SUSAN writes:

I’ve enjoyed going through your archives, and in some ways I agree with you. I would like to ask about one of the issues you frequently address.

A couple of notes about my situation: I’m married, and my husband is a man by any standard. He’s not a firefighter, police officer, or in the military – in fact, he works as a mid-level paper-shuffling office drone (and I’m not criticizing him, as he’d be the first to agree with me). But I once saw him bust open the windshield of a burning car, with his bare hands, and pull the driver out to safety, while a propane tank behind him was about to explode. He’s a man. I’m proud of that, and I love him for it, no question. I also respect his judgment and his intelligence – but no more than I respect my own. I’ve never seen any reason to submit to his decision on anything, unless I agree, and every time that we’ve disagreed and I’ve carried my point, I’ve been right. I don’t cry, manipulate, or withhold sex. I use logic, and I chop it as least as well as he does. When his logic exceeds mine, he wins. That’s only fair.

I should also add that I don’t define myself as a feminist. I’m simply a realist – everyone should just buckle down and play the hand they’re dealt. My hand happens to include an average amount of physical prowess for an unathletic, middle-height woman (that is, almost none). I cherish no ambitions of becoming a wrestler (by the way, the girl who won by forfeit – her parents need to be beaten for not just telling her to look in a mirror and choose some other activity). I’m also a far, far outlier on any emotional, intellectual, or behavioral bell curve of women. I’d be just fine with a society in which women were legally allowed, but definitely not encouraged, to pursue traditionally masculine occupations – simply because I couldn’t care less what anyone thinks, encourages, or discourages. I suppose that makes me rather more like a man.

After reading through your site, I’m left with one question for you, the answer to which seems (from the lack of explanation and plethora of definitive statements) to be self-explanatory to you and to the majority of your readers. It’s clear that you believe that men must lead, control, and direct, not only in the public sphere (a discussion for another day) but at home as well. I paraphrase, but I’ve seen both you and the readers whose letters you post saying that women must be submissive, men must lead, men’s judgment must be paramount, and so on. I’d be very interested in an explanation of why you believe this to be true, particularly in cases where the woman in question isn’t much of an exemplar of what you might consider feminine attributes. You’ve definitely tackled the situations of women whose husbands weren’t particularly masculine, and who were therefore required to fill the gap, but that really isn’t the case here.

I’ll admit up-front that I fully expect to disagree with you, but if you are kind enough to take the time to write a brief explanation to satisfy my curiosity, I will pledge, on my side, to keep an open mind.

Laura writes:

Marriage is ideally the closest of friendships. But it is foremost an institution for the procreation and rearing of children and for the ordering of society. There are working principles in marriage based on natural law. One of those principles is that the man is the head of the family.  Because the family is more than a practical enterprise – it is not a business or a military unit – all rightful authority in the family is couched in love. A father is not a military commander or a C.E.O.  He has the duty to love and protect. He has awesome responsibilities. Given these responsibilities, it is entirely unjust for the man not to have authority over his family. In many cases, this authority is latent and, because it is the source of so much harmony, almost invisible. The normal man expresses it unconsciously in his physical demeanour, his movements, his words, his attitude. He is not playing the part of the boss. He is stronger, less emotional and more attuned to the impersonal. A man often projects his authority as effortlessly as a woman projects her tenderness and solicitude, not by some iron rule or by artifice but simply by acting in accord with his deepest nature.

Men and women can have sex and children outside marriage. Only within the civilized sphere of marriage can a woman find the intimacy she craves; a man, the dominion he is meant to create and sustain; and children, the protection and nurturing they require. If marriage no longer offers intimacy and protection to women, if it is all responsibility to men with no privileges or larger purpose, it is not an appealing institution. People don’t marry because it is good for them. They don’t marry in the same way they might consume whole grain bread. They marry because they can attain something vital, something primary, which they cannot attain without marriage.

Women see marriage in terms of personal bonds. Men see marriage as a form of dominion, as a landholder might look out across his fields and take pride in ownership. They are his. Nature invests a woman with so much power by virtue of motherhood. Nothing can take that power away from her. The natural order would be lopsided, infused with injustice, and men would be mere slaves or indifferent to their offspring, if it did not accord them this rightful dominion and respect this pride in what is his.

Any discussion of hierarchy, of inequality, suggests enslavement to most people today. I understand why you may find the subject difficult or may be confused if you see marriage as purely the friendship or romance between two people. My sense is that you have not read carefully what I and other readers have said on this subject. (The subject is discussed here, here, here and here, and in numerous other entries.) I have never advocated that women cede to the judgment of their husbands in all things. That is a preposterous and unworkable idea. Only the warped man wants to be married to a child. I wouldn’t run this website and express my opinions on any number of things if I thought the judgment of women was unimportant, not just in domestic matters but in society at large. And truly, I believe it rare for women not to be heard by men.

