Woman and the Salvation of the

World: A Christian Anthropology on

the Charisms of Women. - book reviews
Ecumenical Review, The, July, 1997 by Janet Crawford

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When it first appeared in French in 1958 (La femme et le salut du monde), this work was
reviewed in The Ecumenical Review (October 1960) by Vasil T. Istavridis, who
concluded that the lack of a "theology of woman", which Evdokimov offered, was
strongly felt in Orthodox theology.
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Gender and the process of moral development in the thought of Paul Evdokimov
Karl Kaser, Robert Pichler and Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers, Die weite Welt...
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Editorial Comments

In the intervening years the role of women in the church has been widely discussed in
ecumenical circles, including the World Council of Churches, largely because of the
movement in some churches towards the ordination of women. While the Orthodox
position on these issues has often been strongly expressed in ecumenical situations,
notably during the debate at the 1981 WCC central committee meeting in Dresden,
following the Sheffield consultation on the Community of Women and Men in the
Church, little has been published from this perspective. The 1992 report of an interOrthodox symposium on the place of the women in the Orthodox church and the question
of the ordination of women could still comment that the Orthodox bibliography on these
topics is rather limited, since these issues are raised for the Orthodox only in the context
of bilateral dialogues and other ecumenical discussions. The publication of Woman and
the Salvation of the World makes an important Orthodox work on these topics available
for the first time in English. One can only regret that this translation was so long delayed,
though one must be grateful to St Vladimir's Seminary, New York, to whom we owe this
publication as well as a number of other works on related topics written in the US
context.

Paul Evdokimov, Russian Orthodox, was born in St Petersburg in 1910 but left Russia in
1921 for Constantinople and arrived in France in 1923. He studied theology at the newlyopened St Sergius Institute and in 1942 earned a doctorate in philosophy from the
University of Aix-Marseille. From 1943 he worked with CIMADE, the ecumenical
organization set up to help displaced persons and refugees. A committed ecumenist,
Evdokimov believed that Orthodoxy had a unique role to play in the ecumenical
movement and that the Orthodox diaspora, to which he himself belonged, made possible
direct contact between East and West. He was a member of the board of the Ecumenical
Institute, Bossey 1950-68 and one of the professors at the first Bossey graduate school
1953-54. From 1953 onwards he taught theology at the Orthodox faculty of St Sergius
and from 1967 taught at the Higher Institute for Ecumenical Studies at the Catholic
Institute in Paris. He died in 1970.
Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, herself one of the major Orthodox contributors to reflection on
women in the church, wrote of Evdokimov that for a long time he was the only Orthodox
theologian to consider the women's movement with interest and sympathy, discerning in
it one of the "signs of the times" to which Christ exhorted his disciples to be attentive.
Behr-Sigel says it was largely due to the ongoing influence of Evdokimov's writings after
his death that Orthodox members of the WCC staff worked towards the first-ever
international consultation of Orthodox women, held at Agapia, Romania, in September
1976, at which she herself was invited, on account of her friendship with Evdokimov, to
give the opening address. She later commented that. "in spirit and through his prophetic
inspiration, the great Franci-Russian Orthodox theologian was present at Agapia" (The
Ministry of Women in the Church, p.4).
The spiritual heir of prophetic Russian religious philosophers such as Alexander
Boukharev, Paul Florensky and Serge Bulgakov, Evdokimov attempted to synthesize
their philosophical ideas with patristic theology. In Woman and the Salvation of the
World he draws also from other sources, including Orthodox liturgy and iconography,
history, Freudian and Jungian psychology, philosophy and contemporary writers
including Simone de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield and Karl Barth.
Evdokimov characterizes Western anthropology as essentially a "moral" anthropology, in
which the goal of Christian life is the beatific vision of God, whereas Orthodox
anthropology is "ontological", with a central concept of deification (theosis), or the
spiritualization of the human being. This anthropology is developed at some length in the
first and major section of the book, prior to any discussion of the differentiation of human
beings into male and female. This challenging section is especially important for nonOrthodox readers because here Evdokimov makes clear how Eastern (Orthodox) and
Western (Catholic and Protestant) theologies derive from differing conceptions of God
and God's relationship to human beings: creation, fall, incarnation, redemption and the
church are all understood in ways which are significantly different.
The concept of the archetype is fundamental to Orthodox anthropology. Christ is the
divine and original archetype, the image of the one triune God and the universal
archetype for all human beings. The original manwoman duality existed in perfect

