The Authority of the Father over a Grown Son in the Apostolic Constitutions

The Apostolic Constitutions are a compilation of teachings that are thought by the early church to come from the apostles. It is not that the work is written by the apostles. It is compiled and written in the fourth century during the time the first creeds of the church are being constructed. However, it is highly regarded by the church in terms of liturgy, practice, and its instruction for life in and outside the church. It is not merely, therefore, on par with simply a single church father contemplating an issue, but intends to be authoritative in its instruction.

When commenting upon the raising of children, both male and female, the instructions are the same. One is to discipline them by bringing them up in the fear and admonition of the Lord by teaching them wisdom with severity. It then instructs Christians that "when they (i.e., both male and female children) reach an age appropriate for marriage, join them in wedlock" (Apostolic Constitutions 7.436).

In fact, the full statement gives authority to the parents over their entire lives as young adults in the home. 

"Not giving them such liberty that they get the lead of their own lives," and they act against your    opinion, not permitting them to club together to get support from their peers. For so they will be turned to disorderly courses, and will fall into fornication; and if this happen by the carelessness of their parents, those that begat them will be guilty of their souls. For if the offending children get into the company of debauched persons by the negligence of those that begat them, they will not be punished alone by themselves; but their parents also will be condemned on their account. For this cause endeavour, at the time when they are of an age fit for marriage, to join them in wedlock, and settle them together, test in the heat and fervour of their age their course of life become dissolute, and you be required to give an account by the Lord God in the day of judgment.

It further argues that a father who comes upon a woman in the church who has been orphaned (perhaps, abandoned by her family) should marry his son to her (4.1).

In both of these instances, it is the father who is over the son and has the right to give him in marriage. This is because the son, not just the daughter, of a man is under his authority until he departs from his authority to marry. The one household continues into the other. 

If the father did not have that right, it is odd for the Constitutions to instruct the father in such ways. It, instead, should be instructing the son to marry when he becomes an appropriate age, since he'll be leaving the household and forging his own destiny, or it should be encouraging the son to marry an orphaned woman on his own accord.

Instead, it instructs the father because it assumes that the father has authority over the son in the same way that the Apostle Paul relates his authority over his daughter in 1 Corinthians 7. Why? Because there is no assumption of the radical individualism that we have been immersed in from the Enlightenment on. Sons are not separate entities from their fathers. Hence, only the fathers can decide when they will depart, and this is largely wrapped around the father deciding when it is appropriate for his son to marry. In 1 Corinthians 7, the father is given the right by Paul to "keep" his daughter and not allow her to marry. Such instruction from the apostle is seen as tyrannical by the modern American who so prizes autonomy and self-willed destiny as a part of his core value system. It's what Americans call "freedom," and to impose such restrictions on a girl who wants to get married flies in the face of such a valued sentiment. It is no wonder that saying that the father has the same right over his son would dust up the same objections.

Whether one wishes to merely dismiss what the Constitutions say as culture does not address the issue at hand. Maybe it is just cultural. That isn't the point. The issue is whether Christians practiced this, and the church instructed them to do so. It is clear that this is to be decided in the affirmative. As said before, the Constitutions were held in high esteem. People viewed it as the very teaching of the apostles. Even the heretics, like Arians, adopted it, and so we have copies from them (the issue with heretics of course was not that they had different ethics but different theologies of Christ--in the case of the Arians, they had a different view of when Christ came into existence).

What this indicates is not only that some Christians believed and practiced this, but that this was the standard belief among Christians. There is no evidence that they believed sons should leave home, be their own authorities, and then decide for themselves whether they were ready for marriage. This was under the guidance and authority of their fathers (I say "guidance" and "authority" because it is not as though fathers did not take their children's wishes into consideration).

Of course, other practices creep in when cultural assumptions are not evaluated, so what Christians may have done through the ages and what they were supposed to do according to the church may be two different things. It remains for a study of that issue to bear that out.

To be sure, the modern American will hate this idea. He is raised to hate it. Our entire culture is founded on the idea of individual autonomy, not submission to an authority outside of the self. Nonetheless, the Constitutions provide a way to look, if even through a small glass, what the early Christian Church believed on the matter.