A woman cannot perform her duties in relation to her children unless she has the material protection of a man. She is utterly dependent. Given his natural responsibilities to provide for the family’s financial welfare, the husband must have ultimate say when it comes to matters that determine how much money is spent or what sort of work he must do to earn that money. That does not mean his judgment is infallible or that a woman is obliged to follow him mindlessly, like an automaton. A man does not have the authority to tell his wife to do something wrong. But a man’s authority is not dependent on his perfection as a human being. All human authority is imperfect and we respect the office of a president or a commander even when the person occupying the office fails in his judgments. So too with the father. He is not divested of his office because he has made bad decisions. He is only divested of it when he assumes none of its responsibilities or burdens.

Family life is naturally ordered around the father’s work. It is not right for men to assume such responsibilities without some ultimate say over these larger issues I mentioned. It is unjust for society to grant women the power to pick up and leave, take their children with them, and require continued support, all because they no longer like their husbands. Either men or women will lead in marriage. When feminine concerns prevail, marriage is reduced to an emotional bond. Marriage is an emotional bond.  But it is more than that.

In normal marriages, the wife is concerned with her husband’s welfare out of love for him. And the husband makes his decisions out of love for her. The spouses come to agreement about what to do. But the principles that apply to marriage must be in accord with the marriage that is not so companionable. They must be guideposts that help people proceed, directing them through their various hardships, just as certain general precepts in farming help the farmer deal with the vagaries of weather, soil, and growth. 

Women yearn for the authority of men in rearing children, especially when their offspring become adolescents, because men are less swayed by empathy. Children require a balance of empathy and impersonal judgment. The man is the head of the home, the woman its heart.

Finally, we know by revelation that the man is the ultimate spiritual warrior on behalf of his wife and children. He is charged with his family’s spiritual protection and his failings in this area can be catastrophic. As Father Chad Ripperger has written:

The father, by virtue of the office of fatherhood, has rights over the wife and children, and so when the wife and children submit to the father, they enjoy the fruits of those rights, i.e. spiritual providence and protection. Therefore, a wife should not view her subjection to her husband as a loss of freedom or control, but as a form of protection and providence, i.e. a means to her own holiness and spiritual safety.

In fact, a woman loses freedom and loses control over her destiny when she has children and she is not under the authority of one man. The government and business interests do not love her. Feminism is inimical to freedom.

A husband’s authority is a reflection of God. Without it, women are exposed to spiritual harm and to the predatory hand of the State and commercial interests. Someone will always have authority over women. Just as someone higher has authority over men. It is a question of who possesses it. A man assumes authority of his house at great sacrifice to himself.

                                                          — Comments —

Michael S. writes:

Your response was perfect. You might want to list it under your “Featured Posts.”

Greg J. writes:

Bravo for you wonderful reply to Susan!

Susan writes:

Thanks for including the links to previous posts on this topic, as I’d read through many of your archived posts, but by no means all. I do think that your reply to me summed up your point of view better than those previous posts did, as well, so I really appreciate your willingness to rehash the subject for my benefit.

I do have a reply to make, which I know I’m not going to be able to keep brief.

First of all, I’m not a person of faith, not even of the atheist faith – since atheists, in my view, are just as much believers as the religious, but they believe in the absence of God rather than the presence. I prefer to reserve judgment until such time as physical proof is offered one way or the other. I do think that a society ruled generally by Judeo-Christian values (or values very similar to those) is the most historically successful kind, however, which is why I’m able to get on board with many of your opinions about society as a whole. Like I said in my previous email, I don’t mind living in a society that doesn’t want to hand me everything I might want on a silver platter. I can get what I want for myself. A society based on the type of values you promulgate probably is better for the majority of people, and that’s a higher priority than my being able to easily get a scholarship to law school.

In short, though: I don’t buy the idea of the husband as the spiritual head of the house, and I can reach this conclusion logically either by assuming the existence or assuming the non-existence of God. (And I mean no disrespect to your faith by postulating God’s non-existence; this is a thought exercise, and I have no interest in talking you out of it, believe me, even if I thought that were a possible or desirable outcome – which I don’t.)