reciprocity and mutual affirmation, reflecting in human communion the divine

communion; but with the fall this man-woman unity becomes the masculine and the
feminine, polarized and fragmented into "man" and "woman". This fragmentation is
overcome or transcended when the masculine and feminine are integrated into Christ in a
process that transforms its constituent elements. In Evdokimov's words: "We proceed
from Christ, the Alpha in whom there is neither male nor female (which means that
everyone finds his or her image in him); as men and women we move towards Christ, the
Omega, in whom there is neither male nor female. But this time, the differentiation is
overcome within the Body of Christ, the human pleroma (fullness) entirely integrated in
Christ" (pp.24-25)
In the eschatological kingdom of God relationships between men and women will be
transformed, so that we shall not be asexual beings, nor merely "men" and "women", but
the Masculine and the Feminine, the two dimensions of the one pleroma of Christ.
Related Results

Ethnography, art, and death./Ethnographie, art et mort.

Gender and the process of moral development in the thought of Paul Evdokimov
Karl Kaser, Robert Pichler and Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers, Die weite Welt...
Personal Knowledge and Beyond: Reshaping the ethnography of religion Book...
Editorial Comments

Thus on the symbolic level, anthropology leads from the divine-universal archetype to
the archetypes of the masculine and the feminine. These archetypes are to be found in the
Virgin (Theotokos) and John the Baptist, who "are God's thoughts on the masculine and
the feminine.... the archetypical pair, where all fragmentations into man and woman are
transcended by the masculine-feminine integrated in Christ" (pp.231, 233). The key to the
"mystery of woman" is to be found in the affinity between the feminine and the Holy
Spirit, whose hypostatic maternity extends to the virginal maternity of the Theotokos and
prefigures, for all eternity, the vocation of every woman to spiritual maternity. A woman
is not maternal because her body is able to give birth but it is from her maternal spirit,
from the particular feminine charism, that her physiological and anatomical capabilities
are derived. Woman's charism is to give life and to care for it and, above all, "to bring
forth Christ in the souls of human beings" (p.224; cf. p.259). This truth about woman is
revealed in the Theotokos, the archetype of the feminine, in whom are contained and
explained all the ways of being a woman.
Evdokimov argues that, although the Virgin is depicted iconographically as head of the
royal priesthood, the ministry of orders does not belong to woman's charism and that a
woman cannot be a priest without betraying herself. Within the royal priesthood of all
believers she has a specific feminine ministry related to her feminine being or nature,
although it is not clear how this ministry may be realized, or how it differs from that of a
lay man.

As an ordained woman from a Western (Anglican) church, I found this book a helpful
introduction to an Orthodox "theology of woman", even though there is much in it with
which I cannot agree, coming as I do from a tradition which does theology differently and
which does not look to see metaphysical truth revealed in archetypes. While I appreciated
the author's criticism of patriarchy, and his rejection of any theological arguments for
male superiority and female inferiority or for. masculine domination and feminine
submission, I found his idealized understanding of "woman" and her charism bore little
relationship to women's experience and self-understanding as written about by women
themselves. I continue to wonder how "woman" can be affirmed as spiritually stronger
than man (p. 157), the one who among human beings expresses the religious principle
(p.152), while "women" are given so little voice in the church.
Evdokimov's aim was stated clearly in his Prologue, where he wrote that his work would
be justified "if it prompts an ecumenical dialogue a confrontation of anthropologies"
(p.28). Since he wrote those words there have indeed been many confrontations, but little
ecumenical dialogue on anthropology or indeed on Mariology, which as Evdokimov
notes, carries significant ecumenical ramifications (p.222). It is worth noting that this
point has been made several times with reference to the WCC study on the Community of
Women and Men in the Church, which avoided the study of Mariology as apparently -- it
was never stated openly -- too controversial. Reading this book could help those from
other traditions to understand the Orthodox tradition, and so might encourage the
dialogue which Evdokimov hoped would provide "a richer vision of all the possible
aspects" (p.28).
COPYRIGHT 1997 World Council of Churches
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group
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Janet Crawford "Woman and the Salvation of the World: A Christian Anthropology on the
Charisms of Women. - book reviews". Ecumenical Review, The. FindArticles.com. 30
Jun, 2009. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2065/is_n3_v49/ai_19786537/