A certain wise man, after placing many things among the blessings, included this too among them: “A wife who lives in harmony with her husband.” Elsewhere again he counts among blessings a wife living in harmony with her husband.
From the beginning God appears to have taken great 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 relationship between one man and another as close as that between a woman and a man when they are joined as they ought to be.
For this reason, a blessed man once wanted to express extraordinary love while mourning someone dear to him who was one in heart 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, this love rules more powerfully than any tyranny. Other loves are intense, but this desire is both intense and enduring. 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 connection, and how God did not allow something of a different nature to enter from outside? See how many things He arranged. He allowed the man to marry his own sister—or rather, not his sister but his daughter. Indeed, she was something still closer than a daughter: his own flesh. He established the whole race from a single beginning, gathering them 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 make that first relationship the pattern for all later marriages. Otherwise people would have closed in on themselves and separated from everyone else. Consider plants: the finest have one trunk and then spread into many branches. If everything remained clustered around the root, it would all be in vain; but if there were many roots, the tree would no longer be remarkable. So too here: from the one Adam, God caused the whole human race to spring, binding humanity by a powerful necessity not to be torn apart or separated. Then He narrowed marriage further: He no longer permitted marriages with sisters and daughters. In this way we would not confine our love to one small circle and thereby separate ourselves from others. This is why He said, “He who made them from the beginning made them male and female.”
From this come great evils and great benefits, 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 enjoy the fragrance. But when the opposite is true, everything is overturned and confused. When the commanders of an army are at peace with one another, everything proceeds in proper order; when 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.”
How strange! How then is it said elsewhere, “Unless someone renounces wife and husband, he cannot follow Me”? If one must submit “as to the Lord,” how can He say that one must leave a spouse for the Lord’s sake? Indeed, submission is certainly required; 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 for the husband’s sake, act above all for the Lord’s sake. Or he may mean: when you yield to your husband, regard your obedience as service to the Lord. For if the person who resists the civil authorities “resists what God has ordained,” how much more does the wife who does not submit to her husband. This, he says, was God’s intention from the beginning.
Let us therefore suppose that the husband occupies the place of the head, and the wife the place of the body. Paul then reasons from this: “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 body’s salvation. Paul has therefore already laid down the basis for love and care between husband and wife and assigned to each the role he considers appropriate. To the husband he assigns the role of governing and caring; to the wife, submission.