By Fr. Michael Azkoul, Ph.D.
Fr. Michael Azkoul’s new book is characterized by the same
clarity and traditional outlook as his other books. It provides a sustained
argument for and coherent presentation of the Orthodox view on the modern issue
of the ordination of women to the priesthood and other related topics. Its
contribution lies in voicing once again what the vast majority of the Orthodox
Christians believe, which, sometimes, seems neglected or even obscure, because
of the aggressive opposition of a tiny but vocal minority. Many of the authors
basic arguments remind us of those expounded at the Inter-Orthodox Symposium of
Rhodes, Greece, which was organized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of
Constantinople in 1988 and dealt with “The Place of the Woman in the Orthodox
Church and the Question of the Ordination of Women.” The volume on that
Symposium (Tertios Publications, Katerini, Greece, 1992) “showed beyond doubt,”
as its editor stated, “that the Orthodox Tradition leaves no room for the
ordination of women to the priesthood.” Fr. Azkoul’s present volume draws the
same conclusion but, being the work of a single author, provides a more focused
and consistent reasoning for the Orthodox position and supplies meaningful
answers to objections raised by opponents or revisionists. As such, it
clarifies many aspects of the issues discussed and provokes a more meaningful
and balanced discussion.
Protopresbyter George Dion. Dragas
An idea growing in popularity among some Orthodox over the
last few decades has been the admission of women to the sacerdotal priesthood.
The source for this idea is not the Scriptures, the Fathers, the Councils of
the Church, but comes to us from the world, specifically the feminist movement.
It has implications for the secularization of the Church. On one level,
advocates view the ordination of women as something owed the female sex, a sign
of the Church’s repentance, so to speak, atonement for the centuries of female
stereotyping and powerlessness, that is to say, denying her the right to
creatively express her ingenuity, to exercise her freedom and to exhibit her
dedication.
Not unaware of the objections in holy Tradition to the
ordination of women to the presbytery (and consecration to the episcopacy), the
strategy of its proponents is to declare this innovation an “open question.” It
is, in fact, not a subject to be debated. The theological and ecclesial facts
need only to be reviewed to make the point. We turn in a moment for an
understanding of those facts to the only authorities (criteria) available to us
– the Scriptures, the Fathers and the Canons. They have unalterably defined the
place of women in the Church from the beginning.
INTRODUCTION
Female aspirations to the priesthood are not something new.
It has antecedents that reach through the Middle Ages to the time of the
Apostles. The occasion for St. Paul’s comment on the subject was the threat to
the Church from heresies. Early heretics, such as the Gnostics, Montanists and
Priscillianists, had “ordained” priestesses. But women in the priestly office
was naturally part of their religion. In the Orthodox Church, however, women
had no access to the priesthood, and her members were aware that their absence
from its ranks was natural and necessary to her life. The Church understood
priesthood to be a call from God, not the result of “cultural structures” or
“political ideology” which unfairly favored men. Likewise, “the subordination
of women” (which does not constitute
inferiority) to the male was recognized as intrinsic to “the order of creation”
and “the order of redemption” or “salvation.”
With this doctrine we might expect that the history of women
in the so-called “undivided Church” had been a showcase of contentment. It was
not. There were instances of Christian women who, indifferent to the ecclesial
and canonical restrictions, invaded the sanctuary. In his letter to St. Cyprian
of Carthage, St. Firmilian of Caesarea (d. 268) mentioned a woman who presumed
to consecrate the elements and perform the Eucharist with no regard to the
norms of the Church. [1] In 494, Pope Gelasius declared, “We have noted with
vexation that contempt for divine truths has reached such a level that even
women, it is reported, serve at the holy altars. Everything that is entrusted
exclusively to men is performed by the sex that has no right to do so.” [2] Two
centuries later, the Saxon King, Louis the Pious (778-840), complained that “in
some provinces, contrary to divine law and canonical prescription, women are
entering the sanctuary. They handle sacred vessels without fear, passing out
clerical vestments to the priests, and even distributing the Body and Blood of
the Lord (and other indecent things) to the people… It is astonishing that this
practice, forbidden by the Christian religion, should have crept in anywhere…
undoubtedly through the negligence of some bishop.” [3]
Despite the inexplicable behavior of these females, the
admission of women to the priesthood has never been a theological problem in
the Orthodox Church; it has never been a “real cause,” as Fr. Alexander
Schmemann once observed. In part, Orthodox women have understood the reason for
their exclusion. Also, they were never without their own ministries, for
example, the presbytides or
“elderly women” [4] who, like the deaconesses that later replaced them, humbly
served the Church. They were usually widows, who interceded with the priest and
bishop on behalf of women, helped the clergy with their baptism, prayed with
them, nursed the sick and dealt with women’s personal problems.
The deaconess (not a female deacon) was counted with the
lower orders, the sub-deacon, readers, chanters, sextons, and doorkeepers.
Unfortunately, in the sixth century, the Emperor Justinian uncanonically made
40 deaconesses part of the 425 “clergy” that served Hagia Sophia. They entered
the sanctuary and, other than preaching or communing the people, performed the
duties of a deacon, according to the “Rite of the Byzantine Deaconess.” This
episode was an aberration in the life of the Church, rewarded finally by the
virtual negation of this woman’s ministry. This order enjoys a certain revival
today.
Unsatisfied with this “empowerment,” contemporary Orthodox
feminists have scrutinized every aspect of holy Tradition to find historical
support for their “cause”; but not without first “changing the rules of the
game.” Influenced by Western secular thought, they presume to offer a new
understanding of the Church’s Tradition and, necessarily, her Scriptures. The
very concept of Tradition (which includes the Fathers), they insist, must be
reexamined to determine “what Tradition is and what it is not. Obedience to
Tradition must not be seen as a kind of dead fundamentalism. It does not mean
that nothing can ever be done for the first time. Holy Tradition, rightly
understood, is dynamic, not static and inert.” [5] With just these few words,
the entire ecclesial and social legacy of the Orthodox Faith is thrown into
doubt.
The issue is further exacerbated by the contemporary
religious — that is to say, ecumenical — climate. With special regard to the
Scriptures, the Coptic feminist, Marie Assad, insists that the Scriptures
especially must be read “in the context of the present, always conscious of the
difference between the cultural and historical setting of the past and present.
Women in particular have an active role to play in re-reading Scripture
according to our new awareness of ourselves and our role in society.” [6] There
is nothing unexpected in her remarks, but we have a right to ask if Ms. Assad
speaks for all non-Chalcedonian or Oriental Orthodox (or any other religious
denomination); and whether she is aware that her demands for “updating” would
necessarily involve a conflation of Tradition with modern secular ideology, and
it would be this unlawful synthesis that would account for the admission of
women to the priesthood.
From an Orthodox point of view, is there not something
objectionable in any “cause,” however popular, whose fundamental principles are
drawn not from Tradition but from external sources, especially when that
Tradition a priori forbids
the mongrelization of its divine purpose? Does it not appear that the desire of
feminists for the priesthood is not motivated by saving faith, so willing are
they to subordinate the Tradition of the Church to their worldly goals. Then,
too, we have every reason to believe that they are rummaging through that
Tradition to find support of that “cause,” not in order to discover whether or
not it is God-pleasing.
In that case, we need to ask a few more questions: are
Orthodox feminists willing to submit their arguments to the same analysis to
which they have subjected the historical practices of their Church? Might they
not discover that they have incorporated into their thinking another brand of
stereotyping and discrimination? Do they have any suspicion that their opinions
are destined to revision, if not obsolescence in the grand scheme of the cosmic
process; and, ironically, by the same forces of history that they imagine will
inevitably disenfranchise the traditional ways of the Church? In truth, they
have lost sight of the Christian imperative that the Holy Spirit preserves and
protects the teachings of the Church. Their duty as daughters (and sons), is to
humbly accept, defend and assimilate the Faith. We have yet to discover in them
a fear of transgressing “the ancient
landmarks the fathers have erected (Prov. 23:28 LXX).
The Orthodox partisans of women in the priesthood view their
“bold initiative” as a new enlightenment. The late Elizabeth Behr-Sigel (often
called “the grandmother of Western Orthodoxy”), Kyriaki Karidoyanes Fitzgerald,
Nonna Vera Harrison, Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Leonine B. Liveris, Eva
Catafygiotu-Topping, etc., argue that their efforts have not the intention of
overthrowing Tradition but giving to it a “new perspective,” a claim they have
evidenced in literary vehicles, such as the feminist-ecumenist journals,
Massachusetts’ own St. Nina
Quarterly and Australia’s Mary/Martha. They
have been encouraged by the support of the Patriarchs of Constantinople and
Antioch who have arranged conferences—with no little help from the WCC—by means
of which the proponents of women's ordination are given the opportunity to
publicly ventilate their frustration.
Contrary to the thinking of these “Westernizers,” [7] the
place of women in the Church, to repeat, has been permanently settled by the
Apostles and, therefore, cannot be altered; at least, not in the Orthodoxy in
which I was nurtured. Indeed, a male priesthood has been the uninterrupted
Judeo-Christian practice for six millennia. One cannot but grieve the attitude
of feminists, such as L.B. Leveris, who, because she conceives the
“mistreatment” of women as “androcentric prejudices,” urges Orthodox women “to
break the silence imposed on them not by the genuine tradition of the Church,
but by social custom and convention.” [8] Hers is a proud and futile
protestation.
Let us be clear on this matter: the Church has never denied women admission to the
priesthood, because the “gift” (charisma) was
never offered to them by Christ. Put in other words, the female has never
been deprived of the
office, because she was never eligible for it. The “equality” of the sexes (in
the modern sense) has never been part of the Church’s thinking about the
priesthood. Her worldview has always been hierarchical. As C.S. Lewis said, “I
do not remember the text in Scripture, nor the Fathers… which asserts it.” [9]
To be sure, men and women share the “image of God” and, therefore, have a
common humanity; but “the primacy of honor” belongs to the male both in the
“order of creation” and the “order of redemption.” The first, belonging to the
Genesis account, ordains the relationship between the male for whom the female
was made as a help-mate. The “order of redemption” is prefigured in the
covenant between Yahweh and old Israel, and realized in the union of Christ and
the Church. His death on the Cross, among other things, is the act of
sacrificial love of the male Redeemer for His female Companion. The Eucharist,
of course, is their wedding banquet. [10]
Notes
1. Ep. Cyp. LXXV,
10 NPNF. Most of the quotations from the Fathers are taken from The Ante-Nicene Fathers and Nicene-Post (ANF, NPNF), The Fathers of the Church (FOC), Ancient Christian Writers (ACW)
translations. Otherwise, they are translated from the J. P. Migne collection:
the Greek Fathers (PG), the Latin Fathers (PL); also from Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima
collectio (J. D. Mansi, Paris, 1901-1927.).
2. Ep. IX,
26 PL 59 55.
3. Mansi [vol. XVI], 565.
4. Laodicea, Can. 11.
5. Bishop Kallistos (Ware), “Man, Woman and the Priesthood
of Christ,” in Women and the
Priesthood. Ed. by T. Hopko. Crest-wood (NY), 1999, p. 157. In the
1983 edition, His Grace wrote, “Those… who ordain women as minister… are not
however creating priests, but dispensing with the priesthood altogether” (p.
27). In his interview with Teva Regule for St. Nina Quarterly (11 June 1997), he not only calls for women
“as teachers in the pastoral ministry of the Church,” but also they will become
deaconesses, readers, chanters and acolytes. He questions the authority of the
Ecumenical Council to restrict the place of women in the Church. He thinks
women should be permitted to enter the sanctuary. He concludes the interview
with the remarkable statement that Christ’s maleness is of little relevance to
the concept of the Christian priesthood.
6. “Defining Ourselves as Orthodox Women,” in Orthodox Women Speak: Discerning the Signs
of the Times. Ed. by K. K. Fitzgerald. Geneva. 1999, p. 157.
7. Madame Behr-Sigel thinks that a “Westernized” Orthodoxy
would be more congenial to the idea of the ordination of women to the
sacerdotal priesthood. She is under the mistaken impression that the “mind” of
“the Eastern Church” ought to be stretched (The Ordination of Women in the Orthodox Church. Geneva, 2000,
p. 5).
8. Orthodox Women as Writers,Orthodox Women Speak…, p. 129.
9. “Priestess in the Church?” God in the Dock. Grand Rapids (MI), 2002, p. 238.
10 See J. Danielou, The
Bible and the Liturgy. Notre Dame, 1956, pp. 215-221.
A NEW QUESTION
There are many factors that explain the development and
promotion of the idea of women in the priesthood. There has been no more
effective instrument in the furtherance of it than the World Council of
Churches (WCC). Its guidelines on “the question of women” were composed at the
Amsterdam Assembly of 1948. Its first pronouncement on the subject was not so
innocuous as it seemed — “The Church consists of both men and women, and both
have the same degree of personal worth, even if this fact is often disregarded
in practice.” [1] The reference of the Assembly to “the personal worth of
women” signifies much more than “personal worth,” but like “equality” is a
code-word for the elimination of all male privileges and patriarchy or, what is
the same thing, the eradication of biblical anthropology; and, therefore, the
complete transformation of Christianity, as it has hitherto been known.
Two bodies within the WCC most interested in women’s
ordination are the Commission of Faith and Order and (as it is presently
called) “The Department on the Cooperation of Men and Women in Church, Family
and Society.” The latter was especially active in the pursuit of this woman’s
cause. In response to the Uppsala Assembly (1968), the Department convoked
several meetings to discuss the question of women in the priesthood. In 1974, a
conference was held in Berlin that undertook to study “Sexism in the 70s.” Emphasis
was placed on changing “masculine structures” in society. “Sexism” was defined
as “any kind of subordination or devaluation of a person or group solely on the
basis of sex,” Any form of social precedence for males — abusive or
not—connected with the subordination of women was described by many of the
conferees as “heresy,” even something “demonic.” [2]
In 1976, the WCC also sponsored the first international
conference of Orthodox women, at the Agapia Monastery (near Bucharest,
Rumania). Curiously no women were invited to the Anglican-Orthodox Joint
Doctrinal Commission held in Athens, July of 1978. The ordination of women was
firmly rejected at both meetings. The Anglican bishop had proposed that both
Anglican and Orthodox women should be invited, but the late Greek Orthodox
Archbishop Athenagoras (Kokkinakis) of Great Britain and Thyateira overruled him.
