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Authority and Submission in Marriage, Done Right

What is the ideal for the meaning of the sexes and for the ordering of family life? It can be found in understanding authority and submission.

For years, I’ve taught biblical submission to women—and to men. Even writing this seems like exposing a bad secret. Yet I go on because resolving the meaning of submission and authority brought this Protestant minister’s family into the Catholic Church.

The idea of wives’ submission came to me, granddaughter of a Baptist preacher, wife of a Baptist and, later, Presbyterian minister, as a thunderbolt from the blue. I was struck by the power of the Bible’s admonition—that is, without a cloud of such a concept in sight, I was struck by the power of the Bible’s admonition, “Wives, be submissive to your husbands as to the Lord” (Eph. 5:22).

I had read these words as flat syllables, without an ounce of meaning, for as long as I could remember, but on this particular day they were emphatically presented as something I could no longer ignore. Before this, I had accepted marriage as something like a football game. My husband and I were two teams who tried to gain yardage from each other or score goals by getting past each other’s defenses. Sometimes the competition was amiable, sometimes it was vengeful, but there was always competition, with the gaining or giving of ground.

The very thought that I should be on his team was revolutionary. All the assumptions about our relationship were up for review and reform.

It was, after all, his team. That’s the biblical view of the marriage covenant, even though our modern age sees marriage as a loosely joined, two-headed, bi-named conglomerate, very different from the single entity Jesus described. My first understanding of being a team player needed much modification. I had the mistaken notion that the one who headed the team and called the plays was more important and more worthy than the one who took orders and carried them out.

This confusion caused no end of trouble. Perhaps, at first, this abasement was good for my soul, but it had unpleasant effects—not only on me, but on my husband. He too believed that to rule was the best of all worlds. His anger, vented against the opposing team when we were challengers, was in retrospect somewhat justified, but now, when we were on the same team, he still felt that being the commander and having power over people really meant he was entitled to be angry when his expectations weren’t met.

Before, when I fielded my own team, I at least had prestige and wielded power, but now I felt like a nobody. For a while, I rather enjoyed the meek stance—it was like a romantic novel—but this wore thin quickly. To bolster myself, I returned to the passages that taught wifely submission, and all looked right because God was the reason for obedience. Jesus’ mother was the example, the one who never looked for any recognition, who always pointed to her Son (John 2:5), and who accepted totally: “Be it done unto me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). I prayed to be like that—a fateful prayer, for wanting to model her had some astounding effects.

Yet submission in itself is not the whole answer to a godly husband-and-wife relationship. We have all seen the distortions among good men and women. That is the reason, I believe, that Pope John Paul II, in Mulieris Dignitatem, has downplayed the biblical role of submission for women and emphasized mutual submission. “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph. 5:21).

At the root of the distortions lies the authority problem. Though the married sometimes despair of it being solved anytime soon, it actually has been solved, and the solution lies within reach of every reasonable, praying Christian couple. But the resolution in marriage recasts our understanding of authority and obedience all along the line. In our case, it destroyed our happy existence as Protestants.

The last-written prophetic book of the Old Testament is Malachi. Like many of the prophetic voices, his is full of dire warnings about God’s anger against his unfaithful people: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with curse” (3:24). One can echo the King of Siam’s cry: “Puzzlement! It is a puzzlement!”

Malachi’s words speak of a problem that remained unsolved at his writing, the very one the Bible opens with. In Genesis’s first three chapters, the fatal flaw of earth’s children is revealed. It is the authority problem. From the darkest recesses of time, authority had been delegated to the fathers, who so often exercised it heedless of the hearts of those they ordered, and from the first, those under obedience to the fathers rebelled. Rebellion on the one hand, authoritarianism on the other—how can this authority problem be solved?

Malachi foresaw a “day of the Lord” that would achieve a final resolution. Either it would be solved then, hints Malachi, or the whole world would remain under a curse. Nowhere do we see the problem more apparent than in the worldly reaction to the inherent authority of Catholic Church.

The problem began in the early moments of man’s placement in the Garden of Delight. An unspoiled, obedient creation, including its crowning fixture, man, stood beautifully before the Creator, expressing exactly what had been in his awesome heart and mind. Man was made in the image of his Creator to share the Creator’s spiritual attributes. As with anything created, he could be complete only in conformity with the plan under which he was made. In our fallen language, this is called “obedience” or “submission.”

