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Religious Topics
Ordination of Women in the Orthodox Church
Thread starter Brigidsboy
surajiype
Hyderabad India
ozgeorge said:
You seem to think that before an Oecumenical Council is called, it's decisions are already known. That is not how it works. An Oecumenical Synod is convoked to settle disputes, not with the idea that the dispute is settled already. In the example of the dispute about the Iconoclasm, the Iconoclasts were equally cock-sure that they not only had Tradition on their side, but that God Himself had already decreed in their favour on Mount Sinai in the Second Commandment of the Decalogue. Both sides of the Iconoclasm dispute argued from Tradition, both sides were sure they were correct.
What could be the role of the Holy Spirit in the decision of the Ecumenical Council? Was the decision of the Ecumenical council a well considered but nevertheless a rational decision . In that case it is no more than a historical accident, is it not.
ozgeorge
www.greekorthodox.org.au
surajiype said:
Rather than repeat myself with what I have just spent an hour typing on another thread, can I just direct you there:
http://www.orthodoxchristianity.net/forum/index.php?topic=8926.msg118369#msg118369
It was indeed called to settle a dispute, but that's because some were teaching with 'authority' what wasn't tradition. The opposition in such cases tries to show through reworking of tradition that their beliefs were always 'traditional'. The members of council gather together and say "This is what was always taught".
That took you an hour? Do you use more than two fingers?
Looking at that which you typed I note the following...
The doctrines can be made clearer and clearer.
I agree. What can be made more clearer about accepting women as priests? Your defence of this 'progression' implies something is (as it is currently understood) not clear.
Theognosis
The church does and has evolved to meet the cultural demands of the people...consider the difference between Slavic and Greek Christianity, there are substantial differences and changes dependent on culture. So also has the Church changed and adopted with time. We started as a small Jewish Community, became primarially Greek in thought, we went from a persecuted minority to the Imperial Religion and in doing so integrated the Empire into the Church (Imperial law had the same force of canon law within the Church, the Emperor would enter the Altar through the Royal Doors, the Emperor summoned Oecumenical Synods, etc.). Again, with the establishment of the Church outside the Empire different structures arose, when the Empire fell yet new adjustments were made...The Church has always evolved and adapted...that is the way it both expanded and survived.
Political and ceremonial issues?  You missed my point completely.  I was referring to the constituency of the Church, i.e. its PEOPLE. ÂÂ
Church = People
I say it again, the very structure of the Church does not change.
Actually, you can have it both ways...Imagine Jewish people brought up in a Greco-Roman Society had BOTH Jewish and Greco-Roman influences!!! WOW, who would have thought. Thus, I addressed the influence of the two primary influences.
One has no women priests.  The other has women priests.  Hence, they are mutually exclusive.  Either you have it, or you don't.
The Jewish culture would exclude women from religion, whereas the Greco-Roman would include them, but in lesser roles.
Your argument about "lesser roles" is a clever yet desperate attempt to defend your untenable position.  By itself, it is already an admission that women were appointed as priests in ancient times.
I want whoever is the most qualified and capable to be the Patriarch of Constantinople.
Fortunately, what you "want" doesn't matter.  The Church after all, is not a democracy.
No, that is not my perception or at least not it in it's entirety; but it is the posistion of many throughout history...and many on this board who would argue against the ordination of women based on a fear of women having any authority or power; thus pragmatism demands we address that point
The priesthood is about serving people.  It is a sacrifice.
Men trying to prevent women from getting power is nothing but a misogynistic chauvinist agenda.
I beg your pardon.  Are you accusing the Church of having a misogynistic chauvinist agenda?
btw, I consider myself a feminist, so my response is pretty much, so what?
That's quite obvious.
But what this celibacy does demonstrate is that the Church, in her practice, has not interpreted Paul's teachings in the manner you suggested...if she had, then we would have not only maintained a married episcopacy, but would have established marriage as a pre-requisite for the episcopacy.
That argument is based on the assumption that marriage is a prerequisite to priesthood.  Where did you get that idea?  That's absurd.  What Paul was concerned about was polygamy and disorder within the family; he was not advocating priests to marry at all!
Let's look at another example which actually happened. A bishop stood up in Constantinople and told his congregation that Christ was actually two persons and the Virgin Mary was only the Mother of the human one of them. Half the congregation got up and walked out because they didn't recognise the Voice of the True Shepherd in the bishop. Christ's sheep know His voice, not by defined, inscribed dogmas, but by the Holy Spirit. The dogma of the One Hypostasis had not been defined yet, but the traditional hymns of the Church already praised the Virgin as "Theotokos" and her "in whom the Word was wholly circumscribed." This bishop, they understood, was introducing a "new" revelation which the Apostles had not received.
And it is not erroneous to say that nothing can be newly revealed to the Church simply because of the fact that it may be newly revealed to individuals within the Church. The fact that all the dogmas are not known to an individual at their baptism doesn't lessen the fact that the Church catholic knows them.
And we also need to look at what we mean by "knowing". We cannot speak of "knowing" in the Church only in terms of cognition. St Paul was "caught up to the Third Heaven" (whatever that means) and "heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter" (2Cor. 12:2-4). There is a "knowing" in the Church of things which cannot be expressed in words.
Two men see a bush in the dark and one imagines it to be a distant city, while the other (whose night vision is sharper) thinks it is just a bush. The imagination of the first man doesn't make the bush a city. If they light a lamp and look, they'll find it was always a bush, and the second man's opinion was correct. In the same way as the lamp, the Holy Spirit enlightens the People of God in the Church to see what was already there more clearly. And the second man with the sharper night vision who saw the bush for what it was from the beginning, could be said to have developed an "indwelling lamp" which aids his vision- as is the case with the Fathers of the Church, who, through prayer, ascesis, good works and diligent study have "aquired the Holy Spirit" Who enlightens us.
I absolutely agree with you, but does not the above example only bolster those ( like me) who believe that the idea of the ordination of women is an innovation . Now I have read GIC's long defenses on the above .
Still to me the duties of ordianed deaconesses were very different from those which are being expounded today. The roles women played then are different from those being demanded today .
Bp. Tikhon of the OCA(Diocese of the West) wrote this:
What the Reader describes here was done at some time and in some places,
but it was never part of the Holy Tradition or What is passed on to us. At
best we could say that it is a dead tradition, as opposed to Living Tradition.
There have always been those who wish to do something or teach something
outside the Living Tradition, and they dig and delve into ancient
manuscripts, travel diaries, historical anecdotes, back shelves of
libraries etc., and Lo! and Behold! Voila! Eureka1 They find it and when
someone firmly adhering to the Living Tradition questions it, they say,
"Well, this is a Tradition of.....century" or "This is a tradition of the
Church of Carthage (or the like). Only that Tradition Which lives and is
passed on to us, is Tradition. For how can there be such a thing as "that
which was passed on which was not passed on?"
Recently Elaine Pagels (sp?) has mined the rich lode of Gnostic literature
and found there all kinds of "forgotten" or "lost" traditions, or even
"suppressed" traditions on which to base the destruction of the Living, the
True Tradition, so that it even effected Roman Catholic nuns, once the
epitome of service, now much attenuated, and competing with quasi-monastic
women who have built up a Woman Church out of such excavated dead
traditions! This is impossible. Tradition is alive, not dead, not suppressed.
What do you think of it ?
I think it has many valid points (but I would have preferred if he had not cast apersions on Roman Catholic monastics).
The problem is: "what is the Tradition we are dealing with here?" For example, one thing which is claimed to be a Tradition (?dogma) is that the Priest is the icon of Christ and Christ is male therefore the Priest must be male. This may be a traditional theologumen, but I'm not sure if it is a Tradition, let alone a Dogma. If the Priest is dogmatically the Icon of Christ, then why does he offer the Sacrifice on behalf of himself also? And doesn't the notion of the Priest being the Icon of Christ make the Eucharist a re-enactment (which it isn't) rather than a memorial (which it is)? The theologumen of the Priest being the Icon of Christ in itself raises dogmatic questions. And if this premise of the Priest being the Icon of Christ needs to be questioned, then the premise that follows (that only men can be priests) needs to be questioned also.
For nearly two thousand years, Orthodox Churches traditionally had no pews- shouldn't we have assumed from this that it was against Tradition to sit in Church during Services? It is certainly against Holy Tradition to kneel on Sundays, this is in the Canons of our Oecumenical Councils. But if a tradition existed for 1900 years that we didn't sit during Services, shouldn't we have assumed that it is uncanonical to do so in anticipation of a decree on this by an Oecumenical Council? The same argument as was used to exclude pews from Churches- the argument of: "it has never been done before"- is being used to say that women should be excluded from the Priesthood. And yet, we now have pews. Clearly "Holy Tradition" does not simply mean "customary practice". It means the doctrinal teachings of the Holy Orthodox Church.
An evolution from the Jewish system with a rather informal role for women to the Greco-Roman system with an Ordained office for women, just like for men, but a lower office than those available for men.
Is it true that the women priests held a "lower office?"
The answer is NO.
http://campus.houghton.edu/webs/employees/tpaige/Construct.html
When we turn from the profane to the realm of the sacred, it is striking what a difference is to be seen. Even in the Greek world during the classical era--in general a more restrictive time for women everywhere than the first century A.D.--women are found participating and officiating at every level in religious cults, both private and public. "Whereas inequality between the sexes was the rule in the political sphere, it appears that honors and responsibilities in the religious sphere were divided according to some other principle. Priestesses seem to have had the same rights and duties as priests religion offered the only sphere in which Greek women could be treated as citizens." Though excluded from some shrines, cults, or festivals (just as men are also banned from some), women and virgin maidens make up processions, serve as hierophants, priestesses, and other functionaries elsewhere. And this is not only in all-woman events such as the Thesmophoria, but in mixed-gender settings as well.
