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The Ministry of Women in the Church
'With great joy, I recommend this book to all serious readers, to those who are ready to put aside their prejudices. May it be the first swallow that announces the coming of spring'-Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh (England). This book, by a leading theolgian, is a serious reexamination of the role of women in the Church. For Orthodox and Roman Catholics, especially, the question of women's ordination must be asked 'from the inside' and not only 'from the outside'. This book does not suggest final answers, but raises issues and defines their relative importance.
229 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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April 15, 2020
The two most significant obstacles for me ever seriously considering becoming Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic are these communions' restrictions on the Eucharist and their opposition to the ordination of women. Despite venerable arguments against ordaining women to the priesthood (including complementarian arguments proffered by conservative Protestants), I think denying women an equal place in ministry is becoming increasingly scandalous, especially to those outside the Church. Male Protestant scholars such as Stanley Grenz, Gordon Fee, William J. Webb, and Scot McKnight have effectively outlined the Bible's "yes" to women in ministry and they have been joined by numerous female voices as well, including Catherine Clark Kroeger, Tish Harrison Warren, the late Rachel Held Evans, and the folks at the Junia Project. Ultimately though, I have little hope that Protestant arguments in favour of women's ordination will get a hearing among the Orthodox churches or in Rome.
This is why Elisabeth Behr-Sigel's "The Ministry of Women in the Church" is such an intriguing book. I first became aware of her through Wesley Hill's review of Sarah Hinlicky Wilson's book "Woman, Women, and the Priesthood in Trinitarian Theology" in Books & Culture (RIP). Behr-Sigel (1907-2005) had a Protestant upbringing but spent the majority of her life as an Eastern Orthodox believer and theologian. In "The Ministry of Women in the Church," Behr-Sigel questions some of the prevailing Orthodox views on women serving in ministry and gently advocates for the ancient role of deaconesses to be restored to women (of course, Catholicism has women serving in the church as nuns and the priests' wife in Orthodoxy often has a special role of spiritual leader in congregational life; what this book pertains to is ordination as related to the priesthood and deaconate). Her mission in this book is more modest than a lot of Protestant egalitarians aspire to, but in a communion as immutable as Eastern Orthodoxy, it is to be welcomed.
As I read this book, I noticed many arguments already rehearsed by Protestant egalitarians; for someone familiar with the work of Grenz, Webb, Evans, and others in the "biblical equality" camp, there will be repetition (as there is within the collected essays that comprise this book). However, Behr-Sigel has a unique position as an Orthodox Christian arguing for female deaconesses from WITHIN Eastern Orthodoxy and she is well-read in the Tradition that she interrogates, as well as biblical passages that appear to deny women an ordained role in the Church.
One of the most common arguments raised in favour of women's ordination is that God was working within the human cultural conditions of biblical times, hence Scripture's reluctance to expressly commend women in pastoral ministry. This cultural conditioning can extend to values or postures that are deemed to be "masculine" and "feminine;" for instance, many complementarians even today insist that men are more rational compared to emotional women. Behr-Sigel writes:
"Jesus fully assumed his historical condition as a masculine human being, but the values that he exalted, especially in the Sermon on the Mount, are those which according to cultural tradition, especially in the West, are supposed to be feminine: gentleness, humility (Mt. 11:29), forgiveness of offenses, and nonviolence (see Mt. 5). In opposition to the classical, virile, and unfeeling hero, Jesus did not attempt to put down his emotions. For instance, he wept at the tomb of his friend (Jn. 11:34-35). His relations with women show no trace of domination or seduction; there is no sign either of an idealization of femininity" (p. 62).
Jesus himself scandalously reflected both “masculine” and “feminine” values of his day, perhaps even expressing “feminine” values more consistently. To those who insist that by our Creational nature, men and women have been designed with differences in demeanour and values, Behr-Sigel remarks that this ignores the power and gifting of the Holy Spirit:
"the charisms that structure the Church and define its various ministries are given by the Spirit to persons and not to social and biological categories. The distribution of these spiritual gifts is not guided by the criteria that govern the distribution of ranks and tasks in the present age: race, nation, fortune, sex. There is no mention in Paul's letter of FEMININE CHARISMS which would be different from those given to men. This idea of FEMININE CHARISMS is very dear to certain modern defenders of femininity, especially male ones, but the use of this idea runs the risk of being a mystification...the idea cannot be based on the conception of charisms as we find it in Paul's writings" (p. 71).