Even if the Christian God is a reality, our interpretation of God’s will is entirely bound up in the Bible, which is a document of uncertain provenance. There is no guarantee whatsoever that the Apostles correctly recorded Christ’s activities and words, nor is there any guarantee that these recorded events haven’t been altered out of recognition over two thousand years of translation, interpretation, and transliteration. The Old Testament is even more subject to these errors, given its greater age. Since the documents that establish men as the primary interpreters of God’s will, and hence the spiritual leaders of society, are unreliable, I don’t see any reason to be guided by them. And I would also think that if God exists, and is truly omniscient, He would understand that my ability to interpret His will is in every way equal to my husband’s, because He would understand that we are not unequal in moral sense or in intelligence.

If God doesn’t exist, then morality is derived entirely from the logic of what’s best for a society – in which case, if I’m capable of deriving my own morality logically, I don’t need my husband’s moral or spiritual guidance. I expect you to reply that what’s best for society is the authority of men, and to that I would reply, what’s best for society is the authority of those who have proved themselves worthy of it. I’m such a radical that I’m not even on the American political spectrum anymore: I would, ideally, offer suffrage only to those who are over 21, have an I.Q. of 110 or greater, have no criminal record, and are either married with children or property or business owners, or both. (Incidentally, this would disenfranchise me, since I’m neither a parent nor a property owner, though I intend to be both soon enough.) This would include both genders, and I think it would also include almost everyone who has a true, demonstrated, vested interest in the stability and continuance of the democratic state, and the mental ability to parse social and political issues. (If we can be said to really have a democratic state, which is up for debate anytime.) If that suffrage group ended up being skewed heavily towards men, fine by me.

Let’s move on to temporal male authority in the household, on which subject you made an excellent point: “Given his natural responsibilities to provide for the family’s financial welfare, the husband must have ultimate say when it comes to matters that determine how much money is spent or what sort of work he must do to earn that money.”

While this statement seems fair on the face of it, I disagree. One of my major problems with feminism, and I have many, is the not-so-tacit assumption that housewiferyisn’t work, isn’t as valuable as a career (either to the individual, to the family, or to society), and doesn’t require intelligence or skill. (Clearly, it is and it does, and I know we’re in perfect agreement on this point.) I work, but I work from home part-time, and contribute much less to the family income. On the other hand, my other contributions are many. I value those contributions to the point that I don’t think my husband’s are more valuable. He couldn’t function as an office employee, without losing his mind and having zero time to relax, without what I do. I pay the bills, deal with any business we have on hand (negotiating with our realtor, dealing with the property management company, setting up and making changes to our bank accounts, etc.), take care of the laundry, do most of the dishes, and make the grocery lists. And so on. And on. I know you know the drill.

Since we both contribute equal time, mental energy, and labor to the maintenance of our household, who brings in the income doesn’t matter. If I brought in the majority of the income – and I was the primary breadwinner in the past – I wouldn’t expect to have final say in the disposition of the family income. We’re a family. It’s our income, period, just as I wash our dishes and our laundry, pay our bills, and so on. I do agree that he should have the ultimate say on what kind of work he has to do, just as I have the ultimate say on what kind of work I do. He does not have ultimate say on how much money is spent, or on what, because we take care of the household together. Giving the breadwinner authority over the household budget, in my view, devalues other necessary and difficult work done in that household.

So that’s my reply. By the way, I think you misinterpreted my view of my marriage and marriage in general. Yes, we cohabited before marriage, and yes, we are best friends. But we got married because we have the same goals and values. We talked about marriage, family, and finances on our first date, and our tastes in music, TV, and books – which so many young couples seem to think are the primary indicators of compatibility, bizarrely – couldn’t be more different. Neither of us believes in divorce for such reasons as unhappiness or lack of fulfillment. We both agree that anyone who can’t figure out how to make it work (absent violence or infidelity) once they’ve made a legally and morally binding commitment is a whiner.

Laura writes:

Do you have children?

Susan writes:

No, I don’t. I believe I mentioned that I’m not a parent somewhere in my (apologies) very long reply. My husband and I are working on it. :)

I don’t know if this is relevant to the reason for your question, but I am a much older big sister, and have functioned as a semi-parent for my brother and sister since they were born when I was 13. So I do have some understanding of child-rearing, and have done the up-every-two-hours newborn-twin drill with my mother.

Laura writes:

Being a sibling is nothing like being a parent.

As far as the traditional division of labor between the sexes, it may not seem very meaningful to you until you have children. Even then, you may pursue a feminist model (and though you disavow feminism, you essentially subscribe to a feminist model), but I am confident as the years go by you will have less and less faith in that model if you are a good parent.

Since I have already gone through the experience of rearing children and have been a wife for many years, I am more of an authority on the matter. If you were about to climb a mountain and came across people coming down from the summit, whose opinion about the conditions on the top of the mountain would be more reliable, yours or theirs? Admit your inexperience. Or you will find yourself inadequate to the tasks ahead.

