Women and Ordination in the Orthodox Church: Explorations in Theology and Practice

By Cascade Books

Contributing Authors:
Fr. John Behr
Dr Spyridoula Athanasopoulou-Kypriou
Dr. Dionysios Skliris
Fr. Andrew Louth
Dr Mary Cunningham
Met Kallistos Ware
Rev Dr Sarah Hinlicky Wilson
Dr Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald
Dr Carrie Frederick Frost
Dr Paul Ladouceur
Luis Josue Sales

This book--a collaborative, international initiative, involving academic theologians and practitioners--invites the reader into a conversation about the ordination of women in the Orthodox Church. It explores questions relating to the significance of being human, Eve's curse, sexed bodies, the place of Mary, the nature of priesthood, the role of the deacon, and the task of being a priest in the twenty-first century. The reflections move across three main areas of discussion: issues of theological anthropology, particular questions pertaining to the priesthood and the diaconate, and contemporary practices. In each area the implications for ordaining women in the Orthodox Church today are explored.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Jul 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781532695803

Book preview

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Women and Ordination in the Orthodox Church

Explorations in Theology and Practice

edited by

Gabrielle Thomas and Elena Narinskaya

WOMEN AND ORDINATION IN THE ORTHODOX CHURCH

Explorations in Theology and Practice

Copyright © 2020 Wipf & Stock Publishers. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Cascade Books

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-9578-0

hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-9579-7

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-9580-3

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Thomas, Gabrielle, 1974–, editor. | Narinskaya, Elena, 1973–, editor.

Title: Women and ordination in the Orthodox church : explorations in theology and practice / edited by Gabrielle Thomas and Elena Narinskaya.

Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2020 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: isbn 978-1-5326-9578-0 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-5326-9579-7 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-5326-9580-3 (ebook)

Subjects: Ordination of women—Eastern Orthodox Church | Women—Religious aspects—Orthodox Eastern Church | Women in the Eastern Orthodox Church | Eastern Orthodox Church—Doctrines.

Classification: BX342.5 T46 2020 (print) | BX342.5 (ebook)

Manufactured in the U.S.A. July 10, 2020

To Mary B. Cunningham—an excellent scholar, a dear friend, and a great blessing to God’s church.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Contributors

Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter 1: From Adam to Christ

Chapter 2: Christ and Gender

Chapter 3: What Do We Do with Eve’s Curse?

Chapter 4: Galatians 3:28 and the Ordination of Women in Second-Century Pauline Churches

Chapter 5: Why I Have Changed My Mind

Chapter 6: Revisiting an Orthodox Theology of Priesthood

Chapter 7: Elisabeth Behr-Sigel’s Trinitarian Case for the Ordination of Women

Chapter 8: The Mother of God as Priest in the Eastern Christian Tradition

Chapter 9: The Eucharistic and Eschatological Foundation of the Priesthood of the Deaconess

Chapter 10: A Flourishing Diaconate Will Ground—Not Predetermine—Conversation about Women in the Priesthood

Chapter 11: The Ordination of Women to the Priesthood

Chapter 12: On Being a Priest in Conversation with St. Gregory Nazianzen

Contributors

Fr. John Behr is the Regius Professor of Humanity, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, and the Metropolitan Kallistos Chair of Orthodox Theology at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam. Previously, he was the Fr. Georges Florovsky Distinguished Professor of Patristics at St. Vladimir’s Seminary, where he served as dean from 2007–17. He has published numerous monographs with Oxford University Press and St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, most recently a new critical edition and translation of Origen’s On First Principles (Oxford University Press, 2017), together with an extensive introduction and a study of the Gospel of John (Oxford University Press, 2019); he has also published various works aimed for a more general audience, such as his more poetic and meditative work entitled Becoming Human: Theological Anthropology in Word and Image (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2013). He is now working on a new edition and translation of the works of Irenaeus of Lyons.