This is NOT to say that Behr-Sigel wants to do away with male and female difference, to make it all a blur. She affirms that unique dignity and capacity of being made male and female. Behr-Sigel then critiques those who rely too much on unquestioned tradition. She writes "the concepts of TRADITION and NATURE which are used to justify" excluding women from deep theological discussion because they are deemed less rational "are quite ambiguous. Are these concepts petrified mental habits, holdovers from paganism, or do they come from the transmission of the fire of divine revelation? And really, what NATURE are we talking about? Is it the broken and torn nature of Adam and Eve in their fallen condition or the nature of the new creature reunified and reconciled in Christ (p. 105)?
Further:
"in the East as well as the West, Church practice as it concerns women is often a compromise between the Gospel affirmation of the equal dignity in Christ of men and women and a persistent pagan mentality that says that women are inferior, incomplete (even going so far as to deny that they have an immortal soul) and demonic beings. Because of the desire they stir up, women are seen as upsetting the well-ordered society established by males who objectivize and condemn in them their own concupiscence. The Gospel yeast nonetheless continues to raise the heavy dough of historical Christianity" (p. 116).
Especially among the Orthodox and Catholics, Mary the mother of Jesus has a more hallowed place than in much of evangelicalism. Mary was open to God, proclaiming "Here I am, a servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word" (Lk. 1:38). Mary's openness is affirmed, but it is this very openness, this willingness to God's Word, that should be practiced by ALL Christians, male and female alike. Behr-Sigel explains "Mary thus does not appear at all as a model just for women, as the archetype of feminine humility. Her humility is ontological and not psychological; it is the humility of an obedient humanity standing before God. This is how we must understand her holiness" (p. 78).
As stated, while not coming as far as arguing for women's ordination to the priesthood, Behr-Sigel DOES express support for recovering the tradition of female deaconesses. She explains that:
"During the patristic period, the deaconesses took communion around the altar with the clergy. They helped the priest during the baptismal unction of women, but did not have the right to actually baptize except in emergency cases. Before and after baptism, they taught women the rudiments of the faith as well as the duties of Christian women. They visited sick women and brought them communion. The deaconesses were generally chosen from among the 'widows' or 'virgins,' but some were married as was the case of Gregory of Nyssa's wife. She became a deaconess after her husband was elected bishop" (pp. 173-74).
(This is itself interesting as in my understanding, Orthodox bishops cannot be married and a priest cannot take a wife after he has been ordained to the priesthood but only before).
The female deaconate gradually declined, at one point merely being honourary, until it was dispensed with altogether, though some modern attempts have been made to try to restore it, particularly in Russia (p. 174).
Conservatives often believe that ordaining women will inevitably lead down the road to theological liberalism - "better to stay the course rather than revisit our position on women in ministry lest be become like the worst excesses of the Protestant mainline." Behr-Sigel questions this reasoning:
"We must naturally avoid scandalizing the weak ones, so we are told by those who want to justify maintaining these customs. This is the argument we hear even though these customs are foreign to the Gospel and to the light-filled anthropology of the Fathers. They in fact go far beyond the Old Testament and have their roots in ancient anxieties. Ought we not rather to be concerned about scandalizing those, more numerous than we might think, who are shocked by the clash between this literal legalism, fed by the ghosts of an immense and collective unconsciousness, and the liberating dynamism of the Gospel" (p. 222)?
Behr-Sigel not only sees Scripture and the Church Fathers of affirming a greater role for women in church ministry but she demonstrates a perhaps surprising "missional" concern for those looking in on Christianity from the outside and who are repelled by the Church's seeming reluctance to apply the liberating power of the Gospel.
