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ÐAlexander Schmemann 

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St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 3,
1973, pp. 239-243
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Dear Friend: 

When you asked me to outline the Orthodox reaction to
the idea of women's ordination to the priesthood, I
thought at first that to do so would not be too
difficult. It is not difficult indeed simply to state
that the Orthodox Church is against women's
priesthood, and to enumerate as fully as possible the
dogmatical, canonical, and spiritual reasons for that
opposition. At a second thought, however, I became
convinced that such an answer would be not only
useless but even harmful. Useless because all such
"formal" reasons - scriptural, traditional, canonical
- are well known to the advocates of women's
ordination, as is also our general ecclesiological
stand which, depending on their mood and current
priorities, our Western brothers either hail as
Orthodoxy's "main ecumenical contribution" or dismiss
as archaic, narrow-minded and irrelevant. Harmful
because, true formally, this answer would still
vitiate the real Orthodox position by reducing it to a
theological context and perspective alien to the
Orthodox mind. For the Orthodox Church has never faced
this question; it is for us totally extrinsic, a casus
irrealis for which we find no basis, no terms of
reference in our Tradition, in the very experience of
the Church, and for the discussion of which we are
therefore simply not prepared. 

Such then is my difficulty. I cannot discuss the
problem itself because to do so would necessitate the
elucidation of our approach, not to women and to
priesthood only, but above all to God in His Triune
Life, to Creation, Fall and Redemption, to the Church
and the mystery of her life, to the deification of man
and the consummation of all things in Christ. Short of
all this, it would remain incomprehensible, I am sure,
why the ordination of women to priesthood for us is
tantamount to a radical and irreparable mutilation of
the entire faith, the rejection of the whole Scripture
- and needless to say, the end of all "dialogues" ....
Short of all this, my answer will sound like another
"conservative" and "traditional" defense of the status
quo, of precisely that which many Christians today,
having heard it too many times, reject as hypocrisy,
lack of openness to God's will, blindness to the
world, etc. Obviously enough, those who reject
Tradition will not listen once more to an argument ex
traditione.... 

But to what will they listen? Our amazement - and the
Orthodox reaction is above all that of amazement - is
precisely about the strange and to us incomprehensible
hastiness with which the question of women's
ordination was first accepted as an issue, then
quickly reduced to the level of a "disciplinary
matter," and finally identified as an issue of policy
to be dealt with by vote! In this strange situation
all I can do is to try to convey to you this amazement
by briefly enumerating its main "components" as I see
and understand them. 

The first dimension of our amazement can be termed
"ecumenical." The debate on women's ordination reveals
something which we suspected for a long time but which
now is confirmed beyond any doubt: the truly built-in
indifference of the Christian West to anything beyond
the sphere of its own problematics, of its own
experience. I can only repeat here what I have said
before: even the so-called "ecumenical movement,"
notwithstanding its claims to the contrary, has always
been and still is a purely Western phenomenon, based
on Western presuppositions and determined by a
specifically Western "agenda." This is not "pride" or
"arrogance." On the contrary, the Christian West is
almost obsessed with a guilt complex and enjoys
nothing better than self-criticism and
self-condemnation. It is plagued with a total
inability to transcend itself, to accept the simple
idea that its own experience, problems, thought forms
and priorities may not be universal, that it may need
to be evaluated and judged in the light of a truly
universal, truly "catholic" experience. Western
Christians almost enthusiastically judge and condemn
themselves Ñ but on their own terms, within their own
hopelessly "Western" perspective. Thus when they
decide Ñ on the basis of their own, possibly limited
and fragmented, specifically Western "cultural
situation" Ñ that they must "repair" injustices made
to women, they plan to do it immediately and without
even asking what the "others" may think about it, and
are sincerely amazed and even saddened by the lack, on
the part of these "others," of ecumenical spirit,
sympathy and comprehension. 

Personally I have often enough criticized the
historical limitations of the Orthodox mentality not
to have the right to say in all sincerity that to me
the debate on women's ordination seems to be
provincial, deeply marked and even determined by
Western self-centeredness and self-sufficiency, by a
naive, almost childish conviction that every "trend"
in Western culture justifies a radical rethinking of
the entire Christian Tradition. How many such "trends"
we have witnessed during the last decades of our
troubled century! How many corresponding "theologies"!
The difference this time however is that one deals in
this particular debate not with a passing intellectual
and academic "fad" - like the "death of God," "secular
city," "celebration of life," etc. - which, after it
has produced a couple of ephemeral best-sellers simply
disappears, but with the threat of an irreversible and
irreparable act which, if it becomes reality, will
produce a new, and this time I am convinced final,
division among Christians, will signify, at least for
the Orthodox, the end of all dialogues.... 

