment in Matthew 15:4-6, where the withholding of the honor due consists in saying, “It is corban, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me,” and so withholding the honor due, shows clearly that in the notion of honoring is included that material support which their condition as widows required. So again in ver. 17 of this chapter, the “double honor” due to elders who labor in the Word and doctrine is clearly shown by ver. 18 to include payment for their maintenance.

So, if there is no family to materially support the aged then the Church must step in to do so. However, normatively it is the family that is responsible for the care of its own aged.

As an aside let us note here that the call for the Church to be concerned with taking care of the widow would have been a stark contrast to what would have found among the pagans who viewed women as second class citizens – especially aged women who had no kin to care for them. In taking up this care for “the least of these” the Church was demonstrating that the social-order that a Christian community would create would be far different than what was found among the pagans.

“Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.” James 5:16

Now, let’s note briefly here that one implication of this is that the NT does not define “Church” primarily where the members are to be passive recipients listening to two sermons on each Sunday. The Church envisioned in the NT is to be active in the very way that Holy Spirit speaks here. It is to be active in caring for the aged among their membership if they have no people to take care of them.

Some may tend to think that the Church doesn’t need to do this today because that is what welfare and social security are for but I can tell you as someone who spent his first six years ministering among many poor senior citizens that the Government only gives the aged enough to make sure that they remain poor and dependent on the FEDS. They receive just enough to remain at the poverty level.

But this ought not to be so among the Christian aged. If they do not have kin to provide for them then they ought to be able to look to the Church.

However, ideally, St. Paul teaches here it is the family whom God has designed to care for its own and this care is to be taken up inter-generationally. Note, St. Paul says it is Christian children and grandchildren who are responsible to care for the aged. Today, given the longer lifespans we may well include great-granchildren.

This inter-generational responsibility and privilege works to tie the generations together along lines of both blood and faith.

And here let us note that this inter-generational care should work in both directions per the instructions of the Holy Spirit in Proverbs.

13:22 A good person leaves an inheritance for their children’s children,

So, the goal of Christian parents should be to leave an inheritance for their posterity and the goal of Christian children should be to provide for their aged if needs be.

And of course the once Christian West no longer embraces this Christian social-order mindset. Instead you will see on the one end of the generation continuum bumper stickers on these huge houses on wheels that say, “I’m spending by children’s inheritance,” and on the other hand you’ll see, as I did as a boy who was often in a nursing home since my Father worked there, old people abandoned and lonely.

Now, combine this destructive generational self-centeredness with the fact that the FEDS are systematically attacking this vision of inter-generational family faithfulness with its program of the inheritance tax, no default divorce, government schools and other programs designed to weaken the family. More later on opposition to the Christian view of trans-generational family life.

So… the generations in their families are biblically designed to take care of one another and we must pause here and ask ourselves if we are doing so?

There is a great deal that is beautiful about the Scripture, but on this matter there is little that is more beautiful of our Lord Jesus Christ, while dying on the Cross, taking up the mindset of God and there, in spite of unspeakable torture spends His strength to make sure his mother is taken care of after His death.

What is implied in the instructions here in I Timothy 5 is the idea of the Trustee family. Carle Zimmerman in his book Family and Civilization teases out the difference between the Atomistic family, the Domestic family and the Trustee family – all different models of family life. The Scripture presupposes and teaches in the main the Trustee family model;

1.) Trustee

When the state is weak, the extended family or clan is the primary social power, and the state itself is seen as a union of families rather than individuals.  Rights and property belong primarily to the family itself, and its current living members see themselves as mere trustees, charged with passing along what they have received.

Illustration – Members of a band.

Carle Zimmerman noted that;

“The family brings the past into the present.”

This is especially true of the Trustee family. We find it exemplified in these lyrcis from Dan Fogleberg;

The leader of the band is tired and his eyes are growing old
But his blood runs through my instrument and his song is in my soul
My life has been a poor attempt to imitate the man
I’m just a living legacy to the leader of the band
I am the living legacy to the leader of the band

Dan Fogleberg

In the Trustee family the music does not die with the members of the band from one generation but continues on in the subsequent generations.

Pretend you were a member of a band. The band retains its name despite band members coming and going. The band excelled so much it became transgenerational. Despite key members changing over the years, everyone associated this band with a particular sound and quality. There may be variations but the band is the band regardless of the individual members who comprise the band.

 

 

 

Whether you had an album from when the band first started or an album from its centennial anniversary you could pick out its familiar sounds and riffs.

 

 

 

This provides an illustration for the Trustee family. The Trustee family, like the band, has key members come and go, and yet it remains the self-same Band. The family (hopefully) has the same quality from generation to generation. It has the same sound (same mannerisms, temperaments, dispositions) over the years so one can readily identify the family. The members of the family may change but new family members are not completely inconsistent with the family members who are no longer living members of the family.