Compared to liberal Christian feminists such as Evans, Nadia Bolz-Weber, and Sarah Bessey, Behr-Sigel is not as radical. Yet she sees that "the contemporary women's movement (rather than the 'feminist' movement) is, in spite of its weaknesses, a sign of that secret and irresistible force of the Spirit that is lifting humanity toward the Kingdom of the life-giving Trinity. This movement is certainly an ambiguous and sometimes irritating sign, written in clumsy letters and spoken of in consciously provocative terms," yet "Despite its excesses, violence, and distorting simplification, the women's movement asks serious questions of the Churches" and it is, in its own way, prophetic (p. 107). Indeed, Behr-Sigel sees the women's movement as ultimately having its roots in New Testament Christianity through the Spirit's liberation though now it is:
"being cut off from its spiritual roots, and being secularized and made profane, has become 'feminist' and in the process has caused a deep and widely spread identity crisis. In societies dominated by perverted masculine values, by sin, by a spirit of competition and domination and an appetite for power and pleasure, women end up denying their own most profound being, open as it is to the inspirations from On High. Sexual differentiation is reduced to a biological accident and femininity becomes the product of social pressures, or rather, social oppressions" (p. 110).
Behr-Sigel remarks that "the feminine deaconate should in no way be seen as a substitute for their participation in the presbyterial ministry. Nor should it serve as an alibi for avoiding a serious theological reflection about the ordination of women to the priesthood" (p. 174). Despite her own modest mission to recover the order of female deaconesses, perhaps this quote tips Behr-Sigel's hand to an even larger possibility for women to be ordained as priests.
As a Protestant, this strikes me as a remarkable book. For one, most modern female Catholic theologians often have a questionable orthodoxy (e.g. Rosemary Radford Ruether and Elizabeth A. Johnson) and I cannot name another modern female Orthodox theologian save perhaps Edith Humphrey and Frederica Mathewes-Green, both of whom also converted from Protestantism. Orthodoxy is still mysterious to me (as the Orthodox would like it to be) so it’s harder for me to “place” this book in a theological landscape; at times it seems as if there was a notable biological hierarchy among men and women, at least in Orthodoxy. Still, what sets Behr-Sigel apart from Ruether and Johnson or the likes of Bessey and Bolz-Weber is that she seems to write prophetically within a tradition while garnering the respect of prominent Orthodox theologians including Kallistos Ware, Anthony Bloom, and Thomas Hopko. She frequently cites the work of Paul Evdokimov as one of the only modern Orthodox theologians to consider the role of women in Eastern Orthodoxy. For Protestants hoping to converse with Orthodox and Catholic Christians on women’s ordination, this is a crucial book to read.
This is why Elisabeth Behr-Sigel's "The Ministry of Women in the Church" is such an intriguing book. I first became aware of her through Wesley Hill's review of Sarah Hinlicky Wilson's book "Woman, Women, and the Priesthood in Trinitarian Theology" in Books & Culture (RIP). Behr-Sigel (1907-2005) had a Protestant upbringing but spent the majority of her life as an Eastern Orthodox believer and theologian. In "The Ministry of Women in the Church," Behr-Sigel questions some of the prevailing Orthodox views on women serving in ministry and gently advocates for the ancient role of deaconesses to be restored to women (of course, Catholicism has women serving in the church as nuns and the priests' wife in Orthodoxy often has a special role of spiritual leader in congregational life; what this book pertains to is ordination as related to the priesthood and deaconate). Her mission in this book is more modest than a lot of Protestant egalitarians aspire to, but in a communion as immutable as Eastern Orthodoxy, it is to be welcomed.
As I read this book, I noticed many arguments already rehearsed by Protestant egalitarians; for someone familiar with the work of Grenz, Webb, Evans, and others in the "biblical equality" camp, there will be repetition (as there is within the collected essays that comprise this book). However, Behr-Sigel has a unique position as an Orthodox Christian arguing for female deaconesses from WITHIN Eastern Orthodoxy and she is well-read in the Tradition that she interrogates, as well as biblical passages that appear to deny women an ordained role in the Church.
