Women and Ordination in the Orthodox Church

Explorations in Theology and Practice

Gabrielle Thomas, Elena Narinskaya

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781532695803
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christliche Konfessionen

Contributing Authors:Fr. John BehrDr Spyridoula Athanasopoulou-KypriouDr. Dionysios SklirisFr. Andrew LouthDr Mary CunninghamMet Kallistos WareRev Dr Sarah Hinlicky WilsonDr Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGeraldDr Carrie Frederick FrostDr Paul LadouceurLuis Josue SalesThis 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.

1

From Adam to Christ

From Male and Female to Being Human

Fr. John Behr

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.1 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 affirm 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.”2 The arc that runs from Adam to Christ, from being “in Adam” to being “in Christ,” is the fundamental polarity that defines our existence, from the moment that we enter the world to being born into life in Christ, and is the framework within which theology seeks to understand both what it is to be human and the role that sexuality plays within this.

We often theologize with already formed categories—what it is to be human and what it is to be God—and then seek to bring these together in the incarnation, to understand how in Christ divinity and humanity have become united, so that as God became human we now might become gods. The thrust of the conciliar definitions and the theological reflection that accompanies them, however, work the other way round: the one Lord Jesus Christ—the crucified and risen one, as proclaimed by the apostles in accordance with Scripture, unveiled and encountered in the breaking of the bread—defines for us what it is to be God and what it is to be human, together and simultaneously, without confusion, change, division, or separation, in one prosōpon—one “face”—and one hypostasis—one concrete being. He alone is fully divine and fully human, in one: he shows us what it is to be God in the way that he dies as a human being, voluntarily laying down his life, as one over whom death has no claim, so that it is by his death that he tramples down death and gives life to those in the tombs.

It is therefore to the one Lord Jesus Christ that we must look to understand not only what it is to be God but also what it is to be human. As Nicholas Cabasilas put it, at the end of the Byzantine era:

It was for the new human being that human nature was created at the beginning, and for him mind and desire were prepared. . . . It was not the old Adam who was the model for the new, but the new Adam for the old. . . . Because of its nature, the old Adam might be considered the archetype to those who see him first, but for him who has everything before his eyes, the older is the imitation of the second. . . . To sum it up: the Savior first and alone showed to us the true human being, who is perfect on account of both character and life and in all other respects.3

Christ is the first true human being: he is “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15), in whose image we were created. Adam was but “a type of the one to come” (Rom 5:14), as are we who have come into the world in Adam: a preliminary sketch, the starting point from which we are called to grow into “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:13).

One of the most striking examples bearing witness to this, and what it involves, is St. Ignatius of Antioch, on his way to Rome, beseeching the Christians there not to impede his coming martyrdom:

It is better for me to die in Christ Jesus than to be king over the ends of the earth. I seek him who died for our sake. I desire him who rose for us. Birth-pangs are upon me. Suffer me, my brethren; hinder me not from living, do not wish me to die. . . . Suffer me to receive the pure light; when I shall have arrived there, I shall be a human being. Suffer me to follow the example of the passion of my God.4

Our usual understanding of the fundamental categories of life and death, birth and being human, are emphatically reversed. Ignatius is not yet born, not yet living, not yet human; only by his martyrdom, in imitation of Christ, will he be born into life as a human being.

In this light, we can now see a new dimension in the opening verses of Scripture: having spoken everything else into existence—“Let there be” . . . and it was good—God announces his own particular project: “Let us make a human being in our image after our likeness” (Gen 1:26). God does not speak his project into existence with an imperative, but rather uses a subjective: his particular purpose, the only thing upon which he deliberates, is a project, initiated by God, but completed by Christ voluntarily going to the cross. Upon the cross, in the Gospel of John (which deliberately alludes in its opening verse to the opening verse of Genesis: “In the beginning”), he says “It is finished” or “It is perfected,” with Pilate having said a few verses earlier, “Behold the human being” (John 19:30, 5).5 Scripture thus opens with God setting the stage and announcing his project, and concludes with the fulfillment of this project, such that, as the Byzantine hymn for Holy Saturday, when the body of Christ lies in the tomb, says:

Moses the great mystically prefigured this present day, saying: “And God blessed the seventh day.” For this is the blessed Sabbath, this is the day of rest, on which the only-begotten Son of God rested from all his works, through the economy of death he kept the Sabbath in the flesh, and returning again through the resurrection he has granted us eternal life, for he alone is good and loves humankind [anthrōpos].6

It is by giving his own “let it be” that St. Ignatius in turn, following Christ, is born into life as a human being. If, as said above, Christ shows us what it is to be God in the way he dies as a human being, he simultaneously shows us what it is to be human in the same way, in one prosōpon and one hypostasis. Moreover, and even more strikingly, for the only work that is said to be God’s own work—making a human being in his image—we are the ones who say “let it be!”

This is a very different way of understanding the work of God than we habitually assume. We are more likely to think in terms of God’s creative work as having been completed at the beginning, as an initial perfection from which we then fell, requiring God to respond by sending his Son to restore fallen humanity. So much is this the case that from medieval times we regularly ask the question whether Christ would have become incarnate had human beings not fallen. Put crudely, we tend to think in terms of a Plan A, which we then messed up, followed by Plan B. But, equally bluntly: Christ is not Plan B! From the beginning of the proclamation of the gospel, as we saw above, Adam is spoken of as “a type of the one to come” (Rom 5:14)—an initial sketch of the fullness that is first manifest and realized in Christ alone.

I...

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