A poison permeates those words in our fallen milieu. Because of sin, they have been responsible for immeasurable wretchedness, it’s true, yet we know how wonderful life will be if we faithfully live out God’s plan—and how wholly miserable life will be if we do not. Obedience is a blessing and disobedience a curse. Submission to the plan looks like bliss, and rebellion against the plan looks like hell. If the creature in his freedom chooses not to heed his Creator, then the creature must live with all the authority problem brings upon him.

In Genesis this is told in a colorful story that has at least two facets, the first (Gen. 1) a close-up view, the second (Gen. 2) an overview. Because the perfect world with its perfect creature, man, was perfectly happy, there was no chance of disobedience—none. Why would he disobey when all his being experienced bliss?

It took an intruder with upside-down values to bring even a question into this realm. He already had chosen a deviant path to his own lordship. He would transfer this same mindset in order to lord it over these creatures. That is how the authority problem started.

Now a new lord was in charge, one who considered lordship both means and end. The belief that authority means prestige and power and is to be gained at all cost over as many lackeys as possible was imposed on those poor creatures who now were his subjects. The perverted one claimed as much pseudo-authority as he could muster. He had a certain power of aping creation. When asked about aberrant people, Jesus said, “The weeds are the sons of the evil one and the enemy who sows them is the devil” (Matt. 13:38-39). This Enemy, who led man to believe he could be like God, planted envy of authority—of authoring—in man because envy was the enemy’s own prime motivation.

In creating man, the triune God imaged himself. John Paul II writes of Genesis 1:24 in the encyclical Dominum et Vivificantem: “The plural which the Creator uses here in speaking of himself already in some way suggests the Trinitarian mystery, the presence of the Trinity in the work of the creation of man.” Ultimate origin lies with the Father. The creed tells us that “the Son proceeds from the Father” and that the Son is the “only begotten” of the Father. Human language has limitations; human words cannot express fully divine mysteries. These words are not taken to mean what they may seem to mean, that the Father existed before the Son or that the Son came into being secondarily. The truth is that the Son coexists with the Father—and always has. There never was a “time” when the Son was not, yet the Father was.

The Genesis stories describe a relationship paralleling that between the Father and the Son. The first Genesis story asserts that male and female are created together in the image of the triune God. The second describes them as having an interrelationship, female to male, paralleling the relationship the Son has to the Father. Two equals have polar and non-exchangeable, but wholly equal, roles.

The Father’s role of authority or authoring is imaged in the male physiology and psyche. Men are given a kind of authoring and an attendant authority. The female responds to this authoring, and within her womb is formed the fruit of their union. In this she is like the Son, who is matrix of all creation. The Father creates everything through the Son. It was to share the ultimate of joys with man, male and female, that God shared his own triune nature.

Misery came into creation with the values of the Enemy. The extent to which the values of this usurper are unquestioned is an indication of his control over this world. Authority nowadays means prestige and power; a submissive response to authority means slavery and denigration. That is the standard reasoning.

How can one teach Christian authority and Christian submission in marriage and not end up with a man who domineers and a woman who cowers? A frightened woman seldom realizes how frightened she is, nor does she realize that she is appeasing on the one hand and manipulating on the other in order to get her way. The rebellious are just as bound by the authority problem as the falsely submissive—actually, both are forms of rebellion. Both the rebel and the subservient are reactors, neither living in Christian freedom.

Satan rules when men exercise authority as prestige and power, when they demand (and receive out of fear) control of the relationship. Misapplying their headship and behaving high-handedly, they go through life angry. They expect their wills to be carried out, allowing no discussion, and they cannot accept small deviations from their plans. On the other hand, a passive-aggressive woman—and there are many because of the nature of human submission and authority—can drive a man to the brink. As he misunderstands authority, she misunderstands submission.

The problems here are so aggravating, the root causes so deep, that there is only one hope. The cure must be the acceptance of the power of Jesus to forgive sins and conscious living in the Holy Spirit. These two root graces are given in baptism and confirmation, and they are nourished by the Eucharist. Only under grace can new attitudes toward obedience and rule be learned.

Here is the Day of the Lord, which Malachi prophesied would turn the hearts of authority figures lovingly to those submissive to authority and the hearts of those under authority lovingly to those who have the role of ordering. Teaching the roles of Christian husband and wife depends wholly on the supernatural grace of the Holy Spirit to bring people to repentance and then to enlightenment and restoration.