Mary B. Cunningham is Honorary Associate Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Nottingham, UK. Previously to this, she worked and studied in Washington DC, Birmingham and London, UK. Professor Cunningham has published books and articles on Byzantine homiletics, hagiography, and the cult of the Virgin Mary. She has translated Wider than Heaven: Eighth-Century Homilies on the Mother of God (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2008), and is co-editor of both The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology (Cambridge University Press, 2008), and The Reception of the Virgin in Byzantium: Marian Narratives in Texts and Images (Cambridge University Press, 2019). She is an Orthodox theologian and an amateur musician with an interest in early and Orthodox church music.

Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald, PhD, serves as an Orthodox theologian, educator and pastoral psychologist. She is presently adjunct is professor of theology at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, and most recently a visiting professor at the Toronto School of Theology of the University of Toronto. She has also served on the faculties of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, the Bossey Ecumenical Institute (Switzerland), Andover-Newton Theological School, and elsewhere. Co-founder and Executive Director of Saint Catherine’s Vision, she has published numerous books and articles including Women Deacons in the Orthodox Church: Called to Holiness and Ministry and edited Orthodox Women Speak: Discerning the ‘Signs of the Times.’ She is also the editor of SCV’s collaborative book series, Encountering Women of Faith, volumes 1–3, and serves on the staff of Pastoral Counseling Services of the South Shore (Hanover, MA) as a clinical psychologist and pastoral psychotherapist.

Carrie Frederick Frost is an adjunct professor of theology at St. Sophia Ukrainian Orthodox Seminary, and lecturer at Western Washington University. She received a PhD in theology, ethics, and culture from the University of Virginia. She attends to matters of women and mothers in the church, sacraments and practice, Christian material culture, and contemplative prayer. Frost is the author of Maternal Body: A Theology of Incarnation from the Christian East (Paulist, 2019), and editor of The Reception of the Holy and Great Council: Reflections of Orthodox Christian Women (Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, 2019). She is on the board of the International Orthodox Theological Association and the advisory board of the St. Phoebe Center for the Deaconess.

Paul Ladouceur is an Orthodox theologian and writer living in Quebec, Canada. He teaches at the Orthodox School of Theology at Trinity College (University of Toronto) and at the Montreal Institute of Orthodox Theology, affiliated with Université Laval (Quebec). His edited books and articles include French translations of writings of St. Maria of Paris and of Fr. Lev Gillet, and articles concerning various aspects of modern Orthodox theology, ecclesiology, and spirituality. His most recent book is Modern Orthodox Theology (T. & T. Clark, 2019), and he has co-edited, with Brandon Gallaher (University of Exeter), The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky: Essential Theological Writings (T. & T. Clark, 2019). Dr. Ladouceur is responsible for the French-language website Pages orthodoxes la Transfiguration, and participates in the Canadian Council of Churches representing the Canadian Archdiocese of the Orthodox Church in America.

Fr. Andrew Louth is Professor Emeritus of Patristic and Byzantine Studies, Durham University, and was Visiting Professor of Eastern Orthodox Theology in the Faculty of Theology attached to the Amsterdam Centre of Eastern Orthodox Theology (ACEOT), Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, from 2010 to 2014. His research has largely been in patristics, with monographs on Dionysios the Areopagite (1989), Maximos the Confessor (1996), and John Damascene (2002). His most recent books are Introducing Eastern Orthodox Theology (2013), and Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present (2015). He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 2010, and is an archpriest of the Diocese of Sourozh (Moscow Patriarchate).

Elena Narinskaya was born in Moscow, Russia, where she studied Journalism and Literature at Moscow State University, and theology at St. Philaret Orthodox Christian Institute, in addition to studying Judaism and Hebrew at Ratisbone Pontifical Institute in Jerusalem, Israel. Her second master’s degree was in Cambridge, UK, at the Centre for Jewish-Christian Studies. She wrote her PhD and graduated from Durham University, UK. Her area of expertise is biblical stories and their expression in Abrahamic religions. She is author of Ephrem, a Jewish Sage: A Comparison of the Exegetical Writings of St. Ephrem the Syrian and Jewish Traditions (Brepols, 2010), The Poetic Hymns of Saint Ephrem the Syrian: A Study in the Religious Poetry in Fourth-Century Christianity (Mellen, 2013), and a number of articles. Currently, she carries an affiliation at the Department of Theology, University of Oxford.