With a sharp rebuke, he also rejected any notion of female priests, saying that
it is “a contemporary fashion, which overthrows the evangelic order and the
experience of the Church.” [3]
During the Rhodes Consultation (1988), the question of
women’s ordination was finally debated. Generally, for Orthodox theologians
with a Western background, it was a crucial problem. They had, however, serious
reservations about overturning a two-thousand-year tradition. Rhodes concluded
that “the consciousness of the Church from the very beginning excluded women
from participation in the special priesthood [as opposed to ‘the priesthood of
believers’], on the basis of the example of the Lord and the Apostles,
Tradition and practice, in the light of Paul’s teaching concerning the
relationship between men and women in the new reality in Christ.” [4] Of
course, not everyone agreed with this conclusion by reason of the modern
conception of male-female equality, and on the basis of what so many have
called “the silence of tradition” on this question.
Under the auspices of the WCC, other meetings were held in
Crete (1990), Damascus (1996), Istanbul (1997), all treating the subject of a
woman’s place in the Church. Patriarch Ignatius IV of Antioch addressed the
meeting, asserting that “Christianity is an Eastern reality” which includes
“our non-Chalcedonian Orthodox sister churches.” In his remarks to the Istanbul
assembly, Patriarch Bartholomew emphasized that “women are able and should be
invited to offer guidance to the Church on issues that specifically concern
them.” [5] No doubt the women in attendance were pleased with the attitude of
the Patriarch, but they were conscious that neither he nor the vast majority of
Orthodox leaders had yet begun to formulate the issue. They were not given hope
that “one day soon” Orthodox women would be wearing the philoneon.
In American Orthodoxy, there is also division over the idea
of ordaining women to the priesthood. There is no better illustration of this
than Women and the Priesthood, edited
by the retired Dean of St. Vladimir’s Russian Orthodox Seminary, Fr. Thomas
Hopko, first printed in 1983 and updated in 1999. In the chapter “The Debate
Continues—1998,” Fr. Thomas says that the advocates of women's ordination claim
to “defend their views as the result of their studies of the Church Fathers.”
[6] He disputes them, but seems unaware that the Fathers to which they referred
are the Cappadocians who are “the true founders of the doctrine of humankind in
Orthodox theology.” Along with St. Maximus the Confessor, they ostensibly teach
there is an “ontological unity of mankind beyond the distinction between men
and women, according to the order of creation.” [7]
Straining to find an anthropology in the history of the
Church to accommodate their feminist ideology, Orthodox egalitarians have in
fact set the Fathers against Tradition with a new anthropology. In part, they
hoped to counter “the iconic argument” for the exclusively male priesthood.
They reasoned that gender is irrelevant to the office of priest. Men and women
share the same nature, a common humanity, that is, both are the “icons” (Grk.)
or “images” (Lat.) of God. But the “image of God” in the individual is not the
same “image” or “icon” of Christ related to the occupant of the priesthood. For
one thing, the “image of God” to which Moses refers in Genesis is a phrase used
metaphorically to describe man’s spiritual dimension. It is not relevant to the
argument of sex and the priesthood, for which reason the Fathers maintain that
the priest is the “image” of the theandric Christ.
[8]
To what depth Orthodox feminists have carried their analysis
of Christian anthropology, one cannot always ascertain. In every case, however,
they have categorically rejected, under any circumstances, the notion of the
“subordination” of women to men. For them, “subordination”—tantamount to an
admission of her inferiority—is unthinkable. It apparently has not occurred to
them to distinguish between human nature and its functions. It is not a
distinction they will draw so long as it involves the distribution of power in
the favor of the male. Some of the radical feminists have allegorically
converted the Christ into something mythical; hence, to consider Jesus as both
male and female, that is, as androgynous, the
Romantic “Primal Man” or, what the Jewish Kabbalah calls, Adam Kadmon—part male and part female.
But Jesus is a historical figure. His Incarnation is historical fact. That the
Word was incarnate as a male (theandros), and
not as a woman, is sufficient proof of “whose hands and tongue” God wanted to
offer “the sacrifice of praise” to Him at the altar. His intent is even clearer
when we consider that the bishop is “the living icon of Christ” (St. Ignatius
of Antioch). He is male, because the Incarnate Lord was male.
Notes
1. Quoted in Manfred Hauke, Women in the Priesthood: A Systematic Analysis in the Light of the
Order of Creation and Redemption. Trans. by D. Kipp. San Francisco,
1988, p. 51.
2. Ibid., p,
52. See Pauline Webb, “Address at the Public Meeting on Sexism in the
70s,” Ecumenical Woman’s
Congress, Ed. by E. Moltmann-Wendel. Berlin, 1975.
3. Loc. Cit.
4. “The Place of Women in the Orthodox Church and the
Question of the Ordination of Women,” Inter-Orthodox
Theological Consultation. Ecumenical Patriarchate.9 Dec 1988, pp. 2-3.
5. At the Damascus meeting, the Orthodox and the
non-Chalcedonians agreed that male and female babies would be “churched” alike;
and women would not be deprived of Holy Communion during their menstrual
period. They were not required to cover their heads during worship. No
canonical reason was given for the abolition of these practices (Orthodox Women Speak…, pp. 7-19).
6. Women in the
Priesthood…, p. 254,
7. Behr-Sigel, The
Ordination of Women…, p. 2.
8. The “priest” or “presbyter” acts for the bishop. He re-presents the bishop to his flocks. He
is, so to speak, the icon or image of the image of his Incarnate Prototype.
Worthy of note is the distinction between a) the human being as created in “the
image” [eikon] of God; b)
the bishop as “the image of Christ”; and c) the icon as sacred art. Men and
women were fashioned in “the image and likeness of God” the Son, He Who is; d)
“the express Image” of God the Father (Heb. 1:3). That relationship between
those two Persons of the Trinity is not the same as the relationship between
God the Son and the humanity made in His Image. Neither is the relationship
between the icon and its prototype the same as the other two distinctions. The
“image of God” in man has an entirely noetic or spiritual connotation. God the
Son or the Logos is “the express Image” of the Father, something we barely
understand; and are only indirectly related to a) or c). Icons or artistic
images can only depict what has been seen, while the reverence shown them
passes to their prototypes or individuals that were at one time historical
persons.
HOLY TRADITION
St. Paul commands “in
the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” that the Faithful of Thessalonica
separate themselves from brethren who do not follow the “tradition” which he,
the Apostle, delivered to them. They are to “withdraw themselves” from any
“brother” who “walks disorderly” and not after the “tradition” he has
transmitted to them. Paul is not the source of the “tradition” (traditio, paradosis). The
instructions which he “handed over” to the churches was nothing more than
the “teachings” which
Christ gave to the Apostles, “Go,
therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and
of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe whatsoever I have
commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always even to the end of the you: and,
lo, I am with you always even to the end of the you: and, lo, I am with you
always even to the end of the age. Amen. (Matt. 28:19-20). In a word, the
holy Tradition possessed by the Orthodox Church at this hour originated with
the Savior Himself.
Tradition is “handing over” or “delivering the revealed
truth to the Church through the Apostles, those men whom He empowered to teach
His theological and ethical doctrine. Tradition contains everything necessary
for salvation — about the Trinity (theology), the Creation (cosmology), man and
the Fall (anthropology), Old Israel, the Incarnation, the Church and her
Mysteries (ecclesiology), the Theotokos (mariology), the Last Things
(eschatology), etc. Tradition is not only what is “delivered” but also the means
or method by which the Church transfers Her Faith from one generation to the
next. The means of delivery are: the Scriptures, the writings of the Fathers,
the rites of the Church, the canonical and doctrinal decisions of the
Ecumenical Councils, the liturgies, the icons, music, sacred customs, even the
lives of the Saints.
May holy Tradition be altered? May we add to or subtract
from it? Is it open to diverse interpretation according to time and
circumstance? If we mean by “change” or “alteration” believing now what was not
believed before, and from the beginning, we answer in the negative. According
to the doctrine of the Orthodox Church, Tradition is divine, therefore,
infallible and immutable. It was “once
delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), and will remain the same until
the “end of the age” by the
Will of the Holy Spirit.
Since Tradition is unchanging, we must expect conflict with
the ever-changing non-Orthodox societies to which the Church ought to be the
leaven. Her children must anticipate opposition. She is “a stumbling block to the Jews and a scandal
to the Greeks” (1 Cor. 1:23). Its resistance to her mission will be
even greater when the worldly learn that Christians will not conform to
contemporary society; and that her mission is, in fact, the conversion of the
nations. In other words. Tradition is her mind, her memory, the power by which
she meets every “challenge and crisis.”
No wonder Ms. N.V. Harrison holds that any description of
the Tradition as unchangeable kills all hope of “creative development” and
reduces Tradition to “the argument from authority,” which reflects negatively
on the moral character of God. [9] Her discontent is clearly a product of her
dreams. She is right, however, that there is a relation between Tradition and
our understanding of God. If we believe that He permits correction of His
revelation from one generation to the next, God has left His Church without a
flawless standard for the understanding of His Will — or the world. To be sure,
if Orthodoxy modifies her Tradition to accommodate present social trends,
future generations may be led by force of circumstances, to more adjustments,
with the result that revelation eventually loses all its relevance.
Without a fixed and inerrant Tradition, the Church is
defenseless before a world in which believers are “children tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of
doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in
wait to deceive” (Eph. 4:14). If we may add or subtract from it, then
there will be no spiritual and doctrinal continuity between one generation of
the Church and the next. If the fullness of doctrinal truth is necessary for
salvation, then, with the constant realignment of the Faith, there will come a
time when none can be saved. By what means shall we identify the teachings the
Lord commands us to observe? How shall we speak of “the Apostolic Tradition,”
having lost touch with the Apostles by virtue of the incessant innovating. The
spirit and doctrines of the Fathers will become anachronistic, while the Bible
becomes a closed book for the number of clashing interpretations. Soon her
children will not know what to believe — if it will make any difference.
I am weary of this tinkering with Tradition, and all for the
sake of new causes and movements, as if, indeed, the Church is obliged to
accommodate every soi-disant “enlightenment.”
It is not the Church that must be “deconstructed,” but the world.
Unfortunately, some modern Orthodox “theologians” seek, in the face of great
challenge to the traditional Faith, to find solutions that satisfy both the
so-called “traditionalists” and the “progressives” Thus, Bishop Kallistos
(Ware) characterizes holy Tradition as “the critical spirit of the Church.”
Apparently, secular society ignites the process of rethinking old ways in terms
of new relevancies, leading to the abrogation of “patriarchal prejudices,
practices and canons of the Church,” which, at this present moment, have
deprived women of their full membership in the Christian community. Current
exigencies demand that they should have “roles as teachers in the pastoral
ministry of the Church,” he remarks in his 1997 interview with Teva Regule of
the Mary/Martha periodical. He is not
alone in speaking of “creative fidelity” to tradition, in order to resolve
problems the Orthodox Church has never met before. He sees in this attitude no
effect on the internal and essential teachings of the Christian Faith.
His Grace is not alone in thinking that unless such changes
are made in Tradition, the Church loses her pertinence; or more, she ceases to
be a living thing. He seems unaware that “change” is a product of the fallen
world; but Christ “is the same
yesterday and forever” (Heb. 13:8). Failure to take such verses
seriously, he calls upon Orthodoxy to abandon her “slavish adherence to the
past.” One need not conjecture from where Kallistos Ware derived his theory of
Tradition. It is also clear that he, and those like him, have not considered
the theological, ecclesiological and moral implications of their opinions.
Already we have seen the impact of diversity on the Orthodox Church. If only it
were nothing more than “the Calendar issue” or “church order” or canonical
infractions. The unwillingness to cling without compromise to holy Tradition —
whether under the influence of “ecumenism” or “reactionaries” — has put the
Orthodox mission in peril.
Notes
9. Ms. Harrison argues that if the only reason women have
been excluded from the priesthood is “divine authority” it “would make God not
only arbitrary, but unjust as well. Such conduct cannot reflect his true
character” (“Orthodox Arguments for the Ordination of Women as Priests” Women and the Priesthood, p. 167).
THE CANONS
In the introduction to The
Rudder, Sts. Agapius and Nicodemus declare, “Thou must keep them safe
and above every calumny of caviling critics, and render them trustworthy and
indisputable, to be received by all Christian peoples with the authority of
Councilor and Apostolic decision.” In a word, the Canons are an integral
component of holy Tradition. None may tamper with their prescriptions nor
ignore their purpose. They are the culture within which the “new man” is
formed. The proponents of women’s ordination argue that some of the Canons are
demeaning to women. They are forbidden to enter the Sanctuary. [10] They are
denied Holy Communion during menstruation. [11] They are commanded to remain
silent during the Liturgy. [12] Such restrictions are viewed as the implicit
recognition of female inferiority.
Those who favor the admission of women to the Orthodox
priesthood hold that the existing Canons should be supplanted or economized,
which suggests that they understand the Sacrament or Mystery of Ordination as a
legal convention. They want Canons to be added that legislate a woman’s “right”
to the sacerdotal priesthood. New Canons, indeed, may be added to the extant
body of ecclesiastical ordinances, but they may not replace or supersede the
old. Tradition does not allow the negation or mutilation of extant Canons. In
addition, to apply the principle of leniency (economia) does not imply the contravention of the legitimate
ends of any Canon. Neither is “economy” a surrender to circumstance as the
Latin legal aphorism states —"Necessity creates what is not permitted by
law” (quod non est licitum lege
necessitas facit licitum). This principle can, as I believe it eventually
shall, provide a basis for the admission of women to the Roman Catholic
priesthood. In the case of the Orthodox Church, however, there has never been,
nor can there be, a revision of existing Canons. She does not understand her
Canons as “laws,” but rather as moral and spiritual imperatives.
