St. Phoebe the Deaconess

The ordination of Sister Angelic Molen to the diaconate by Metropolitan Serafim (Kykotis) of Zimbabwe raises questions on a number of levels. These range from the comparative nature and function of the male and female diaconate historically to Sister Angelic’s ordination specifically.

I offer my thoughts in a charitable spirit of critical thinking. Some of our reverend blogging theologues need to be reminded that “critical” thinking does not mean criticizing, condemning, mocking, ad hominem attacks, unilaterally declaring new heresies—never complete without the embarrassing puerility of scare quotes. How joyless and exhausting must it be for a parish priest who sets himself up as the sole arbiter of true Orthodoxy in a terrifying vortex of schismatics and heretics.

This essay is guaranteed to please no one. I agree and disagree in part with disputants on both sides. “Progressive” and “conservative,” as categories of fallen human life, have no place in Orthodox theology and praxis. Neither progressivism nor conservatism sets us free, but Truth. Christ called Himself neither Progressivism nor Conservatism, but Truth. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, not of progressivism or conservatism. The Orthodox faith is neither progressive nor conservative, but true. I believe it was Paul Evdokimov who wrote that “liberalism liberates no one and conservatism conserves nothing.” “Progressive” and “conservative” Orthodox resemble each other in the unfailing predictability of their views on every topic. Postmodern controversies within Orthodoxy seldom ever represent a case of fundamentalism vs. non-fundamentalism, but of dueling fundamentalisms. Our ascetical task as the pillar and ground of Truth is to resist sinful divisions and partisanship in the Church with all the spiritual resources placed at our disposal by divine grace, which always heals what is infirm and completes what is lacking. In this way, loving one another, we may with one mind confess the fulness of Truth. The struggle for mystical oneness with all in the Church after the likeness of the Holy Trinity is waged in the heart of each and every one of us. We all fail every day. We are all called to a repentant change of mind and heart every day.   

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I begin on a note of heartfelt congratulations and prayers for Sister Angelic. Her impressive record of diakonia to her Orthodox brothers and sisters, and her dignified bearing even in her photos, make it impossible not to love and respect her as a glowing star of her parish, her archdiocese, her patriarchate, and the universal Orthodox Church. We are blessed to have her as our sister in Christ.

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My knowledge of the female diaconate comes from an hours-long conversation with a doctoral candidate during the first year of my priesthood thirty-five years ago. Her research focused on the history of the female diaconate. I refrain from naming her because she lives quietly as a priest’s wife, mother, and grandmother who has done nothing to deserve being thrust into the crosshairs of the hatred that too often masquerades as faithfulness to Tradition.

I went into the conversation highly skeptical. I felt that the ordination of women was antithetical to Orthodoxy. Yet, I was willing to listen and to ask intelligent questions. While I still strongly oppose the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate in the Orthodox Church (what other faith communities do does not concern me), I left our conversation that evening fully convinced of the legitimacy, indeed the desirability, of restoring the female diaconate under the right conditions. I have spent almost four decades during and after my priesthood hoping to witness this restoration in my lifetime.

After reading the positive accounts of Sister Angelic’s ordination, however, I’m not at all persuaded that the Alexandrian Patriarchate’s decision to ordain her meets a traditional metric of what I proffer as “the right conditions.” 

From what I have seen of current Orthodox scholarship on deaconesses, the basic historical outlines seem not to differ substantively from my friend’s telling almost forty years ago:

1. Deaconesses were ordained by laying-on of hands at the altar table during the Divine Liturgy, as are the three orders of male clergy.
2. Deaconesses received Communion with the clergy in the altar, in order after the deacons, not with the laity.
3. Deaconesses were liturgically non-interchangeable with deacons, and wore different vestments from deacons. Their liturgical role consisted of assisting with female baptisms at a time when baptizands received the pre-baptismal anointing and baptism fully disrobed. They also offered practical assistance in the women’s section of the church at a time when the genders were segregated during divine services.
4. Outside of divine services, their role consisted of ministry to women, such as taking Communion to homebound women.
5. Mandatory celibacy (whether widowed or never married) was imposed on deaconesses at a time when married men were ordained to the diaconate, priesthood, and episcopate.
6. The canonical age for deaconesses was originally set at 60, later lowered to 40, at a time when the canonical age was 25 for deacons, 30 for priests, and 35 for bishops.
7. The order of deaconess faded away slowly until their disappearance in the 13^th century. It was never formally abolished. St. Nektarios of Aegina is said to have ordained a monastic deaconess in the early 20^th century.