 

The family is not a one-and-done generational phenomenon. It stretches from the past into the present while all the time remaining one unit. Sure, it has different members but it remains “The Band.”

 

Because of this I am as attached to my Great Grandfather as he is to my Great Grandson. Different members…. same band.

Because of this, it is not improper to say as I often heard when I lived in South Carolina; “My family has been knowing that family for 100 years.”

In Zimmerman’s analysis the family is the primary instrument of justice:  the family itself is held accountable for the misdeeds of its members, and each member has a duty to avenge wrongs against his kinsman. Historically Trustee society have often been naturally polytheistic, with each clan having its private gods. Greece, Rome, and the Germanic barbarians all began with the trustee family system. However, Israel in many respects though not in totality also practiced the Trustee family model.

2)      The domestic family.

As the state gains power, it takes over the role of enforcing justice and tries to stamp out the private justice of the trustee family. That the domestic family also has biblical roots to a degree is seen in the fact that the families of Israel were not allowed to implement the judicial death penalty apart from the concurrence of the community, and apart from witnesses. The family was not judge, jury, and executioner such as was found in the American lore of the Hatfields vs. the McCoys.

In Domestic family arrangements and social orders there are more duties that are extended to non-kinsmen. There is thus more co-operation between families. Judges, Magistrates, Sheriffs, public personnel as from many different families work together to make the social order work.

With the spread of trade, it becomes useful for a family to be able to sell the property which it had been holding in trust.  Out of these pressures arises the domestic family, the type which Zimmerman believes constitutes the best balance of family and society.  The domestic family consists of the living members of the nuclear family unit:  father, mother, and children (Nuclear Family). Family property belongs to the paterfamilias; the living no longer hold it in trust.  Rearing children is the family’s primary function.  Religion provides strong social sanctions against divorce, childlessness, and sexual immorality.

3)      The atomistic family.

As individualism and impiety spread, the ideological foundations of the domestic family are undermined, leading to the atomistic family.  In an atomistic society, marriage is seen as a temporary and socially unimportant contract between independent individuals.  As atomism spreads, divorce becomes common, adultery loses its stigma, sexual perversions of all sorts come to be accepted and even celebrated, children rebel against their parents, childbearing comes to be seen as a burden, and the population implodes.  A society cannot survive without the will to produce a next generation, and so the decedent society is eventually replaced by a new civilization embracing a more virile (trustee) family type, and the cycle begins again.  Greece after the Peloponnesian War, Rome during the late empire, and the contemporary West have the atomistic family as their dominant type.

It is in the interest of the State to undermine the family since an Atomistic family is no threat to the State’s increasing power. Where the family is weak there the State can assume the former’s authority and power of the family to itself.

Zimmerman sees Western civilization headed for destruction if it cannot revive the domestic family.  One of the heroes of his story is the Emperor Augustus, whose anti-adultery and anti-celibacy laws can be seen as a rational attempt to protect the Roman family and hold Rome’s destructively atomistic tendencies at bay.  This history’s most important hero, however, is the Church, which was forced to fight a war for the domestic family on two fronts, against both Roman atomism and barbarian pagan trustee-ism.  By the High Middle Ages, the Church had established her own sacramental version of the domestic family as the primary type in Christendom.  This work was undone by the anti-Christ partisans of divorce and immorality of the Renaissance and Enlightenment.

What we see in I Timothy and elsewhere in Scripture is a hybrid form of the Trustee/Domestic family.

That especially comes through in vs. 8 where we read;

8 But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

The “own” there refers to what we would call today a “man’s Nuclear family.” “The especially for their own household” refers to what we would call today “his extended family.”

And with that observation we will pause and take this up again next week, continuing to draw out the meaning in the text and then also considering recent and current opposition to this family model that we are currently fighting against.

Let us close with a quote from Thomas Fleming in support of returning to the Trustee family;

“For most of the past hundred years, defenders of ‘family values’ have limited their attention to the so-called bourgeois or nuclear family, and some have even pretended that these isolated households of parents-cum-children are a human norm. To anyone who knows anything about chimpanzees or primitive societies and, indeed, to anyone who has read the Old Testament or Beowulf or the Iliad, such a notion will appear preposterous. In rough times, isolated households are incapable of defending themselves from predatory enemies, and in the conditions imposed by modern state, nuclear families cannot stand up against the legions of public-school teachers, child-saving social workers, and children’s rights advocates. Stripped of the protection of offered by broader networks of kith and kin, the nuclear family cannot even protect its children from mass culture, much less from the vast network of social agencies arrayed against it.”

Thomas Fleming – 3213