House board (instruction)

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The house table is a compilation of Bible verses that relate to the behavior of different classes as required by Christianity. These verses were compiled by Luther in 1529 , attached to his Small Catechism and printed together with it. Luther also coined the term house table .

Following Luther, two passages in Paul's letters from which the house-table sayings come (Ephesians 5:22 - 6.5 and Colossians 3: 18-4.1) were themselves referred to as house tables .

history

Since the Small Catechism was supposed to be memorized by all Lutheran Christians and was regularly taught in schools and churches, the house tablet was extremely popular from the 16th to the end of the 19th century.

From the letters of the apostles, Luther chose proverbs that concern the following eleven classes:

  • Preachers and bishops,
  • Authorities,
  • Husband,
  • Wife,
  • Parents,
  • Children,
  • Domination,
  • Servants,
  • young people,
  • Widows
  • all Christians as a whole

Soon afterwards, a colleague of Luther added the "listeners" (that is the parish) and the "subjects", to whom corresponding sayings between the preachers and the authorities or between the authorities and the husband were inserted.

One recognizes in this structure the Lutheran three-tier doctrine , which divided the entire society into the areas of church, secular rule and house ( ecclesia , politia , oeconomia ). The subsequent insertions of "listeners" and "subjects" emphasized the three-tier structure principle even more. The classes of young people and widowed people who fell out of the system of superiors and subordinates were added to the area of ​​the house.

In the verses referred to by Luther, the subordinate classes (parish, subjects, wives, children, servants) are above all exhorted to obedience, which had to be unconditionally performed in all matters not directly related to faith. The higher classes, on the other hand, (preacher, government, husband, parents, house rule) are encouraged to care, rigor, justice and to behave in an exemplary manner. The last stand is the overarching stand of mutual love that is supposed to unite all Christians with one another.

The selected verses come mainly from two places in Paul's letters to the Ephesians and to the Colossians (Ephesians 5.22 - 6.5 and Colossians 3.18 - 4.1), in which in the tradition of the ancient Greek house teaching there is talk of the various stands of the house. These passages of the Bible were soon referred to as house tablets themselves (as is still the case today in the Luther Bible ).

What is characteristic of Luther's home table, however, is that he expanded it with Bible verses with instructions for the preachers and for the authorities (later supplemented by the congregation and subjects) and that the home table thus encompassed not only the house but the entire society.

The tripartite image of society on which the house table is based was not received by other circles of his followers until after Luther's death (1546), as Luther did not write his own writing on it and did not explicitly speak of it in connection with the house table, but was then accepted by the conservative Lutheranism shaped until the end of the 19th century. Luther and his followers were convinced that the three-tier structure of society corresponded to the divine order of creation, although it is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible itself.

Home sermons

Since the 50s of the 16th century there have also been printed sermons on the house table, mostly at the end of sermon cycles on the catechism, even if not all authors of catechism sermons took the house table into account. In the sermons about the house table, the model that Luther had only hinted at when he put together the proverbs is elaborated in more detail. (Note. Of course, neither Luther nor his successors saw the doctrine of duty of the house table and the three-tier system as a “model”, but rather as a kind of “ideal reality” that was already created by God in creation, but which was corrupted in many ways by man under the influence of the devil.)

Compared to Luther's submission, the sermons on the clergy - in keeping with Lutheran orthodoxy - emphasized not only the pastors' duty to lead an exemplary way of life, but also the duty of correct teaching. The sermons to the authorities were now aimed directly at the sovereigns in the manner of the prince mirrors , while Luther with his Pauline saying only called for the authorities to be respected. Some authors of home-table sermons added additional classes, such as teachers and students, or added the class of the elderly to the class of young people. The sermons about the latest status, that of Christian love, also turned out very differently, to which no limited social grouping corresponded.

The preachers illustrated the duties and the offenses against them with a large number of " examples " that were taken from the Bible, above all from the Old Testament, but also from ancient histories and to some extent also from contemporary history. The audience was also made familiar with religious education.

Despite individual variations, the scheme of the house table and the interpretations in the sermons remained essentially constant throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, even if the Lutheran three-tier model on which the house table list is based, with its juxtaposition of those still hierarchically arranged in the Middle Ages three classes, to which all people belong to Luther at the same time, seems peculiarly modern (because it is actually an order according to functional areas, while the surrounding society is still completely stratified), so the home table sermons are the most characteristic expression of the classical Lutheran Conservatism, which shaped German social history into the 20th century.

literature

  • Julius Hoffmann, Hausväterliteratur and the sermons on the Christian household . Home Doctrine and Education for Home Life in the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries. Weinheim 1959.
  • Albrecht Peters, Commentary on Luther's Catechisms , Vol. 5. Ed .: Gottfried Seebaß. Göttingen 1994, pp. 95-118.

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