Belief in the existence of God is reasonable, so reasonable that the counter-arguments cannot explain reason itself. If everything in nature is the product of purely physical processes, there is no such thing as truth and no such thing as morality. There is no point in talking about your own thinking, because it is sensation and not thinking at all. These topics are beyond the scope of this entry, but I recommend C.S. Lewis’s Miracles. Lewis wrote that naturalism “offers what professes to be a full account of your mental behavior; but this account, on inspection, leaves no room for the acts of knowing or insight on which the whole value of our thinking, as a means to truth, depends.” You write, “If God doesn’t exist, then morality is derived entirely from the logic of what’s best for a society.” No, if God doesn’t exist there is no logic regarding the existence or non-existence of God.

Reserving judgment on such an important matter is not really reserving judgment. Acting as if God does not exist is belief in his non-existence. If a hurricane is coming and you do not prepare for it, you are either oblivious or you do not believe it is coming. There is no neutrality in these matters, only distraction from them.

As for the reliability of the gospels, I assume you reject most of what we know about the ancient world because in terms of their reliability as historicaldocuments – that is, that they were the testimony of actualpeople who were attempting to be honest in what they recorded – they have withstood intense scrutiny by scholars. The gospels were in circulation while Jesus’ contemporaries were still alive, placing their authorship close to the events themselves. The accounts of the actual events of Jesus’ life emerged instantaneously after they occurred and do not meet the standards of legend. The most brilliant mastermind couldn’t have devised and disseminated a legend of such complexity and detail within a few years of Jesus’sdeath. And a committee of people couldn’t have possibly schemed to create such a legend and coordinated their stories so closely within such a short time. That Jesus was an actual person, that he was alive and was crucified was corroborated by other sources, such as Josephus.

I won’t attempt to exhaust this subject either. It is beyond the scope of this entry and there are so many people who have written well on it. For a layman’s view of the scholarship on the gospels, I recommend Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ. I don’t have a Ph.d. in New Testament studies, but I did study the issue. I felt compelled to study the issue before I believed. I came to the conclusion that the gospels were reliable despite my own tremendous resistance to the idea. Given that many intelligent people throughout the centuries have believed the factual claims made in the gospels, you cannot possibly believe Christian civilization was good if these people were stupid or gullible, which is what they must have been if they believed historical accounts of such evident unreliability.

Given the dire implications for you if you are wrong and if Christ was who he said he was, I would assume that you have done extensive reading on the matter and have read the gospels in their entirety with a scientific attitude. It is not possible to be fair to the evidence unless you approach it with an open mind and truly study it. It is not possible to be fair to your ancestors, assuming they were Christians, unless you have studied the issue at least well enough to refute Strobel’s points in his book. Remember, the early Christians and authors of the gospels were persecuted. Why did they die for their claims? No other myth makers have died to prove their stories were true. These myth makers were insane, evil liars, or convinced that what they said was true.

Susan writes:

I really will keep this brief.

First of all, I agree with Michael S. and Greg J.: thank you for two thought-provoking and interesting essays on this subject. I enjoyed reading them and I enjoyed conversing with you.

Second: my opinions have certainly changed over time, and I don’t deny that they may do so again. At the moment, I’m not convinced, but I will certainly keep your experience of marriage and child-rearing in mind.

Third: I wouldn’t be so disrespectful to the writers of the Bible as to think they were evil, stupid, or lying. Nor do I disbelieve the basic, historically confirmed elements of Christ’s life. But I do think, for example, that a virgin birth is (while scientifically possible) very unlikely to have occurred. And if this scientific rarity did occur, was it really an act of God, or a bizarre biological fluke that was interpreted as such? So there’s some uncertainty introduced just by the level of scientific knowledge of the people involved. And it’s well known that people under the influence of extreme grief (as in seeing your friend/leader/family member crucified), or anger (unjustly crucified), or adrenaline (both of the above) can misinterpret events, hallucinate, or otherwise experience an emotional truth that may or may not be real. When you add the historical distance between these people and us to the mix, the accuracy gets fuzzier.

To me, it’s a bit like The Iliad. From what I know about it, Troy quite possibly was destroyed by Greeks. Whether or not I believe that Zeus et. al. intervened is another matter. That’s literary license, the beliefs of the times, metaphor, or some mix of those and other factors.

Lastly: I have read the Bible, and with an open mind. It’s a great read, and contains all the best stories in the world. I wasn’t convinced. Nor do I think that logic and reason can’t exist without God, and I have read C.S. Lewis pretty extensively (I was raised by a well-educated mother, you see – some of your theories of child-rearing put into practice). That is entirely beyond the scope of this topic, though.