The Orthodox Church has always recognized the Canons as the
work of the Holy Spirit. Listen to the first Canon of the 7th Ecumenical
Council:
“… We welcome and
embrace the divine Canons, and we corroborate with rigid fiat the entire body
of them that have been set forth by the renowned Apostles, who were and are
trumpets of the Spirit, and of the six holy Ecumenical Councils and those
composed by the regional synods for the purpose of setting forth such edicts,
and the of our holy Fathers. For all those men, having been guided by light
dawning from the same Spirit, prescribed rules that are to our interest.
According, we too anathematize whomsoever they consign anathema; and we too
depose whomsoever they consign to deposition; and we too excommunicate
whomsoever they consign to; and we likewise subject to a penance anyone they
liable to penance…”
There is no remedy for the advocates of the female
priesthood in the Canons. As they are, the Canons cancel what the egalitarian
demands. Orthodox “progressives,” if they do not ignore the Canons altogether,
simply minimize them into irrelevance, a practice that encourages feminists to
believe that in the future, there may be a canonical solution to their
frustration.
Notes
10. Canon 44 of Laodicea.
11. Canon 2 of St. Dionysius of Alexandria
12. Canon 70 of Quinisext. Canon 2 of the Quinisext Council
ratified as “ecumenical” or “universal” all the Canons of regional Councils as
well as those composed by the holy Fathers.
THE HOLY FATHERS
“Following the holy Fathers...” is a pledge the Orthodox Church
has never failed to keep. She has never failed, whether by treatise or
encyclical or Canon, in theology or spirituality, to proclaim her allegiance to
them. They are an authority, not a resource. She accepts them as “new
prophets,” not as philosophers. Their writings and sermons, art and music,
canons and spirituality are not valued as personal speculations, but as
inspired witness to the Faith inherited from the Apostles. The Church speaks of
each generation of Fathers as having received their beliefs from their
predecessors, and they go back to the time when she received them from the
Savior. The Fathers preserved and defended the Christian heritage, testifying
to the history of sacred teachings as revealed by God and passed to every
generation of Orthodox under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. [13]
On this account, the Church believes them. We might
otherwise love and admire the Fathers merely for their piety. And if they had
left us their personal Scriptural interpretations to study, we might fairly
insist that our own exegesis of the Old and New Testament was as good, even
more so because we have scientific methods of inquiry not available to them. If
our biblical insights agreed with theirs, it would be a happy coincidence, and
perhaps increase our confidence in them. Thankful as we might be to them, we
might, nevertheless, follow our own light. Of course, we might concede that
since they lived closer to the time of the Apostles, their opinions are owed a
certain deference; but beyond that advantage, their theological achievements
were really no better than our own. [14]
But the Church does not characterize her attitude to the
Fathers in this way. Their knowledge of the Faith comes from a higher Source
than philosophy, archeology, criticism and comparative literature. She does not
think of them as speaking to one generation alone, but to all times, to all
societies, to all men, until the Return of Christ. Thus, what they taught is
“delivered” to the next generation of Orthodox not as personal speculation, the
case, if what they taught did not originate with the Apostles, there would be
no “faith of our Fathers.” In other words, their witness must have the same
authority among twenty-first century Orthodox as it had in the beginning, and
shall have to the end. If not, then, the writings of the Fathers would have no
religious obligation on us; and we would be free to think that it is not on
them who bequeathed to us; neither would we have the solemn duty to safeguard
the gospel for our posterity, etc. In that case, Tradition would be a patchwork
of doctrines mandatory upon no one. Then, the Councils, which endorsed their
teachings, would likewise provide us with no assurance of their credibility. In
as much as the Scriptures are the literary transcription of Holy Tradition,
they too would lose their authority, aside from the fact that its books would
offer the same sort of exegetical dilemma for Orthodoxy as they always have for
Protestantism. Under these circumstances, there would indeed be no “essential
grounds” against the ordination of women to the Church’s priesthood or episcopate.
It is clear from patristic teachings that they offer a
common reply on the place of women in the Church. There is not a single Father
who entertains the idea of women priests. They follow the teachings of the
Apostles and the Lord Himself: they saw the absence of women from the
priesthood as the Will of God, not societal discrimination nor male perfidy,
nor “a fossilized traditionalism.”
Speaking for the Fathers, St. Epiphanius of Salamis
declared, “Never, anywhere, has any woman acted as priest for God, not even
Eve… Even after her fall she was never so audacious as to lay her hand to an
undertaking so impious as this; nor did any of her daughters… Many men in the
Old Testament offered sacrifices, but nowhere had a woman exercised the
priesthood (hierissas prosetaxe).” There is nothing in the worship of
Old Israel to permit it. [15] Also, in the New Testament Church, he continues,
“no woman was ever permitted to canonically (kanonikon) perform liturgical acts.” “Never has a woman been
appointed priest or bishop.” [16] He describes priestesses as “a new myth.”
[17] To be sure, St. Epiphanius and the other Fathers and ecclesiastical
writers did not always describe women in flattering terms, but this practice
was a pastoral stratagem — rhetorical exaggerations to teach women humility.
Jews and pagans received the same treatment. To my knowledge, the holy Desert
Mothers never raised the question of the female gender in the priesthood.
Notes
13. For example, Madam Behr-Sigel maintains that the
Cappadocian Fathers and St. Maximus the Confessor are “the true founders of the
doctrine of humankind in Orthodox theology. They strenuously affirm the
ontological unity of mankind beyond the distinction between men and women,
according to the order of creation” (The
Ordination of Women…, p. 2). The Fathers are witnesses to the Apostolic Tradition, not the makers of it.
14. If it is correct that the title of “Father of the
Church” is applied to Christian writers with the four qualifications —
orthodoxy of doctrine, holiness of life, ecclesiastical sanction, and
antiquity— there are many writers (Tatian, Origen, Clement, Tertullian, etc.)
to whom the appellation “Father” does not apply, if only because their
inclusion must abrogate any notion of a patristic consensus (see J.
Tixeront, Handbook of
Patrology. Trans. by S. A. Raemers. St. Louis, 1951, p. 2). Too many
theologians lack “orthodoxy of doctrine” (Augustine, Prosper of Aquitaine,
etc.). The qualification of “antiquity” would exclude St. Gregory Palamas, St.
Mark of Ephesus, St. Gennadius Scholarius, etc. There are very few Fathers who
have received “ecclesiastical sanction.” In any case, it is the Church that
decides who speaks for her.
15. Pan..LXXIX,
2 PG 42 741B.
16. 3, 744D.
17. 4, 745B.
THE “MASCULINITY” OF GOD
According to Judge Robert Bork, radical feminism is the most
destructive and fanatical movement to reach our century from the sixties.
Promising to give women choices, it rather condemns any thought or behavior
inconsistent with its agenda. It is totalitarian in spirit, deeply antagonistic
to traditional culture, and proposes the complete transformation of religion,
morality and society by a new understanding of human nature. Feminists are
convinced that only new values and institutions will liberate women from the
historic oppression of their sex that has denied them the free exercise of her
talents and the realization of their most personal aspirations. The Port Huron Statement identifies
woman’s oppressor as “patriarchy” (i.e., the male sex) or tyranny that has
confined her to Children, Church and Kitchen—Kinder, Kirche und Kuchen—and a fortiori as a sex object. Hence, their hatred for the
institution of marriage and the family, and the support of them by the
Christian religion. Radical feminists are certain that men and their
patriarchal deity are behind it. “‘No
God,’ ‘no master,’ ‘no laws’” seems to be their motto. “The exclamation ‘no
God’ presumably refers to the feminist illusion that religion was intended by
men to control women.” [18]
The religious aim of “radical feminists” is the feminization
of God, and hence, the emasculation of the world’s male population. They are
not merely egalitarians who seek the virilization of women and the feminization
of men. As a part of their philosophy, many of them have adopted the Platonic
myth about male-female creatures (androgyny). At present, the sexes are
differentiated, but in the future the traits of one will become the traits of
the other, “Androgynization” is the destiny of the human race. Many feminists,
also, believe in the superiority of women; consequently, the future of humanity
is female dominance (matriarchy).
Naturally, they reject anything that opposes their ideology,
which involves, if not the abolition of Scriptures, a complete rewording of
them, that is, the elimination of its so-called masculine gender bias. Also,
the deity (“God/ess” as some address it) of radical feminism is not the God of
the Prophets, the Apostles and the Fathers. “She” rejects what her daughters
reject, approves what they approve. One would expect, too, that She abhors the
traditional definitions of “masculinity” and “femininity” — the male as bold,
resolute, authoritative; the female as “the
weaker vessel” (1 Pet. 3:7), gentle, nurturing, pacific, sympathetic,
etc. Perhaps, there is some truth in the feminist prognostication, inasmuch as
today we find men and women often sharing the same characteristics; hence, “the
tender male” and “the strong female”; or, more accurately, the evisceration of
all gender differences. “Gender feminists” are doing their work well. “Nature”
is being corrected by their “nurture.”
Most feminists calling themselves “Christian” are willing to
combine elements of the biblical tradition with the anthropological aims of the
radicals. They seem to have no aspirations to manhood, nor do they resent
womanhood. One “Christian feminist” told me that she approves of strong men.
Unlike the radicals, also, she did not abhor motherhood or “wifery” and she
loved children. Her only concern was “equality of rights and opportunity.” She
did not crave the revision of the Nicean Creed to read, “I believe in one Father/Mother”; and
the Lord’s Prayer as “Our
Father/Mother which art in the heavens.” Neither did she demand
“inclusive language” in the Bible (e.g., “human” for “man” or “Child of God”
for “Son of God” or “Parent” for “Father”).
Most Orthodox feminists, although not in accord with the
theology of the radicals or “gender feminists,” yet share with them, to some
degree, a common understanding of church history. They explain the exclusion of
women from the priesthood on the basis of “patriarchy” and man-centered
(“androcentric”) values. They are also grateful to the feminist movement in
general for “raising the consciousness” of society on women's issues. They see,
also, women gradually achieving a new status in the Church (e.g., teaching in
seminaries, serving on Church Board’s, etc.), an obvious impact of the feminist
movement on the Church. The door to women in the priesthood is opening.
In addition, not a few feminists imagine that this new
picture of women may in fact have been the primitive conception of the
Christian women, somehow lost in the long trek of the Church toward
21st century enlightenment. The changes they want would surely begin with
the worship of the Church, and the worship with her language and rubric; and
that would be followed by a reexamination of the “masculine God.” Naturally,
then, a justification of the changes would require a new study of the
Scriptures with their masculine language and imagery.
Let us concede that holy Writ does indeed sometimes
attribute feminine characteristics to God. Thus, “the Rock that begot you… the God who gave you birth” (Deut.
32:18); or, Yahweh says, “I cry out
as a woman in labor, gasping and panting” (Isa. 42:14). Also, He
exclaims, “As a mother comforts her
son, so will I comfort you” (Isa. 66:12). Some feminists argue that
such verses ought to initiate the beginning of the Christian
“de-patriarchalization” of the Scriptures, which would profoundly influence our
conception of God and how we should address Him/Her.
Although there are words and phrases that characterize His
behavior as feminine, nowhere in the Old or New Testament is God conceived or
addressed as feminine per se. Even
when female images or similes are ascribed to His actions, it is still very
much a “masculine” Divinity to whom they are applied. This is clear from the
consistent use of the masculine pronoun “He” for God. Nowhere is He called
“she” or “her,” even when feminine imagery is involved. The Bible never refers
to Him as “Mother” or some other female appellation. Nowhere in the Scriptures
is God hailed as “Queen” or “Mistress” “consort” or “matriarch.” On the
contrary, although not a man —and beyond gender—He is ordinarily compared to a
masculine-father. [19] The inspired biblical writers never think of God except in masculine terms.
In the Hebrew, the names of God, Yahweh and Elohim, are
masculine. He is described as “Father” (Ex.
4:22; Deut. 32:6; Isa. 63:16; Mal. 2:10, etc.). Jesus prays, “Our Father”
(Matt. 6:9). He is “father” in the parable of the Prodigal Son. Through baptism
and the Spirit of adoption we are privileged to cry, “Abba, Father” (Rom. 8:15). God has the title of King (ho basileus) Who rules a
Kingdom (he basileia). He
is Lord, ho kyrios. He is
also Judge, Master, Savior, and Ancient of Days. The Old Testament speaks of
Him as “the God of Abraham,” not “the God of Sarah.” The fact that the man Adam
was created before the woman Eve suggests that God, in His actions (i.e., the
Uncreated Energies), is masculine rather than feminine.
One might pause to ask whether there is something in the
divine Nature and Its relation to maleness which accounts for the use of
masculine language? Likewise, one may argue that to amend or displace this male
language is to distort the meaning of the Scriptures. If the sacred books were
“cleansed” of male “bias,” what criterion would we apply? Secular
egalitarianism? Must the Church accept the idea of “equality” as modern society
defines it? No Prophet, no Father, no Bishop or Council of Bishops has that authority.
To be sure, the Church recognizes the value of textual criticism (e.g., the
authentication of documents, verses and words), but unless one denies the
inspiration of the Old and New Testaments, no changes in the Bible history or
doctrine is permissible, “androcentric values” notwithstanding. There is no one
with the holiness, the wisdom or the divine authorization to revise the
Scriptures.
To eliminate gender language altogether in theological
discourse, as feminists demand, is post-Christian mischief with no
justification in Orthodox Tradition. Rather than obedience to the word, there
are some that would prefer to explain the Divine masculinity as the product of
the Prophets’ or Apostles’ or Evangelists’ cultural conditioning rather than
divine inspiration. There is certain irony in this point of view, because it
was the ancient pagans who had goddesses and priestesses — who in their function
and status were not in the least inferior to male gods and priests. Some of the
Fathers held that the idea of the pagan priestess is necessarily linked to the
idea of female deity. The history of ancient religions would strongly intimate
that this connection was not coincidental. I fear the modern revival of female
deities among feminists (and witches) and their call for women to the
priesthood is more than accidental. I have a sense that the noise of some
Orthodox women for admission to the priesthood may, in some instances,
presupposes a new conception of God.