I'd like to add that it is important to study priesthood as it relates to Greek culture only, not the multi-cultural Greco-Roman world.
greekischristian
montalban said:
As regards the so-called "feminist" position (of which we hear so much today), there are certain issues on which the Orthodox Christian (if not, perhaps, the rational individual) cannot yield. We do affirm and recognize an order, meaning, and functional differentiation in created things. Thus our Faith teaches us that the female is endowed by God with certain characteristics and tendencies that differ from those of men. (And this, rather than detracting from her, elevates her as part of the divine scheme. By no means does this teaching suggest. or tolerate the relegating of women to some lowly status.) Moreover, our intellects and senses teach us that women and men differ. We border on the insane (not an unusual thing in these bizarre times) if we deny the biological roles of men and women in procreation. These roles are verified by the external, physical distinctions of gender. And even the most radical psychological portrayals of men and women readily admit to fundamental differences between the sexes in cognitive style and mental functioning. (Paradoxically enough, it is part of the feminist movement itself that psychological profiles and categories standardized on males are not appropriate in the assessment of female behavior.)
http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/general/women.aspx
orthodoxinfo.com eh? The mere fact it's something they publish on that BS site is just about sufficient grounds to reject it as absurd.
What we see here is someone spending an excessive amount of time trying to express a very simple concept. George Orwell expressed it far better and more eloquently, so I thought I'd post his more eloquent words so that we can better understand your posistion:
Freedom is Slavery.
serb1389
Vallejo, CA (current); Gurnee, IL (greater Chicag
www.greekorthodoxvallejo.org
PeterTheAleut said:
I guess I'm just being a nitpick.
I understand what you're trying to say, that Christ is not here physically as He was during His sojourn on earth, but He is truly here with us even today.  "Behold, I AM with you always, even to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:20)
I agree with this, and that is what I was trying to say. Sorry I was dealing with other things when I was writing. thanks for the help!
Mother Anastasia said:
I agree, but sometimes things are not as simple as that.  We have been called to be the living breath of the church and that means that we need to look at things in a context Christ could not have.
Dear Brother,  you are implying that He is Not the Alpha and the Omega, the Eternal, Omniscient One,  that He is limited by His own creation, time and space??  That He did not foresee ALL things?
I do not agree, He knows all things in time and eternity, and He knew precisely what He was doing.
Also, how are you a Deaconess?  Is this an official title?  Were you ordained to this position?
Yes I am an ordained Deaconess.
I did not mean it that way.  What I meant was that Christ did not leave us a clear understanding of how to address every issue that would befall us after his Ascension.  He left us the Holy Spirit and his presence as our Lord and Savior. ÂÂ
So I agree with what your assesment but we have no standardized answer from God or the HS about this issue, so that's what I was trying to get to...eventally
Would you mind telling us more about your ordination?  Like who ordained you?  What church?  How it happened = the liturgical experience.  Your role in the church...etc. ÂÂ
The reference to Rc monastics must be to those activist nuns running around . Well if they are not obedient to their magestirium, how could they expect any quarter from the Orthodox
I agree Holy Tradition does not equal customary practise, but WO is different from using pews is it not. Today most Orthodox churches, have a choir with musical instruments. That was not the practise for atleast 1500 years . Though I have reservations re the unrestrained use of keyboards and the like, WO is a different issue altogether . If am not wrong Greek priests use stoles inscribed with IC and XC. Even if it were a theologuemenon ; it seems to be a deeply ingrained one.
A women celebrating the eucharist to me seems to violate the symolic nature of the Eucharist. I hear Behr-Siegel had critiqued that view. Must confess I am not convinced. The reasons demands for WO are being made has nothing to do with the reasons for which deaconesses or myrrh bearers existed.
IMO todays demands stem from a relativistic view of Scripture and Tradition.
If St Paul was merely giving into cultural biases with respect to WO, could not the same apply to Homosexuality. And if St Paul could be behind todays times, how could SS Peter Mathew and John be protected from the same.
I have read from too many Anglo Catholics who were Pro WO in the seventies and today with the benefit of hindsight call it the beginning of the end.
Should'nt the singular failure of the liberal Protestant experience with WO, cause us to take a pause. Even if today clear cut knock down arguments against WO seem lacking.
I agree Holy Tradition does not equal customary practise, but WO is different from using pews is it not.
I'm assuming "WO" stands for something to do with the ordination of women. The points I was making are, firstly that "it has never been done before" does not mean "not doing it is a teaching of the Church"- this cannot be used as a basis of dogma; and secondly, that everyone is so sure that they know the dogmas about the Priesthood, and that these include that women should be excluded from it. What I'm saying is that our understanding of the Priesthood may be wrong to begin with. If a belief can be questioned as to it's doctrinal soundness, should it not be questioned?
If am not wrong Greek priests use stoles inscribed with IC and XC. Even if it were a theologuemenon ; it seems to be a deeply ingrained one.
My priest doesn't- and he's an Athonite monk.
A women celebrating the eucharist to me seems to violate the symolic nature of the Eucharist.
"Seems to"? So you aren't certain? Well neither am I. So perhaps some dialogue is needed about it? Perhaps we both would like clarification about this? So rather than scream "heretic" or "reactionary" or "liberal" at each other, and accuse one another of being "modernist" (as though that actually means anything in the Church), let's talk about it, pray about it, study about it. Just don't try and tell me "it is dogma, the case is closed" before an Oecumenical Synod has decreed that to be the case or not.
The reasons demands for WO are being made has nothing to do with the reasons for which deaconesses or myrrh bearers existed.
Who is demanding anything? Can you tell me where anyone in the Orthodox Church has "demanded" ordination for women? Why is a request for dialogue on theological grounds assumed to be a "demand"?
If St Paul was merely giving into cultural biases with respect to WO, could not the same apply to Homosexuality.
The same old illogical, emotional argument...
Tell me, what has homosexuality (which is a sin) have to do with womanhood? Do you consider it a sin to be born a woman? Are women not Icons of God? The old argument of "first it's women, and then it's homosexuals" makes as much logical sense as saying that infant baptism leads to murder.
Should'nt the singular failure of the liberal Protestant experience with WO, cause us to take a pause.
Absolutely. We should, as you yourself say, "take pause" and be circumspect. But "take pause" does not mean "press the stop button and eject". If for nothing else than the fact that the Archbishop of Canterbury is not the head of the Orthodox Church, and hence the teachings of the Orthodox Church cannot be soley determined by the experiences of those you call "liberal protestants".
Ebor
"Seems to"? So you aren't certain? Well neither am I. So perhaps some dialogue is needed about it? Perhaps we both would like clarification about this? So rather than scream "heretic" or "reactionary" or  "liberal" at each other, and accuse one another of being "modernist" (as though that actually means anything in the Church), let's talk about it, pray about it, study about it. Just don't try and tell me "it is dogma, the case is closed" before an Oecumenical Synod has decreed that to be the case or not.
Being radical again and asking for thoughtful and charitable discussion, OzGeorge.? It would certainly be different for there to be defined terms and concepts (like what is meant and how is this assertion backed up that "men and women are different in things like "cognitive style and mental functioning""? maths abilities? Logic?) or to have discussions that don't toss off labels and don't really think about what other people might be saying. (or that don't slag off on other Churches)
Ebor said:
Being radical again and asking for thoughtful and charitable discussion, OzGeorge.?  It would certainly be different for there to be defined terms and concepts (like what is meant and how is this assertion backed up that "men and women are different in things like "cognitive style and mental functioning""? maths abilities?  Logic?) or to have discussions that don't toss off labels and don't really think about what other people might be saying. (or that don't slag off on other Churches)
Come, come now Ebor...dont you know that the primary reason we dont ordain women is because those modernist anglican heretics do?
Wow.  What a thread...
First, to the guys...
greekischristian said:
Though a relationship between family leadership and Church leadership may have been envisioned by Paul, the fact that the leaders of the Church were generally (and are) celibate and not family men tends to undermine the analogy between one's family role and one's official ecclesiastical role.
Not sure I buy this argument...just as the man, being the physical patriarch of the family unit knit together by a common bloodline, is the head of said unit, so is the priest the head of the "spiritual family" of the parish which is knit together by the common Blood and Body of Christ.  St. Paul declared that the heads of both families would be male.
greekischristian]...in the 19th century when western cultures evolved to such a point as to reject slavery we enjoyed the luxury of abandoning our ancient support for this institution...[/quote] "Ancient support"?  How about "long-standing acknowledgement"?  It seems that said:
On the issue of the ordination of women I would say that just as there is no Greek or Jew in Christ, neither is there Male or Female; all are created in the image and likeness of God. Thus, what is important is not the race or gender, but rather the fact that the person is human and, thus, in the image and likeness of Christ.
...and, thus, is just as much a candidate for theosis as any other human.  This does not mean he or she is by default a candidate for the priesthood.  You stated elsewhere (I lost the link) that St. Paul states this quote you mention often in a "moment of clarity," or something like that, for he realizes deep down that his other statements prohibiting women from teaching were faulty, so the "neither male nor female" comment is a sort of, "well, yeah, okay, BUT" moment of backpaddling.  The lack of faith placed in St. Paul's ability to articulate truth aside, do you also think that he was merely having social friction within his own mind about whether or not slaves would be suitable to teach the Church?  Certainly it would make no sense to say St. Paul was so confused as to give equality to slaves to the extent that they, who were bound to their master in an apparently "anciently supported" institution, would be suitable for the presbytery.
