"The wife is a second authority; let her not then demand equality . . ."
This is the second part of a three part series responding to feminism. You can also read part one and part three.
In the previous post we looked at Galatians 3:28, a text leaned heavily upon by feminists and egalitarians, and why it doesn’t really support an egalitarian reading. Let’s now turn to two of the other Pauline texts most central to this debate, specifically regarding headship within the family. Ephesians 5:22-33 and 1 Cor. 11:3-15 both establish an undeniable hierarchy within marriage.
St. John Chrysostom, the Church’s greatest expositor of St. Paul—so great, in fact, that St. Paul’s whispering into his ear the truth of his teachings resulted in St. John’s ear becoming an incorrupt relic, which exists and is on Mount Athos to this day—says this about Ephesians 5:32-33:
However not for the husband’s sake alone it is thus said [that marriage is the great mystery of Christ and the Church], but for the wife’s sake also, that he cherish her as his own flesh, as Christ also the Church, and, that the wife fear her husband. He is no longer setting down the duties of love only, but what? That she fear her husband. The wife is a second authority; let her not then demand equality, for she is under the head; nor let him despise her as being in subjection, for she is the body; and if the head despise the body, it will itself also perish. But let him bring in love on his part as a counterpoise to obedience on her part. For example, let the hands and the feet, and all the rest of the members be given up for service to the head, but let the head provide for the body, seeing it contains every sense in itself. Nothing can be better than this union.
The feminist-egalitarian vision of marriage is necessarily one of either two heads, or two bodies, or some other unholy configuration, while St. Paul’s vision is that of a head and a body, just as Christ is the head of His Body, the Church. Chrysostom continues:
And yet how can there ever be love, one may say, where there is fear? It will exist there, I say, preeminently. For she that fears and reverences, loves also; and she that loves, fears and reverences him as being the head, and loves him as being a member, since the head itself is a member of the body at large. Hence he places the one in subjection, and the other in authority, that there may be peace; for where there is equal authority there can never be peace; neither where a house is a democracy, nor where all are rulers; but the ruling power must of necessity be one.
Just as the good order of the κοσμος (cosmos) is (or was) maintained by humanity humbly submitting to God’s rule over it, so it is with the μικρόκοσμος (microcosm) of the family: a singular principal reigns in self-emptying love and care over the whole, and those under his authority return love in submissive gratitude, resulting in the harmonious, peaceful operation of the whole. Echoing this point, one of the other Three Holy Hierarchs of the 4th century St. Gregory the Theologian writes:
The three most ancient opinions concerning God are Anarchia, Polyarchia, and Monarchia. The first two are the sport of the children of Hellas, and may they continue to be so. For Anarchy is a thing without order; and the Rule of Many is factious, and thus anarchical, and thus disorderly. For both these tend to the same thing, namely disorder; and this to dissolution, for disorder is the first step to dissolution. But Monarchy is that which we hold in honour.
The ‘arche’ of the Father is an aspect of orthodox trinitarianism, enshrined in the Nicene Creed: The Son is begotten of the Father (and not vice versa) and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father (and not vice versa). Thus, though all the Persons are ομοούσιος (“of one essence”), there is a relational hierarchy within the Godhead, with the Father as the fountainhead or the Monarch of the Holy Trinity.
With this in mind, we read in 1 Cor. 11:3: “that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.” St. Paul explicitly lays out a hierarchy, and grounds it in the relationship of the Son to the Father, which—as we’ve just seen—is not a reciprocal relationship (though this lack of relational symmetry in no way entails ontological inferiority). And in Ephesians 5, he links the hierarchy of husband-to-wife with the hierarchy of Christ-to-Church.
St. Paul uses these two non-reciprocal, hierarchical relationships as the image or blueprint of marriage, therefore the relationship of husband to wife can not be reciprocal either. Yet, for an egalitarian ‘equality’, this is precisely what the relationship must be: exactly reciprocal. Ergo, per the Bible and the dogma of the Holy Trinity as revealed by Christ and attested to by the Church, ‘egalitarianism’ cannot be true.
Most Christian feminists and egalitarians will attempt to obfuscate by shifting to a discussion of the culture that Paul was writing in, 1st century Roman household codes, the nature of headship and other irrelevancies. But these moves should be treated as the shabby evasions that they are. We don’t need to know the nature of headship or gender norms in Paul’s context because he grounds his teaching in eternal referents: Christ is the head of the Church; the Father is the head of the Son. And the reverse is not true, in either case.
Even if your tradition has—for some inexplicable reason—misplaced the apostolic teaching on the nature of the headship of the husband in the family, the text still states unequivocally that it is something husbands have and wives do not, which is enough to take feminism and egalitarianism off the table as options.
In the next post, we will look at the subject through the lens of Christian tradition and discuss the way that the Theotokos embodies Christian femininity such that her example sets the standard for the Church’s response to Christ, and for women in a unique way.
This is the second in a three-part series responding to feminism — Part three is now available.