Their logic seems to be that if God is not masculine, then
it is not important for Christ to be male, and, since the priest is the icon of
Christ, a neutered Christ may act as Prototype for either male or female.
Furthermore, if “masculinity” is emblematic of neither God nor Christ, the
Church and society must dispense with their patriarchies. But the Orthodox
Church maintains that the history of the human race begins with Adam and Eve,
and, as F. Crusermann says, Genesis 2 postulates “a clearly androcentric view
of the world.” [20] The rest of the Bible confirms it. The admission of women
to the priesthood cannot occur until the Church renounces the theology and
anthropology of Genesis as traditionally understood.
We have this wisdom from C.S. Lewis to add: “But Christians
think that God Himself has taught us how to speak of Him. To say that it does
not matter is to say that all the masculine imagery is not inspired, is merely
human in origin; or else that although inspired, is merely arbitrary and
unessential. And this is surely intolerable; or, if tolerable, it is an
argument not in favor of Christian priestesses, but against Christianity.”
Notes
18. Slouching
Towards Gomorrah: Modem Liberalism and American Decline. New York,
1997, p. 202.
19. The God of the Testaments is Christ, “the Father of the
Age to Come” (J. W. Miller, Father
and Fathering. Mahwah (NJ),
1989, p. 61).
20. Als Mann und
Frau Geschaffen: Exegetische Studien zur Rolle der Frau Berlin, 1978,
s. 60.
21. “Priestesses in the Church?” God in the Dock. Grand Rapids (MI), 1970, p. 237.
THE MALE CHRIST
Not only Orthodox feminists contend that the Fathers gave no
special attention to Christ’s maleness. Much is made of the fact that the
Nicean Creed announces that “He became man” or “human” (anthropos} — en-anthropesantos—and not “male” (aner). In point of fact, the Greek
word anthropos may be used
for “human” or “male,” never for female. The Fathers also speak of Christ as
“the God-male” (theandros), and
precisely because the Word took the form of a male. St. John of Damascus [22]
refers to the Incarnation as “the theandric economy” (tes theandrikes oikonomias). Christ became both an individual
male (aner) and
humanity (anthropos) even
as Adam, the type of Him Who was to come (Rom. 5:14).
Christ was not an androgynous being. Adam was male, as Eve
was female. We may not jump to the conclusion (as some do) that because Eve
emerged from him, He was androgyne, a
being as much male as female — until God “liberated” her from his side. To be
sure, Eve was born of Adam’s side as he slept on the ground. She was the type
of the Church (second Eve) that was born from Christ’s side as He slept on the
Cross, St. John Chrysostom observed. [23] Eve was “the mother of the living,”
as the Church is the mother of the new living
— “the Christian race,” as St. Justin Martyr called it. The human race is the
natural progeny of Adam and Eve. All who have been reborn through baptism form
the new and spiritual humanity of Christ (male) and the Church (female). In
other words, as the woman, Eve, was taken from the one man (Adam) for the
reproduction of the human race, so the female Church was taken from the one Man
(Christ), to reproduce “the many,” the new humanity. Baptism is her womb.
Orthodox Christology demands that the Savior is a male. He
was the Son of the Virgin Mary. The Incarnation of the Word specified what
modality of human He was —male. He was given a male name, Jesus (Ieshua). He was “churched” and
circumcised as all Jewish males in antiquity. Jesus was always addressed as
“He”. He was called Lord, Master, Rabbi, Messiah, all male titles. He offered
His male Blood on the Cross to His “masculine” Father—as the story of Abraham and
Isaac typify (Gen. 22:1-13). He is the Bridegroom of the Church, her Head, as
Adam was the head of Eve: “for the
man is the head of the woman” (1 Cor. 11:3). He is male as He
sits in Glory at the Right Hand of the Father. It will be the male Christ that
returns to judge the living and the dead. The saved shall enter the eternal
Kingdom of the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.
According to St. Gregory the Theologian (329-390), Christ
was completely male. “He was a male because He offered Himself for Adam; or
rather the Stronger of the strong when the first man had fallen under sin.
There is in Him nothing feminine, nothing unmanly. He burst from the bonds of
the Virgin Mother’s womb with much power, and a male was brought forth by the
prophetess, as Isaiah declares “the
good tidings.” [24] Later,
St. Theodore the Studite (795-826) will say, “Maleness and femaleness are found
only in the forms of bodies, since none of the difference which characterize
the sexes can be recognized in bodiless beings. Therefore, if Christ were
uncircumscribable, as they are, He would also be without sexuality. But He was
born male, as Isaiah said. (25)
If, then, Christ is male, He is male not only because His
Father is “masculine” but because He is the “second Adam.” Consequently, if He
is the Priest of the Liturgy, His icon must be male. The human priest of the
Eucharist is male. As Fr. John Pacheco rightly puts it, “God chose the male sex
to redeem the world, and so he chooses males to continue to do so in this the
Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.” [26] Fr. Louis Bouyer is plainly astonished by
those who fail to understand this simple fact. “It would have been monstrous if
the Son of God had been a woman,” he writes, “and it would have been a total
contradiction to wish that He be represented among us by both men and women
without distinction in His work of revealing the Father. [27]
It is shortsighted of Ms. N.V. Harrison that she refuses to
accept the connection between gender and the priesthood; or, perhaps, she
interprets any male privilege as a sign of female derogation. [28] She cannot
imagine the equality of the sexes without equal distribution of power. But this
vision of “equality” is secular, if not socialist, and simply irrelevant to the
Christology of the priesthood. Men and women are equal by virtue of their
spiritual nature and the image of God that is property of every human being. It
is, therefore, an inane hyperbole for P.K. Jewett to declare that the
“exclusion” of women from the priesthood is no more than “the reluctance of
males to include females in the human race.” [29]
Notes
22. Barl, et.
losaph. VIII, 60-62; Woodward, trans.
23. Baptismal
Instructions. III, 17-18 ACW.
24. Oration on
Pascha, 13 PG 36 641A.
25. Ref.
Iconom. III, 45 PG 99 409CD.
26. “The Male Priesthood,” p. 3
(Domestic-Church.Com/CONTENT.DCC/19990501/prst-authority.htm).
27. Woman in the
Church. Trans. by M. Teichert. San Francisco, 1979, p. 72.
28. “Orthodox Arguments Against the Ordination of Women as
Priests,” p. 165. Ms. Harrington might take a cue from Fr. Schmemann. He writes
that the question of women in the priesthood is often seen within the
perspective of “human rights” and “equality,” etc. — “categories whose ability
to adequately express the Christian understanding of man and woman is, to say
the least, questionable.” Yet, so long as the priesthood is conceived in terms
of power, men hoarding that power, the Church is reduced to a power structure
that is controlled by men even as it is in secular society, then, “the alleged
inferiority of women within secular society corresponds to their inferiority
within the ecclesiastical power structure, hence, their exclusion from the
‘clergy.’ And therefore their liberation in secular society must correspond to
their liberation in the Church, i.e., their admission to the priesthood. The
Church simply cannot be reduced to these categories. As long as we measure the
ineffable mystery of her life by concepts and ideas a priori alien to her very essence, we mutilate her and her
real power, glory and beauty. Her real life simply escapes us” (Preface to the
1982 edition of Women and the
Priesthood. Ed. by T. Hopko. Crestwood [NY], 1999, p. 4).
29. The
Ordination of Women: An Essay on the Office of the Christian Ministry. Grand
Rapids (MI), 1980, p. 121.
THE MALE PRIESTHOOD
Hopefully the reader is beginning to suspect that women are
forbidden the priesthood for reasons other than those propounded by its
advocates. With regard to the place of women in the Church, the Orthodox
Tradition does not need to justify itself, as Madam Behr-Sigel demands. The cry
of “outmoded taboos,” “misogynic stereotypes,” “the stagnation of theological
thought,” “discrimination” and “patriarchy” [30] is a form of tactical
intimidation. If we may use some of it ourselves, the demand for the ordination
of women is an act of apostasy, not
“a creative development of the living tradition of the Church.” [31] The
priesthood is male for the arguments already made, and others yet to be
provided.
We need to recall that the Lord made no woman an Apostle.
[32] To no woman did He say “He who
hears me, hears you.” To no woman did He promise to ratify in heaven
what she had bound or loosed on earth. To no woman did He give the apostolic
commission — “Go ye therefore and
teach all nations…” (Matt. 28:19). No woman succeeded the Apostles as
bishops of the Church. To no woman did He commend His flock. He gave permission
to no woman to baptize or to preside at the Eucharist. In fact, no woman was
present at the Mystical Supper. Save for the Theotokos, there is no evidence of
any woman present at Pentecost. Although women have always had many ministries
in the Church, not for two thousand years has she included women in the
priestly hierarchy.
Until just a few generations ago, it was universally assumed
throughout the Orthodox world that the example of the Lord in choosing only men
to be His Apostles, the emphatic language of St. Paul in prohibiting women to
preach or teach the Church, constituted overwhelming proof against their female
ordination. [33]
This practice is unequivocally affirmed in the writings of
the holy Fathers. Sacred custom and canons reinforced the prohibition with
collateral arguments. For example, St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain insists
not only that women must remain silent, that is, neither to teach, nor speak in
the congregation, [34] but they must not chant in the divine Services, whether
in a female choir or with men. And, of course, they are to stand apart from
men. Under these conditions alone, it would be impossible for women to be
priests.
The same is true for the order of deaconess, which seems to
have replaced the order of widows (presbytides) who
did very much the same kind of ministry. If not virgins, they were without
spouse, at least 40 years old. [35] There is some dispute among Orthodox
scholars whether they were “appointed” or “ordained.” [36]
According to the Apostolic Constitutions [37] they were
appointed. St. Hippolytus of Rome says they were “appointed” not “ordained”
because the Deaconess did not offer the oblation (prosphora), nor celebrate the Liturgy. [38] They were
reckoned among chanters, readers and sub-deacons, each with their own function.
[39] Although St. John Chrysostom considered the “female deacons” to be
deacons, he understood that position to have its peculiar duties and not an
order within the priestly hierarchy. Others vigorously maintained that under no
condition, may the deaconess be equated with the male deacon and, under no
circumstance, was she to insinuate herself into sacerdotal functions.
Let us be clear on this matter. If the feminist argument is
to prevail, that women have on the basis of male manipulation of revelation,
been kept from their rightful place in the leadership of the Church, then, it
is futile to appeal to the “patriarchal” Scriptures, the Fathers, canons and
customs in order to refute it. If a male-dominated Church has presumed
deliberately to deny competent and pious women a place in the sacerdotal
ministry in contradiction to the express command of the Lord and the Apostles,
then nothing her Fathers, Councils and hierarchy in general is worthy of trust.
If, on the basis of male pride, the Church has developed a false anthropology
along with an erroneous conception of “the order of nature” and “the order of
redemption,” Orthodoxy is guilty of fraud and deceit and may not be viewed as
representing Christ.
But if we are not so cynical, if we have not caught the
virus of post-modernism; and if we confess the Orthodox Faith as the historical
Agent of the Holy Spirit, the Ark of salvation, then we are assured that the
absence of women from the leadership of the Church is part of “the Faith once delivered to the saints”
(Jude 3). We must necessarily hold, therefore, that only a man may represent
Christ, as only a woman may represent the Church, a parallel anticipated by
Adam and Eve, the masculine Yahweh and the female Israel. Truly, a woman priest
would “turn everything upside down” (panta
ano kai kato ginetai), to borrow a phrase from St. John Chrysostom.
Notes
30. Behr-Sigel, E. & Ware, K., The Ordination of Women in the Orthodox Church. Geneva, 2000,
p. 1.
31. Ibid.,
p35.
32. The title “equal to the Apostles” later bestowed by the
Church on Sts, Mary Magdalene, Helen, Nina, Olga were honorific. They were in
fact neither Apostles nor priests.
33. The Protestant theologian, P. K. Jewett, holds that the
Scriptures do not deny women the priesthood. “Tradition,” he thinks, is the
source of this discrimination. “Thus the Church has construed the data of
revelation in a manner that limited a woman's place in the family of
God” (The Ordination of Women, p.
100). Employing language so appealing to the post-modern mind, Jewett describes
the task of the “Church” as “transformation and renewal,” instead of clinging
to an old and irrelevant ecclesiology which bases the occupation of the
priesthood on the “masculinity” of God (l.c.).
34. The
Rudder. Trans. by D. Cummings. Chicago, 1957, pp. 373-374. St.
Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain cites Lev. 20:18-20 & Ezek, 18:6 on the
matter of menstruation; and also, St. Nicephorus of Constantinople, St. Basil
the Great, St. Timothy of Alexandria, St. John the Faster, Novel 17 of Leo the
Wise.
35. Quinisext, canon 14.
36. Among many others, J. Karmiris (The Place and Deaconate of Women in the Orthodox Church. Athens,
1978) believes the ministry of the deaconess is “a clearly auxiliary
institution in the work of the Church. In every instance, in the ancient Church
women did not in fact exercise purely priestly functions” (pp. 47-49).
Evangelos Theodorou (‘Cheirotonia’
or ‘Cherothesia’ of the Deaconess? Athens, 1954) that in the early
Church the “ordination of the deaconess” was performed in the same way as the
ordination of the deacon, with a few notable exceptions (pp. 60-63). Both agree
that she could not preside at the Eucharist.
37. VIII, 17, 1125 NPNF.
38. Ap.
Trad., 11; Chadwick trans.
39. Ap.
Can. VIII, 28, 1128.
ONE IN CHRIST
“For you are the children of God by
the Faith in Christ Jesus, For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ
have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor
free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:26-28 is currently
viewed by many Christian writers as the biblical manifesto of “gender equally.”