I remember a few years back there was an uproar on Orthodox forums because the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America tonsured a woman as a Reader. The reason for the uproar was because this is the first step toward Priesthood (as even the prayers for tonsuring a Reader say). If that is the case with merely tonsuring Readers, how much more the case actually ordaining a Deacon by cheirotonia?
Being tonsured a reader IS the first step of the priesthood.  That's why there are no female readers in the OCA.  That aside, isn't it true that the female deacons didn't even serve liturgical purposes like the deacons did back when the female deaconate even existed?
And having read through the last posts as well as many other threads, I find a total lack of patristic support for Communing with a Spoon.....yet we now do.
There is no patristic support for the use of the "Epitaphio" on Holy Friday either- it is not found in the rubrics of any typicon. Yet we began to use it.
As has been mentioned, the problem was not with distribution with instruments, but with reception through instruments.  THe quote-throwing shows that there were multiple customs within the Church re: reception of the Eucharist as well as re: many other things.  Women's ordination was consistently rejected.  Even if it is "mere theologoumena" and not defined by a council, the consistent, until-recently unquestioned theologoumenon of male-only priesthood should stand in contrast to the contested ones concerning communion and the epitaphio.
And now, for the ladies...
suzannes said:
I know, I sound nuts, but what I mean to say is, I've heard women say "I'm called to celebrate the sacraments" but wretches that we are, how fortunate are we just to *partake*??  I want to hear an argument in favor that is characterized by humility and self-effacement of Christ.  I just don't see that.  I see more of a "having it all" mentality, which will never be the way of Orthodoxy.
Right on.  Met a fellow this Pascha who, due to the fact that he'd gotten in trouble with the law earlier in life, was rejected by all Orthodox seminaries (and apparently can't be ordained), so he's solved that problem by coming to SW Theological Seminary (the Baptist one in Dallas) and is working his way towards being a Baptist minister, simply because he feels "called to preach."  I see those who run after women's ordination in much the same way; unwilling to accept that perhaps they are mishearing God, they push after this out of pride.  God knows, ultimately, but the women I've talked to who are in Protestant seminaries to become ministers are often very vocal about this "entitlement" of being in the clergy...
Since Christ did everything by way of example, to instruct us, how can we miss the significance of His exclusion of women from the priesthood?  This is not any bias towards women, since He set so many precedences by choosing women to be first, His Mother, the woman at the well and Mary Magdalene.  This too He did as an example for the male dominated society.  He must have had a VERY good reason for excluding women from the priesthood, and I believe the answer (at least in part) is well explained here.
Like I said to GiC, and like you said so well, the Theotokos and the myrrhbearing women are some of our greatest saints.  It may be to the benefit of women that they're excluded from the priesthood; it may actually save their souls...
Anyone else notice that the Orthodox WOMEN here are against women's ordination and that it's only a couple of GUYS who are attempting to make room for it?
One can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
OH, YES YOU CAN! Just put salt in its oats.
Amdetsion
High Elder
I have been peaking at this thread from time to time.....
I hear you!!...
Hold your breadth since if you note some of the comments some of the people here make they will argue you down (With biblical support) that for example: ...A mother should not be relegated to a second class motherhood status; but that women should also have the right to be men and fathers with the same rights and powers endowed to men...
It is a lost cause for people like you considering the level of thinking you seem to be at.
Regarding slavery and uprising being non-Christian as it relates to slavery. I think you are right. But remember the master has to be bound by the same honor which is Christ. If he is truly a believer and following Christ commands he will no longer own his slaves since Christ owns him thus his slaves belong to Christ.
Christ did not leave any room for justifying slavery in any of its forms.
I think you know that; I thought that I would just make an emphasis on this issue.
I noticed that a few days ago. So did another poster.
These guys are in my opinion trying to feed the full.
"MetroOrthodoxual"
Hmmm.....
Pedro said:
Being tonsured a reader IS the first step of the priesthood. That's why there are no female readers in the OCA.
See, I have a problem with that. This is like saying "XYZ is a dogma of the Ecumenical Church because it is the practice of my Synod."
"'Taint necessarily so......"
That aside, isn't it true that the female deacons didn't even serve liturgical purposes like the deacons did back when the female deaconate even existed?
Depends who you ask. Ask a "traditionalist-with-agenda" and they'll tell you they just assisted the Priest in the baptism of women. Yet even the Subdeaconesses ordained by St. Nektarios of Pentapolis less than 120 years ago administered Holy Communion according to his own accounts. The "traditionalists-with-agenda" will also tell you that Deaconesses weren't ordained by cheirotonia even though the Apostolic Constitutions gives the rubrics for doing so:
"Concerning a deaconess, I, Bartholomew enjoin O Bishop, thou shalt lay thy hands upon her with all the Presbytery and the Deacons and the Deaconesses and thou shalt say: Eternal God, the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the creator of man and woman, that didst fill with the Spirit Mary and Deborah, and Anna and Huldah, that didst not disdain that thine only begotten Son should be born of a woman; Thou that in the tabernacle of witness and in the temple didst appoint women guardians of thy holy gates: Do thou now look on this thy handmaid, who is appointed unto the office of a Deaconess and grant unto her the Holy Spirit, and cleanse her from all pollution of the flesh and of the spirit, that she may worthily accomplish the work committed unto her, to thy glory and the praise of thy Christ. " ( Source)
My point is that we haven't even done the groundwork on this issue yet, and yet some have already decided what is and isn't dogma. Since when has obscuring facts been considered "Orthodoxy"? Is it really too much to ask that both sides of the debate go to the primary sources and dispationately gather facts and dialogue about them instead of re-writing history to fit with their argument?
Women's ordination was consistently rejected.
Really? Could you point out where this issue came up in the Church before and was "consitently rejected."? If indeed, as you say, it was "consistently rejected" there must be some documents to this effect.
The fact that the Church has been silent on this issue may simply mean the issue hasn't come up, not necessarily that she "consistently rejects" it.
What is needed is genuine scholarly study and dialogue, not assumptions based on "bloody opinion".
Unfortunately, "bloody opinion" seems to be easily mistaken for "Orthodoxy".
Wouldn't it be boring here without me around ;D ;D ;D
But that's not what Paul, at least, is saying in his first epistle to Timothy, rather he says, 'One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)' The consideration here is not one of male authority, but rather of choosing proven people for the office of bishop who were first entrusted with lesser responsibilities and have proven themselves there before being given the greater reponsibility of ruling within the Church.
"Ancient support"?  How about "long-standing acknowledgement"?  It seems that, as you're fond of saying, there was neither slave nor free in regards to salvation in Christ, but they did acknowledge that, within the secular world at that time, slavery did exist, for better or for worse, and that slaves should submit to their masters as good witnesses rather than engage in violent uprisings, which would not be Christian.  Acknowledged, yes, but I can hardly see how such a thing would be supported.
Acknowledged, supported, you may use whatever word you like, but the institution was enforced by Scripture, Canons, and Tradition. However, don't belive the Church can be criticized for this, her mission is primarially a salvific one, not one of social justice; thus, she reacted to the culture of the day in her interaction with it, even though these actions were not consonant the fullness of the truth given to the Church. Likewise, I submit, with the Ordination of Women. Just as until the last couple centuries it would have been socially disastrous to openly oppose slavery so also would it have been a social problem to place women in posistions of authority in the Church until the latter part of the 20th Century. Furthermore, I suggest that as we reversed our posistion on slavery when society allowed such a stance, we should today reevaluate the posistion of women in the Church since society now, like it did with slavery, not only will allow us to do so, but it demands it. Just as once our asserting of this social posistion could have undermined the salvific mission of the Church, so also today our failure to do so could undermine the salvific mission of the Church.
...and, thus, is just as much a candidate for theosis as any other human.  This does not mean he or she is by default a candidate for the priesthood.  You stated elsewhere (I lost the link) that St. Paul states this quote you mention often in a "moment of clarity," or something like that, for he realizes deep down that his other statements prohibiting women from teaching were faulty, so the "neither male nor female" comment is a sort of, "well, yeah, okay, BUT" moment of backpaddling.
Actually, I articulated the point slightly better than that for which you are giving me credit. St. Paul had revealed to him the fullness of Christian Anthropology on this issue when he manifested that there is no Male or Female in Christ. However, his Epistles are also pastoral letters and must be understood in that context. He is not writing dogmatic treatises to the several Church, but is rather addressing real and specific problems that are occurring within a given society and place, and thus he makes allowances for the culture when solving real pastoral issues. Later we would come to call this economia, but at the time it was simply good pastoral sense. Today the pastoral demands are different and we must make allowances for the time, cultures, and societies in which the Church finds herself.
The lack of faith placed in St. Paul's ability to articulate truth aside, do you also think that he was merely having social friction within his own mind about whether or not slaves would be suitable to teach the Church?  Certainly it would make no sense to say St. Paul was so confused as to give equality to slaves to the extent that they, who were bound to their master in an apparently "anciently supported" institution, would be suitable for the presbytery.
Again, I believe he was putting aside the theological ideal which he gave to deal with a real pastoral problem, in which he did not enjoy the luxury of pontificating about Christian Anthropology, as it would been contrary to his salvific mission.
Well, within the GOA there are female readers, so perhaps progress is being made afterall.
Right on.  Met a fellow this Pascha who, due to the fact that he'd gotten in trouble with the law earlier in life, was rejected by all Orthodox seminaries (and apparently can't be ordained), so he's solved that problem by coming to SW Theological Seminary (the Baptist one in Dallas) and is working his way towards being a Baptist minister, simply because he feels "called to preach."
