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 not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his cattle, nor anything that is his.
What does this mean?--Answer.
We should fear and love God that we may not estrange, force, or entice away our neighbor's wife, servants, or cattle, but urge them to stay and [diligently] do their duty.
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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