This, along with other such verses, form the basis of the biblical argument for
the admission of women to the priesthood. [40]
But this verse does not say the sexes are equal or the same,
but “one in Christ.” And,
to be sure, St. Paul did not write “unto
the churches in Galatia” in order to announce the “equality” of women
in Christ, certainly not in the modern sense. He tells them and us that within
the Church there are many roles, but all exist to foster unity in the Spirit.
In the specific case of women, writes R.T. Beckwith, “the normal role of a
woman has been as wife and mother, and her normal sphere the home.” [41] I am
not certain that Beckwith has gone far enough. Motherhood is not so much a
“role” or “ministry” as it is something inherent to the female gender itself.
Surely, that is the reason that the Orthodox Church thinks of “virgins” or nuns
(female monastics) as more than women.
Men and women bear “the image of God” and, therefore, they
share the same humanity. What is common to them transcends the biological
differences. Nevertheless, what they possess in common does not eliminate the
physical and emotional differences between them. God has grounded gender in
nature (creation). It is written on our bodies, and it will not disappear at
the resurrection (redemption), nor will deification erase the distinct
identities of male and female. The righteous will spend eternity with the blessed
Trinity as men and women. Monasticism is a type of the future existence,
inasmuch as male and female monks live on earth as the angels, “neither giving nor taking in marriage”
(Matt. 22:30).
On earth, at least, our oneness in Christ does not outlaw
many members and offices, “For by one Spirit are we baptized into one
body, whether we are Jews or Gentiles, bond or free, and all have been made to
drink of one Spirit. For the body is not one member but many” as St. Paul
teaches the Church at Corinth (12:12-13). In the words of St. Justin Martyr,
Galatians teaches that the Church lives by one Spirit, one Faith, as “one man.”
[42] Nevertheless, the one Church has many functions. “Now you are the body of Christ, and members in particular” Paul
writes. “And God has set some in the
church first to be apostles, secondarily, prophets, thirdly teachers, after
that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, etc.”
(12:27-31). Each person has his duty and his rank, the highest of these the
“elders” or “presbyters,” generic term for the leaders of the Church. There is
nothing here that leads us to conclude that the Holy Spirit has reduced the
members and their duties of the Church to an abstract sameness.
The Fathers make very plain the meaning of unity
or “oneness in Christ” “This is the purpose of the great mystery for
us,” wrote St. Gregory the Theologian. “This is the purpose in God, who for us
was made man and became poor, to raise our flesh, and recover His image,
remodeling man that we might all be made one in Christ (Gal. 3:28). He was made
perfectly one in all of us what He Himself is, that we might no longer be male
or female, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free (which are badges of the flesh),
but rather bear in ourselves the stamp of God, by whom and for whom we were
made, and have so far received our form and model from Him.” [43] In other
terms, gender characteristics are not relevant to our unity or salvation in
Christ.
St. John Chrysostom says the same: “‘For as many of you
as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.’ We have all become
sons of God. Since Christ is the Son of God; and thus having put Him on, you
have the Son within you. You are fashioned according to His pattern. You are
kindred in nature with Him. In other words, ‘There is neither Jew nor
Greek, neither bond nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in
Jesus Christ’ We are all the children of God through the Faith. Paul does
not stop there; but tries to find something more exact which may serve to
describe our oneness…he comments that ‘You are all one in Jesus Christ,’
meaning that you have all one form and mould with Christ Himself. What can be
more wondrous than these words! He that was a Greek, or a Jew, or a bondsman
yesterday, now carries about in himself the form, not of an Archangel, but of
the Lord of all, displaying Christ in himself.” [44]
St. Ambrose of Milan likewise stressed the unity of those
who have been incorporated into Christ. “And these indeed were you, but ‘you are washed, you are sanctified, you are
justified in the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of God’(1 Cor. 6:11).
How many instances of this need I produce? For it is written ‘you are all one in Christ’ (Gal.
3:28)…‘sanctified in Christ’ (1
Cor. 1:2)…‘you have the righteousness of
God in Him’ (2 Cor. 5:21) …” [45] St. Hilary of Poitiers likewise
associates Gal. 3:28 with oneness in Christ, but links it with the common will
of believers and their participation in the Sacraments. “For as the Apostle
shows that the unity of the Faithful arises from the Sacraments when he writes
to the Galatians, ‘For as many of you
were baptised into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek,
there is neither, bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are
all one in Christ Jesus’… That these are one among such diversity of
race, condition, sex—is from an agreement of will or from the unity in the
sacraments, since they all have one baptism and put on Christ…” [46]
St. Leo the Great also connects oneness in Christ with
baptism. “And because through the transgression of the first man the entire
stock of humanity was tainted, no one can be freed from the state of the old
Adam, save through Christ’s Sacrament of Baptism. Therefore, the Apostles
says, ‘For as many of you as were
baptized into Christ put on Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither
bond nor free, neither male nor female, but you are all one in Christ
Jesus’ (Gal. 3:27-28) …Behold how the grace of God makes what is
unequal equal, whatever their labors in this life.” [47] God does not look upon
His children by virtue of their race, nationality, class or gender, but to
their identity with His Son. Their “equality” is the consequence of their
membership in the Church — not through any political solution. This equality
before God cannot be found outside the Church. Only in her are
we “Abraham’s seed and heirs are all one in Christ Jesus” (Eph.
3:29).
Whoever is baptized into Christ has the same value before
God and, to be sure, each must pay equally, “a ransom for his soul” (Exodus 30:15). The Sacraments work
unity in Christ, but the process of salvation also requires human effort: a
common Faith and a common will. They are bestowed upon us as a pledge or
earnest of the promised kingdom, of the good things to come. In Divine-human
synergy or covenant, the Faithful are prepared for the Kingdom of heaven
wherein the saved are like angels “neither giving nor taking in marriage.”
[48] The promises of the future, however, do not entitle us to revolutionize
ancient practices or revise the doctrinal and canonical imperatives of
Tradition in favor of a new understanding of men and women in the Church. For
the present, there is no “democracy” in the Church. Patriarchy and the
hierarchy are a permanent feature of the earthly Church, which extends from the
“order of creation” through the “order of redemption.”
To summarize, Galatians 3:28 nowhere supports male/female
egalitarianism in the functioning of the Church. It is not, as some writers
think, the last word on the subject of female equality. St. Paul unambiguously
teaches in all his letters the subordination of the female to the male. He
recognizes the distinction between male and female as taught by Genesis; and,
also, that it is through this condition, perpetuated in the new covenant, as
soteriologically essential. In other words, we are not free to profess that St.
Paul was speaking only for his time or that the holy Fathers failed to explore
certain not probe beyond the landmarks erected by their predecessors; it was
that they respected their silence.
Notes
40. R. B. Alien, Liberated
Traditionalism: Men and Women in Balance. Portland (OR), 1985, p. 134.
41. “The Office of Woman in the Church to the Present Day,”
in Why Not? Priesthood and the
Ministry of Women. Ed. by M. Bruce &G.E. Duffield. Appleford,
1976, p. 27.
42. Dial. c. Trypho, ch. 116 PG 6 745A.
43. Ora VII, 23, PG 35 783C.
44. Comm. On Gal., III, v. 28 NPNF.
45. Of the Holy Spirit II, viii, 74 NPNE.
46. On the Trinity, VIII, 8 NPNE.
47. Ep. XV, 11 NPNE.
48. Cf. St. Athanasius, Four Discourses Against the
Arians II, 74 NPNF; St. Aphrahat, Selected Demonstrations XXII,
13 NPNF; St Jerome, Ep. 75, 3 NPNF.
49. N.V. Harrison, “Orthodox Arguments Against…,” 179.
THE CREATED ORDER
The book of Genesis is, among other things, the source of
Christian anthropology. The elements in the story of man’s creation are
historical. Moses records that God crowned His creation with the formation of
human beings. He made a man and a woman, body and soul. The man He made
first. “‘Let us make man after our
image and likeness...’ (Gen. 1:26). ‘Male and female’ Moses says, although as yet Eve had not yet
come into being,” explains St. Symeon the New Theologian, “but instead was yet
within Adam’s side, co-existing with him.” [50] According to St. John of
Damascus, “He creates with His own hands man of a visible and invisible nature,
and after His own image and likeness: on the one hand man’s body He formed of
earth, and on the other, his noetic and thinking soul. He bestowed upon him by
His own inbreathing, and this is what we mean by ‘after His image.’ For the
phrase ‘after His image’ clearly
refers to the side of his nature which consists of mind and free will,
whereas ‘after His likeness’ means
similarity in virtue, as far as that is possible.” [51]
Man’s affinity to God by virtue of his “image” did not involve a natural
immortality. The first man was neither mortal nor immortal, as St. Ephraim the
Syrian observes. [52] At the same time, the “image” involved dominion over the earth, signified by his naming
the animals. “Adam was given rule over the earth. He was lord over all things
on earth, according to the blessing which the Creator gave him on that [6th]
day.” [53] St. John Chrysostom agrees. “So ‘image’ refers to the matter of control…God created man as
having control over everything on earth, and nothing on earth is greater than
man, under whose authority it falls. ‘Man’ refers
to both male and female… ‘Nonetheless, it is not proper for a man to cover his
head as the image and glory of God; whereas the woman is man’s glory (1 Cor.
11:7). One is in command, the other is subordinate, just as God had said to the
woman, ‘Your yearning shall be for
you husband, and he shall be your master’ (Gen. 3:16). You see, since it is
on the basis of command that the ‘image’ was received and not on the basis of
form, man commands everything is constituted in God’s image and glory whereas
the woman is ‘the glory of the
man.’” [54]
What, then, is their relationship? God said, “It is not good that the man should be
alone, let us make for him a helpmate suitable to him… And God brought a trance
upon Adam, and he slept, and a rib which He took from him God formed into a
woman. He brought her to Adam. And Adam said, This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be
called woman, because she was taken out of her man (andros). Therefore, shall a man leave his father and
his mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh”
(Gen. 2:18. 22-24). In the words of St. Paul, “For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. Neither was
the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man” (1 Cor. 11:8-9).
Male and female share the same nature and together govern the world.
Nevertheless, he is the “Leader” (“the one in front,” in Hebrew, neged) from the beginning, evidenced by
the fact that he named her “woman” — and “naming” is the sign of authority. She
was, “in all things, to be subject to her husband, and… he the head of his
wife, that they may live according to Thy will.” [55]
Not for nothing did God call the first human being “man” and
not “woman.” Neither was it by accident that the male was created larger,
stronger, bolder, and swifter than the female. It was from him (“one man”) that
all “man-kind” emerged, even as all who believed in Christ are re-collected in
Him to form a redeemed humanity (“one man”). Noteworthy, too, is the fact that
Adam was not given the neutral name “person”, but man or male; neither was
Christ neutered. He was formed outside the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2:7); and only
later relocated there. The woman was formed from Adam in the Garden (Paradise),
where God commanded them to “increase
and multiply.” Eve was “the
mother of all the living” as bringing forth their progeny, suggesting her
principal function was motherhood. God permitted them to eat from all the trees
of the Garden, save from the fruit of the tree in its midst, lest they die.
She was the first to sin; or, as St. Ephraim said, “Eve, who
had been the mother of all the living, became the fountain of death for all the
living.” [56] Moses records that the woman was approached by a “serpent,”
tempting her to eat from the forbidden fruit. She acquiesced and gave the fruit
to her husband, and he ate. Why did the serpent not go to the man first, since
he was the head of the woman? St. Gregory the Theologian comments that the
devil believed he could arouse vanity in the woman, and using Adam’s tender
feeling for her, induce him to eat. The devil’s calculation was right. Adam
“forgot the commandment which had been given to him, he yielded to the baleful
fruit.” [57] St. John Chrysostom maintains that the devil came to the “naïve
and weaker vessel, namely, the woman who he drew into his deception by means of
conversation.” [58] St. Ephraim the Syrian says that the serpent or the devil
avoided Adam “out of fear.” He went to the subordinate woman and caused her to
envy the man. “She hastened to eat before her husband that she might become
head over her head, that she might become the one to give command to that one
by whom she was commanded; and that she might be older in divinity than the one
who was older in humanity.” [59]
Eve’s envy brought sin into the world even before she and
her husband had consumed the forbidden fruit. If nothing else, the implication
is that the devil knew who was the head of the human race, and why we call this
calamity the fall of Adam. By her disobedience to God, and usurpation of the
man’s headship, Eve became the occasion for the fall; nevertheless, “He could
have rebuked her,” declares St. John Chrysostom, “but chose to be her partner
in the fall, depriving himself of the divine benefits on account of a brief
pleasure.” [60]
That God called to Adam (and not to Eve), “Where are you?” implies that He
blamed Adam for the “original sin,” that is to say, the primacy belongs to the
man. He was responsible for the expulsion of our first-parents from paradise,
because he was “the head of the
woman” His disobedience brought death, sin and corruption to his posterity.
But also, Eve’s sin became a pattern for the future. Seeking to control him,
she unleashed misery upon the human race. The woman, no longer the man’s
complement, becomes his competitor. God also punished her with the words, “I will greatly multiply your pain and your
groaning: in pain you shall bring forth children, and your submission shall be
to your husband and he shall rule over you” (Gen. 3:17). To Adam, God
said, “Because you have listened to
the voice of your wife, and eaten of the tree which I had forbidden you to
touch, cursed be the grounds of your labor. With pain shall you eat of it all
the days of your life …In the seat of your face shall you eat your bread until
you return to the earth” (Gen. 3:18-20). God also cursed the serpent,
making him lower than all the brutes of the earth, and putting “enmity between you and the women, between
our seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel”
(Gen. 3:15-16). This scene plays out not only in the drama of man’s fall from
grace, but is the anti-type of his restoration: Christ the new Adam, Eve the
Church, with the serpent or the devil, the enemy of the human race vanquished
on the Cross (“the tree”). And, to be sure, those who might have become gods through
obedience of the first Adam, shall become gods (2 Pet. 1:4) because the new
Adam was “obedient even unto the Cross.”