How could someone leaving the Church to get what they want be comprable to someone working within the Church to make their case before our Theologians and Bishops?
I see those who run after women's ordination in much the same way; unwilling to accept that perhaps they are mishearing God, they push after this out of pride.  God knows, ultimately, but the women I've talked to who are in Protestant seminaries to become ministers are often very vocal about this "entitlement" of being in the clergy...
O.K....let's save this quote for a second...
Now let's bring that quote back...
Why do you think that women don't want to step up on this issue? When they do speak up you get accusations of pride, arrogance, and excessive ambition. While I may be accused of being a modernist (a title that I take upon myself with pride anyway) or question my 'manhood' based on some archaic cultural paradigm (but I'm secure enough in that to not be concerned about the opinion of a few online reactionaries) but no one can make a viable accusation of ambition or having an agenda against me. So until ad homines and bullying cease to be part of the so-called 'traditionalist's' rhetorical methodology many women who might have genuine callings will be unwilling to enter into this discussion...it is a great tragedy and loss to this world that everyone doesn't enjoy argument, rhetoric, and conflict as much as I ;D But dont get your hopes up too quickly, there are enough of us who thrive on such things to prevent this issue from ever going away until it is finally determined one way or the other
"'Taint necessarily so......"Depends who you ask. Ask a "traditionalist-with-agenda" and they'll tell you they just assisted the Priest in the baptism of women. Yet even the Subdeaconesses ordained by St. Nektarios of Pentapolis less than 120 years ago administered Holy Communion according to his own accounts. The "traditionalists-with-agenda" will also tell you that Deaconesses weren't ordained by cheirotonia even though the Apostolic Constitutions gives the rubrics for doing so:
Well, in the spirit of academic dialogue I will post a couple primary sources about the role of the deaconess...but I dont expect scholarly and honest discussion to go to far here
Concerning ordination of deaconesses by the laying on of hands, as a supporting document to what you above posted I submit the 15th Canon of Chalcedon:
'Let no woman be ordained (χειροντονείσθα) a deaconess before the age of forty, and even then after a strict test. But if she, after receiving the gift of chirothesy (χειροθεσία) and remaining for some time in the ministry, proceeds to give herself in marriage, thus insulting the grace of God, let any such actress be anathematized together with the man who has joined himself with her in marriage.'
We see that the Greek word used to refer to the Ordination of a Deaconess is the same one used when refering to the Ordination of a Male Priest or Deacon.
Also of potential interest, in the First Collection, Title VI, Chapter 6, Paragraph 1 it is written in the Constitutions of Justinian (italics added):
'We do not permit women who have contracted a second marriage, or who (as We have already stated), have led a vicious life, to be ordained, but they must be free from all suspicion in order to be admitted into the holy service of the Church, to be present in baptism, and assist in the celebration of the mysterious and sacred rites which form part of their duties.' (S. P. Scott's Translation)
Unfortunately, I have been unable unable to come across the Original Greek of Justinian's Novels (not that I've tried too hard, but it's not readily available; though the Latin Digests, Intitutes, and Code of Justinian are widely available, even online) thus am unable to confirm what word was used for 'ordained,' though it is the same word the translator uses in reference to Deacons, Priests, and Bishops. However, the primary reason I posted this paragraph that I found buried in the middle of Justinian's Novels is because of what I italicized, which clearly states that assisting in the 'celebration of the mysterious and sacred rites' (note the use of the plural) is part of the duties of the deaconess. Though it doesn't give details this quite clearly implies that the deaconess did have a broader liturgical role than many today would like to admit.
(If anyone has the Greek text of the above law, posting it would be most appreciated)
she reacted to the culture of the day in her interaction with it,
There you go again with that totally unsupported assertion.  Time and again we have shown that the gender of priesthood and the position of women in society are INDEPENDENT of each other in Greek culture (and even Latin). This alone demolishes your entire argument.  The teachings of Paul about the exclusivity of priesthood to men were not motivated by social or cultural factors at all!
even though these actions were not consonant the fullness of the truth given to the Church
What's even worse is that you are accusing Paul of not having "the fullness of the truth!" ÂÂ
Amazing.  Did Jesus Christ reveal something to you that He didn't tell St. Paul?  Do you claim to have the fullness of the truth?
minasoliman
Stratopedarches
Let's take this one question at a time.
When St. Paul says something like this:
But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.
What does this mean to us? Is it a theological verse or a customary verse ruled by cultural prejudices?
minasoliman said:
I don't think it's theological. Our own theology doesn't allow us to say that it is a dogma.
Who is the head of the Theotokos, she who is "more honourable than the cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the seraphim"? Was St. Joseph her head? If so, in what sense do we mean this if they were not married, nor "one flesh"? If this is a theological statement, wouldn't it mean that a woman must not be an Orthodox Empress- a position recognised by the Church and annointed by the Church? Are not men subject to the Empress? What about St. Helen, St. Catherine the Great, St. Irene the Empress- who not only opposed Iconoclasm, but opposed her own son taking the throne from her and was supported by the Church in this...?
Like I said before, I frown at the fact that Kings, let alone Empresses, entered the altar because of the dangerous mixture of government and church. I truly oppose such things, and it is one thing that makes me attached to the OO Church.
Therefore, issues concerning women in politics have nothing to do with teaching in Church. To "consecrate" an empress is nothing but a Church kissing the feet of the world, and not being above the world.
So, if we disagree on these issues concerning the empress, it shows how different traditions can interpret that same verse differently, and why it has become a theological issue. Render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. If one truly understands this, then we can proceed to the issue of female priesthood, as St. John Chrysostom also believed to be non-existent in the Church (who is also an opponent of the government).
I wanted to add something else concerning deaconesses:
While there is consecration or ordination of a deacon, the role of a deacon is certainly not like that of a priest or bishop. For the priest and bishop is just like the role of the husband in the household, to be the leader or head of a house, and for the priest and bishop's cases, the church.
Now, what is a deacon's role? To help serve those directly in need as well as help serve the priest with certain duties. The word "deacon" means "servant," and while a male deacon in the epistle to St. Timothy should be a man of one wife and ruling his household well, the deacons' first roles were to serve widows and tables and other issues that allow more flexibility than the priest or bishop. This is why female deacons existed. In addition, deacons did come out not because it was always there, but because of a necessity as Acts 6 shows. The increasing role of females in the Church also lead to the formation of female deaconesses. Therefore, the role was "unnecessary" and became necessary to make more efficient service to the needy.
At the same time, I don't deny that the deacon is also an ordained role, part of the threefold orders of priesthood, but that doesn't mean that deacons ruled the church like priests and bishops do. In fact, I would also venture to say that the role of both deacons and deaconesses shows also a prophetic role of the state of the Heavenly Jerusalem, where I believe no distinction would be made since we are all "priests and kings" and of the one Church having communion with our bridegroom Christ.
Just as we are the "body of Christ," so was a deaconess necessarily the body of priests and bishops in very important issues as well, but certainly women were taught to be submissive to men, just as the Church is to Christ, or Christ is to the Father. This is sufficient reason, I believe, why male priesthood is preferred, and it seems to me a very good theological reason.
There are other Bible verses that may seem harsh, like those that forbid women to have authority over or to teach men. A female deacon does not have authority over men, and certainly not over priests and bishops. However a priest and bishop will have authority over male deacons, and this is something St. Paul would object to, not because of cultural reasons, but because of a theological reason, that Adam was formed first.
St. Paul seemed very serious when asking those not to change traditions and that those contentious with customs do not exist in the church.
What you and I "frown on" is immaterial- unless we want to rewrite the history of the Church, which, unfortunately, it seems many people wish to. And from this personal prefrerence of yours to "frown on" Kings and Emperesses "entering the altar" you conclude that:
Therefore, issues concerning women in politics have nothing to do with teaching in Church.
"I feel [fill in the blank], therefore the teaching of the Church is [fill in the blank]."
This is not discussion, it is just more "bloody opinion" which is going nowhere fast. It is substituting dispassionate fact gathering with illogical syllogisms based on no premise other than "I feel".
I'm not idiotic, I know that people "feel" certain ways about women as priests. I feel certain ways about it myself, but I would never base Church dogma simply on how "I feel".
What does this mean to us?  Is it a theological verse or a customary verse ruled by cultural prejudices?
What evidence do you provide for this? Nothing.
The evidence for the opposite assumption is that the church didn't ordain female priests. As someone else earlier pointed it out before a cradle Orthodox objected to them being zealous for Orthodoxy*, there's nothing in Tradition for women to be ordained.
That should be the end of it, but people here insist on personal speculation based on modernity driven notions.
*-itself a problematical stand-point to take
I didn't know you had a sense of irony.
When someone suggested earlier about leaving this up to the hands of church tradition you didn't like the fact that they, a convert to Orthodoxy, would be zealous in defending the Traditions of the church.
You offer no alternative proofs, yourself.
I've still not seen any good argument for change other than those that are suggesting that it's possible (by not classing it as a matter of dogma). That in itself is not a good reason.
Not again. Greek civilization was accustomed to having women priests. The alleged cultural prejudices have been ruled out already by virtue of this historical fact.
The practice of women prophesying at the church in Corinth would have had no negative reaction from Greek culture, at least not for being done by females. On the contrary, two of the most famous oracles of the Greek world had at their heart women who were used as vehicles to medate the message of the god. Women played key roles in the public celebrations of many cults, and there is little doubt that at least some of these roles involved speaking: prayers, words of consecration of the sacrifice, perhaps instruction in the mysteries or words of assurance or warning to initiates. The only trouble Christian prophetesses would have caused the surrounding culture would have been due to the fact that the religion was foreign and denounced traditional faiths as false. But this has nothing to do with women's roles.
