Section 1

A certain wise man, after placing many things among the blessings of life, included this too among them: “A wife who lives in harmony with her husband.” Elsewhere again he counts among blessings a wife living together with her husband in concord.

From the beginning God appears to have shown great providential care for this union. Speaking of the two as though they were one, He said, “Male and female He made them,” and again, “There is neither male nor female.” There is no bond between one man and another as close as the bond between a woman and a man when they are joined as they ought to be.

For this reason, when a blessed man wished to express surpassing love while mourning someone dear to him and of one soul with him, he did not mention father, mother, child, brother, or friend. What did he say? “Your love came upon me like the love of women.” Truly, truly, this love is more powerful than any tyranny. Other attachments may be strong, but this desire has both intensity and endurance. A certain love lies hidden in our nature and, without our noticing it, binds these bodies together.

This is why, from the beginning, woman came from man, and afterward both man and woman came from man and woman. Do you see the bond and interweaving, and how God did not allow another substance to enter from outside? See how much He arranged. He allowed the first man to marry one who was, so to speak, his own sister—or rather, not a sister but a daughter; and not merely a daughter, but something still closer than a daughter: his own flesh. He established the whole race from a single beginning, gathering the two into one like stones joined in a structure.

He did not form the woman from outside the man, so that he would not regard her as a stranger. Yet He also did not restrict all later marriage to that immediate relation, so that people would not draw into themselves and separate from everyone else. Consider plants: the finest are those that have one trunk and then spread into many branches. If everything remained crowded only around the root, it would serve no purpose; yet if there were many unrelated roots, the tree would no longer have the same unity. So too here: from the one Adam, God caused the whole human race to be planted, placing upon humanity a powerful necessity not to be torn apart or separated. Then, narrowing the permitted degrees of kinship, He no longer allowed sisters and daughters to be married, so that we would not contract our love into one small circle and thus become separated from one another in another way. This is why Christ said, “He who made them from the beginning made them male and female.”

From this union great evils can arise, and also great goods, both for households and for cities. Nothing holds our common life together so strongly as the love between husband and wife. For this love many people lay down even their weapons; for it they even give up their lives. Paul therefore did not devote so much care to this matter without reason when he said, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.”

Why? Because when husband and wife live in harmony, the children are brought up well, the servants keep good order, and neighbors, friends, and relatives share in the good influence. But when the opposite is true, everything is overturned and confused. Just as, when the commanders of an army are at peace with one another, everything proceeds in proper order, while if they quarrel everything is thrown into confusion, so it is here as well. Therefore he says, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.”

But wait—how then does Christ say elsewhere, “Unless someone renounces wife and husband, he cannot follow Me”? If a wife must submit “as to the Lord,” how can Scripture also speak of leaving spouse for the Lord’s sake? Certainly the Lord must come first. But the word “as” does not always mean exact equality in every respect.

Paul may mean: submit while knowing that you are serving the Lord. Elsewhere he makes the same point: even if you are not acting primarily for the husband’s sake, act above all for the Lord’s sake. Or he may mean: when you yield to your husband, consider that obedience as service offered to the Lord. For if the person who resists the civil authorities “resists the ordinance of God,” how much more, he argues, the wife who refuses the order God has appointed in marriage. This, he says, was God’s intention from the beginning.

Let us therefore begin from this image: the husband occupies the place of the head, and the wife the place of the body. Paul then reasons from it: “The husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the Church, and He is the Savior of the body. But as the Church submits to Christ, so also let wives submit to their own husbands in everything.”

After saying, “The husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the Church,” he adds that Christ “is the Savior of the body.” For the head is the source of preservation for the body. Paul has therefore already laid down for husband and wife the foundation and care of their love, assigning to each the role he considers appropriate: to the husband, leadership and provident care; to the wife, submission.