One of the most common arguments raised in favour of women's ordination is that God was working within the human cultural conditions of biblical times, hence Scripture's reluctance to expressly commend women in pastoral ministry. This cultural conditioning can extend to values or postures that are deemed to be "masculine" and "feminine;" for instance, many complementarians even today insist that men are more rational compared to emotional women. Behr-Sigel writes:
"Jesus fully assumed his historical condition as a masculine human being, but the values that he exalted, especially in the Sermon on the Mount, are those which according to cultural tradition, especially in the West, are supposed to be feminine: gentleness, humility (Mt. 11:29), forgiveness of offenses, and nonviolence (see Mt. 5). In opposition to the classical, virile, and unfeeling hero, Jesus did not attempt to put down his emotions. For instance, he wept at the tomb of his friend (Jn. 11:34-35). His relations with women show no trace of domination or seduction; there is no sign either of an idealization of femininity" (p. 62).
Jesus himself scandalously reflected both “masculine” and “feminine” values of his day, perhaps even expressing “feminine” values more consistently. To those who insist that by our Creational nature, men and women have been designed with differences in demeanour and values, Behr-Sigel remarks that this ignores the power and gifting of the Holy Spirit:
"the charisms that structure the Church and define its various ministries are given by the Spirit to persons and not to social and biological categories. The distribution of these spiritual gifts is not guided by the criteria that govern the distribution of ranks and tasks in the present age: race, nation, fortune, sex. There is no mention in Paul's letter of FEMININE CHARISMS which would be different from those given to men. This idea of FEMININE CHARISMS is very dear to certain modern defenders of femininity, especially male ones, but the use of this idea runs the risk of being a mystification...the idea cannot be based on the conception of charisms as we find it in Paul's writings" (p. 71).
This is NOT to say that Behr-Sigel wants to do away with male and female difference, to make it all a blur. She affirms that unique dignity and capacity of being made male and female. Behr-Sigel then critiques those who rely too much on unquestioned tradition. She writes "the concepts of TRADITION and NATURE which are used to justify" excluding women from deep theological discussion because they are deemed less rational "are quite ambiguous. Are these concepts petrified mental habits, holdovers from paganism, or do they come from the transmission of the fire of divine revelation? And really, what NATURE are we talking about? Is it the broken and torn nature of Adam and Eve in their fallen condition or the nature of the new creature reunified and reconciled in Christ (p. 105)?
Further:
"in the East as well as the West, Church practice as it concerns women is often a compromise between the Gospel affirmation of the equal dignity in Christ of men and women and a persistent pagan mentality that says that women are inferior, incomplete (even going so far as to deny that they have an immortal soul) and demonic beings. Because of the desire they stir up, women are seen as upsetting the well-ordered society established by males who objectivize and condemn in them their own concupiscence. The Gospel yeast nonetheless continues to raise the heavy dough of historical Christianity" (p. 116).
Especially among the Orthodox and Catholics, Mary the mother of Jesus has a more hallowed place than in much of evangelicalism. Mary was open to God, proclaiming "Here I am, a servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word" (Lk. 1:38). Mary's openness is affirmed, but it is this very openness, this willingness to God's Word, that should be practiced by ALL Christians, male and female alike. Behr-Sigel explains "Mary thus does not appear at all as a model just for women, as the archetype of feminine humility. Her humility is ontological and not psychological; it is the humility of an obedient humanity standing before God. This is how we must understand her holiness" (p. 78).
As stated, while not coming as far as arguing for women's ordination to the priesthood, Behr-Sigel DOES express support for recovering the tradition of female deaconesses. She explains that:
"During the patristic period, the deaconesses took communion around the altar with the clergy. They helped the priest during the baptismal unction of women, but did not have the right to actually baptize except in emergency cases. Before and after baptism, they taught women the rudiments of the faith as well as the duties of Christian women. They visited sick women and brought them communion. The deaconesses were generally chosen from among the 'widows' or 'virgins,' but some were married as was the case of Gregory of Nyssa's wife. She became a deaconess after her husband was elected bishop" (pp. 173-74).
(This is itself interesting as in my understanding, Orthodox bishops cannot be married and a priest cannot take a wife after he has been ordained to the priesthood but only before).
The female deaconate gradually declined, at one point merely being honourary, until it was dispensed with altogether, though some modern attempts have been made to try to restore it, particularly in Russia (p. 174).