The Garden, Chrysostom tells us, was a type of the Age to
Come. Adam and Eve were both types or anti-types of Christ and the Church.
Also, the establishment of Israel as the Bride of Yahweh is a shadow of the
Church as the Spouse of Christ, which was born from the side of the crucified
Christ. She was formed of the blood and water that poured from Him.” [61] Adam
and Eve are the prototype of every man and woman. Christ and the Church are the
prototype of every “new creature,” that is, every baptized man and woman. They
are “one flesh.” To the typology of Eve and the Church, belongs another
comparison: between “the Virgin Eve and the Virgin Mary.” The first is a type
of the Church, the second is the Church and, in a sense, the model of every
Christian woman.
All that is prophesied in the Old Testament concerning the
Church, according to the holy Fathers, receives simultaneous application to the
Mother of God, beginning with Eve. St. Justin Martyr says “that He [Christ] was
born of the Virgin so that the evil caused by the serpent might be destroyed in
the same manner that it originated. For Eve, an undefiled Virgin, conceived the
word of the serpent, and brought forth disobedience and death; but the Virgin
Mary, filled with faith and joy, when the angel Gabriel announced to her the
good tiding that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her, and ’the power of
the most High would overshadow her,’ and, therefore, the Holy One born of her
would be the Son of God, replied ‘Be
it done to me according to Thy word.’ [62]
The disobedient Eve, continued St. Irenaeus of Lyons, was
deceived by a (fallen) angel, the obedient Mary by angelic communication
received the glad tidings of God to her who had exhibited obedience. Unlike Eve
who was disobedient, the Virgin Mary was obedient that she might become the
advocate of the virgin Eve. And thus, the human race fell into death’s bondage
by means of one virgin, but rescued by another.” [63] Eve was mother of the old
humanity, the Mother of God is the mother of the new humanity, that is, Mother
of those reborn in Christ.
In the words of St. Leo the Great, “For today [Nativity] the
Maker of the world was born in a Virgin’s womb, and He, Who makes all natures,
became Son of her, whom He had created.” Moreover, by the Nativity, “we are
celebrating the commencement of our own life. The Birth of Christ is the source
of life for the Christian People, and the birthday of the Head is the birthday
of the body.” [64] His body consists of His “brothers and sisters,” “conformed
to the image of His Son” who is “the first-born of many brethren.” But
the undefiled Theotokos is the Mother of the Lord; hence, the Mother of “all that have been baptized into Christ.” As
the new Eve, Mary is the Church.
“How beautiful are those things which have been foretold of
Mary under the figure of the Church,” mused St. Ambrose of Milan. [65] St.
Methodius of Olympus took delight in “identifying the Virgin as the Church.”
[66] St. Cyril of Alexandria sang the praises of “Mary, the ever-Virgin, the
holy Church.” [67] Mary begot Christ, said the Venerable Bede; yet every time a
person becomes a Christian, “Christ is born again”; [68] thus, new sons and
daughters for the Church, more children for Mary. Having said all this about
the Theotokos—the type of the female Eve, the type of the female Israel, she is
the Church. She is, according to St. Ephraim the Syrian, the Mother, Sister,
Daughter, Bride of the Incarnate Lord. “I became His Mother and by a second
birth, I brought Him forth, so did He bring me forth by a second baptism.” [69]
In every case, her role is feminine. Her Son and Lord is
masculine. His Mother gave birth to Him virginally. The Church gives birth to
her children virginally, i.e., baptism. In imitation of the Church (and Eve),
motherhood is the primary function of the women, as the Orthodox rite of
Matrimony stresses. Obedience and subordination win her salvation, as the
Virgin’s Magnificat teaches. [70] The point cannot be made too often: woman is
the image of the female Church — the Theotokos — and man is the image of the
male Christ; and on the male gender alone has He bestowed the priesthood.
Notes
50. On the
Mystical Life: the Ethical Discourses (vol. 1): The Church and the Last Things, Trans.
by A. Golitzen. Crestwood (NY), 1995, pp. 21-22.
51. On the
Orthodox Faith II, 12 NPNF.
52. Commentary on Genesis, (FOC), I, ii, 17:3.
53. Ibid. I,
ii, 3:10. The rite of Holy Matrimony calls the male “a king over the creation” (Service Book of the Holy Orthodox Catholic
and Apostolic Church. Trans. and arranged by I.F. Hapgood. Englewood (NJ).
1975, p. 295). Adam was created on the 6th “day” or age of the first week of
the earth. Sunday or “one day” (not the “first day”) is both the beginning and
end of the week (6th day), or age of the first week of the earth. Sunday or
“one day” not the “first day”) is both the beginning and the end of the week (8th
day), a circle which typifies the destiny of creation: to begin and end in God.
Christ is the second Adam, the beginning and end of the new creation. By his
disobedience, the first Adam brought the calamity of sin and death upon the
earth. By His obedience, the second Adam abolished sin and death and restored
the world to His Father. The Incarnation of the Lord, the second Adam, occurred
during the 6th age or period of universal history. He was resurrected on
Sunday-Pascha, a type and earnest of the end (eschatos) or the 8th and eternal day or Age everlasting (See
J. Danielou, The Lord of History:
Reflections on the Inner Meaning of History. Trans. by N. Abercrombie.
London, 1958, p. 5-9).
54. Hom. On
Gen, VIII, 10 PG 53 656.
55. Service
Book…, Ibid, p. 296. The relationship patterned not only after Adam
and Eve, but Christ and the Church.
56. Homily on the
Lord I, 5 (FOC).
57. On the
Theophany, 12 PG 36 324C.
58. Hom. On
Gen. XVI, 3 PG 53 129.
59. Comm. On Gen.
I, ii, 18:2.
60. Hom. on
Genesis XVI, ib.
61. Enc. Max. 3
PG 51 229.
62. Dial. c.
Tryp.,100 PG 6 709D-712A.
63. Adv.
Haer. V, xix, 1 PG 7 [12] 116B-117A;III.xxii, 4 PG 7 [1] 958D-960A.
64. Serm. XXVI,
1-2 PL 54 213AB.”
65. On
Virginity, XIV, 89 PL 16 341B. In the words of St. Ambrose, Sed virgo, quia est Ecclesia typus
(Expos.Evang. s. Luc. II, 7 PL 15” 1635D-1636A).
66. Symp. 7PG
18381AB.
67. Hom.Div.,4
PG 77 996C.
68. In
Apoc. PL 93 165-166.
69. Hymns on the
Nativity, 9 (FOC).
70. Paul Evdokimov perceives the Virgin Mary as the type of
all Women (Women and the Salvation of the
World. Trans. A. P. Gythiel. Crestwood, NY, 1994).
CHRIST AND THE CHURCH
The Church is “a
great mystery” (Eph. 5:32), “even
the mystery which has been hidden from before the ages, but now is made
manifest unto the saints” (Col. 1:26). The mystery is “the mystery of His will according to His
good pleasure which he hath purposed in Himself: that in the economy of the
fullness of times, He might bring all things under one head in Christ (ana-kephalaiosathai
ta panta in Christo) what is on earth and
what is in the heavens, even in Him Whom we have received an
inheritance…” (Eph. 1:9-11). There will come a moment in the history
of the creation that “all things
shall be put under His feet, by which God gave Him to be the head (kephalen), which is His Body [the Church], the
fullness of Him that fills all things” (Eph. 1:21-22). The “mystery”
is God’s eternal plan of salvation, executed in Christo, that is, His recovery of the cosmos from the devil
and its transformation (metamorphosis) by
His Uncreated Energies. All that is reconciled and deified shall form His
eternal Kingdom, His Church or Body, over which He shall be the eternal Head.
Man and woman, differentiated and complementary, reflect the
eternal mystery. [71] The mystery is shown in the creation of man and woman,
the mating of Yahweh and Israel, and finally incarnated in Christ and the
Church as “one flesh.” This last union is not a temporary relationship, even as
marriage between man and woman that is purportedly indissoluble, typifying the
“oneness” of Christ and the Church. The book of the Apocalypse (21:2) announces
that at the end of time, “the New
Jerusalem will descend from heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her
husband.” The final Judgment accomplished, all things having been put
under His feet, the righteous with all the angels will form a wedding escort to
meet Him. Their joy will be consummated with a celestial banquet. Christ and
His Church, the eternal Man and the eternal Woman will be joined by everlasting
participation in the divine Nature.
The marriage of Christ (male) and the Church (female) is the
central symbol in the New Testament. Christ Himself hinted at this truth with
the question, “Can the wedding
guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?” (Matt. 2:19). Later, He
said, “The Kingdom of heaven may be
compared to a king who gave a marriage feast for his son…” (Matt.
22:2-3). “The kingdom of heaven
shall be compared to ten maidens who took their lamps and went out to meet the
bridegroom” (Matt. 25:1). As the other prophets of the Old Testament
(e.g., Hosea 2: 8; Is. 1:21-26, etc.), St. John the Baptizer foretells the
coming of the Messiah, “I am not the
Christ, but I have been sent before Him. He that has the bride has the
bridegroom. The friend of the Bridegroom, who stands and hears Him, rejoices
greatly at the bridegroom” (John 3:28-29). Yet, it is not until His
Resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit that the Church is
identified: “For I am jealous over
you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may
present you as a chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Cor. 11:2). In other
terms, the male role of Christ and the female role of the Church belong to the
mystery of redemption, that is, the recovery and sanctification of all
creation.
It is with this premise that in his letter to the Ephesians
(5:22-32) that the Apostle Paul associates “headship” in the marriage covenant
with the male. “Wives submit
yourselves (hypotassesthe) to your
husbands. For the husband is the head (kephale) of the wife, as Christ (kephale) is the Head of the Church. He is the Savior of the Body. Therefore as
the Church is subject (hypotassetai)
to Christ, let wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands love your
wives, even as Christ loved the Church; and gave Himself for her: that He might
sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might
present her to Himself a glorious Church, without spot or wrinkle or any such
thing… So ought men love their wives as their own bodies…” If we take
these verses as they stand, there is no dispute that the husband is the head of
the wife, as the male Christ is spouse to the female Church. We ought to be
assured by this text that salvation to the woman comes through her obedience to
her husband, even as the service of the husband to his wife leads to his
salvation. Hence, the words of the Orthodox rite of Matrimony, “grant that this
handmaid may be subject to her husband, and that this Thy servant may be head
to his wife, that they may live according to Thy Will.” [72]
Self-evident or not, there has been some controversy over
the word “head” in these verses. The phrase “the head of the woman is the man” is found in 1 Cor. 11:3 and
1 Pet. 1:3-7. It is linked to the word “submission” or “subordination” (hypotage, noun), “to subject
oneself, to be under obedience” (hypotassesthai, passive),
“to put under subjection (hypotassein, infinitive).
There are not a few seminary professors who wish to translate “head” (kepahle) as “source,” not
“authority.” They rely on such Greek expressions as “the source (kephale) of the river” in the
writings of Herodotus, and other Greek historians. [73] In the case of New
Testament lexicons, however, and the Septuagint, the Fathers, [74] even in
Plutarch is the word he
kephale rendered “authority.”
If kephale is
reduced to “source,” the conclusion that the woman is subservient to the man or
the wife in obedience to her husband may be avoided, but that raises other
problems. On account of the analogy between Christ and husband, it is also
necessary to view the “headship” of
the Lord Himself over the Church as “source” rather than the traditional “sway”
or “authority” or “dominion.” What, then, of Colossians 2:10 that says that
Christ is “the head of all rule and
authority”? Shall we translate the phrase as “the source of all rule and authority”?
In point of fact, “source” and “head” are synonymous. As Creator, Providence,
and King, He is the “source” of all “rule and authority.” In the same way, the
bishop is the “source” of power or authority in the Church. To cite St.
Ignatius of Antioch, without the bishop “nothing can be done without his
approval.” He has received from God the spiritual power (charisma) by which he rules his
flock, either directly or through his presbyter. [75]
Thus, considering that Christ and the Church, Bridegroom and
Bride, is the manifestation of “the
great mystery” it is impossible for a woman to be “head” of the local
church. She would be “head” to a “body” (female), a relationship which must be
construed as lesbian. In any case, “headship” was bestowed on the man and she
was given to him as a helpmate. A woman takes the subordinate role. It is a
voluntary obedience, even as God the Son “emptied Himself,” became man,
willingly subjecting Himself to the Father for our salvation. In the same way,
the voluntary obedience of the woman to the man is to exalt them both.
Notes
71. Anstall, K., “‘Male and Female Created He Them’, An
Examination of the Mystery of Human Gender,” in The Mystery of Gender and Human Sexuality. Dewdney (BC), 1996, p.
44.
72. Service
Book..., p. 296.
73. R.S. Cervin, “Does Kephale mean ‘Source’ or ‘Authority’ in Greek Literature? A
Rebuttal,” in Trinity Journal 10
NS (1989), p. 12.
74. Professor Cervin admits that in Lampe’s Patristic Greek Lexicon, there are
many citations referring to Christ as the “Head of the Church” and a few
citations where kephale alludes
to a bishop. He insists that “the use of head in patristic Greek is a technical term primarily
pertaining to Christ, and occasionally to members of the ecclesiastical
order” (Ibid., p. 107).
Virtually every New Testament lexicon agrees that kephale means “a person of superior authority” or “rank” or
“ruler.”
75. To the
Smyrnaens, 8.
HIERARCHY OF THE COSMOS
There is no reason to call the teachings of 1 Cor. 11:2-16
“Pauline.” The Apostle informs us that he is speaking for himself; and likewise
specifies that his advice is not mandatory. Here he directs the
Corinthians “to keep the traditions
as I delivered them to you.” Whose traditions are they? They are not
the traditions of men, but the beliefs of the Church that Paul received from
the other Apostles and God Himself. If he did not transmit them precisely as he
obtained them, the gospel message would be incomplete; and there is but one
“gospel” to which even angels must be obedient (Gal. 1:8). The part of
Tradition to which he directs the attention of his brethren involves, among
other things, a picture of reality as hierarchical.
