“Wives Should Be Subordinate to Their Husbands in Everything”

 

“WIVES SHOULD BE SUBORDINATE TO THEIR HUSBANDS IN EVERYTHING”

Ephesians 5:21-33 (New American Bible)

 

Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ. 

Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body. 

As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything. [boldface mine]

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 

So [also] husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 

For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. 

“For this reason a man shall leave [his] father and [his] mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 

This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church. 

In any case, each one of you should love his wife as himself, and the wife should respect her husband.

Basically, Father Gregory Pine, O.P. in his remarks on this passage affirms the relationship of Christ, the head, to the Church, his body, in the order of grace, reciting without direct commentary the verse (Ephesians 5:24) obliging the encompassing, absolute subordination of the wife to the husband. Closing, he parses the entire passage, the difficult verse included, as a declaration of the differentiated, complementary roles God wills for both husband and wife, indeed, for all creation.

See: https://youtu.be/nA_E40TxgAA

—Pints with Aquinas, “Wives Submit to Your Husbands: What it REALLY Means w/ Fr. Gregory Pine, OP,” YouTube video, 13:52 minutes, January 8, 2022

It’s a highly problematic passage for our postmodern times. It builds a theological argument based on social mores that have transformed over time. The description of the relationship between Christ and his Church is not in dispute. It is rather the relationship between husband and wife that is put forward as normative. In this respect it is problematic. Human authority is subject to abuse in our fallen world, and the same is only too true of the exercise of authority by the husband in a marriage. It’s best to read the passage, I believe, first, as an artifact of historical social mores. Second, as the description of a worthy ideal. Third, not as an absolute norm but rather as a salutary framework adaptable according to the inherent diversity of our human condition, with due regard for a genuinely Christian ethos. Let’s step away from a literalist reading of every verse in Scripture.