Hausvater: /HAUS-fah-ter/
noun (German)
1. Housefather.
2. Spiritually responsible head of household, including the housefather as assisted by the housemother.
>> Example: "As the Hausvater should teach it [Christian doctrine] to the entire family ..."
(Martin Luther, Small Catechism, 1529)
Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother [that it may be well with thee and thou mayest live long upon the earth].
What does this mean?--Answer.
We should fear and love God that we may not despise nor anger our parents and masters, but give them honor, serve, obey, and hold them in love and esteem.
Source (Public Domain): Concordia Triglotta: The Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, ed. F. Bente (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921). The excerpt from AC XXVI has been taken from Tappert’s English rendering of the German text, which more fully identifies the distinctive roles of husbands and wives than the Latin text that is the basis for Bente’s translation; moreover, it was the German, rather than the simultaneously produced Latin version, that was read before Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Augsburg. See The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, ed. Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959), 65. The full text of the Book of Concord is available at www.bookofconcord.org and much of it also is available at Project Wittenberg.
“The Natural Law of the Family,” by Dr. Ryan C. MacPherson, President of The Hausvater Project, in Natural Law: A Lutheran Reappraisal (CPH, 2011)
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