Who should be called father? Paul of Tarsus between the Jesus tradition and patria potestas

Who should be called "father"? What an odd question. Doesn't everyone in every culture grow up calling the male who begot them their linguistic equivalent of "father"? In the world of Jesus and Paul, everyone knew the answer to that question. For them, the term father included reference not only to their male blood progenitors, and perhaps to their fathers' fathers, but also to the emperor at Rome, the pater patriae, the "father of the fatherland." This title, as Nicholas Purcell observes, "was eloquently suggestive of the protecting but coercive authority of the paterfamilias" (1121).

In Roman culture this nearly absolute, coercive authority was called patria potestas, which in its range included the father's power of life and death over his children, beginning in infancy when a father chose to acknowledge and rear a child of "to expose" it, that is, throw the child away. The second-century Roman jurist Gaius noted that "there are virtually no other peoples who have such power over their children as we have" (INSTITUTES 1,55). From ancient Republican times, Roman fathers had been permitted by law to sell their sons into slavery--as many as three times. Yet during the Empire, paternal monopoly on the control of property probably influenced the behavior of sons and daughters more than their father's legal right to execute them.

As Richard Saller has stressed, writers such as Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch urged fathers to use encouragement and reasoning rather than blows or ill treatment as the means of leading their children to honorable lives (1994). Paternal moderation, even toward serious filial misbehavior, was praised as a virtue. And family affection and genuine respect could motivate the obedience of children, as Judith Hallett (1984) has especially documented for Roman daughters. However the children were motivated, their father was to be obeyed absolutely; and the deeply felt appropriateness of this demand was rooted in Roman male ideology, according to which children, slaves, and women all lacked full powers of judgment.

Thus grown daughters and sons were usually bound by their father's authority until he died. Until then they could own no property, and any of their earnings or gifts they received belonged by law to their father. His consent was necessary for the marriage of both sons and daughters, and he could coerce a divorce. In the sine manu form of marriage that prevailed from the late Republic on into the Empire, the wife remained under the authority of her father. Ovid (FASTI 6.219ff) called attention to the importance Roman fathers placed on obtaining husbands for their daughters. Yet once such fathers were successful in this regard, legislation by Augustus guaranteed that these fathers retained considerably more authority over their married daughters than their husbands could have. This fact will be particularly relevant later when I invite you to reconsider Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 7. Who should be called father? What a silly question.

Filial Piety and the Authority of Fathers

Patriarchy as a psycho-social system is frequently but inadequately defined solely as male domination of females, men dominating women. Yet patriarchal social codes are enforced beyond the household by the actions of men who seek to acquire more honor by dominating as many other men as possible. In a wide variety of cultures, men are brought up to gain honor for themselves precisely by dominating as many others as they can, both men and women. And the lessons in such domination began and still begin in the home. Sons raised to be absolutely obedient to their fathers grew up anticipating that they, in turn, would become patriarchs who would appropriately demand such obedience from everyone in their own families. Thus a boy was raised to be aggressive, to demonstrate self-mastery, and to look forward not only to being served by his wife, children, and slaves, but also to expect deference from those males he had successfully challenged in the public realm.

Boys who were trained to be obedient sons became loyal political subjects who were indeed subject to the ruling powers. For such sons, calling the Roman Emperor "father" fit well with their common sense of how the world worked. Thus any in-depth understanding of patriarchy in the Roman Empire or any society must include, if not begin with, an analysis of male socialization and the power arrangements valued among men. Across all social classes, traditional male socialization programmed males to pursue a never-ending quest for greater honor and influence, including fathers arranging their children's marriages so that the honor of their families would be enhanced.

Unfortunately, most descriptions of ancient patriarchy are incomplete because they routinely disregard this systemic quest for honor by competition among men and the resulting domination of males by other males. Yet by ignoring this central feature of ancient patriarchy, scholars have predisposed themselves to miss one of the most interesting counter-cultural challenges on which Paul agreed with Jesus.