My friend had uncovered no explanation for the requirement of celibacy. She conjectured that a married female diaconate would create the anomaly and inevitable conflicts of a deaconess having two heads, her husband and her bishop.

I don’t recall whether we discussed the reasons for a significantly higher canonical age than male clergy. My personal guess is that a widowed deaconess’ children should have reached adulthood and be on their own, while a never-married deaconess should have passed the age of deciding to marry and have children.

It seems to me that the historical female diaconate comprised an order of semi-monastic women, perhaps not unlike Roman Catholic nuns today who belong to orders active in teaching school, nursing, catechesis, missionary work, etc., rather than to one of the more contemplative orders. When I was growing up in the pre-V2 Catholic Church, every sizable parish had a convent housing a few nuns who engaged in teaching children’s catechism classes and other forms of parish ministry.

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In light of these historical (some would say traditional) considerations, the ordination of a young wife and mother for a liturgical role identical to that of the male diaconate represents, in my view, neither a restoration of the female diaconate nor its renewal (a semantic distinction insisted upon by a colleague in Orthodox theology and advocate for the female diaconate whom I respect). Alexandria has restored or renewed nothing. Rather, we see the creation of an entirely new thing, a diaconal order in which men and women function interchangeably. This is not said in condemnation, but as a dispassionate statement of fact that such a diaconate has never existed in Orthodox history. Metropolitan Serafim openly acknowledges that Sister Angelic’s ordination and liturgical role do not comport with the Byzantine model of deaconess. Not knowing His Eminence or his personality, I find it perhaps a little disingenuous to characterize the historical female diaconate with a temporo-cultural descriptor instead of simply traditional: a married deaconess with young children who serves liturgically as a male deacon can in no sense be said to reflect a traditional deaconess.

While I have no patience for the slippery slope hysteria peddled at every opportunity by certain of our reverend bloggers, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to wondering if the ordination of a married woman to the male diaconate opens the door for Alexandria eventually to ordain women priests—to repeat, a move to which I’m strongly opposed. The ordination of a deaconess meeting traditional requirements and fulfilling a traditional ministry would not have made me wonder about any such thing.

Because the female diaconate was never formally abolished, any Synod retains the canonical prerogative to restore it in its traditional form. The creation of a new diaconal order, as I call it, unprecedented in Orthodox history or Tradition, seems to me an unfortunate unilateral move without extensive consultation among all the Patriarchates.  Certainly, every Synod must remain free to meet the needs of the local church, given as the reason for Sister Angelic’s ordination. It has yet to be explained, however, what need the local Zimbabwean Church has for fully interchangeable male and female liturgical deacons.

Is the Orthodox Church to devolve into an Anglican Communion ecclesiological model of a loose-knit federation of ecclesiastical entities sharing less and less unity of doctrine, liturgy, and praxis?

With respect to historical and traditional precedent, the photos of modern Armenian deaconesses that have generated no little euphoria among Orthodox on social media over the past couple of years is misplaced. Despite the welcome growth in cordial relations between the Orthodox and non-Chalcedonian Churches, the latter have been in schism from us for some 1600 years. This fact seems to be forgotten or overlooked in some Orthodox academic and ecumenical circles. Their practices are interesting and informative, but in no way normative for us, no more so than contemporary Roman Catholic practice.

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Alexandria’s decision to ordain Sister Angelic casts into stark relief what is perhaps the most divisive question in contemporary Orthodoxy, to whit, the intersection of Holy Tradition and historical precedent. To say that they are precisely identical is foolish and historically disproven. To say that the Church is rigidly bound to precedent is equally foolish and historically disproven. Yet, to glibly dismiss precedent whenever a thing doesn’t appeal to us and to our individualistic, postmodern sensibilities is perhaps most foolish of all. Far too often, we distinguish between small-t traditions of men and capital-T Tradition on little more basis than personal tastes, or worse, secular ideologies. I struggle with this constantly in my own principal area of theological inquiry, i.e., sexuality and gender. Many of my readers on both extremes think that I fail utterly at it.