Thanks again for an interesting debate.

Laura writes:

You’re welcome. And I appreciate your explaining your views.

You write: I wouldn’t be so disrespectful to the writers of the Bible as to think they were evil, stupid, or lying.

But, they must have been evil, stupid or lying if they propagated a story of this nature while making the claims they did. They didn’t just casually recount this story. They traveled about telling it to everyone who would listen, insisting that these events had changed the course of human history and that nothing mattered but whether they were true.

The Virgin Birth was extremely unlikely. Everyone admits that. It was so unlikely that it happened only once.  “But then the whole history of the Earth,” as Lewis said, “has also only happened once; is it therefore incredible?” And of course we can never prove that it happened except by taking the word of those who were there and who insisted that it did happen. But then if it did happen, that is the only choice they had. They could offer no documentation.

Every birth has something highly improbable about it if one looks at the creation of personality. The idea that personality and thought are created purely by the meeting of sperm and egg strikes me as fantastically hard to believe, in the same way the Virgin Birth strikes you as improbable. If you reject the idea of supernatural intelligence altogether, which is the only way to preclude the possibility of what we would call the miraculous or the scientifically improbable, then you must think of nature as a closed system and everything in it only the product of material processes. You should strive to live honestly by this belief because otherwise you are living incoherently or dishonestly.

Nor do I think that logic and reason can’t exist without God…

Yes, you’re right. What I meant to say is not that logic and higher reason can’t exist, but that you can’t explain their existence. You’re only choice is to distract yourself from the question of how they came to be, because you cannot explain them. Purely material processes produce something immaterial, which is what consciousness and reason are. 

Parts of the Bible have legendary qualities similar to The Iliad. The difference is that the Greeks did not believe or promote the idea that Hector and Achilles were real people. They didn’t insist that if they were not real they had no meaning. What was different about the Christians that they were not happy with myth alone when so many other ancient people were? 

I would agree some of the Bible is “a great read” and it contains great poetry and legend. But some of it is deadly dull, which makes it very different from The Iliad. Why is this deadly dull stuff in there?  Homer did not waste time on pure history, in the way the writers of the Old Testament and the New Testament did. It’s in there because the Bible contains history as well.

Josh F. writes:

When I read Susan’s words I am at a loss as to what truly motivates these young females to have such an intense desire to be perceived as “equally” worthy/valuable/intelligent/spiritual etc. as their
husbands? Susan may think she sounds logical, but in reality, she reads like she is in some kind of cutthroat competition that has been thrust upon her by a nameless external force. Who exactly is
pressuring these females to embrace this most destructive desire to be “equal” to one’s husband in all manner? Why would a wife feel threatened by her “unequal” status in relation to the husband? And seriously, how can a faithless person ever claim an equal standing with a person of faith? How can a faithless person have a competitive desire to be “equal” to her husband that is anything more than a dastardly social construct? Susan wasn’t actually born with this desire to compete for “equality” with her husband, was she? And how can a faithless person object to a faithful husband as spiritual head of household?

In short, I don’t think Susan has given us much of anything in regards to why she objects to your stance. She has neither explained the “equalness” of the faithless existence to the faithful existence nor has she justified the desire to compete for “equality” with her husband.

What really drives these females?

Laura writes:

If a woman has been told for many years that men once disliked women so intensely that they deliberately denied them rights and benefits that were essential to their happiness, then it is only normal to see any relationship with a man as a type of contest. That women feel this way is not surprising to me at all. (And let’s remember that men stood by and let this verdict of history unfold because they liked the independence of women and the loss of their own authority. Many men also believed this verdict of history was true.). What is surprising to me is that, after so much propaganda, any woman claims she loves a man. Why claim to love someone you hold under so much suspicion? If men have done what they are accused of doing, then they are unlovable by nature.

Texanne writes:

If there is no God then everything is permitted. 

Justice Anthony Kennedy infamously proclaimed in Planned Parenthood v. Casey: 

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. 

And it can come as no surprise that now we are all exercising our right to define our own such concepts, we find that there are an infinite number of “truths” — and Truth no longer has any meaning at all. We have come to the point where even the definition of words themselves has become subjective, and in such case neither the Bible nor the Constitution can hold us together. Not only are nations and communities and churches splintering as individuals adamantly assert their right to determine their own personal “truth” and follow their own personal bliss, but the embrace of this definition of freedom is what’s fostering the breakdown of families and marriages. For two to become one, both have to be looking at a Truth beyond their individual imaginations. For our society to have formed in the first place, and remain intact (“out of many, one”), there has to be some Truth beyond our individual feelings and ideas.