Those who assert that the women can be priests do the ff: (1) ignore the facts of history, (2) deny 2,000 years of Tradition and (3) provide personal interpretation of Scripture as they see fit at the expense of the credibility of the apostles.
Quite frankly, these GUYS remind of me of Martin Luther who did exactly the same things. Didn't he ignore history when he preached Sola Scriptura? Didn't he reject the Tradition of the fathers? Didn't he interpret Scripture to his liking to the point of calling the epistle of James the epistle of straw?
Even so, Martin Luther wasn't so critical of St. Paul!
Who is the head of the Theotokos, she who is "more honourable than the cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the seraphim"? Was St. Joseph her head? If so, in what sense do we mean this if they were not married, nor "one flesh"?
Had they been married, then yes, he would have been. Since they were not, then no, he was not. Not even the Theotokos, however, was elevated in her lifetime (as far as has been recorded) to any kind of teaching or sacramental ministry within the Church--highly revered and dearly loved by all who received her, according to Ignatius, iirc, but not an ordained anything.
If this is a theological statement, wouldn't it mean that a woman must not be an Orthodox Empress- a position recognised by the Church and annointed by the Church? Are not men subject to the Empress? What about St. Helen, St. Catherine the Great, St. Irene the Empress- who not only opposed Iconoclasm, but opposed her own son taking the throne from her and was supported by the Church in this...?
I'm afraid I fail to see your point here, George. How is being the civil head of the government comprable to being an ordained priest or bishop? I understand that they entered a church through the altar, but did they concelebrate with the actual, ordained clergy? I don't think so; it seems this honor was given to them due to their helping the church in matters of secular life--protection of the Church from enemies of the Empire and so on. Yet, even though they were granted access to the altar area, are there any examples within history of an empress standing before the holy table and proclaiming "Blessed is the Kingdom..." and proceeding to celebrate the liturgy in the place of (or even with) a priest or bishop? Any examples of an empress giving absolution to a penitent? Any examples of an empress baptizing anyone, at any time? I just don't see how saying that an empress (or even an emperor) has authority over men in a civil way is the same as saying that she is therefore eligible for the sacramental priesthood.
...Paul...in his first epistle to Timothy...says, 'One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)' The consideration here is not one of male authority, but rather of choosing proven people for the office of bishop who were first entrusted with lesser responsibilities and have proven themselves there before being given the greater reponsibility of ruling within the Church.
Right...having HIS children in subjection and ruling HIS own house, for otherwise HE can't take care of the Church of God. These are not neuter pronouns. To ignore the gender is dishonest. I agree it's about presbyters (who were all called either bishops or presbyters in the NT time but whose office separated into celibate bishops and married priests (in the East), as you know) being able to handle smaller responsibilities, but the gender in the verses leaves no room for matriarchal rule.
Acknowledged, supported, you may use whatever word you like, but the institution was enforced by Scripture, Canons, and Tradition.
The two words are worlds apart. I can acknowledge something exists and seek to be a Christian within this framework as best I can, but I do not have to support it and call it good. There is, however, a difference between the issue of slavery and that of women's ordination. Never in the history of the Church has the Church demanded that slaves be slaves within the Church; they all approach the altar as equals with non-slaves and, when slavery is abolished, they rejoice with them in their freedom, as in Philemon. IOW, it was always seen as evil yet not resisted (nor "supported"). Women's exclusion from the priesthood, otoh, was, as has been stated elsewhere, not only something the NT authors and Fathers often saw as compatible with their culture, but also something that was a part of their orthodoxy even in situations when the positions of authority held by pagan women were greater than those of women within the Church.
So when you say something like this:
I suggest that as we reversed our posistion on slavery when society allowed such a stance, we should today reevaluate the posistion of women in the Church since society now, like it did with slavery, not only will allow us to do so, but it demands it.
I say, we never reversed our position on slavery (I refer to the American version; the version in ancient times was incredibly different, as you know); we just found ourselves in a position where we didn't have to deal with it anymore. Yet now that society has changed their views on women, we are not at all beholden to society to change that which we have never seen to be at odds with our morality, as was the case with slavery.
Theognosis said:
Theognosis,
Firstly, isn't refusing to examine the Holy Tradition of Deaconesses an attempt to "ignore history ...(and).... reject the Tradition of the fathers?
Secondly, precisely who is being "sola scriptura" on this issue? The only appeals made for documented evidence that the Church Dogmas forbid women to be Priests are ever made to St. Paul's writings. So let's examine them to see how well we have maintained this Holy Apostle's Tradition:
How many women cover their heads in accordance with the same Apostle's command in your Church?
And if they don't cover their heads, why are they not shorn?
Why is this tradition no longer observed? Is it not an Apostolic Tradition, even though an Apostle wrote it and taught it?
Why is women covering their heads a dispensible Apostolic Tradition, but women speaking in Church (which they do in the Oecumenical Patriarchate anyway) absolutely indispensible? Why is it that we can disobey the Apostle's instruction to "observe every tradition whether in writing or spoken by the Apostles" in the case of women covering their heads?
Also, St. Paul forbade women to "prophesy" in Church with their heads uncovered. Didn't these women speak their prophesies, and thereby instruct the People of God in the Church. How can this be that St. Paul forbids women to teach but allows them to prophesy in Church?
Why is one Apostolic Tradition more important than others?
Let me tell you something you may not know. The Church, and only the Church is the sole interpreter of Holy Tradition. No individual, no matter how great, how holy, much they have attained theosis, can ever interpret alone what the Holy Tradition is. So no matter what, this question can only be answered by the Church.
We cannot simply, as someone else suggested, place this question "in the hands of holy tradition", because the Church still needs to interpret that Tradition.
Not again.  Greek civilization was accustomed to having women priests.  The alleged cultural prejudices have been ruled out already by virtue of this historical fact. ÂÂ
Those who assert that the women can be priests do the ff: (1) ignore the facts of history,  (2) deny 2,000 years of Tradition and (3) provide personal interpretation of Scripture as they see fit at the expense of the credibility of the apostles.
Quite frankly, these GUYS remind of me of Martin Luther who did exactly the same things.  Didn't he ignore history when he preached Sola Scriptura?  Didn't he reject the Tradition of the fathers?  Didn't he interpret Scripture to his liking to the point of calling the epistle of James the epistle of straw? ÂÂ
Your words ring true with me.
So far this thread has not produced a good reason for change, other than it might be possible. One person, a convert to Orthodoxy like myself was criticised for coming to Orthodoxy and being zealous for it's great and Holy Tradition! I found that argument astounding.*
Jesus knew what He was doing when He picked 12 men. The Apostles knew what they were doing too, after Pentecost.
All of this for the sake of those who feel pressures from modern notions of what is right or wrong and seek to change the church to suit these fleeting ideals.
* Why one shouldn't be allowed to be zealous for their new faith is beyond me. There seems to be some snobbery here - that a cradle-orthodox would resent someone who holds the Orthodox traditions more dear than he.
Had they been married, then yes, he would have been. Since they were not, then no, he was not.
So then, who was the head of the Theotokos, because if St. Paul's words are dogma and not mere custom, she who is "more honourable than the Cherubim" must have had a human male as her head. So who was it?
I'm afraid I fail to see your point here, George.
I can see that by the rest of what you wrote. The point is that the Emperor was a position both in the State and the Church. And when the Emperor was a female, men in the Church even bishops were subject to her. The Seventh Oecumenical Council was convened by a woman- St. Irene the Emperess. This woman summoned 367 bishops of the Orthodox Church to a Synod. So the point is that if St. Paul's instruction meant that women could not have authority over men, that's not what the Fathers of the Seventh Oecumenical Council thought.
Secondly, precisely who is being "sola scriptura" on this issue? The only appeals made for documented evidence that the Church Dogmas forbid women to be Priests are ever made to St. Paul's writings.
That is false. I have cited John Chrysostomon in post #145
Clement of Rome #148. Sorry that you wish to go down the path of ignoring such evidence as has been presented. I include both at bottom of this to save you or any other reader time.
Firstly, women in my church cover their heads.
Secondly, there's biblical injunctions not to bear false witness. People do do that. That doesn't mean that the injunction is thrown-out because people aren't following it. That's your 'logic' here, cite examples of people not following a calling by St. Paul
John Chrysostomon says, in part...
For if any one will consider how great a thing it is for one, being a man, and compassed with flesh and blood, to be enabled to draw nigh to that blessed and pure nature, he will then clearly see what great honor the grace of the Spirit has vouchsafed to priests; since by their agency these rites are celebrated, and others nowise inferior to these both in respect of our dignity and our salvation.
Book III.5
TREATISE ON THE PRIESTHOOD
http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF1-09/npnf1-09-08.htm#TopOfPage
Our apostles also knew, through our Lord Jesus Christ, and there would be strife on account of the office of the episcopate. For this reason, therefore, inasmuch as they had obtained a perfect fore-knowledge of this, they appointed those [ministers] already mentioned, and afterwards gave instructions, that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed them in their ministry. We are of opinion, therefore, that those appointed by them, or afterwards by other eminent men, with the consent of the whole Church, and who have blame-lessly served the flock of Christ in a humble, peaceable, and disinterested spirit, and have for a long time possessed the good opinion of all, cannot be justly dismissed from the ministry. For our sin will not be small, if we eject from the episcopate those who have blamelessly and holily fulfilled its duties. Blessed are those presbyters who, having finished their course before now, have obtained a fruitful and perfect departure [from this world]; for they have no fear lest any one deprive them of the place now appointed them. But we see that ye have removed some men of excellent behaviour from the ministry, which they fulfilled blamelessly and with honour.