If we are to be honest with ourselves as the Church, the relationship between Tradition and precedent remains an unanswered, indeed unanswerable question until the sunrise of the age to come. The Orthodox Church has always possessed, and still possesses, the fulness of truth through the action and indwelling of the life-giving Spirit, who Christ has promised leads us into all truth. Holy Tradition is precisely a living and life-giving Tradition, dynamic, not static, always new, never a museum of antiquities.

Let us all be more charitable to each other in our disagreements as we work through these things, individually and ecclesially, in the sincerity of our hearts.  

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In the interests of scholarly integrity and playing devil’s advocate, I would point out that the meaning of St. Paul’s reference to Phoebe as “a deaconess of the church at Cenchreae” (Rom 16:1; RSV) is far from unambiguous. While it’s true that the Greek says of her οὖσαν ‹καὶ› διάκονον τῆς ἐκκλησίας (ousan <kai> diakonon tes ekklesias), neither the Vulgate nor the Slavonic picks up on the word deacon(ess). The Vulgate doesn’t use a noun at all, but renders the sub-verse as quae est in ministerio ecclesiae (who is in the ministry of the church). The Slavonic renders it сꙋ́щꙋ слꙋжи́тельницꙋ цр҃кве (sushchu sluzhitel’nitsu tsrkve [being a woman-servant of the church]).

On the other hand, Origen, Chrysostom, Pelagius, and Theodoret of Cyrus all recognized Phoebe as the holder of an ordained rank. (See ACCS, NT, vol. VI, pp. 355-56.) Pelagius traces a direct lineage between Phoebe and the deaconesses of his time: “Even today, women deaconesses in the East are known to minister to their own sex in baptism and even in the ministry of the Word, for we find that women taught privately.”

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Carrie Frederick Frost’s Reflections, published by Public Orthodoxy, provides an excellent summary of Sister Angelic’s ministry prior to ordination, her preparation for ordination, the ordination itself, and her joyful acceptance by the faithful. Unfortunately, Frost ends an otherwise enjoyable and informative piece with a theological and ecclesiological disaster: “We [she and her daughter] agreed that we were, for the first time, witnessing the Church in its fullness.” It’s no exaggeration to say I’ve seldom been more shocked by an Orthodox theologian. Does the fulness of the Church really depend on who stands where and does what and wears what in the Liturgy? Has the poor Church lacked its fulness for a thousand years, and recovered it only in a village parish in Zimbabwe? Twice when I was a priest, my sole congregant at the Liturgy was one of my children, the 7-year old the first time and the 5-year old the second time. I still tear up when I remember, with the 5-year old, proclaiming “Blessed is the Kingdom” and he, sitting cross-legged on the altar floor a few feet from me, whispered “Amen,” barely audible, his eyes glistening with the purity of an angel’s. Christ was with us both times in all His glory, together with His Mother and all the saints, all the angels and archangels of heaven—indeed, all the fulness of the Church. Now, circumstances beyond my control have relegated me to the back of the church, in street clothes, alone, forever mourning the still unexplained loss of my priesthood almost thirty years ago. And yet, Christ is there with me in all His glory, together with His Mother and all the saints, all the angels and archangels of heaven—indeed, all the fulness of the Church.

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In conclusion, if Sister Angelic is reading this: My grave reservations about the form of your diaconate in no way reflect on you. I assure you, your husband, and your children of my love, my respect, and my unworthy prayers. Pray for me, your unworthy brother.

Giacomo Sanfilippo is an Orthodox Christian, PhD candidate in Theological Studies at Trinity College in the University of Toronto, and founding editor of Orthodoxy in Dialogue. He is currently on leave from his program to write a crossover version of his doctoral research as a book entitled Conjugal Friendship: The Sacrament of Love. Father Pavel Florensky’s Orthodox Theology of Same-Sex Love.