Luis Josué Salés, a native of Mexico City, obtained his PhD in early Christianity from Fordham University and currently teaches at Scripps College. He takes decolonial, mujerista, and queer approaches to examine the intersection of philosophy, religious thought, and ethics in eastern Christian traditions, particularly as they relate to subjectivity and sexual difference. His publications include translations of Maximos the Confessor’s works into English and Spanish, and his articles have appeared in The Journal of Late Antiquity, Sacris Erudiri, The International Journal of Philosophy and Theology, and Studia Patristica, among others, and he has contributed several chapters to edited volumes. He is currently giving the final touches to his first monograph, Maximos the Confessor: Virtue, Sexual Difference, and Divine Subjectivity.

Elizabeth Theokritoff earned a doctorate in liturgical theology at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia, and has worked for many years as a freelance theological translator from modern Greek. She is a research associate and lecturer at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge, with particular interests in the theology of creation and ecology. Elizabeth is co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology and author of Living in God’s Creation: Orthodox Perspectives on Ecology (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009), as well as numerous articles and book chapters on ecological and liturgical themes.

The Reverend Gabrielle Thomas lectures in Early Christian and Anglican studies at Yale Divinity School, New Haven, CT, and is an ordained priest in the Church of England. Prior to this, she worked as a postdoctoral research associate at Durham University, UK, and served as a minor canon in Durham Cathedral. Her publications include The Image of God in the Theology of Gregory of Nazianzus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), and articles in the Scottish Journal of Theology, Exchange, Ecclesiology, and Studia Patristica. She has also published a number of chapters for edited collections and articles for the popular Christian press. From 2020, she will serve on the Anglican-Oriental Orthodox International Commission.

Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia (b. 1934 Timothy Ware) is a titular metropolitan of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Great Britain. He studied classics and theology in the University of Oxford. Originally an Anglican, he was received into the Orthodox Church in 1958, and ordained priest in 1966, becoming a bishop in 1982. From 1966 to 2001, he was Spalding Lecturer in Eastern Orthodox Studies at Oxford, and he is an emeritus fellow of Pembroke College. His books include The Orthodox Church (Penguin Books) and The Orthodox Way. He is co-translator of three volumes of Orthodox service books, and of the five-volume English edition of The Philokalia.

The Reverend Sarah Hinlicky Wilson is an associate pastor at Tokyo Lutheran Church in Japan. She serves as visiting professor at the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, France, and was formerly a consultant to the International Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue. Her book Woman, Women, and the Priesthood in the Trinitarian Theology of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel is the first book-length study of this important twentieth-century figure in Orthodox theology. She also hosts with Paul R. Hinlicky the podcast Queen of the Sciences: Conversations between a Theologian and Her Dad.

Abbreviations

ACW Ancient Christian Writers

CPG Clavis Patrum Graecorum. Edited by Maurice Geerard. 5 vols. Turnhout: Brepols, 1974–87

CSCO Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium. Edited by Jean Baptiste Chabot et al. Paris, 1903

FC Fathers of the Church

JBL Journal of Biblical Literature

JTS Journal of Theological Studies

LCL Loeb Classical Library

NRSV New Revised Standard Version

OCP Orientalia Christiana Periodica

PG Patrologia Graeca. Edited by Jacques-Paul Migne. 162 vols. Paris, 1857–86.

PL Patrologia Latina. Edited by Jacques-Paul Migne. 217 vols. Paris, 1844–64.