Clement of Rome Chapter XLIV.-The Ordinances of the Apostles, that There Might Be No Contention Respecting the Priestly Office. "Epistle to the Corinthians"
http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-01/anf01-05.htm#P171_20841
The Church, and only the Church is the sole interpreter of Holy Tradition. No individual, no matter how great, how holy, much they have attained theosis, can ever interpret alone what the Holy Tradition is. So no matter what, this question can only be answered by the Church.
You do interpret that yourself, in light of modernity, and then argue from there, ah irony! (Having provided NO evidence for a change yourself) *
The church can't change Holy Tradition; the teachings of the church. I've already asked this question, perhaps I'm on some people's 'ignore list'; what is to be understood more properly about having women priests?
*And, worse still is claiming that the opposition has provided less evidence than they have. So in balance we have
one side providing evidence -v- one side producing none.
one side providing reasons for staying the same -v- one side producing no reason for change (other than you 'can').


text:
Always Bet On Rust
What do shells do, and do we need them?
blog.abor.dev
Diving into what shells do, and an introduction to unsh, the unshell.
Josh Kuhn
Recently, I wrote about Evcxr, a REPL and Jupyter notebook kernel for Rust. In that post, I made the assertion that shells are basically REPLs, and that we should replace REPLs with notebooks. I think that's true, but I still think there is a place for something like a shell, albeit a very restricted one.
Like any technology that has been around for decades, shells have a lot of features and responsibilities that were gained through gradual accretion. If a shell does almost everything you want except for this one thing I need right now, there's a heavy temptation to add that one thing and not reinvent everything from scratch. Do that long enough and you end up with some things that a shell does well, and lots of things it does less well but, you know, well enough.
Some people have looked at the deficiencies of the shell1 and thought "How do we make this better?" Both fish shell and nushell are attempts to take what shells do and improve on it by making the shell more capable and its scripting language less crufty. In contrast, I think we should strip away responsibilities from the shell and hand them off to tools that are better suited.
Let's take a look at what shells do, and see if we can tease apart what their strengths are and where other tools have come along and supplanted them. Then we can come back and see what's left and see if there's something better to be built. It's usually a good idea to learn what something is doing before tearing it down.
What capabilities do shells provide?
A way to spawn processes and pass startup options
In functional languages like Haskell, applying a function to its arguments is the most common and important operation you'll do, so the syntax is very lightweight. No parentheses, no commas, just spaces between the function and its arguments. f a b is the syntax for calling a function, which is equivalent to f(a, b) in most imperative languages2. Removing that little bit of syntactic noise is worth it because function application is so central.
Likewise in a shell, spawning a process and passing it options is the central activity. Compare the way we invoke commands in a shell:
$ echo hello world
with how we call a process in Rust:
std::process::Command("echo").args(&["hello", "world"]).spawn();
Shells have reduced their overall syntactic flexibility in order to make spawning processes maximally convenient. Simple things like arithmetic and if/then conditions are syntactically very noisy in shell scripts, but spawning processes and passing it argv is about as easy as it gets.
A way to navigate the filesystem
In a shell, using cd and ls are about the most common things I do. Specifically, cd is so common we might not often pause to consider that usually it's a shell builtin and not a separate executable on the path. If you write a naive cd program and invoke it in a shell, it'll just change the directory of the subprocess and then exit, leaving the shell's current directory unchanged.
I have a graphical file explorer on my system, but I don't often use it. When I want to navigate somewhere on the filesystem I usually want to invoke some commands in that directory immediately afterward. It's much easier for me to just cd some/directory than to click my way there in a GUI.
A default user interface for simple programs
Don't want to think about your user interface? Just output text. Most languages3 make writing to stdout very easy, so it's a very low friction way to allow your program to communicate with humans. For many programs that don't need heavy interaction with the user, you accept arguments through the command line and output to stdout.
Imagine needing to construct a GUI text box in order to display output to a user. That would introduce a huge amount of overhead to creating small programs and testing things out. Instead the shell provides the default UI: text scrolls up as the program executes, which the user can scroll back through if they want. Then the shell returns to the prompt when the program exits.
There are downsides to this universal interface: it relies on the user having a gigantic library installed in their brain already: the entire human language your program is written in plus the ability to read the written form of that language. Most everyone can drag a slider or click a button, but a text interface is completely useless to someone who doesn't know the language or how to read.
A way to connect the output of one program to the input of another
Besides spawning processes, this is the second thing the shell makes delightfully easy. The boundary between the pipe character and shell scripting language itself is a bit blurry, but it's worth calling it out separately because all by itself it makes shells significantly more capable even without other programming language features like variables, loops and conditions.
It works really well because it turns out it's the same thing as function composition. There are entire categories of math devoted to how much power you get just by composing functions. To make it explicit, here's three things that are alternative syntax for the same thing:
cat /dev/urandom | head -c 200 | base64
base64(head(cat("/dev/urandom"), 200))
cat("/dev/urandom").head(characters=200).base64()
Technically, processes return a second bit of information, the exit code, which makes this composition a little fiddly. But the basics are the same.
A resizable 2D grid that can display characters in color
This is getting into the border between the shell and the terminal emulator. Really it's the terminal emulator that interprets various escape sequences and displays color and implements raw mode which enables writing to arbitrary character locations. But if we are willing to conflate shell and terminal emulator momentarily, command lines have the capability to create rudimentary graphical interfaces.
Sure we have to use some weird box-drawing unicode characters, but the limited graphical capabilities on par at least with xterm are expected by many common tools. I mean, heck, even systemd status uses color to indicate the status of services:
A simple programming environment
After piping, there are some basic programming features like variables, for loops, if statements etc. This is what tempts you to solve problems in a shell script rather than back up and realize you should switch over to solving the problem with a general purpose programming language.
The friction is so low though! Maybe by the time you've crafted half of the solution to your problem by piping shell commands together, there's a little bit of sunk cost calculation going on. Do I really want to rewrite this entire thing over again in a completely different language, or should I just go look up the difference between [ and [[ one more time and bang this thing out?
Personally, I think this is the original sin of the shell. It gives you just enough rope to hang yourself. Once you've solved your problem in a shell script, doesn't it make sense to just commit that as your code? And once you're committing your shell scripts, doesn't it make sense to add a linter like ShellCheck to your CI pipeline? This is the point at which the slope begins to slip.
A persistent global history buffer of previous commands
This might seem like a minor point, but I regularly use my shell command history as a very limited second brain. Especially with fancy history autocompletion, this becomes a really powerful way to keep arcane program invocations stored… somewhere. And, in contrast to curating and storing your useful commands in a wiki or something (probably copy/pasting it back and forth), searching the command history automatically puts the command exactly where it needs to be to execute it immediately.
A lowest common denominator execution environment
Because it's always available on *nix systems, shell scripts offer a language to bootstrap other features from. MacOS won't execute ELF binaries, but if you wrap your downloader in a shell script like rustup does, you can intelligently interrogate the host system and download the appropriate binary file for it. This makes distributing tools like rustup much easier.
Build systems commonly use this strategy to decide which tools are available to execute with. For example, autotools is essentially a gigantic shell script that checks the capabilities of a UNIX system extensively in order to determine the best way to compile a C program.
What are shells to a human?
So far I've talked about a bunch of technical capabilities and features of shells, but one layer above that is what roles shells play at a human level. By that I mean, what is a human trying to do when they reach for a shell? If there are two equivalent ways to do something, when do we choose to use a shell to do it?
A place to execute non-GUI programs
You could make the argument that the dividing line between an app and a program is whether you invoke it from the shell or not. Programs are available on your $PATH, not your desktop. They're words you memorize and type out, not icons you click. They're intended to be tools used in combination with other tools, not self-contained applications. The shell is how you access and configure programs like this.
A sense of location
When you cd into a directory, you are navigating there mentally. This is repurposing the brain's well developed spatial awareness. From the computer's point of view, absolute paths and relative paths are equivalent. From a human's point of view, relative paths are a natural way of specifying directions that originate from a particular starting point.
You can see this effect in tools like git, which looks at the current directory to decide which project you're working on. When non-technical users interact with computers, they usually don't think of themselves being in a particular place in the filesystem. The location is either the desktop or an app. When you're in the shell, you're wherever your current directory is.
A place to tinker and figure things out
This is enabled by the REPL nature of the shell, and the interaction between the UNIX philosophies of everything is a file and the capability of piping data around. When Brett Victor talks about visual feedback and showing the data being more important than showing the code, it becomes obvious that the shell provides a crude form of that.
The arcane invocation you're building up piece by piece may be difficult to understand by reading it, but that's because you're not reading the code, you're running the code and seeing what it outputs. The process is to incrementally build the code to get the answer you're looking for.
A stylized workflow in this mode is something like:
Do a basic query, see what the output looks like
Pipe the output into some program like awk or jq and start digging for the piece of the output you need
Use Ctrl+R and ⬆ to modify the previous version incrementally and re-execute
Once the query portion is what you expect, simulate the write step by adding an echo that prints what command would be invoked
When you're comfortable with that, swap out the echo for the actual write operation
Walk away. Don't commit the result to source control or refactor, this is ephemeral write-only code for a one-off job
A place for hacker aesthetic
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that things running in the shell have a certain aesthetic that many developers find pleasing. This demo for the terminal UI kit tui-rs is undeniably cool:
tui-rs demo
Why is that? If someone made the same interface in a GUI toolkit, it wouldn't look nearly as cool to me. I say this as someone who has used a shell daily for almost two decades, the novelty somehow hasn't worn off.
