“WIVES SHOULD BE SUBORDINATE TO THEIR HUSBANDS…”? ON WHAT PLANET?

10/30/18

As some of you know, I am a weekday lector at one of our local parishes; each Tuesday morning, I read the first reading, generally from one of Paul’s letters but sometimes from the Old Testament, another letter, the Acts, or Revelation.   Today, I read that most uncomfortable of readings from the fifth chapter of Paul’s letters to the Ephesians.   You know the reading; it’s the one about wives’ being subordinate to their husbands:

“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.”

Paul’s admonition is clearly offensive to the modern western ear.   Wives should be subordinate to their husbands?   “On what planet?” would be a common, and surely understandable, resort.  In fact, many churches simply omit the above part of the reading and skip immediately to a portion that yours truly discusses later in this post.

As an aside, back when time permitted, I had coffee after weekday Mass with a group of guys who were, for the most part, ten, twenty, or more years my senior.   When this topic came up in conversation over the years, several would say something like “What’s wrong with that reading?   My wife is subordinate to me.”   The funny thing is that I never got confirmation on that from any of their wives.   Nor did I try.   But I digress.

So how do those of us who derive most of our knowledge of God from the Scripture and acknowledge its truth, yet have an aversion to sleeping alone, defend Paul’s words?   It’s tough, but at least we can try.

First, the reading deals only secondarily with the relationship of married couples.   Paul uses the example of a married couple of his day to explain the relationship of Christ and the Church:

 “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.  (Ephesians 5, 25-32)

This, by the way, is the section with which the aforementioned churches that skip the “wives should be subordinate to their husbands” verse start the reading, but I merely complete my former digression.  The important point is that, while the teachings on family contained in this reading are important, the important point is Paul’s teaching on the relationship of Jesus to the church.  Still, however, the teachings on family remain and the part about wives’ being subordinate to their husbands is as offensive as ever to the reader in a society in which women are not, or at least ought not be, subordinate.

A better defense of this reading can be found at its onset:

“Brothers and sisters:
Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.”   Ephesians 5,21

This portion of the reading was one of the portions of the letter that was offensive to Paul’s ancient original addressees, who lived in a society in which it was assumed that women were subordinate to men.   Men are supposed to be mutually subordinate to women?   The retort when this letter was originally read, and read for the next, oh, 1,900 years or so, was something like “The hell you say!”

What Paul is teaching in this section is that, in a marriage, each partner should subordinate his or her feelings, desires, pursuit of happiness, and very being to those of his or her partner.   S/he should think of her or his partner before s/he thinks of herself or himself.   That is what a marriage is:   thinking of, first, the two of us, second, my spouse, and third, me.    While the words of Paul that women should be subordinate to their husbands is surely offensive, it is also offensive to hear a husband or a wife talking about getting “my way” in a particular decision the couple is supposedly making as a couple.  Marriage means that there is no longer a “my way,” but only an “our way,” the way that is best for the couple and the family.

A further defense of Paul’s writing can be found inside the above quoted verses:

“Husbands, love your wives….”   (Ephesians 5, 25)

Today, we are offended, and justifiably so, by the words

“Wives should be subordinate to their husbands…”  (Ephesians 5, 22),

but those words didn’t faze Paul’s original readers, or even his readers for the next nearly two millennia.   What really set off Paul’s readers were the above words telling men they had to actually love their wives.   In that ancient society, love between married couples was not unheard of; it may have even been common.   But it was indeed the exception to the rule.   For the most part, women, even wives, were treated like chattel, there to breed and keep the home while the husbands went about doing whatever they wanted in all matters, including romance and sexuality.   Readers in the ancient church were therefore probably as likely to simply omit the “love your wives” portion of Paul’s letter as we, in the modern church, are likely to omit the “Wives should be subordinate to their husbands” part of the letter.   Far from being the misogynist that he is accused of being by modern observers, Paul was, for his day, quite the champion of women’s rights.

There is no doubt about it or way around it; “Wives should be subordinate to their husbands” is offensive to today’s ear.   For that reason, this portion of the reading is simply dropped in many churches today.   The peculiar, or at least counter-intuitive, consideration is that nothing is lost from Paul’s larger meaning when that portion is dropped.   His major messages remain.   First, wives are not meant to be the property of a man but, instead, are meant to be loved and cherished.   Second, marriage is an institution in which the “me” is subordinated to the “us.”   Third, Jesus loves his church, which includes all of us, as a man should love his wife, i.e., as he loves himself.

All God’s blessings now and forever.