Journal: Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
Volume: JBMW 01:4 (Oct 1996)
Article: Women’s ordination and orthodoxy
Author: Anonymous

Women’s ordination and orthodoxy

An Interesting Insight From First Things, March, 1996

Dr. Eugene Brand Of The Lutheran World Federation (LWF), recently assured a consultation on women in Geneva that he would “not sell out the ordination of women” to gain communion with the Roman Catholic or Orthodox churches. He said, “We should not ask, ‘Is it possible to ordain women?’ We should ask, ‘Is there any earthly reason why women should not be ordained?’ The only answer to that question is no.” To which First Things editor Richard John Neuhaus replies as follows:

The only answer? In fidelity to a tradition of almost two thousand years, the three bodies that hold to a sacramental view of ministry in apostolic succession—Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican—unanimously answered the question otherwise. In 1994 and 1995 the Catholic Church again—this time in a form that clearly makes the teaching unchangeable in the future—declared that the Church is not authorized to ordain women to the priesthood. As much as we can say ‘never’ about anything in history, we can say that the Orthodox will never ordain women to the priesthood. The fact is that, among churches with a sacramental and apostolic view of ordination, the tradition was unbroken until 1974 when a few Episcopalian women were illegally ordained. The illegality was later regularized by the Episcopal Church in this country, and now the Church of England has followed suit. But the worldwide Anglican communion, counting fifty to sixty million members, is still divided on the question. The Catholic Church has more than a billion members, and the Orthodox approximately 200 million. It follows that, among the churches holding to a catholic view of ministry, those who have broken with the tradition—and that only within the last few years—claim about 3 percent of the membership. In addition, the great majority of Protestants who do not subscribe to a catholic view of priesthood (Baptist, Missouri Synod Lutherans, orthodox Calvinists, et al.) believe that ordaining women is precluded on biblical grounds. The inescapable conclusion is that ordaining women is a very recent North American- European innovation accepted by a very small part of world Christianity. Whether that very small part represents the wave of the future or a temporary aberration of our theologically confused times is a question about which people can disagree. But to say that no is the ‘only answer’ to the question of whether there is any reason why women should not be (or cannot be) ordained is to write off two millennia of tradition and the practice of the overwhelming majority of Christians in the world today.

Neuhaus concludes: “A small minority of Christians, and a much smaller minority of those holding to a catholic view of ministry, have in recent yea...