If you want to build something with a terminal UI like this, your target audience is necessarily programmers and other technical users. Non-technical users are not going to put up with this stuff. The barrier to entry the shell puts up means programmers can have their dorky tools and make them the way they want, without anyone complaining that it looks ugly.
This also functions as a kind of costly signal: if a tool has an intricate terminal UI, it's a good bet the creator of the tool cares about programmers. The code needed to write a terminal UI is just as complex as the code needed to output a basic html interface or use a standard OS GUI library. The difference is purely in the rendering layer, and the implicit message is "I'm rendering this for you, fellow hacker"
What replaces the shell?
This is a big topic and there are lots of answers, but I think we can point out some general replacements for aspects of what the shell does
Terminal UIs become browser interfaces
This trend is already happening. Terminals can be pressed into service to do graphical output, but human input in a terminal interface is abysmal. Browsers do input and output about equally well (that is to say: mediocre, but not badly).
Explore and tinker in a programming language's REPL or code notebook
I mentioned this in the previous post: I'm a fan of the notebook concept over REPLs. But even a REPL in a good language is better than a REPL in a bad language (shell script).
Use IDEs or code notebooks to provide task-oriented location
IDEs also provide the metaphor of "project directory is where you are", and code notebooks like jupyter do as well. You can change the current working directory in a notebook, but it rarely seems necessary because the implicit assumption is that the notebook file itself is in the directory you want to be in.
Minimize serialization logic and lean more heavily on library interfaces
This is a larger topic than I want to get into here, but the basic idea is that I think the UNIX toolbelt approach of making small, single responsibility tools that interact by piping plaintext to each other was a really good idea in the 70s, but we understand the problem domain better now and have myriad solutions for it.
Fundamentally, small tools communicating through plaintext has a few weaknesses:
It makes serialization, de-serialization and validation code a larger proportion of what your program does. It also means you lose much of the benefits of a language like Rust with strong typing. Serialization and de-serialization are the boundaries where the type checker can no longer help you, so you want to minimize those, not maximize them.
For a tool to really be usable in this way, you need to commit to backwards compatibility. This means tools have a limited ability to evolve before they become ossified in order to prevent breaking things.
awk, tr, and cut are all programs for parsing ad-hoc underspecified serialization formats. Let's do away with the need for them by using the much richer interfaces provided by modern programming languages' type systems and the tooling they have for expressive and flexible serde.
The alternative to small focused binaries communicating through plaintext is small focused libraries with richly typed interfaces.
What's left for the shell?
I think this leaves the shell with:
the default interface for simple programs
a place to spawn processes and provide configuration arguments
a cross-platform bootstrap environment
I hope that as WASM+WASI gains traction, it can take over the cross-platform bootstrapping capabilities. Or possibly something exotic like Actually Portable Executables will take root. But I don't think shell scripts are a good long term solution for "write once, run anywhere".
Unleashing Unsh
That leaves the default interface and process spawning responsibilities. To that end, I've written unsh (short for Un-shell). All it does is provide a loop where you can execute programs, provide them with an argv, and see what their output is:
It doesn't have a programming language built in, and it doesn't allow piping output:
Is unsh useful? Well, sure if you need those two things, and nothing else. It's designed to hint strongly to the user that if they want something more complicated, they should probably use a real programming language.
If you want to be hardcore, try switching your login shell to unsh and see how it goes. I think people may be surprised at how far simple process launching gets you, even without the rest of a shell's capabilities.
Throughout I'm talking mostly about POSIX shells. Some of what I'm talking about is also applicable to PowerShell, but I haven't been careful to call those places out (mostly because of my lack of familiarity)
This function call style seems to have been popularized by Fortran, and maybe even earlier by Plankalk, a language used in 1948. Though there's some convergent evolution going on since mathematics used the f(a, b) syntax before computers were around. If anyone knows of a comprehensive history of this syntax, let me know!
For some reason it always irked me that Java required one to do System.out.println just to put a string on the console.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
ARCHIVED - Portman bay regeneration contract signed
Locals hold their breath as they wait for work to begin in Portman
The long-lasting campaign to regenerate the bay of Portmán, in the municipality of La Unión, came another step closer to fruition on Monday when the works contract was officially signed by the national government and the project was definitively awarded to the temporary merger company formed by Marco and Ciomar.
Throughout most of the 20th century the bay was used by mining companies as a dumping ground for unwanted by-products of their activities, and the resulting landfill robbed Portmán of its natural shoreline and filled the old port with toxic sterile substances. The worst of the pollution occurred between 1957 and 1987 at the hands of the Peñarroya company, and for over two decades since the closure of the last mine in 1991 efforts have been made to ensure that the much-needed clean-up will take place.
Over the last five years there have been many false dawns, but following the signing of the contract this week for 32.1 million euros – 1.3 million less than original offer price last December – it is hoped that no further hiccups will occur. Appeals by other bidders against the awarding of the work to Marco and Ciomar have been rejected, and in theory all is now ready for what is projected to be a 46-month project to begin.
If this is indeed the case, then by the end of the year 2020 the shoreline in this small bay next to the regional park of Calblanque will be brought 250 metres closer to its original location – only half of the distance it was moved by the dumping last century, but nonetheless a triumph for those who have been championing the cause of Portmán for the last 20 years or more.
The attitude among the locals and the environmental groups concerned is reported to be one of cautious optimism, given the jinx which appears to have surrounded previous regeneration projects, with many expressing the opinion that until they can actually see work being carried out it will be hard to believe that this time it is really going ahead. Hopefully, their fears will be allayed over the next few months.
For more local news consult the La Unión section.
Scientists warn of serious problems..
Europe has called on the central and regional government of Murcia to work together to reduce pollution The most precious..
Spanish warship sets sail for the Black Sea amid growing tensions..


A new film adaptation of John leCarré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy prompts a look at the various incarnations of his greatest character, George Smiley.
That violent nullity James Bond having long outlived his creator, it has fallen to an interesting gang of alpha novelists and superhacks to keep him busy: since the death of Ian Fleming in 1964, more than 20 new Bond books have been written. The latest of them, Jeffery Deaver's Carte Blanche, was published this year, and as recently as 2008, Bond nuts were solemnly delighted—or I was, anyway—by Sebastian Faulks's even-better-than-the-real-thing novel, Devil May Care, which featured a partially lobotomized lead goon and a villain with a main de singe, or "monkey hand" (hairy wrist, non-opposable thumb).
Perhaps the most rewarding of the pseudo-Flemings, however, has been Kingsley Amis, whose Colonel Sun appeared in 1968 under the nom de plume Robert Markham. Amis's Bond, while retaining the familiar psychopath's obsession with menus, tailoring, and branded goods—"Bond almost felt relaxed, finding the charcoal-grilled lamb cutlets with bitter local spinach very acceptable"—is also a suspiciously Kingsley-esque conservative, deploring newly built houses and the rise of a "vast undifferentiated culture, one complex of super-highways, hot-dog stands and neon … stretching from Los Angeles to Jerusalem." Amis would maintain a fierce moral allegiance to 007. Decades later, upon learning that John le Carré had described Bond as an "ideal defector" and "the ultimate prostitute," he vented in a letter to Philip Larkin: le Carré's comment was a "piece of bubbling dogshit," he wrote, adding that he preferred Bond to the "dull fuckers" of le Carré's own fiction.
George Smiley, le Carré's enduring gift to the literature of espionage, is, of course, the anti-Bond. Across the sequence of novels in which he appears, peripherally or centrally, this secret servant of Her Majesty (like Bond, he works for British Intelligence, known in le Carré world as "the Circus") is discreet to the point of self-erasure. Bureaucratically dowdy, rarely spotted in the field, a dull fucker by both instinct and training, Smiley drops no one-liners, romances no tarot-card readers, roars no speedboats through the Bayou. Bond has his ultraviolence and his irresistibility, his famous "comma of black hair"; Smiley has his glasses, his habit of cleaning them with the fat end of his tie, and not much else. There is a cultivated blandness to him, a deliberate vagueness of outline that at times recalls G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown—the little priest's alertness to sin replaced, in Smiley's case, by an extraordinary memory and a profound knowledge of "tradecraft." Smiley is also a cuckold of near-mythic proportions: his wife, the glamorous and rarely-at-home Lady Ann, seems to sleep with everybody but him. (She has doubtless slept at least once with James Bond: he's just her type.) When John le Carré dies, there will be no pseudo–le Carrés, rotating the clichés of Smileydom through their potboilers. Not only is le Carré more or less inimitable—less imitable, certainly, than Ian Fleming, whose style was essentially that of a school bully with a typewriter—but Smiley himself is too elusive a creature to be captured by any pen other than that of his creator.
News late last year of a movie adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy—the greatest of the Smiley novels—caused me to salivate mentally. Gary Oldman as Smiley? John Hurt as Control, the withered, irascible Circus chief? Colin Firth playing someone, anyone at all? The juices of anticipation squirted in my brain. In the autumn of 1979, every Briton with access to a television set was watching, with avidity and occasional bewilderment, the BBC's gloomy, labyrinthine Tinker, Tailor miniseries—not least because, as le Carré modestly reminds us in his introduction to the latest edition of Smiley's People, "the only independent channel in those days obligingly staged a strike and for six precious weeks the entire British viewing public had to choose between BBC1 and BBC2." There were other reasons, too, for the general enthrallment. Anthony Blunt, a much-garlanded art historian and the Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, had just been exposed as a former Soviet spy, part of the Philby/Burgess/Maclean ring. Thus did current affairs conspire to lend a more-than-usual piquancy to le Carré's vision of an Establishment honeycombed with treachery. In Tinker, Tailor, George Smiley is prodded out of retirement to unmask the mole who sits at the Circus's top table: Is it busybody Percy Alleline? Roy Bland, "the shop-soiled white hope"? Dashing Bill Haydon? Or the Hungarian, Toby Esterhase? Alec Guinness, playing Smiley (25 years removed from playing Father Brown in The Detective), blinked myopically and carried inscrutable wounds. Around him at the Circus were men both loud and furtive in their natures, swaggering and self-concealing, as if simply to be born into the British ruling class was to sign up for a lifelong career as a double agent.
