This is a post taken from Liberated Woman's Facebook page-
It’s easy to pull “wives submit” out of context and read it as a universal ideal. But in the Greco-Roman world, women were already living under systems that assumed male authority and made independence risky.
Aristotle wrote plainly that “the male is by nature superior, the female inferior; the one rules, the other is ruled” (Politics 1.1254b). This wasn’t about one household. It was presented as the natural order of society.
Xenophon describes marrying a girl “not yet fifteen,” raised to “see as little, hear as little, and ask as little as possible,” and then explains how he trained her (Oeconomicus 7). The expectation was not mutual growth, but formation into obedience.
Demosthenes states the structure without hesitation: “we have courtesans for pleasure… concubines for daily use… and wives to bear legitimate children and guard the household” (Against Neaera 59.122). Wives were defined by function, not partnership.
Gaius confirms the legal reality that adult women were placed under guardianship “on account of their levity of mind” (Institutes 1.144–145). Even in adulthood, women were not considered fully independent legal actors.
Thucydides records the cultural ideal: “the greatest glory of a woman is to be least talked about” (History 2.45). Silence and invisibility were treated as virtue.
Under Augustus, law reinforced male control over the household and placed women’s lives firmly under that structure (Lex Julia, 18 BC). The system did not just assume authority, it gave it legal force in which husbands could order the death of their wives and fathers could order the deaths of their daughters!
P.Oxy. 744 Hilarion to Alis, c. 1 BC, Oxyrhynchus Papyri depicts a father ordering the death of his child if his wife gives birth to a daughter and not a son!
This is the world of Ephesus and Corinth when Paul the Apostle was writing. Women did not have equal legal standing, did not have independent protection, and did not have social freedom to openly resist authority without consequence.
And into that world, the instructions are not one-sided. Wives are told how to navigate a system that already held power over them (Ephesians 5:22–24; Colossians 3:18; 1 Peter 3:1–6).
But husbands are told something far more disruptive to that system.
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25).
“Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself” (Ephesians 5:28).
“Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them” (Colossians 3:19).
“Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with honor…” (1 Peter 3:7).
“The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband… the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does” (First Epistle to the Corinthians 7:3–4).
In 1 Peter 3, when Peter refers to the wife as the “weaker vessel,” the Greek phrase is asthenesterō skeuei (ἀσθενεστέρῳ σκεύει). Asthenesterō is a comparative form of asthenēs, meaning vulnerable, often used in contexts of social disadvantage rather than inherent inferiority. Skeuos means vessel, an instrument or container, a common metaphor for a person. In a world where women were legally, socially, and physically more vulnerable, the phrase points to her exposed position within that system, not a declaration of lesser worth. Peter immediately pairs it with “show them honor as co-heirs of the grace of life” (1 Peter 3:7), directly countering any idea of inferiority.
Those commands for husbands cut directly against the norms described by Aristotle, Demosthenes, and Roman law itself. In a world where men were assumed to rule, entitled to control, and rarely held accountable for how they treated their wives, they are instead commanded to love, to give themselves up, to restrain themselves (not be harsh), to honor, and to treat their wives as their own bodies. That is not a reinforcement of the system, it is a confrontation of it at its core.
“Submit” was spoken into a reality where defiance was not theoretical, it could cost a woman her security, her protection, her social standing, and in some cases her very life. It acknowledges the structure that already existed around her.
But “love, honor, and self-sacrifice” was spoken into a reality where men were not expected to limit their authority, not expected to share power, and certainly not expected to lay themselves down for the good of their wives.
One side speaks to survival of women within that system.
The other demands transformation of it.
Another good resource on the subject-
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