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Elisabeth Behr-Sigel
(1907-2005), a convert to Orthodoxy in her early twenties and a central figure
of Orthodox theology among Russian émigrés in Paris, first began to reflect on
the question of women in the priesthood in 1976. Initially supporting the
general consensus that priesthood would be impossible for the Orthodox, she
came to retract this view, finding a basis for female ordination in women's
distinct spiritual charisms. Behr-Sigel later shifted the foundation of her
case to personhood, inspired by the work of fellow Orthodox theologian Vladimir
Lossky, and arrived at the conclusion that all the Orthodox arguments against the ordination of women were, in
fact, heretical at root.
In this volume, Wilson analyzes
all of Behr-Sigel's writings about women and the priesthood across the whole
sweep of her career, demonstrating the development of her thought on women over
the last thirty years of her life. She evaluates her relationship to feminism,
Protestantism and movements within Orthodoxy, finally drawing conclusions about
this much-contested matter for the ongoing debate in both the East and the
West.