Susan writes:

I do beg to differ about The Iliad [Laura writes: Ha! You are right. Parts of The Iliad are dull too and its purpose as an epic is in part historical. Nevertheless, my main point was that the Bible in its entirety is not a “good read.”] I’ve always thought Homer’s exhaustive laundry list of the Greek ships present at Troy was incredibly dull and informative.

How can I claim to love my husband when I hold him under suspicion? Well, I never said – nor, I think, implied – that I suspect him of any ill intent. This is not a “contest,” as Josh F. describes it. Nor have I said that I feel oppressed or threatened. I certainly hope that none of the contributors to this thread feel oppressed or threatened by the existence of people whose views don’t accord with their own. “Competing” implies the desire to win, pure and simple, which isn’t relevant here. As I said: if my husband is right about a subject, with reason on his side, then he’s right. If I’m right, with reason on my side, I’m right. I have no investment in winning, only in reaching the most logical decision. I’m drawing the notion of my equality with him from evidence: I’m right about half the time.

Do you think that for a woman to love a man, she must consider him superior to herself? I would say that love requires respect, not a consciousness of inferiority.

Laura writes:

You say marriage is not a contest and yet from the very beginning you seem to suggest that it was. You said, “I’ve never seen any reason to submit to his decision on anything, unless I agree, and every time that we’ve disagreed and I’ve carried my point, I’ve been right.”

By the way, I noticed that you earlier wrote something that I didn’t respond to. You said, “Giving the breadwinner authority over the household budget, in my view, devalues other necessary and difficult work done in that household.”

Perhaps I made myself unclear but my point wasn’t that a husband should control the budget. In fact, in many cases, it is the woman who manages the household budget and that works out fine. What I said was that he should have ultimate authority to determine how much money he is to make and how much should be spent. That means that in the event of conflict on these issues, he must be the one to decide. For instance, if a woman wants to spend $40,000 a year to send the children to private school, a husband’s wishes that they not spend that much should be respected. If a woman wants to spend $50,000 on a new kitchen, the husband should be the one to decide what the budget for that project should be if there is conflict.

I never said women are inferior to men. I do think they are inferior in some ways, not in essence but in the accidents of nature. Men are inferior to women in some ways. If a doctor has authority over you during an illness, does that mean he is superior to you? Is a teacher superior to a student? Is a king superior to a prime minister? I think we would agree that none of these people are superior in essence to the other. They have authority by virtue of their positions and abilities. Similarly, a man as father and husband possesses a certain degree of authority by right that should be cultivated and honored by his wife. Since marriage is a friendship, his authority occurs in the context of affection and loving protection. He is not a father to his wife; he is her husband. His authority is sui generis, in a category of its own.

Kristor writes:

Laura writes: 

What I meant to say is not that logic and higher reason can’t exist [if God doesn’t exist], but that you can’t explain their existence. 

You are right about that, to be sure. But I think it is also true that if God did not exist, then neither could logic or reason. God is (among other things) the ultimate reason for existence. If there is no such ultimate reason, then there is no God, and vice versa; these are two ways of saying the same thing. And, of course, to say that there is no ultimate reason for the things that happen is to say that there is just no reason at all to them. 

Notice that if things happen for no reason, then, since there is nothing to them than might possibly be understood, it is not possible even to begin to reason about them, or to understand them. But if it is not possible to understand anything, then (statements being among the things that cannot be understood) it is ipso facto not possible to understand any statement. But this means that it is impossible to say anything that is even meaningful, let alone true. If it were not possible to understand anything, then when we were confronted with even a simple statement like, “it’s sunny,” we would not be able to understand what the statement meant, or therefore whether it was true. 

Atheism, then, if true, is (like all human utterances) mere nonsense; but nonsense cannot have truth value; so atheism can’t have truth value; so atheism can’t be true; the negative of atheism being theism, theism is true. 

Indeed, so true is theism that we all presuppose its truth with every word we say. When we say, “it’s sunny,” we presuppose that statements can have meaning. That presupposition presupposes in turn that there is an order to everything, everything whatsoever, that allows for the possibility of understanding of uttered noises, and by extension of the world in which and by which they find utterance. Saying or knowing anything at all depends upon the prior order and meaningfulness of reality; and the order and meaningfulness of reality depends on the prior order and meaningfulness of God.

