Ordination and the Minor Orders

The Church distinguishes two kinds of laying-on of hands: cheirotonia, the sacramental ordination of the major orders (bishop, priest, deacon) performed within the altar during the Liturgy, and cheirothesia, the appointment of the minor orders (reader, subdeacon) performed outside the altar. This file treats that distinction, the minor orders, and — soberly and from both sides — the historic order of deaconesses and the modern discussion of its meaning and possible restoration.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Cheirotonia and Cheirothesia

Greek preserves a technical distinction that English blurs. Cheirotonia (literally “stretching out the hand”) is the term for the sacramental ordination of the three major orders — bishop, presbyter, and deacon. Cheirothesia (“placing of the hand”) is used for the setting-apart of the minor orders and other blessings. Though both involve the imposition of hands, the tradition marks the difference between them by several signs, and the difference expresses the conviction that the major orders are conferred by a mystery of the Spirit in a way the minor are not (Ware, The Orthodox Church, Penguin, 1993, Part II, on the major and minor orders; see Orthodoxy: Holy Orders).

The liturgical marks of cheirotonia are precise and telling. The ordination of a bishop, priest, or deacon takes place within the sanctuary, at the altar, and during the Divine Liturgy — each at its proper point: a bishop and a priest are ordained before the anaphora, so that they may at once concelebrate the offering; a deacon is ordained after the anaphora, since he does not celebrate but serves. The ordinand is led three times around the altar, the bishop lays his hand on his head with the prayer “The divine grace, which always healeth that which is infirm and completeth that which is wanting, promoteth [name]… let us therefore pray for him that the grace of the All-holy Spirit may come upon him,” and the people ratify the ordination with the cry “Axios!” — “He is worthy!” (the Orthodox rites of cheirotonia; described in Ware, The Orthodox Church, Part II). The minor orders, by contrast, are conferred outside the altar, in the nave or before it, apart from the eucharistic offering, by cheirothesia.

The Minor Orders

Below the three major orders the Orthodox Church retains minor orders, chiefly the reader (anagnostes), who is tonsured and set apart to read the Scriptures and psalmody and to serve in the altar, and the subdeacon (hypodiakonos), who assists the deacon and attends the bishop. In the ancient Church there were further minor orders now largely absorbed or lapsed — the doorkeeper, the exorcist, the acolyte in some traditions, the cantor. These are ministries of the Church’s ordering rather than sacramental priesthood; a man is normally made reader and subdeacon on the way to the diaconate and priesthood, and the minor orders serve as steps of formation and service (Ware, The Orthodox Church, Part II, on the reader and subdeacon). Their conferral by cheirothesia, outside the altar and apart from the Liturgy, marks them as distinct in kind from the sacramental cheirotonia of the major orders — a distinction that becomes important in the question of the deaconess.

The Historic Diaconate

The diaconate deserves particular note because its history is richer than its later reduction to a mere stepping-stone suggests. The seven “appointed over this business” of serving the tables in Acts 6:1–6 have traditionally been read as the first deacons; Paul greets deacons alongside bishops (Philippians 1:1) and sets out the qualifications for the office (1 Timothy 3:8–13). In the early and Byzantine Church the deacon was a major minister with real liturgical and charitable functions, sometimes of great influence; the permanent (non-transitional) diaconate flourished and then, in much of the Orthodox world, contracted, so that for long periods the diaconate was chiefly a brief stage before the priesthood (Ware, The Orthodox Church, Part II, on the diaconate). There has been, in modern times, some movement to recover the permanent diaconate as a distinct and lasting ministry of service.

Deaconesses

The most discussed question of the diaconate today is the ancient order of deaconesses. That the early and Byzantine Church had deaconesses is not in doubt. Phoebe is called diakonos of the church at Cenchreae (Romans 16:1); 1 Timothy 3:11 is read by many as referring to women deacons; and the order is amply attested for centuries — the Apostolic Constitutions (late fourth century) give a rite for the ordination of a deaconess; the Council of Chalcedon (451) legislates for deaconesses in its Canon 15, setting the minimum age at forty; and the Byzantine euchologia (notably the eighth-century Barberini codex) preserve a rite for making a deaconess that closely parallels the rite for the deacon (for the historical attestation, see Ware, The Orthodox Church, Part II; and the standard scholarship, e.g. Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald, Women Deacons in the Orthodox Church, Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1998). Deaconesses ministered chiefly to women — assisting at the baptism of adult women (for reasons of modesty at the anointing and immersion), instructing them, ministering to the sick and the poor, and serving in convents. The order declined and effectively disappeared in most of the Orthodox world by the later Middle Ages, surviving longest in monastic use.

[Disputed: whether the ancient deaconess was ordained by a true, sacramental *cheirotonia* equivalent to that of the male deacon, and what the historical order implies for its possible restoration today. (a) One reading, pressed by scholars such as Evangelos Theodorou and by advocates of restoration, emphasizes that the Byzantine rite for the deaconess was performed within the sanctuary, at the altar, during the Liturgy, with two prayers and the term *cheirotonia* — the marks of sacramental ordination — and concludes that the deaconess belonged to the ordained diaconate in the full sense, so that restoring the order would be a recovery of authentic tradition, not an innovation (Theodorou's studies of the ordination rites; discussed in FitzGerald, *Women Deacons in the Orthodox Church*, 1998). (b) A more cautious reading holds that, whatever the parallels of the rite, the deaconess exercised a ministry distinct from the male diaconate — she did not serve at the altar in the Liturgy or minister the chalice to the assembly — and that the historical evidence, and the tradition's long lapse of the order, counsel great care before treating a modern restoration as straightforward; some fear it would be a step toward claims the tradition does not warrant. The Orthodox discussion is live and unsettled: the Church of Greece formally provided in 2004 for the possibility of ordaining deaconesses in convents, and the Patriarchate of Alexandria consecrated/blessed several deaconesses for missionary work in Africa in 2017, while other Churches have not acted, and theologians differ on the meaning of these steps. This collection reports the historical reality of the order, the parallels and differences of the rite, and the range of contemporary positions, and does not adjudicate.]

The sobriety the subject requires is worth stating plainly. The existence of deaconesses in the tradition is a fact, not a modern invention, and it is not honestly denied; equally, the exact sacramental status of the order and the wisdom and meaning of restoring it are genuinely contested among faithful Orthodox scholars and hierarchs, and the question is entangled — though it must not be simply identified — with the quite separate and, in the Orthodox understanding, closed question of the ordination of women to the priesthood, which the tradition does not admit (Ware, The Orthodox Church, Part II, distinguishing the diaconate question from the priesthood; FitzGerald, Women Deacons in the Orthodox Church, 1998). The mystery of orders thus includes, in its history, a women’s ministry the Church once ordained and largely let lapse — a fact the tradition holds without embarrassment and continues to weigh.

References

Ware, Kallistos. The Orthodox Church. New ed. London: Penguin, 1993, Part II.
FitzGerald, Kyriaki Karidoyanes. Women Deacons in the Orthodox Church: Called to Holiness and Ministry. Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1998 (with the studies of Evangelos Theodorou on the ordination rites).
Apostolic Constitutions 8 (the rite for a deaconess). In Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 7.
Council of Chalcedon (451), Canon 15 (deaconesses). In NPNF, Second Series, vol. 14.
The Barberini Euchologion (Barberini gr. 336, 8th c.) — the Byzantine rite for the ordination of a deaconess.
Scripture: Acts 6:1–6; Romans 16:1; Philippians 1:1; 1 Timothy 3:8–13.