Facing Women in the East
Women and the Priesthood
edited by Thomas Hopko
Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1999
(260 pages; $13.95, paper)
reviewed by Richard J. Mammana, Jr.
The declaration of an unofficial meeting of Orthodox and Old Catholic theologians in 1996 that “there are no binding dogmatic reasons present against the admission of women to priestly service”1 caused eyebrows to rise throughout the ecclesiastical world. Were the Orthodox changing their minds? While the Bild Christi und Geschlecht conferences (in Poland and Switzerland) at which that statement was drawn up were not official and did not offer any directive to the respective communions to begin the ordination of women, the words rang oddly in Orthodox Christian ears. The conference’s deliberations (which run to some 281 pages, and are still not published in English), include 14 essays on “The Image of Christ and Gender.” They are at odds on some points with the commonly accepted teachings of Orthodoxy on the matters they address.
That a different perspective was being brought to the ongoing debate in Orthodoxy about the place of women in the Church, and the possibility of their ordination to the priesthood, was further clear with the appearance in 1999 of a new edition of Women and the Priesthood, edited by Dean Thomas Hopko of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in Crestwood, New York. The original edition appeared in 1983, and changes in tone, opinion, method, and viewpoint are clear in the 1999 edition.
The sands have shifted in the ecumenical world to no little degree since the first edition. In the Roman Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II would appear to have settled the question of women’s ordination in Inter insigniores, Mulieris dignitatem, Ordinatio sacerdotalis, and, most recently, Ad tuendam fidem, with a decidedly negative response. In catholic-minded traditions that do not have a Magisterium to teach definitively on matters that arise in the development of doctrine and life in the Church, the issue is, on the other hand, more muddled.
In Anglicanism and Old Catholicism, for instance, traditionalist groups hold out with the contention that the ordination of women to the priesthood is an alteration of apostolic teaching and catholic order, while splinter groups and their closely related sects of episcopi vagantes proliferate in response to the official practice of both communions. The effects of women’s ordination have been largely negative—declining numbers of communicants, significant shifts in teaching on the nature of Christian marriage, and even departures from orthodox Trinitarian and incarnational doctrine. Despite these actualities, there appears to be no sign of reversal (which is, officially, still quite possible at least in Anglicanism) in these two bodies, though Southern Baptists—the largest of the Protestant churches—have overwhelmingly reaffirmed their decision not to ordain women.
Currents in Orthodoxy have not remained stable since 1983 either. Still, Hopko makes it clear that “no author in the present volume calls for the ordination of women bishops and priests in the Orthodox Church.” But at least one hierarch—Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh—and several prominent theologians, among them Dr. Elizabeth Behr-Sigel, Dr. Susan Ashbrook-Harvey, and Dr. Constantinos N. Giokarines, support the ordination of women to the priesthood in the Orthodox Church. So do contributors to periodicals such as the St. Nina Quarterly and the Australian Martha and Mary journal. According to Hopko, “they say, simply speaking, that the ordination of women is compatible with, and even demanded by, the anthropology of the Church fathers.”
With such a change in attitudes among clergy and laity alike, a new edition was certainly necessary. Below, I examine each of the essays in its 1983 and 1999 editions.
No Biblical Precedent
George Barrois, who died in 1987, was a biblical archeologist and a convert to Orthodox Christianity. His essay on “Women and the Priestly Office According to the Scriptures” is one of two essays presented without change (except for typographical corrections) from the 1983 edition. The subject for him “is one of burning actuality.” “Only in relation” to “the historic work of Christ,” he writes, “can we ascertain the part of women in the ongoing economy of salvation in and through the Church.”
His aim, then, is “to examine the biblical data in its historical context.” A survey of both the Torah and later Scripture “does not support the thesis of a radical inferiority of women in biblical culture.” For example, the ministry of prophets in Scripture is one aspect of women’s public involvement in the life of Israel. “Biological factors play no part in the exercise of the prophetic charism . . . because it draws its origin not from the will of men but from the Holy Spirit.” But the priesthood for Israel was another matter altogether: “The difference of sexes was a determining element in the organization of Hebrew worship.”
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on ministry from the online archives
32.1—January/February 2019
Sex, Women's Ordination & the Rejection of Hierarchy & Equality by James A. Altena
more from the online archives
18.10—December 2005
on an Apostle’s Encounter with the Son’s Children by Anthony Esolen
28.6—Nov/Dec 2015
on the Deepest Longings of the Restless & the Lonely by William Graddy
22.5—June 2009
C. S. Lewis on Civilization & the Natural Order by Timothy L. Hall
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