PPS Popular Patristics Series

SC Sources chrétiennes

SVTQ St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly

Introduction

The inspiration for this book emerged from the work of Women’s Ministries Initiative (WMI), an educational forum pioneered by Dr. Elena Narinskaya in the UK. Since 2013, the forum has provided a space for study days on various subjects, including early women’s ministries in the church, the laity, loneliness and solitude, personhood and individualism, and sickness and suffering. In September 2018, WMI held a conference on the ordination of women in the Orthodox Church at Pusey House, Oxford. The aim was to honor all who were present, whatever their view on the ordination of women, and included a range of Orthodox, Catholic, and Anglican academics and practitioners. This book consists of the papers presented at the conference, in extended form, together with further essays from scholars who work on this area. While, for much of its development, Orthodox theological thought was surrounded and contextualized in patriarchal structures, the aim of Orthodox theology is to rise above the constraints of contemporary politics or cultures, and to transform them into higher and elevated realms of human synergetic collaboration with the divine. This is an ongoing collaboration of thought, and the aim of this book is to reflect on this collaboration through the centuries on the one hand, while offering a contemporary contribution to it on the other. 

The importance of publishing a book exploring the question of the ordination of women is located in its relevance to the contemporary developments within the Christian church. Although women’s ordination to the clerical orders of the church is not a contemporary phenomenon as such, due to the long tradition of women’s diaconate, the ordination of women to the priesthood remains a controversial and divisive subject in the Orthodox Church. Although in some places women in the twenty-first century are benefiting from some degree of equality and an increased range of rights, women’s participation in leadership in the Church is far from settled. This book is an attempt to give voice to the theology of the Orthodox Church on the subject of women’s leadership roles and abilities; or, put another way, to explore the depth and breadth of Orthodox theology, history, theological anthropology, ecclesiology, culture, and teaching on the ordination of priests and deacons. At the same time, it draws on work by Lutheran, Catholic, and Anglican theologians in the hope of an ecumenical conversation about women’s gifts and status across all traditions.

The book journeys through three themes relating to the ordination of women in the Orthodox Church. These are (a) theological anthropology, (b) diaconate and priesthood, and (c) contemporary practices. Beginning with theological anthropology in chapter 1, Fr. John Behr explores the relationship between Adam and Christ, and how this relates to being human. One of the burning issues of the day, perhaps even the defining question of our era, is what it is to be human, and how our existence as sexed and sexual beings relates to our common humanity. The relationship between these two poles—being sexed/sexual and being human—is, moreover, inscribed in Scripture in a manner that seems to set the two at odds with each other, for while the opening verses of Genesis affirms that God created the human being in his image . . . male and female he created them (Gen 1:27), the apostle asserts that in Christ not only is there neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, but also that there is neither male and female, for all are one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:28). This chapter argues that this is the framework within which theology seeks to understand both what it is to be human, and the role that sexuality plays in this.

Elizabeth Theokritoff, in chapter 2, reviews an important contribution to this question not yet published in English: Konstantinos Yokarinis, Τό ἔμφυλο ἤ ἄφυλο τοῦ σαρκωθέντος Χριστοῦ [The Incarnate Christ: Gendered or Ungendered?] (Athens: Armos, 2011). Yokarinis’s book explores gender in the ancient world and in the theological anthropology of Old Testament, New Testament, and church fathers. He discusses the theological difficulties of positing a substantive difference between human beings based on gender. In the second part of the book, Yokarinis turns to Christology, noting the inadequacy of human language. Finally, he considers the nature of ministerial priesthood, and the sense in which the priest can be seen as imaging Christ. He concludes that there are no theological reasons against ordaining women to the diaconate and priesthood, but that the final decision lies with the Church.

