Ordained Women in the Church Christine Marchetti
Women today have proven themselves successful in medicine, law, and virtually all other professions. Why, then, do certain churches refuse to ordain them? Some churches claim that ordaining women would be contrary to tradition and Scripture. Men, they say, have led the church for centuries, but female clergy are a relatively new phenomenon, one that reflects the influence of secular humanism and modernism, not orthodox teaching. However, this argument ignores the facts. Indeed, a Roman Catholic—hence complementarian—commission recently acknowledged a long history of women deacons in the church,1 and their findings merely echo conclusions previously published by several researchers. A consensus of scholars concludes that women were ordained deacons, presbyters, and bishops in the church through the Middle Ages. This paper will discuss the ordination of women deacons and presbyters in the Eastern and Western churches from the second century through the sixth. The continued ministries of female deacons, presbyters, and bishops in the West through the eleventh century will be studied, and the meaning of “ordination” will be examined briefly, as the ordination of men and women in the early and medieval church was not necessarily defined in the same way it is today.2 Finally, the question of why women’s ministries were curtailed will be addressed with a short survey of the views of various scholars on the subject.
Ordained Women in Scripture The first woman in church history to be called “deacon” is Phoebe in Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paul writes that Phoebe was a deacon of the church at Cenchreae (16:1). The Greek word for deacon is diakonos; it means “helper” or “minister.”3 In Paul’s general usage, the term describes the ministry of Jesus (Rom 15:8), Paul’s fellow servants, and Paul himself (Rom 15:25), all of whom preached and ministered to others. Paul attributes the same role to Phoebe.4 Diakonos also refers to a specific function, and in the Pastoral Epistles it denotes a church office,5 similar to the office of episkopē or bishop6 (1 Tim 3:1). Paul uses the term diakonos as a title to describe Phoebe’s function or office in the church.7 Several early Christian writers commented on Rom 16:1, affirming that Phoebe was an ordained deacon in the early church. According to Origen (second and third centuries), the passage “teaches that there were women ordained in the church’s ministry by the apostolic authority. . . . Not only that—they ought to be ordained into the ministry, because they helped in many ways.”8 John Chrysostom (fourth and early fifth centuries) notes that Paul honored Phoebe by naming her first in Rom 16 and mentioning “her rank of deaconesses as well.”9 In his commentary on Rom 16:1, Pelagius, a contemporary of Chrysostom, writes that “women deaconesses in the East are known to minister to their own sex in baptism or even in the ministry of the Word.”10 Theodoret, a fifth-century theologian and bishop of Cyr (a
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prominent city in northern Syria), remarks that the church at Cenchreae was so large, “it even had a woman deaconess, and one who was famous and well-known.”11
Female Deacons in the East The works of the Patristic fathers illustrate the widespread acceptance of female deacons, and in the Eastern church, several canons, literary texts, and inscriptions confirm that women deacons were members of the clergy. The Didascalia Apostolorum (DA), a third-century text, and the Apostolic Constitutions (AC), a fourth-century editing of several church orders including the DA, contain many details about women deacons. For example, both documents put forth a Trinitarian model of church offices in which the bishop represents God, the deacon Christ, and the female deacon the Holy Spirit: “the deacon stands in the place of Christ . . . let the deaconesses be honoured by you in the likeness of the Holy Ghost.”12 The AC instructs bishops on the ordination (cheirotonein) of deaconesses: “Ordain also a deaconess who is faithful and holy.”13 Cheirotonein means ordination to ministry as a member of the clergy, a clear indication that female deacons were ordained members of the church.14 A non-ecclesiastical witness to the existence of deaconesses is found in the Codex Theodosianus, compiled between 429 and 438, which deems that a woman may be “transferred to the association of deaconesses at age sixty.”15 The Council of Chalcedon (451) states that “a woman shall not be ordained as a deaconess before the age of forty,” and it exhorts her to persevere in ministry.16 The word for “ministry” here (leitourgia) usually connotes eucharistic ministry.17 Numerous letters and literary texts add to the evidence of a female diaconate in the East. Basil of Caesarea addressed a letter (dated 372) to the deaconesses who were daughters of Count Terentius.18 As Gregory of Nyssa discussed the details of his sister Macrina’s funeral in 379, he wrote, “there was one in the diaconal rank . . . Lampadion by name, who said she knew exactly what Macrina wanted for her burial.”19 John Chrysostom ordained three female deacons (diakonous) for the monastery of his friend Olympias, and Olympias herself was an ordained deacon.20 Theodoret of Cyr’s Ecclesiastical History refers to a woman who is both a deacon and a teacher.21 In addition to the above examples, Carolyn Osiek and Kevin Madigan cite no less than sixty-one inscriptions mentioning female deacons, many of which are funerary inscriptions listing the woman’s name and her title, diakonos.22
Female Deacons in the West The office of female deacon was more prominent in the East than in the West.23 Female deacons were considered members of the clergy in the East, but the Council of Orange, convened in 441, hoped to avert this practice in the West: Canon 26 stipulated that “female deacons (Latin diaconae) are by no means to be ordained.”24 In 517, the Council of Epaon repeated the prohibition
Priscilla Papers | 35/1 | Winter 2021 • 15