There are other proffered “solutions” to the chafing miseries of the authority problem in marriage. Feminism is one. Feminism disdains hierarchy and views authority in terms of power, just as the lord of this world views it. The feminist (usually unknowingly) accepts the Satanic evaluation of the role of authority and the role of servant. The feminist solution—the equal sharing of the role and power of authority and the shunning of servant roles—holds not a shred of hope because the enemy still controls.

God’s word gives no opportunity for a change of roles, but much for a change of heart. The Bible holds steadfastly to the order of male and female established in the beginning. It is not Paul who “reverts” to Jewish law by holding women to obedience, something Jesus freed them from, according to feminist writers. It is Jesus himself who stands behind Paul’s insistence in 1 Corinthians 11 that women are under their husbands’ headship. We know this in two ways.

First, Paul writes under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, so the words are not his alone, but the Word of God. He is aware of that as he writes them, and he claims full apostolic authority for his teaching (1 Cor. 14:34-37).

Second, Paul tells us that he is passing on a tradition given him by Christ: “I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received” (1 Cor. 15:3). Paul speaks of a tradition that he received directly from Christ and is delivering to his readers. This is a formal wording about the handling of sacred tradition, like the messenger asking you to sign for the package.

Paul transmits the tradition taught by Christ. This must also be the tradition carried on in the church established by Christ, the Catholic Church. In a day when all other forms of Christianity seem to be losing this essential and basic truth, its retention by Catholicism can be seen as a sign of the infallibility of the teaching office of the Church.

But man and woman, appropriating the roles of submission and authority as equals within marriage and experiencing the fruits of right order in the family, put the hierarchy of the Church into bold relief. The morphology of man and woman points to the male priesthood and the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary as model for all Christians.

How, as a matter of practical apologetics, do we teach this proper sense of authority and submission to those who are ready to receive instruction?

The man, who images the First Person of the Trinity, will, of course, learn his role mainly from meditating on the role of the First Person. Just as God the Father exercises authorship of the whole created order and does so only with the good of the created in mind, so will the Christian man look to that model in his own fatherhood, whether physical or spiritual. The father provides, protects, and furthers the well-being of all life dependent upon him. He orders his human family for its well-being. His governance is just, his heart is turned towards those he heads, and he serves them wholeheartedly.

The man has another role. He must learn submission himself, for he, even in the exercise of a delegated authority, is under authority. He owes obedience to those who have the care of his soul, the priests and bishops who have a prior and primary authority, and to others above him, such as his own father and his employer. His stance toward God is like his wife’s stance toward him, obedient and submissive. C.S. Lewis wrote in That Hideous Strength that “the masculine none of us can escape. What is above and beyond all things is so masculine that we are all feminine in relation to it.”

The woman likewise has a model within the Trinity. She looks to the Second Person. It is the principle that emanates from him that explains her being. She is the respondent to the initiative and authority of the man, just as the Son is the respondent to the Father.

It is not just the human Jesus who speaks only what he hears the Father say, or does only what he sees the Father doing—it is also the Second Person of the Trinity, who is sent by the Father and never sends the Father. It is he who, “not counting equality with God a thing to be grasped at, emptied himself and took the form of a servant” (Phil. 2:5-7). The woman’s heart will be turned with trust and joy toward headship, and with her, the whole laity will relearn the stance of obedience to godly authority.

This Second Person in the human flesh of Jesus had two roles on earth. To the Father, he displayed the attitudes asked of all men and women who accept him as Lord (turning away from the lord of this world). To mankind, he displayed the loving concern of God the Father. On the one hand, we hear him speak manifesting authority as Godhead exercises it: “He speaks not as the scribes, but as one having authority” (Matt. 7:29). On the other, we see how we are to respond to God with the same trust and obedience as Jesus.

Just as the Persons within the Trinity share common attributes but exercise them from different poles, so man and woman share common attributes but exercise them differently. A woman exercises a delegated authority over her sons—Scripture affirms it (Luke 2:51; Col. 3:20; Eph. 6:1-3). Yet authority is more to be said of him and obedience more to be said of her. Since his role, too, is a service role, their relationship is one of mutual submission (Eph. 5:21).

All this is hard to explain and hard to accept for moderns reared in a secular environment. The puzzlement will vanish in meditation on the Trinity. Malachi’s cryptogram about authority and obedience has been solved by the Day of the Lord Jesus. It is the relationship of the divine Persons that man and woman are created to image on this earth, for their good and their Maker’s glory, and it is the Catholic Church that alone holds this model as its ideal for the meaning of the sexes and for the ordering of family life.

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