It is well known that the advocates of women's
ordination explain the scriptural and the traditional
exclusion of women from the ministry by cultural
"conditioning." If Christ did not include women into
the twelve, if the Church for centuries did not
include them into its priesthood, it is because of the
"culture" which would have made it impossible and
unthinkable then. It is not my purpose to discuss here
the theological and exegetical implications of this
view as well as its purely historical basis which,
incidentally, seems to me extremely weak and shaky.
What is truly amazing is that, while absolutely
convinced that they understand past "cultures," the
advocates of women's ordination seem to be so totally
unaware of their own cultural "conditioning," of their
own surrender to "culture." 

How else can one explain their readiness to accept
what may prove to be a passing phenomenon, and what at
any rate is a phenomenon barely at its beginning (not
to speak of the womenÕs liberation movement which at
present is nothing but search and experimentation), as
a sufficient justification for a radical change in the
very structure of the Church? How else, furthermore,
are we to explain that this movement is accepted on
its own terms, i.e., within the perspective of
"rights," "justice," "equality," etc., all categories
whose ability adequately to express Christian faith
and to be applied as such within the Church is, to say
the least, questionable? 

The sad truth is that the very idea of women's
ordination as it is present and discussed today is the
result of too many confusions and reductions. If its
root is surrender to "culture," its pattern of
development is shaped by a surrender to "clericalism."
It is indeed almost entirely dominated by the old
"clerical" view of the Church and the double
"reduction" inherent in it: the reduction on the one
hand of the Church to a Òpower structure"; the
reduction on the other hand of that power structure to
clergy. To the alleged "inferiority" of women within
the secular power structure corresponds their
"inferiority," i.e., their exclusion from the clergy,
within the ecclesiastical power structure. To their
"liberation" in the secular society must therefore
correspond their "liberation," i.e., ordination, in
the Church. 

But the Church simply cannot be reduced to these
categories. As long as we try to measure the ineffable
mystery of her life by concepts and ideas a priory
alien to her very essence, we literally mutilate her,
and her real power, her glory and beauty, her
transcendent truth simply escape us. 

This is why in concluding this letter I can only
confess, without explaining and justifying this
confession by any "proofs," that the non-ordination of
women to the priesthood has nothing, absolutely
nothing to do with whatever "inferiority" we can
invent or imagine. In the essential reality which
alone constitutes he content of our faith and shapes
the entire life of the Church, in the reality of the
Kingdom of God which is perfect communion, perfect
knowledge, perfect love and ultimately the
"deification" of man, there is truly "neither male nor
female." More than that, in this reality of which we
are made partakers here and now, we all - men and
women, without any distinction - are "kings and
priests," for it is essential priesthood of the human
nature and vocation that the Christ has restored to
us. 

It is of this priestly life, it is of this ultimate
reality that the Church is both gift and acceptance.
And that she may be this, that she may always and
everywhere be the gift of the Spirit without any
measure or limitations, the Son of God offered Himself
in a unique sacrifice, and made this unique sacrifice
and this unique priesthood the very foundation, indeed
the very "form" of the Church. This priesthood is
Christ's, not ours. Not only have none of us, men or
women, any "right" to it, but it is emphatically not
one of the human vocations analogous, even if
superior, to all others. The priest in the Church is
not "another" priest, and the sacrifice he offers is
not "another" sacrifice. It is forever and only
Christ's priesthood and Christ's sacrifice, for in the
words of our Prayer of Offertory, "it is Thou who
offerest and Thou who art offered, it is Thou who
receivest and Thou who distributest .... "And thus the
"institutional" priesthood in the Church has no
"ontology" of its own. It exists only to make Christ
Himself present, to make His unique Priesthood and His
unique Sacrifice the source of the Church's life and
the "acquisition" by men of the Holy Spirit. And if
the bearer, the icon, and the fulfiller of that unique
priesthood is man and not woman, it is because Christ
is man and not woman.... 

Why? This of course is the only important, the only
relevant question, the one that no "culture," no
"sociology," no "history," and even no "exegesis" can
answer. For it can be answered only by theology in the
primordial and essential meaning of that word in the
Church, as the contemplation and vision of the Truth
itself, as communion with the uncreated Divine Light.
It is only here, in this purified and restored vision,
that we might begin to understand why the ineffable
mystery of the relationship between God and His
creation, between God and His chosen people, between
God and His Church is "essentially" revealed to us as
a nuptial mystery, as the fulfillment of a mystical
marriage; why, in other terms, creation itself, the
Church herself, man and the world themselves, when
contemplated in their ultimate truth and destiny, are
revealed to us as a Bride, as a Woman clothed in the
sun; why in the very depth of her love and knowledge,
of her joy and communion, the Church identifies
herself with one Woman whom she exalts as "more
honorable than the Cherubim, and beyond compare more
glorious than the Seraphim." 

Is it this mystery that has to be "understood" by
means of our broken and fallen world which knows and
experiences itself only in its brokenness and
fragmentation, in its tensions and dichotomies, and
which as such is incapable of the ultimate vision? Or
is it this vision and this unique experience that must
again become for us the "means" of our understanding
of the world, the starting point and the very
possibility of a truly divine victory over all that in
this world is but human, historical, and cultural? 

Alexander Schmemann