To begin, St. Paul reminded the Corinthians that “the Head
of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the Head of
Christ is God” (v. 3). Note “every man” (pantos
andros) not merely Christian men. The verse, “the head of the woman is the
man” points to Adam and Eve, the prototypes (or anti-types) of both genders.
Christ had not only restored the fallen world, but also introduced it to a new
Age. To be sure, the Christian man is not ontologically superior to the
Christian woman, despite his “headship.” The structure of their relationship
has the purpose of leading both to salvation. Finally, above every level of
being — whether the Theotokos, the angels, the martyrs and all the saints in
Abraham’s Bosom, the male and the female on earth — is God the Father Who has
taken dominion over the universe through the risen Christ in His Church (Eph.
1:22-23).
Verse 4 tells us that “every man praying or prophesying with his head covered dishonors his
head; but every woman that prays or prophesies with her head uncovered
dishonors her head.” The covering is more than the recognition of her
husband's “headship.” To pray (or worship) or prophesy with an uncovered head
is the same as if the woman were shaven. “For if the woman is not covered, let her also be shorn; but if it be a
shame for a woman to be shorn (or shaven), let her be covered. For a man indeed
ought not to cover his head or inasmuch as he is the image and Glory of God:
but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman, but the
woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for
the man. For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head, because of
the angels” (vv. 4-10).
Here is another component of “the prescription of veils”
that calls upon all females, young and old, to cover their heads, especially at
public worship. [76] Angels are present at the divine Services; and it is an
offense to them to see the immodesty of women that an uncovered female head
reflects. Furthermore, St. Paul was compelled to mention the practice of head
covering in order to counter the Gnostic influence on the Corinthian Church.
Here was a heretical sect “which
crept into the house and led silly women captive” They “were ever learning, but never able to come
to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim.
3:6-7). Women were encouraged by the Gnostics to discard traditional roles in
favor of “egalitarianism” that must have involved, among other things,
dispensing with their “veils” — the objections of their bishop and husbands
notwithstanding.
As St. John Chrysostom suggests, the Christian women of
Corinth were not faithful and steadfast. For their return to piety, the Apostle
was required to repeat what they already knew about the liturgical practices of
the Church. A person committed to the Faith is “content with the tradition
alone. He that is weaker, when he learns about the matter, both retains what is
said with more care and obeys with much more readiness in the future” [77] The
loss of fidelity to the Church inevitably begins with a change of language and
contempt for the pertinent symbols of religious worship.
Notes
76. Hauke says that “the prescription of veils” is quite
obviously not an indispensable component of the original deposit of faith (deposition fidet) (Women in the
Priesthood, p. 346.) A Roman Catholic, he affirms The Commentary on the Declaration of the
Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the Question of the
Admission of women to the Ministerial Priesthood (https://www,ourladyswarriors.org/teach/intensi.htm).
It is an appendage to Pope Paul VI’s Inter
Insigniores (15 Oct. 76) on the same subject. An Orthodox would never
presume to delete a teaching of the Apostles (1 Cor. 11:13-15).
77. Comm. On 1
Cor., hom. XXVI, 1 PG 61 213
HANDMAID OF THE LORD
To achieve the admission of women to the priesthood would
require the radical alteration of theological and liturgical culture. The
existence of women in the priesthood would implicitly relativize the witness of
two thousand years of Tradition on the place of women in the Church. The
teachings of the Fathers and the Councils, the Confessors and martyrs,
canonists and iconographers would be obfuscated if not abolished. The advocates
of women priests are quick, of course, to dismiss the judgment of holy people
on provincial bias. Egalitarians want us to believe that the male leaders of
the Church have, with regard to women’s concerns, understood the Old and New
Testaments in the same way for so long that they are blinded to the distinction
between male prejudice and divine verity. If their objection is correct, then,
we must abandon any notion of the infallibility of the Church on matters of
doctrine and morality.
Even worse, if contemporary Orthodoxy were to change its
religious legacy—however noble the purpose— the generations to which it passed
it, would have precedent with which to make changes of their own, until finally
any link with the Apostles would be lost. Holy Tradition would need to be
redefined. What we believe and how we ought to behave would be determined by
the spirit of the times. Power, not faith, would command. Also, if, as in the
case of the admission of women to the priesthood, future decisions of the
Church were based on the current social and intellectual climate, Tradition
would be so mutilated that the gospel-message would eventually be lost
altogether.
Put another way, if feminists were to win the day, that is,
if the secular egalitarianism managed to persuade others to support their
cause, including synods and bishops; if they succeeded in neutralizing those
biblical verses, such as 1 Cor. 14:34-35 and 1 Tim. 2:8-15 (which forbids them
to preach to men, teach men, and celebrate the divine Liturgy), the priestess
would cause a revolution in faith, practice, language, [78] and to be sure, the
entire constitution of Church life. At the same time, secularism would have
penetrated Orthodoxy to such an extent that there would be no way to prevent
its further mischief.
But there are New Testament verses that need to be explained
if feminists hope to reverse the attitude of the Church. Before we touch on
them, however, something needs to be said to those who contend that St. Paul
did not write second Corinthians and first Timothy. The books of the New
Testament were chosen by the Church to be placed within the canon of Scripture,
because those gospels, letters and histories accurately reflect the teachings
of holy Tradition. Tradition does not rest on Scripture, but Scripture on
Tradition. The “controversial passages” concur with teachings and practices of
what had been orally delivered to the Church from the Apostles. In a word, it
is not relevant who authored these epistles.
’Tradition teaches the Church that women cannot be priests.
The Scriptures, God’s written word, only confirm it. Obviously, it is
impossible for women to be priests if they are not permitted to speak—hence,
cannot preach — in the church. “Let
your women keep silence in the churches,” St. Paul insists, “for it is not permitted for them to speak,
but to be under obedience, as also says the Law” He does not rest his
case on the Jewish Law—as many of his critics say—but finds corroboration in
it; hence, the expression, “as also (kai) says the Law” (Deut. 25:4; 28:49;
Isa. 28:11). Obviously, if they cannot speak, they cannot ask questions. “Therefore, if they want to learn anything,
let them learn from their husbands at home (or, if unmarried, acquire
answers from a male relative or friends). It is a shame for women to speak in the church” (1 Cor.
14:34-35).
’The apostolic prohibition against women speaking during the
worship of the Church includes not only preaching, reading, or chanting, but
also all ecstatic and edifying discourse. He intensifies his command with the
word “shame” (aischron). Women
are to be silent in church as a matter of principle. [79] Even the prophesying
of women occurred outside the liturgical assembly of believers. Later, the
Apostle writes to St. Timothy that he wants all men (andras) “to pray with the lifting of holy hands, without wrath and
doubting.” He turns his attention to the current problem with
admonitions regarding the conduct of men. “In like manner, let the women (gyne) adorn themselves in decent apparel, with modesty and sobriety…” “Let women learn in all silence and
submission (hypotage). I suffer not a
woman to teach, nor to take authority over men.” Genesis provides him
with the reason. “For Adam was first
formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived but the woman. Being deceived she
was in transgression.”
St. John Chrysostom follows St. Paul in his reasoning. “‘But I suffer a woman not to teach,’ that
is, saying this, women are not permitted to teach, but to occupy the station of
learners and show submission by their silence.” He caricatures woman as
“naturally somewhat talkative; and for this reason restrains them on all
sides.” Their loquacity is not the reason for their treatment, “‘For
Adam’ he says, ‘first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived but
the woman being deceived was in transgression.’ If anyone asks, what has
this to do with women of the present day? It shows that the male sex enjoys the
higher honor. Man was formed first and elsewhere this superiority is
shown. Neither was the man created
for the woman, but the woman for the man (1 Cor. 11:9). Why does Paul
say this? He wishes the male to have preeminence in every way… Let him have
precedence, on account of what occurred in the Garden… For the woman taught the
man once, and made him guilty of disobedience and wrought our ruin. Therefore, because
she made bad use of her power over the man, or rather her equality with him,
God made her subject to her husband...” [80]
Paul ties his discourse to the question of woman’s
salvation. “Notwithstanding, she
shall be saved through childbearing, if she continues in faith and love,
holiness and sobriety” (1 Tim. 2:8-9,11-15). He purposefully relates
these remarks to those that he made about women’s attire. In what he writes to
St. Timothy, the Apostle reaffirms in what he conveyed to the Church at
Corinth. He observes that the community led by Timothy has likewise neglected
traditional church order. Among other things, women adorn and dress themselves
immodestly. They also refused to be silent and to respect the station and
authority of their husbands; and Christian men in general. The problem of his
flock was the desire of some women for “emancipation” from their husbands. We
may surmise that they even wanted to be priests, the result of listening to
false teachers (Gnostics) who encouraged them to rebel against the restrictions
placed on their behavior and dress.
Evidently, Paul’s calling women back to silence and
submission excludes them from offices of bishop or presbyter. [81] By
extension, women were barred from any ecclesiastical office that might place
them in authority over men. This would be the case even if her husband gave her
permission to occupy such a position. One might wonder if the priesthood was
available to Corinthian women, would they have continued, as priestesses, to
obey their husbands? Would they have covered their heads during prayer and worship;
or would they expect their husbands to comply with their decision as a call
from God? Would he accept her authority over him, kiss her hand, take her
obediences and blessings, and, if necessary, make confession to her. Of course,
women would have worn no beard. Finally, what are we to think of the appearance
and condition of a pregnant priestess before the altar as she celebrates the
Liturgy?
St. Paul did not fail to take such things into consideration
when he commanded women “to learn in
silence and with full submission.” It would have been sheer tautology,
as it is for so many now. The Apostle has more to say. The woman’s
subordination is not to her husband alone, or else he would have used the
definite article or possessive pronoun with man — “I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a
man or her own (idiois) husband” (Cf.
Eph. 5:22; Col. 3:18-19). The implication of “the head of the woman is the man” (1 Cor.11:3) refers to the
preeminence of the male throughout social order. At the same time, “Woman is the
teacher of every virtue by word and deed within her own province at home; but
she is not allowed even to speak or sing within the sacred precincts of the
church. Woman’s task is to bear children and to rear them in the belief and
love of God,” he concludes, “to uphold the sanctity and sobriety of marriage…”
[82]
St. Paul saw virtuous motherhood as something inherent to
the salvation of women (1 Tim. 2:15). Nevertheless, women in the primitive
Church were not all married. Their calling was sometimes higher. Some, like
Sts. Zenaida and Philonella, Paul’s cousins, were physicians, generally to
other women. Sts. Phoebe and Priscilla were co-workers with the Apostle Paul.
[83] They ordinarily dealt with other women, carrying out their work in an
informal home setting, not in public assembly, and not without the supervision
of male elders. In 1 Timothy 2 (and elsewhere), Paul delineates role
distinctions, because everyone in the Church should have a ministry. He was
also in possession of those theological principles or criteria that let him
determine the nature of woman’s service most befitting her, and for the man’s
service befitting his nature. What God has done, why He created man one way and
woman another, why He has ordained their ministries as the Church has always
exercised them, we do not know. We are certain, at least, that “gender roles”
reflect the order of creation and the order of redemption; indeed, the very
mystery of our salvation.
Notes
78. C. S. Lewis observes that “a child who has been taught
to pray to a Mother in heaven (as opposed to a Father) would have a religious
life radically different from that of a Christian child” (“Priestesses in the
Church,” p. 237).
79. See St. John Chrysostom, Comm. On Titus, hom. 4 NPNF; St. Ambrose, De Off Min. LXV, 230 FOC; St.
Jerome. Adv. Pel. 1, 25 PL
23 542B; St. Cyril of Jerusalem. Procat., 14
PG 33 336B; Ambrosiaster, Comm. On 1
Cor. ,11 PL 17 253.
80. Comm. On Tim.
Hom., IX, 2 NPNF.
81. It did not prohibit them making public confession of
faith, to instruct other women, to pray for them or to nurse them.
82. The
Rudder, pp. 373-375.
83. There is some uncertainty about Junias (Rom. 16:7), whether this
individual was male or female. St. Epiphanius considered Junias to be a man,
while St. John Chrysostom counted her a woman of such devotion as to deserve
the title “apostle.” He was not attributing to her sacerdotal authority, however,
but praising the immense piety of a Christian woman.
CONCLUSION
Orthodoxy is a hierarchical worldview. She conceives reality
as steps—a “ladder” that ascends to God. As we saw in St. Paul’s first letter
to the Church at Corinth, the man occupies the higher rung relative to the
woman. He was formed first, from the virgin soil of the earth. She was made
from the man and for the man, even as the Church was made from and for Christ.
Some modern writers have concluded that a higher station for the man implies
his superiority to the woman. Judging from what the Fathers say, in matters of
piety, women have often proven themselves to be the greater. “O nature of woman
overcoming man in the common struggle for salvation,” writes St. Gregory the
Theologian, “and demonstrating that the distinction between male and female is
one of body, not of soul.” [84] In the end, it is holiness or the lack of it
that is the source of power in the Church.
Woman’s quest for “equality” by the acquisition of rank
(i.e., power) in the Church manifests the popular secular mentality. I refer
specifically to the democratic ideal that expects never to find in a crowd one
head above the other. To be sure, “All men/women are created equal,” if we
define “equal” to mean the same human nature, both sexes stamped with the
divine Image; now, however, if we understand “equality” as identity in ability,
intelligence or beauty or strength, and, indeed, not in function. It is also
true that God placed the man at the apex of the physical creation, and that
“patriarchy” or the leadership of men is the natural order. Not entirely
incidental is the fact that anthropologists have discovered that patriarchy is
allied with “the development of monotheism.” [85] If this is true, then it is
not improbable that polytheism (or religious pluralism) is related to
democracy.
