Women Disciples in the Gospel

Mary Magdalene stands at the head of a great company of women in the Gospels and the apostolic Church: the women who followed Jesus from Galilee (Luke 8:1–3), the women at the Cross and the tomb, and the women of the early Church — Phoebe the deaconess, Priscilla the teacher, the prophesying daughters of Philip. This file surveys that company, sets Mary Magdalene among the women honored as Equal-to-the-Apostles, treats the order of deaconesses, and observes carefully the Orthodox distinction between the honor and ministry of women and the ordained priesthood.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Equal-to-the-Apostles, Myrrh-bearer)

The Women Who Followed Jesus

The Gospel of Luke records that, alongside the Twelve, “some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities” travelled with Jesus and “provided for them out of their means” — Mary Magdalene, Joanna the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, Susanna, “and many others” (Luke 8:1–3, RSV). This is a remarkable datum: a band of women, several of them of substance, accompanying the itinerant ministry and supporting it materially. The same women appear at the Cross “looking on from afar, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him” (Matt. 27:55), and at the empty tomb (Luke 24:10). The Gospels remember them by name and by role; the women’s discipleship is woven into the narrative from Galilee to the Resurrection (see The Women Who Followed).

The verb used of their service — diakoneō, “to serve, to minister” — is the same root from which “deacon” comes, and the Fathers and the tradition read the women’s diakonia as a genuine ministry within the company of the Lord, not mere domestic provision (Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew, Hom. 88). The women of the Gospel are disciples in the full sense: they followed, they ministered, they remained, and they were the first witnesses of the Resurrection.

Women in the Apostolic Church

The standing of women as fellow-laborers continues into the apostolic Church, and St. Paul’s letters name many of them with honor. Phoebe is commended as “a deaconess (diakonos) of the church at Cenchreae” and “a helper (prostatis, patron) of many and of myself as well” (Rom. 16:1–2, RSV) — the earliest named deaconess. Priscilla (Prisca), with her husband Aquila, is named among Paul’s “fellow workers in Christ Jesus” and is shown instructing the learned Apollos “more accurately” in the way of God (Rom. 16:3; Acts 18:26). Junia is greeted as “of note among the apostles” (Rom. 16:7) — a phrase much discussed but, on the most natural reading and the reading of many Fathers including Chrysostom, honoring a woman for her apostolic labor (Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans, Hom. 31, marvels “how great the wisdom of this woman must have been, that she was counted worthy of the appellation of apostle”). The four daughters of Philip the evangelist “prophesied” (Acts 21:9). The apostolic Church, like the Gospel ministry, was rich in the labor of women.

The Equal-to-the-Apostles Women

The Church gathers the greatest of these women evangelizers under the title isapostolos, “Equal-to-the-Apostles” — a liturgical rank of honor for those whose proclamation of the Gospel was apostolic in scope (see Apostle to the Apostles). Among the women so honored: Mary Magdalene, first witness of the Resurrection and (in the tradition) preacher at Ephesus and before Caesar; Photini, the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4), who in the tradition evangelized and was martyred; Thecla of Iconium, the Protomartyr and disciple of the Apostle Paul (see St. Thecla); Nina the Enlightener of Georgia, who converted a kingdom (see St. Nina of Georgia); the Empress Helen, who found the True Cross; and Olga of Kiev, grandmother of the baptizer of Rus’. This luminous band of women evangelizers is one of the clearest witnesses of the Church to the apostolic dignity of women’s labor for the Gospel.

The Order of Deaconesses

The ministry of women in the early Church found an ordered form in the order of deaconesses, attested from the apostolic age (Phoebe, Rom. 16:1) and flourishing especially in the Christian East from the fourth century. Deaconesses assisted at the baptism of women, ministered to women in the congregation, cared for the sick and poor, and held a recognized office; the Apostolic Constitutions (late fourth century) and the canons of the Council of Chalcedon (451, Canon 15, setting the age for ordaining a deaconess) regulate the order (the Apostolic Constitutions 8.19–20; Chalcedon 451, Canon 15). St. John Chrysostom worked closely with the deaconess Olympias, to whom many of his letters are addressed. The order declined in the later Byzantine and medieval periods but has never been formally abolished, and its possible restoration has been discussed in modern Orthodoxy (the 1988 Rhodes inter-Orthodox consultation; the 2016 decision of the Patriarchate of Alexandria) — a topic treated more fully in the Orthodoxy guide (see The Order of Deaconesses).

Honor, Ministry, and the Priesthood

A careful account must distinguish what the tradition distinguishes. The Orthodox Church honors the apostolic labor of women — names them, ranks the greatest of them Equal-to-the-Apostles, ordains deaconesses in its tradition — while reserving the office of the ordained priesthood (the presbyterate and episcopate, in the succession of the Twelve) to men. The Church does not derive the latter restriction from any inferiority of women; the very fact that women were the first witnesses of the Resurrection and that the Mother of God is honored above all the saints tells decisively against that. Rather it derives the all-male presbyterate from the iconic and typological structure of the priesthood and the example of the Lord’s own choice of the Twelve, holding it as a matter of the Church’s order and not of the worth of persons (see the fuller treatment in Women in Orthodoxy). The honor of Mary Magdalene as Equal-to-the-Apostles is not diminished by this distinction; the title is a real rank for a real apostolic labor, conferred on a woman, and held by the Church in the highest honor.

Mary Magdalene as Sign

Mary Magdalene is, in all of this, a sign and a summit. She is the first witness of the Resurrection (John 20:18), the first sent to the apostles, the foremost of the myrrh-bearers, and the head of the company of women disciples. In her the Gospel’s honoring of women reaches its clearest expression: that the Church’s Paschal faith rests, at its very foundation, on the testimony of a woman whom Christ delivered and sent. To honor her rightly — as Myrrh-bearer and Equal-to-the-Apostles, not as a reformed prostitute — is therefore also to honor rightly the whole company of women disciples whom she heads.

See Also

References

  • The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version: Luke 8:1–3; 24:10; Matthew 27:55; John 4; 20:18; Acts 18:26; 21:9; Romans 16:1–7.
  • Chrysostom, John. Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew, Hom. 88; Homilies on Romans, Hom. 31. Trans. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I, Vols. 10 and 11.
  • The Apostolic Constitutions 8.19–20. Trans. Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 7.
  • The Council of Chalcedon (451), Canon 15. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 14.
  • FitzGerald, Kyriaki Karidoyanes. Women Deacons in the Orthodox Church: Called to Holiness and Ministry. Brookline: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1998.