Josh F. writes:

I was being somewhat rhetorical in my query as to what drives these wives to have such an intense desire to be “equal” to their husbands in order to underscore exactly the answer you gave. Susan is a product of unmitigated social engineering and that’s where her logic should lead her. She has essentially reduced her biological nature to nothing (radically autonomous), but nonetheless, her “biological nature” has logically led her to relentlessly seek “equality” with her husband. But the “equality” she seeks is really an equality of faithlessness. Susan has very pointedly asserted that she is without faith; she is UNABLE to be faithful. She is unwilling to be loyally committed. This is the logic of being faith-less and seeking “equality” with your husband. And when we go back to the original disagreement which was Susan disputing that the husband should be the spiritual head of household, we can see the logic of a faith-less person’s dispute. If Susan is “married” to a faithful man then clearly, as long as nothing changes, her man will undoubtedly and quite logically be the spiritual head of househould. This will ruffle her feathers for no logical reason. If though her man is a faith-less as her then we will simply witness the struggle for the greatest “freedom” to be unfaithful (radically autonomous). And Susan will logically call this the pursuit of “equality.” An “equality” of unfaithfulness is where her logic leads.

Susan writes:

Eek! $50,000 on a kitchen?? I know it’s hypothetical, but I think my thrifty English farmer ancestors all just rolled over in their (inexpensive) graves. :) If I wanted to spend a tenth of that on a kitchen, my husband might be all for it, but first he’d want to know who I was and what I’d done with his wife.

But back to the point. Okay, that example is completely reasonable. With you so far. But I think we both know that a lack of financial acumen, misunderstanding of real estate market trends/stock market trends/interest rates on home improvement loans/etc., and low intellect, aren’t traits found only in women. (Because I think any of those traits in a wife could account for a husband’s refusal to go along with an expensive plan.)

Let’s say it’s the husband who wants to spend $50,000, on a remodel, a car, a swimming pool, what have you. The wife knows, based on their credit scores, their savings, instability in his employment sector, falling real estate prices, etc., that it’s a bad idea. I assume that you would think it’s her duty to express this point of view. So let’s say he insists, either because he doesn’t believe the truth of the facts she’s presented or because he’s just stubborn. (And I’m not imputing evil, or selfishness, here – just stupidity or poor understanding of finance.) Let’s assume the reasons she presented were logical and compelling, and that there could be real consequences to the family’s financial health if the wrong decision is made.

My question: In that scenario, do you consider it the wife’s duty to, a) stick to her guns and refuse to yield, or b) give in to his authority, even though she knows it’s a bad idea?

This is truly hypothetical – I’m not currently embroiled in a dispute with my husband over a large purchase.

Laura writes:

But I think we both know that a lack of financial acumen, misunderstanding of real estate market trends/stock market trends/interest rates on home improvement loans/etc., and low intellect, aren’t traits found only in women. ; – )

I never mentioned any of those things. The  husband should have final say when there is conflict over money. For one, he is making the money, or should be. In most cases, he probably has better judgment, but this is not always true.

As for your question, if a husband does not heed his wife’s reasonable advice, that is wrong and she is not required to approve of expenditures they can’t afford or to sign loans that she considers foolish. As with anyone confronted with serious wrongdoing of any kind in a spouse, she has to work to convince him otherwise, remembering that it was she who chose her husband and that, while she is not responsible for his faults, they are an irrevocable part of her life.

Jesse Powell writes:

I get the idea from Susan that she sees authority in a family relationship as simply being and endless series of decisions where maybe her opinion is better or maybe her husband’s opinion is better. This to me is a completely wrong way of looking at the issue of authority. Authority is a tool whose purpose is to create a long-term successful marital relationship that serves its primary function, the raising of children. One decision is not isolated from another in an endless series of decisions to be made; all decisions are related to each other and are organized to achieve the overarching long-term goals of the marital union. The man, for multiple reasons, is the one best suited to perform this leadership role. [Laura writes: Excellent point!]

I’d like to jump in here and address some of the things Susan said from the point of view of a fellow non-believer. First of all, it is not necessary to believe in God in order to believe that male authority is a good thing and necessary for the proper functioning of society. If one makes a Darwinian assumption that humans evolved from apes and got to where we are today through natural selection then patriarchy makes perfect sense. Women who mated with men who were powerful enough to protect them and resourceful and productive enough to provide them with material resources had more children who lived to adulthood and in turn had children of their own. This lead to the genes of men who were powerful and successful spreading throughout the population. 

The provision of order and long-term stability, otherwise known as leadership, is a benefit that men have historically provided to women just as much as protection and material resources is a benefit that men have historically provided to women. In order for a man to successfully fulfill his leadership function he needs to have the authority to do so; in other words, he needs to be granted the assumption that he is in charge; that he is to be obeyed. 

Women want strong competent men who can provide for them; in the same way a man wants to be a strong and competent man deserving of a woman’s loyalty and affection; furthermore, the man doesn’t want to be undermined and attacked and held to be unreliable and untrustworthy by the woman he is honor bound to take care of and provide for. 