According to the democratic notion of equality, one
individual has the same “rights” as any other. None need argue with that
sentiment, but human and civil rights are not ideas relevant to the Church’s
conception of the priesthood. Incidentally, not every historian or philosopher
has agreed on the positive merit and desirability of “equal rights,” especially
when it rests on the shifting sands of positive law, which itself is constantly
shaken by the capricious winds of representative government. That aside, we
need to understand that democracy and hierarchy involve antithetical
worldviews. The one vision will necessarily depict the place of women in the
Church and the world differently. Democratic egalitarianism rejects the very
notion of gender subordination as intolerable to its very understanding of
human society and its institutions. To anyone having adopted this mentality, it
is no surprise that they have serious objections to the Church’s exclusion of
women from her priesthood. Orthodoxy, on the other hand, must consider the
democratic ideal—hence, women's ordination to her priesthood—as rebellion
against both the order of creation and the order of redemption.
Furthermore, we see precisely what this means when the
demand for “equality” — or, in other terms “liberation” — implies compromise
with or rejection of a woman's historic role, that is, wife and mother. I
assume that Orthodox women would not go so far, and if they chose to work
outside the home, would pursue activities, jobs and professions consistent with
the Christian piety. If they adopt the dominant idea of womanhood found in
democratic societies, it will not be easy for them to acquire sanctity. For that
reason, must we be disconcerted at the prospect of Orthodox women in military
combat, FBI agents or movie actresses? This kind of “freedom” if it does not
diminish those characteristics which have historically denned her — those
virtues that have made her the civilizer — it will produce in her a pride that
leads not only to the degradation of her femininity, but will have sorry
consequences for the Church, the family and society. Unfortunately, there are
too many Orthodox women— often with the support of the male leadership in their
churches — who have adopted the thinking of K. Stendahl (former Dean of Harvard
Seminary), “If emancipation (of women) is right, then, there is no valid
‘biblical’ reason not to ordain women. Ordination cannot be treated as a
‘special’ problem, since there is no indication that the New Testament sees it
as such” [86] To take his advice would not only signal the overthrow of
Orthodox hierarchism, but ensure the conformity of the Church to the world.
I have no doubt that if advocates of women's ordination
succeed, they will use their version of church history to determine what kind
of religion Orthodoxy was. They will use their revision of traditional theology
to settle what kind of Church she will become — especially in a milieu where
relativism and subjectivism dictate the attitude of men and women toward
religion. To begin, Orthodox theologians have even now felt the need to justify
the ordination of women to the priesthood (and eventually the episcopate). They
will leave to future generations a pattern and method for any further
modifications of the Orthodox Faith. For intellectual purposes, they will adopt
some form of “doctrinal development.” Has not Madame Elizabeth Behr-Sigel
already endorsed this conception of Tradition with a rhetorical question of her
own? “The ordination of women,” she asks, “is it an act of apostasy or a
creative development of the living tradition of the Church?” [87]
Their reinterpretation of that Tradition has begun already
with a defilement of the Church Fathers. They have ceased to be the arbiters of
belief and unbelief for a growing number of the Faithful. Orthodox feminists
deny their teachings to be final. “There are some areas of anthropology that
the Fathers have not explored sufficiently,” states N.V. Harrison; “and here it
will perhaps prove appropriate for the Church to add to their thought, though
not to distort or undermine the crucial affirmations on which they are agreed.”
[88] She chooses carefully her words, so as not to appear shrewish or disloyal.
Moreover, to substantiate their speculations, they turn not to all the Fathers,
but to some whom they have decided gives their cause a religious credibility.
As already mentioned, they have perversely anointed the Cappadocian Fathers as
their champions. They find comfort for their ambition in what they have written
concerning the Image of God. [89]
No Orthodox will dispute the common humanity of men and
women. We need to add, however, that the woman was born from the man, not
because he is superior, but because God chose Adam as the “source” of unity.
The woman is the “mother of all the living,” but she originated with the man.
“All things proceed from unity,” St. Cyprian wrote somewhere, even as the Son
and the Spirit issue from the Father, the arche of the Trinity. Christ is the single “source” (kephale) of the new humanity. Put
another way, it is a false argument that women have been deprived of the
priesthood because men would not share with them the control of Church and
society. Neither may we believe that too many people for too long have secretly
believed that men have surreptitiously taught that the female was given a
different stamp of Gods Image than themselves; [90] so that he only bears the
“icon” of the Christ and, therefore, he alone is eligible for the priesthood.
The objection is altogether contrived. There is no Father or
Council or Patriarch that declared men and women differ in their spiritual
natures. Feminists or egalitarians seemed to have unconsciously equated “the
image of God” with “the image of Christ.” Men and women are the imago Dei, eikon ton Theou, but
only the man is the “image of Christ,” imago
Christi, eikon ton Christou. St. Theodore the Studite (759-826) calls
Christ the “archetype” (archetypou) of
the bishop (or priest, “the image of the image”) who is “icon of Christ” (eikon tou Theou) and an “imitation
of Christ” (mimema Christou). [91] So it is that only men can be
priests.
Reading the books of Orthodox feminists or egalitarians
(call them what you will), they are not zealous for Orthodoxy. [92] It is
evident that they do not believe that the Orthodox Church is the Catholic
Church. I have a suspicion that they do not have a traditional ecclesiology,
and that in fact they look beyond her precincts for an understanding of the
Church. It might be beneficial for all to hear once more the words of St. Cyril
of Jerusalem. The Church, he says, “teaches universally and completely one and
all the doctrines which ought to come to men’s knowledge concerning things both
visible and invisible, heavenly and earthly… She brings unto godliness all
mankind… and because she universally treats and heals every class of sins,
which are committed by soul or body, and possesses in herself every form of
virtue which is named, both the deeds and words, and in every kind of spiritual
gift.”
Notes
84. Ora. XVIII,
8 PG 35 993D-994A.
85. “It is a tragic accident of history that this advance
occurred in a social setting and under circumstances which strengthened and
affirmed patriarchy,” writes Greta Lerner. “Here is the historic moment of the
death of the Mother-Goddess and her replacement by God-the-Father and the
metaphorical Mother under patriarchy” (The
Creation of Patriarchy. Oxford, 1986, p. 198). I mention this because
there are not a few Orthodox feminists who mock St. Epiphanius when he
affiliated female aspirations to the priesthood with the ancient cult of
goddesses. Also, among these women is a profound resentment of men. To their
marrow, they hate patriarchy. They are dedicated to “the struggle against
patriarchal values.” They want to join civil society in the “mutual liberation
from the shackles of patriarchy that has ruled the world and our religious life
for far too long. We need to help free our gospel teaching from the cultural
influences that have shrouded its true message: one gospel that frees us all,
men and women, and makes us precious and equal in the sight of God.” They have
been “frustrated in Orthodoxy by this emphasis on obedience and submission”
(presumably to men). Part of the task is to overcome apathy and obedient
submission to teachings that alienate and subordinate us” (Marie Assad,
“Defining Ourselves as Orthodox Women,” pp. 156-157).
86. Translated by Antonio de Nicolas, The World & I: A Chronicle New
York (Oct. 1986, p. 355).
87. The Bible and
the Role of Women. Philadelphia, 1966, p. 4.
88. “The Ordination of Women in the Orthodox Church” p. 35.
89. Behr-Sigel, p. 36.
90. St. Gregory of Nyssa was right that the divine Image
does not admit a distinction between male and female. The body alone
distinguishes them (De Hom.
Opf., XVI PG 44 181C). But we cannot infer from this fact that Adam
was androgynous, as radical feminists teach. Nor are we to adopt Plato’s
dualism. Body and soul are intertwined, a mutual penetration which allows these
two human dimensions to affect one another directly. Therefore, the body as
well as the soul defines the sexes.
91. Ref.
Iconom., 4 PG 99 439CD; cf. Ep. 1,
11 PG 99 945D.
92. “My ecumenical contacts,” confesses Teny Perri-Simoman
in a revealing statement, “have helped me to understand my own roots better;
and they have made me more tolerant toward others points of view” (“Orthodox
Women in Ecumenical Dialogue,” Orthodox
Speak Women Speak…, p.150).
93. Catech. XVIII,
23 PG 33 10944D-1045A.
APPENDIX
The community of monks, the monastery of male (monachos) and the monastery of
females (monache), is an
eschatological phenomenon. The monastery adumbrates the Age to Come where there
shall no “giving and taking in
marriage.” The monastery (and convent), as someone said, is “the city
on the edge of tomorrow.” It has one foot in time, the other in eternity.
Naturally, then, the liturgical order in the monastery (male
and female) differs from the liturgical order in the local parishes “in the
world.” With special regard to the liturgical practices of the female monastery
(convent), its “nuns” chant, read the Apostles, serve as acolytes (but may not
touch the altar); and in some convents, the Abbess (Amma), the head of the monastery, may even carry the Holy
Gifts out of the sanctuary and around the temple. She may not, however,
re-enter through the Royal Doors, but transfers the Gifts to the priest who
lays them on the altar. Neither may she, or any of her nuns, read the Gospel.
She may give “spiritual talks” to them, but not from the pulpit (ambon). The female monastery
requires a priest for its liturgical worship. He may be assigned to it, or
borrowed from a male monastery. He may even be the Abbot (Abba) himself.
Thus, the monastery, as part of the Church, follows her
theology and discipline. The difference between a male and female monastery is
not explained by an ideology of power. Such worldly notions play no part in the
monastic culture. Monasticism is the “angelic life” whose ligaments are
poverty, chastity, obedience. They know, too, the danger and penalty of power,
even priestly power, for as St. John Chrysostom said, “It is easier for a camel
to enter the eye of a needle, than for a priest to enter the Kingdom of
heaven.” Indeed, it is the powerless, not the powerful who will inherit the
earth.
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Scriptures,” St. Vladimir’s
Theological Quarterly, XIX, 3 (1975) 147-192.
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Church. Geneva, 2000.
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Closing of the American Mind. New York, 1987.
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Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline. New York, 1997.
Bouyer, L. Woman
in the Church. Trans. by M. Teichert. San Francisco, 1979.
Bruce, M. and G. C. Duffield. Why Not? Priesthood & the Ministry of Women. Appleford,
1976.
Bullough, V. L. The
Subordinate Sex: A History of Attitudes Toward Women. Urbana, IL, 1973.
Clark, E. A. Jerome,
Chrysostom and Friends: Essays and Translations. New York, 1979.
Danielou, J. The
Ministry of the Women in the Early Church. London. 1961.
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1999.
Friedan, B. The
Feminine Mystique. New York, 1974.
Hapgood, I.F. (ed. & trans.). Service Book of the Holy Orthodox Catholic Apostolic Church. Englewood,
NJ, 1975 (5th ed.).
Hauke, M. Women
in the Priesthood? A Systematic Analysis in the Light of the Order of Creation
and Redemption. Trans. by D. Kipp. San Francisco, 1988.
Hopko, T. (ed.). Women
and the Priesthood. Crestwood, NY, 1999.
Inter Insigniores: Declaration on
the Admission of Women to Ministerial Priesthood (15 Oct 1976). Sacred Congregation
for Catholic Doctrine and Faith.
Jewett, P. K. The
Ordination of Women. Grand Rapids, 1980.
Kaehler, E. Die
Frau in den Paulinischen Briefe. Zurich/ Frankfurt, 1960.
Lewis, C.S. God
in the Dock. Grand Rapids, MI, 1970.
Matthews, G. Just
a Housewife: The Rise and Fall of Domesticity in America. New York,
1987.
Migne, J.-R (ed.). Patrologiae
Cursus Completus. Series Graecae. 162 vols. Paris, 1857-1890.
____ (ed.). Patrologiae
Cursus Completus. Series Latina. 217 vols, Paris, 1857-1890.
Podles, L. J. The
Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity. Dallas, 1999.
Roberts, A. and J. Donaldson (eds.). Ante-Nicene Fathers. 10 vols. Grand
Rapids, MI, 1951.
Schaff P. and H, Wace
(eds.). Nicene-Post Nicene Fathers. 9 vols. New York, 1895-1900.
Stendahl, K. The Bible and the
Role of Women. Philadelphia, 1966.
Thrall, M. E. The Ordination of
Women to the Priesthood: A Study of the Biblical Evidence. London,
1958.
Tiemayer, R. The Ordination of
Women. Augsburg, 1970.
Wolff, H. Jesus the Man: The
Figure of Jesus in Psychoanalytic Perspective. Stuttgart, 1976.
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in the Church: A Study in the Practical Theology. Trans. by A. G. Merkens. St.
Louis, 1955.
Fr. Michael Azkoul was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He
received his BA in Philosophy from Calvin College (1954), his BD in Theology
from St. Vladimir’s Russian Orthodox Seminary (1958) and his MA and PhD in
Medieval History from Michigan State University (1963-1967). He has taught at
Michigan State University, St. Louis University and Washington University and
also at Seminex Lutheran Seminary. Apart from numerous articles and pamphlets
in St. Vladimir’s Theological
Quarterly, The Greek Orthodox
Theological Review, Theological
Studies, The Byzantine and Patristic
Review, Fr. Azkoul authored several important books, including: Narcissus and the Magi Microform: A
Study of the Relation between Faith and Reason in Greek Patristic life and
in Western Thought (1957), Anti-Christianity:
The New Atheism (1981), On
the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit by Photius of Constantinople (1983), The Teachings of the Holy Orthodox Church (1986), The Influence of Augustine of Hippo on the
Orthodox Church (1990), Why
Christianity (1994), St.
Gregory of Nyssa and the Tradition of the Fathers (1995), The Toll-House Myth: The Neo~Gnosticism of
Fr. Seraphim Rose (1997), Once
Delivered to the Saints: An Orthodox Apology for the New Millennium (2000)
and God, Immortality and Freedom of
the Will according to the Church Fathers: A Philosophy of Spiritual Cognition (2006).
Ordained to the Diaconate in 1956 and to the Priesthood in 1958 by Archbishop
Anthony Bashir he served successively in the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of
the USA, in the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, in the Holy Orthodox Church in
North America, and in the Church of the Genuine Orthodox Christians of Greece.
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