There had been other screen Smileys—Rupert Davies gave him a bluff inhumanity in The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, and James Mason drawled James Masonically and rather ineffectually through Sidney Lumet's TheDeadly Affair—but Guinness's became at a stroke the definitive performance. Guinness-as-Smiley was monkish, fastidious, almost prim, bestowing here and there the faint, equivocal benediction of his Smiley smile. He had a doughiness of feature and a plumminess of tone. He moved as if he were wearing three overcoats. In restaurants he looked inexpressibly pained, but if you mentioned his wife his face would register nothing at all. Guinness's only rival to date for the role has been Simon Russell Beale—the voice of a hooded, magnetic Smiley in a recent series of BBC radio plays.
The new model of Tinker, Tailor—opening in the U.S. in December—is, for me, problematic. Director Tomas Alfredson, previously known for the well-regarded vampire flick Let the Right One In, has reduced the already low pulse of the BBC version to a throb of nearly reptilian thrill-lessness. Which would be fine, except that much of the distinctive le Carré atmosphere has also floated away. Circus HQ, for example, in the novels a warren of pokey corridors with London traffic-grunt coming in through the windows, is rendered by Alfredson as a kind of totalitarian Reading Room, a soaring industrial/cerebral space in which ranks of eavesdroppers and codebreakers clack at their machines, and meetings are conducted in soundproofed cubes. It's a chillier spy world, with wider gaps between people. The center of gravity provided in the novel by the Establishment, the clubbable Old Boys in their smotheringly furnished rooms—burgundy carpets, burgundy faces, overstuffed men in overstuffed chairs—has gone. Gone too is the heavy fellowship and ghastly heartiness, the endless belaboring of Smiley with the long syllable of his first name: Oh really, George!, George, you must see …, How's the lovely Ann, George? Now they all communicate in leers of mutual suspicion: a Scandinavian reboot has occurred. Was the Cold War really this cold?
Oldman-as-Smiley, meanwhile, is blanker, harsher-voiced, impenetrable behind the huge reflective panels of his glasses. The wan little smile has become a grimace. Twice we accompany him in the laborious meditation of his early-morning swim in the Thames, watch him pushing pale-shouldered through the tea-colored water—to what end? We cannot possibly guess what he's thinking. No clue! Smiley's understatement has been overstated.
It's very 2011, I suppose, to rub away the interpersonal texture and crank up the anomie. Didn't the Bond franchise give it a go in 2006's Casino Royale? Daniel Craig as a harder, icier Bond, hacking his ethically unencumbered way across a borderless post-9/11 globe … To strip down or minimalize le Carré, however, is to sacrifice the almost Tolkienesque grain and depth of his created world: the decades-long backstory, the lingo, the arcana, the liturgical repetitions of names and functions. Did you know that it was John le Carré who introduced the word mole (for "double agent") into English? Also honey trap? He has enriched the language itself—a claim not even the most devoted Bondian, not Kingsley Amis himself, could make for Ian Fleming.


The Visionary Basic Hoodie is an essential item for the team visionary wardrobe. It is constructed from a poly / cotton blend and features the VMG logo across the chest.
Machine wash warm with like colors. Do not bleach. Tumble dry low. Do not iron decoration.


text:
Lewis expands apology
A day after apologizing to Browns quarterback Johnny Manziel, the Browns, and their fans, Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis reached out to other groups Tuesday when he issued another apology.
On Monday night during the club's radio show, Lewis referred to the 6-0 Manziel as "a midget."
"I'm aware that my comment on local radio last night was offensive to people of short stature and to their families and friends," Lewis said in a news release from the Bengals public relations department. "It was thoughtless on my part to use the word I did, and not excusable, and I greatly regret it. I since have read about this issue on the Little People of America website.
"I understand it better, and as I have apologized to Johnny Manziel and the Cleveland Browns community, I offer the same to all others who I offended, and I pledge that I will learn from this. I hope that my mistake and the resultant publicity may serve at least to help others not make similar insensitive comments in the future."
Lewis made his statement in the same afternoon news broke that Manziel makes his first NFL start Sunday (1 p.m.-Cincinnati's Channel 19) against the Bengals in Cleveland, the fifth time in the Lewis Era the Bengals have played a quarterback making his first start in the league and the fourth time on the road. They have split the games with the last one a win over the Panthers' Jimmy Clausen in Carolina on Sept. 26, 2010 in a 20-7 victory.
They also beat the Rams' Brock Berlin on Dec. 9, 2007 at Paul Brown Stadium, 19-10. Then six days later in San Francisco they lost to Shaun Hill, 20-13. The Bengals also lost to the Ravens' Joe Flacco in his first start, 17-10, in the 2008 regular-season opener in Baltimore.
Mixon Holds Second Annual Football Camp
Joe Mixon's football camp was held at his high school in California.
Camp hits: Green eyes century; Ross wreaks havoc in space; Price continues grind; TBT on line
Ced gets another say
Willow no longer just in the wind
Quick hits: Eifert question mark for camp; three-pick day; Joe all go
Record sack race underway
Carl Lawson is one of the many guys happy to see voluble and valued veteran left end Carlo Dunlap surface for this week's mandatory minicamp. Lawson, who usually sets up at right end on passing downs, nearly broke Dunlap's rookie sack record last season and he likes the competition. And on Tuesday he offered a challenge to a guy he calls "like an older brother to me."
Quick hits: Eifert not back Tuesday; Dalton finds Ross, Malone deep
Bengals 2018 Training Camp Opens Thursday, July 26
Bengals fans will get their first chance to see this year's team up close when Bengals Training Camp, presented by Fifth Third Bank, kicks off on Thursday, July 26.
On Sale Now: Bengals Introduce Jungle Pass
Fans interested in attending every Bengals home game this season have a new option. The $200 mobile-only Jungle Pass includes tickets to 10 Bengals games, eight in the regular season and two in the preseason.
Scrutiny is mandatory for offense
Just the presence of the very large Cordy Glenn at left tackle at Tuesday's start of mandatory minicamp is evidence of the effort to shore up the offense since he arrived via trade for a first-rounder. But the hopes of a little-used role player also reflect how this offense may be changed by as much philosophy as looks. Remember Ryan Hewitt, the forgotten fullback?
Hobson's Choice: Potpourri
Open Letter to Fans: Bengals Support Music Venue
The Bengals support a music venue and think it would be a great addition to the downtown area.


Who should you trust while promoting your brand or business? People around you? Your colleagues? Your friends? Or social media platform? My vote goes for the social media platform. And Instagram is arguably the most powerful tool that helps you in sharing the images and has the fantastic potential for promoting the business. It is an image and video sharing app that makes you create the professional photos to attract the major population worldwide. Instagram is the most trendy social media platform that is easy to use and is fast in sharing your content across the world easily. You can even buy high-quality Instagram likes to gain the number of loyal followers.
As every other business is coming towards the Instagram platform and it becomes difficult for the people to notice your posted content. You should keep in mind the following powerful Instagram marketing secrets which will give you the positive response for sure.
Any business start-up cannot give you a positive regard if you don't have a proper plan setup and goals to achieve. It requires a lot of effort and hard work to make your profile the best among all the other related accounts. Or else, you should focus on choosing the best niche on which your business should be based and established. Learn to make things unique and appealing to the people on Instagram. You can further gain the dedicated followers by witty bio and the direct link to your website in the bio.
Consistency is what attracts most of the people on Instagram. Most of your loyal followers wait for your posts on Instagram. When you make frequency in posting, you lose your engagement rapidly. People usually get bored of seeing the same things again and again. The apps, Buffer and Later are specially designed to schedule your posts earlier. You can even finalize the captions, edits, and hashtags on the posts you have to upload later. They also help in analyzing the results.
Instagram has this major fascinated point that it is a mood changer. You can refresh your moods, be warm and be welcoming to the people who are visiting your account to make them feel comfortable. Select the representative theme on which you will be serving the people. Always be punctual in answering the people's questions and concentrate on the crucial objects. It's would be your business account and you should be free to change the style regularly so that people could not get bored.
Even the posts of the famous accounts lose likes and engagements because of posting things irregularly. You have to understand the concept of posting of content on the right time. It requires a bit of concentration and tricks but is easy to get done. Always be focused on tagging, sharing the links, answering the questions, copying the information and posting the killer contents. These are things on which most of your followers count depends.
Make use of the Instagram stories for doing the advertisement of your brand them. People mostly get attracted by the stories you posts as they are quick and catchy to most of the people. Also, plan to come up live on Instagram to keep the interactions with your followers.
Always stay active in looking up and calculating that how many people are daily visiting your Instagram account. It will give the estimated amount which will help you in making the required changes so that there can be the increasing number of visitors and more followers.
There are a lot of different apps available that help you by showing the estimated number of followers, likes and shares you get in a week. It is really helpful in keeping an eye on your progress.
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