In chapter 3, Elena Narinskaya asks, What do we do with Eve’s curse? as it occurs in Gen 3:16. In Jewish and Christian exegetical writings, Eve is presented as one whose desire is for her husband, with her husband ruling over her. Narinskaya presents a biblical-philological analysis of the latter part of Gen 3:16, together with expressions of this verse in rabbinical interpretations, writings of the church fathers, and projections of it, which occur in the liturgical use of the Christian church. The question of divine promises and curses and their conditional nature are key to this study, as well as the question of whether we may attribute divine or human responsibility for the curse in Gen 3:16. In answer to what we do with Eve’s curse, the chapter suggests that a return to Christ, whose incarnation, death, and resurrection broke the curse, will lead to the restoration of ontological freedom and equality of human beings, be it in the relationship between the sexes, or in relationship with God.

Drawing this section to a close is Luis Josué Salés, who, in chapter 4, examines various early Christian reports that a second-century Christian congregation in Phrygia accorded women prominent ecclesiastical roles, including prophethood, priesthood, and episcopacy. The longest entry concerning these appears in Epiphanios of Salamis’s Panarion, which refers to this congregation as the Quintillianists after their leader, the prophet Quintillia. According to Epiphanios’s reports, this group based the ordination of women to all ecclesiastical ranks on Paul’s claim in Gal 3:28 that in Christ Jesus there is not male or female, on precedent established by women prophets mentioned in the Septuagint and New Testament, and on Eve’s superiority over Adam for having eaten first from the Tree of Knowledge, by which act she acquired knowledge before him. Epiphanios refutes these claims by a handful of scriptural prooftexts that in his mind defeat Quintillia’s reasoning. Salés argues that Epiphanios’s answers are dissatisfactory from a historical-theological perspective, in large part because his argument heavily relies on pseudo-Pauline material—and this material’s reinterpretation of Gen 1–3—that promotes a logic of sex-based discrimination of androprimacy. Nonetheless, Salés maintains that this discriminatory logic is in fact absent from the earliest attestations to Paul’s kerygma. From this point of view, it is especially significant that the Phrygian church was one of the first churches Paul planted, which might suggest that their unrestricted ordination of women could have been an original Pauline custom. The chapter concludes by highlighting the significance of these findings for contemporary conversations regarding women’s ordination in the Orthodox Church.

The second theme of the book moves to explore questions relating to diaconate and priesthood. Chapter 5 charts the journey of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware. The theological journey of the Metropolitan on the subject of women’s ordination is extraordinary. His first publication on this theme is an essay entitled Man, Woman, and the Priesthood of Christ, published in Man, Woman, and Priesthood (1978).¹ In this, he argues vociferously against women’s ordination to the priesthood.² Later, he began to rethink his argument, in light of the biblical texts, and his contribution to this very book outlines his change of position with respect to the theological arguments against the ordination of women. As a friend, advisor, and contributor, Metropolitan Kallistos has been an invaluable support of the Women’s Ministries Initiative from its inception.

In chapter 6, Fr. Andrew Louth, in conversation with Dionysius the Areopagite, explores an Orthodox vision of the priesthood, and asks what difference would be made if the Orthodox Church were to ordain women to the priesthood. Fr. Andrew begins by explicating the importance of the priesthood of all believers, before moving on to explore the specific function of the person who is ordained priest. He argues that the role of the priest is to draw believers into unity with God. Cautioning against decisions made from a place of fear, Fr. Andrew then discusses the interpretation of tradition and how this may change over time, drawing on slavery as his primary focus. The chapter closes by asking what the Spirit might be saying to the Church today about both the priesthood and the place of women in the Church.

The Reverend Sarah Hinlicky Wilson takes the conversation forward in chapter 7 by reviewing the contribution to the debate on the ordination of women made by the well-known French Orthodox theologian Elisabeth Behr-Sigel (1907–2005). Behr-Sigel did not contemplate the possibility of women in the priesthood until she was nearly seventy years old and invited to speak at the Agapia gathering of Orthodox women in Romania in 1976. After initially rejecting the notion on the grounds that a priest must iconographically resemble Jesus in his maleness, she gradually came to support the ordination of women because of the Church’s need for feminine gifts in its public ministry. However, in time, Behr-Sigel came to reject this argument for the ordination of women, though not the ordination of women itself, in favor of her mature position that persons rather than sexes are called to service, and that spiritual gifts are distributed by the Holy Spirit without regard to sex. She summoned patristic as well as contemporary Orthodox theology to her defense, and anchored her view within a holistic Trinitarian framework, a position she continued to advocate until her death at the age of ninety-eight. Her groundbreaking work has since functioned as the foundational argument for the ordination of women in the Orthodox Church.

