Thomas Aquinas' Twofold Subjection Explained, Part 8

Authority is a needful societal construction that allows society to function well. The reason authority is needed is because people don't love; they hate, kill, covet, and do all kinds of evil against their neighbors. Without evil, authority would not be needed - which brings us to the question: why does a husband need authority over his wife.

In the olden days, when marriage was a social contract and love was something people read about in books, the husband's authority created stability at the expense of the wife's feelings. It worked - at least for some. But now that we all want to have the kind of marriage Abraham and Sarah had, the love story that never ends, authority just doesn't seem to fit in.

If authority was given to certain people because of evil (cf. Romans 13), is a wife so prone to evil that a husband absolutely needs authority to restrain her? Or is the husband so unable to live with his wife if he doesn't have the last word in everything because he has a tendency to do evil? Since authority wasn't given for evil, but against evil, the latter cannot be true.

So, are all women evil? The second century theologian Tertullian thought so.

You are the devil’s gateway: you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of your desert—that is, death—even the Son of God had to die.

 You are the devil's gateway.

And do you not know that you are (each) an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too.

Because of this kind of thinking, theologians decided that the husband had to have authority over their wives, and reinterpreted Genesis 3:16 to say that God had punished the woman with subjection to the man. But note: it was only after the fall that this subjection was said to have begun, not before. And it didn't even begin after the fall; it began a few hundred years after the formation of the church!

Where love resides, authority is no longer needed, for those who love, willingly serve others. Humility is the cure for the serpent's poison, not pride. Love doesn't elevate itself, it humbles itself. It doesn't seek it's own, it seeks to please others. Love is God's final answer to evil.

Sources:

Tertullian, On the Apparel of Women, Book I, Ch. I.