None of these realities requires a religious orientation or a belief in god to explain or to justify; these phenomenons can be just as easily explained through natural selection and the benefits that division of labor brings. 

Susan writes:

 “I paraphrase, but I’ve seen both you and the readers whose letters you post saying that women must be submissive, men must lead, men’s judgment must be paramount, and so on. I’d be very interested in an explanation of why you believe this to be true, particularly in cases where the woman in question isn’t much of an exemplar of what you might consider feminine attributes.” 

I’d like to tackle the above question. Men should lead because it is the man’s role to lead; it is really as simple as that. Men and women have different characteristics on many different levels; they have different temperaments, different ways of viewing themselves and the world around them, different senses of what their purpose in life is, different things that they find attractive or unattractive in the opposite sex, and indeed different strengths and weaknesses in comparative cognitive abilities. It is not just one characteristic of a man that says he should be the leader in his family; it is multiple characteristics of the man and even more so it is the constellation of the characteristics of a man that all fit together to form a greater whole. 

The legitimate authority of men is an inter-connected web of multiple advantages that come from male authority and multiple harms that come from the undermining of male authority. This is why it doesn’t really matter if a woman possesses a greater than average number of masculine characteristics or if a man is more feminine than the average man; it is not just one factor that makes male authority desirable, it is a whole constellation of factors that are related to each other that make male authority desirable.

Laura writes:

Patriarchy is in accord with nature. However, Jesse writes:

If one makes a Darwinian assumption that humans evolved from apes and got to where we are today through natural selection then patriarchy makes perfect sense.

A belief in natural selection is not contrary to theism. But a belief in evolution, meaning that all of life originated in random, physical processes, is contrary to theism. 

In regards to the main theme of this discussion, Darwinism can’t sustain civilized patriarchy. People don’t adhere to monogamy for many decades or sacrifice themselves for others because it is natural to do it. They don’t stay in marriages at enormous personal sacrifice because it worked for their ancestors. In the evolutionary scheme, there is justification for all human desires. Adultery makes sense and is natural. Polygamy is rooted in our past. While the Darwinist can say, “Society works best with these traditional family patterns because we evolved that way.” He cannot provide the individual with a reason to follow those patterns in his own life. Traditional marriage might have worked for our ancestors, but human beings can continue to evolve and adapt. Besides, there have always been some individuals who did not follow the main pattern. Why not me?

Darwinism can’t justify moral restraints on patriarchy or give it human purpose. It tends to highly reductive understandings of masculinity and femininity. For instance, many Darwinists see almost everything a grown woman does as rooted in hypergamous instincts. All love, in the Darwinian scheme, is self-interest. 

Mr. Powell writes:

I would agree with you that “Darwinism can’t justify moral restraints on patriarchy or give it human purpose.” “Human purpose” comes from human beings, Darwinism is just an explanation for why life is the way it is that doesn’t require an external “God” to create the order we see around us. 

Darwinism is not a set of moral values or rules for society, human beings have to create and enforce the moral values of a society (or alternatively these values and rules come from God). 

A society is made up of human beings; more specifically males and females; and males and females have different characteristics that lead to their different roles in society. Males and females are created differently, the raw material of humanity comes in a male form and a female form and this raw material is what it is; it cannot be changed, it is immutable. The question is, what social rules and ethical values work best, produce the best results, given the raw material of male and female that we, as a society, have to work with. The culture and law and prevailing social norms can be changed; the nature of men and women cannot be changed. A feminist can proclaim that men and women are “equal” but the feminist cannot make such an assertion true. 

This is why feminism is objectively bad while patriarchy is objectively good; feminism goes against the immutable nature of human beings while patriarchy is consistent with the immutable nature of human beings. 

Darwinian evolution provides a plausible explanation for why the raw materials of male and female are what they are; ethics and morals and the rules of society, however, need to come from intentional human will and choice (or alternatively these essentials of a working society come from God as expressed through religion). 

As an atheist I am a great believer that life exists under an externally imposed order that we as human beings are obligated to submit to and obey.

Josh F. writes:

I think Susan came to you with a genuine inquiry, but is seemingly leaving without having her “logic” punctured. The easiest answer to her particular question is, “Because you are faith-less… Because you choose not to be faith-full.”

This is the answer to why your husband deserves authority over you ESPECIALLY if he is a man who is faithful.

If though, he is without faith exactly as you, then his authority will derive at any moment he decides to assert it. And likewise, you will mimic this pattern. Your “marriage” becomes nothing more than a struggle for who enjoys more “freedom” within your relationship.