In chapter 8, Mary Cunningham asks whether Mary, the Mother of God, serves as an early model for the ordination of women. Both textual and material evidence suggests a priestly role for Mary, the Mother of God, in the early Christian and Byzantine traditions. Scholars have recently argued that this proves either that Mary served as a priest during her lifetime, or, alternatively, that she was understood to assume a clerical status only in symbolic terms. This chapter reassesses the surviving evidence before offering a new solution to the problem. It argues that texts and images illustrate a larger allegorical role for Mary: she represents the royal priesthood (1 Pet 2:9), which includes both male and female members of the church. The chapter concludes that using the Virgin Mary as a model for the ordination of women in the modern Orthodox Church is problematic, since she reflects a symbolic concept of the priesthood that encompasses not only the ordained clergy, but also the entire church.

Chapter 9 draws the focus on the priesthood and diaconate to a close by utilizing the interpretive lens of the ancient liturgical principle of Lex Orandi est Lex Credendi. Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald re-examines the ramifications of Professor Evangelos Theodorou’s groundbreaking studies of the female deacon’s priesthood as exhibited through the Byzantine ordination rite. Special emphasis is placed on patristic terms, concepts, and gestures congruent with the ordination rite’s eucharistic and eschatological context, clearly and repeatedly witnessing to the priesthood of the deaconess. The study results propel FitzGerald’s conclusion that the eucharistic and eschatological context of the female deacon’s ordination deserves prayerful exploration and thoughtful attention, as well as courageous response by the Orthodox Church today.

The final phase of the book discusses different aspects of the implications on contemporary practice. In chapter 10, Carrie Frederick Frost opens by asking questions that interrogate the link between the reinstitution of the order of deaconesses and the possibility of women in the priesthood in the Orthodox Church. On the one hand, she argues, there is no link because the former is a restoration, the latter an innovation; and, given the church’s ecclesiology, each of the major orders—deacon, priest, bishop—ideally has its own, distinct expression; the diaconate is not a waypoint to the priesthood. But, on the other hand, the embodied experience of women in ordained ministry for the first time in nearly a thousand years would naturally generate new questions and discussion about women in the priesthood. In this chapter, Frost maintains that while foregone conclusions are not possible, it is natural and reasonable to expect rich conversations about the priesthood to follow the return of women to the diaconate. She furthermore maintains that the presence of deaconesses will bear certain fruits, shaping the ecclesial and lay life of the Church in ways such that a particularly fresh and sound space for conversation about the possibility of women as priests will be created. The Church ought to welcome such a conversation—without knowing its outcome—with a hermeneutic of courage and love.

Chapter 11 turns the focus from theology to practice. Here, Paul Ladouceur asks whether the ordination of women to the priesthood is a theological or a pastoral question. He states that Orthodox Christians have debated the ordination of women to clerical office for the last half-century with little agreement, and reviews the major arguments both for and against the ordination of women. Two general conclusions emerge: first, there is no decisive and irrefutable argument against the ordination of women; and second, there is no decisive and irrefutable argument why women must be ordained. To move beyond the theological stalemate, Ladouceur argues that it is time to recognize that the issue cannot be resolved by theological argument alone. A more productive approach is to consider the ordination of women as a pastoral question. This opens the door to more irenic and productive discussions, with new questions such as: Would the ordination of women assist the Orthodox Church to carry out its mission? In what circumstances? Is Orthodoxy ready for such a move? Should all local or national Orthodox churches adopt