Are men more like God than women are? That is the implication of many arguments against ordaining women as bishops, priests, or deacons. Whether the argument is that priests “icon” Christ in the Divine Liturgy, acting in persona Christi; or that fatherhood is especially priestly and more priestly than motherhood; or that the order of clergy and laity is like the order of Creator and creature, heaven and earth, or soul and body, the implication is that men and women are not equal: Men are outrank women in the hierarchy of being.
Inequality is inherent in the very concept of hierarchy. As originally defined and still commonly understood, hierarchy is all about mediation between highers and lowers, superiors and inferiors, the more godlike and the less godlike. And yet the first to define the concept—the sixth-century philosopher who wrote in the guise of the first-century St. Dionysius the Areopagite—did not attribute hierarchy to men and women. Neither did he attribute hierarchy to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
In the Trinity, we therefore have a paradigm for interpersonal relations that are equal yet ordered—a taxis without hierarchia. How might such an order explain the exclusion of women from the clergy? That is the question to be answered here by outlining a theological difference between male and female—theological in that it relates male and female to the Persons of the Trinity.