Conservatives often believe that ordaining women will inevitably lead down the road to theological liberalism - "better to stay the course rather than revisit our position on women in ministry lest be become like the worst excesses of the Protestant mainline." Behr-Sigel questions this reasoning:
"We must naturally avoid scandalizing the weak ones, so we are told by those who want to justify maintaining these customs. This is the argument we hear even though these customs are foreign to the Gospel and to the light-filled anthropology of the Fathers. They in fact go far beyond the Old Testament and have their roots in ancient anxieties. Ought we not rather to be concerned about scandalizing those, more numerous than we might think, who are shocked by the clash between this literal legalism, fed by the ghosts of an immense and collective unconsciousness, and the liberating dynamism of the Gospel" (p. 222)?
Behr-Sigel not only sees Scripture and the Church Fathers of affirming a greater role for women in church ministry but she demonstrates a perhaps surprising "missional" concern for those looking in on Christianity from the outside and who are repelled by the Church's seeming reluctance to apply the liberating power of the Gospel.
Compared to liberal Christian feminists such as Evans, Nadia Bolz-Weber, and Sarah Bessey, Behr-Sigel is not as radical. Yet she sees that "the contemporary women's movement (rather than the 'feminist' movement) is, in spite of its weaknesses, a sign of that secret and irresistible force of the Spirit that is lifting humanity toward the Kingdom of the life-giving Trinity. This movement is certainly an ambiguous and sometimes irritating sign, written in clumsy letters and spoken of in consciously provocative terms," yet "Despite its excesses, violence, and distorting simplification, the women's movement asks serious questions of the Churches" and it is, in its own way, prophetic (p. 107). Indeed, Behr-Sigel sees the women's movement as ultimately having its roots in New Testament Christianity through the Spirit's liberation though now it is:
"being cut off from its spiritual roots, and being secularized and made profane, has become 'feminist' and in the process has caused a deep and widely spread identity crisis. In societies dominated by perverted masculine values, by sin, by a spirit of competition and domination and an appetite for power and pleasure, women end up denying their own most profound being, open as it is to the inspirations from On High. Sexual differentiation is reduced to a biological accident and femininity becomes the product of social pressures, or rather, social oppressions" (p. 110).
Behr-Sigel remarks that "the feminine deaconate should in no way be seen as a substitute for their participation in the presbyterial ministry. Nor should it serve as an alibi for avoiding a serious theological reflection about the ordination of women to the priesthood" (p. 174). Despite her own modest mission to recover the order of female deaconesses, perhaps this quote tips Behr-Sigel's hand to an even larger possibility for women to be ordained as priests.
As a Protestant, this strikes me as a remarkable book. For one, most modern female Catholic theologians often have a questionable orthodoxy (e.g. Rosemary Radford Ruether and Elizabeth A. Johnson) and I cannot name another modern female Orthodox theologian save perhaps Edith Humphrey and Frederica Mathewes-Green, both of whom also converted from Protestantism. Orthodoxy is still mysterious to me (as the Orthodox would like it to be) so it’s harder for me to “place” this book in a theological landscape; at times it seems as if there was a notable biological hierarchy among men and women, at least in Orthodoxy. Still, what sets Behr-Sigel apart from Ruether and Johnson or the likes of Bessey and Bolz-Weber is that she seems to write prophetically within a tradition while garnering the respect of prominent Orthodox theologians including Kallistos Ware, Anthony Bloom, and Thomas Hopko. She frequently cites the work of Paul Evdokimov as one of the only modern Orthodox theologians to consider the role of women in Eastern Orthodoxy. For Protestants hoping to converse with Orthodox and Catholic Christians on women’s ordination, this is a crucial book to read.
September 27, 2015
Донякъде остаряло - през времето изминало откакто е писана книгата аргументите са доста рафинирани, на някои места според мен има грешки (основно в патристиката), но като цяло добре напипваща нещата и стимулираща книга.
Исторически, в Православната църква Бер Сижел е като бяла лястовица - но в нейния случай тя води след себе си ято от млади и способни учени, за които е била вдъхновение.
Исторически, в Православната църква Бер Сижел е като бяла лястовица - но в нейния случай тя води след себе си ято от млади и способни учени, за които е била вдъхновение.
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July 11, 2020Good book but it’s criminal how poorly proofread this edition (SVS Press 1999) is
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