Thank you. I'll agree to most of this, but I don't understand how, in the text in question, the submission of wives to husbands is voluntary. My impression is rather that the verbs in question are implicitly imperatives; what has always struck me as odd about this passage is that the obligation to love falls only on the husband, while the wife is to SUBORDINATE HERSELF and (5:33) to FEAR her husband (of course in the same sense that a human being is to stand in "fear of the Lord"--but still there is a considerable hierarchic distinction here). No doubt the pattern in Ephesians is consistently hierarchic: as Christ is the HEAD of the church, so the husband is the HEAD of the wife; the corporeal model of head and body is maintained throughout. I'm inclined (personally) to wonder whether this is consistent with Galatians 3:28. I realize that there are ways in which this may be brought into harmony, depending upon the presuppositions that one brings to bear upon scripture; I can only say
that, speaking only for myself, I find this problematic.