“I commend to you my sister Phoebe,
the deacon
of the church at Cenchreae.”
Romans 16,1
Some critics just dismiss Phoebe’s
status in the apostolic Church by saying that diakonos in Greek only
means ‘servant’, as Michael Richards tries to do (The Tablet,
Letters, 8 February)? Does this not apply to all the words that referred to
ministries in apostolic times: presbuteros (elder), episkopos
(overseer) and even apostolos (delegate)? If we argue as he does, we
might as well discount all such New Testament terms as having no more than
secular implications.
Diakonos denotes a very ancient ministry. It was
instituted by the apostles even before presbuteroi or episkopoi
were. Diakonoi were properly ‘ordained’ by the imposition of
hands and the invocation of God’s Spirit (Acts 6:1-6). Paul mentions
‘bishops and deacons’ in one breath (Philippians 1:1). In the early
Christian communities everyone knew that diakonos, no less than
episkopos, indicated a person with an ‘ordained’ ministry. It
is therefore highly significant that Paul calls Phoebe not only a
‘diakonos’, but, as the text says literally: ‘(also) being (the)
deacon of the church in Cenchreae’. Would Paul use the term loosely
in this context?
The early Greek Fathers certainly understood Phoebe to
have been an ordained minister. St. Clement of Alexandria (150 - 215) speaks of
the ‘women deacons’ (diakonoi gunaikes) whom ‘the noble
Paul mentions in his letters’. Origen (185 - 255) states: ‘This text
(Romans 16,1-2) teaches with the authority of the Apostle that also women are
institued as deacons in the Church’. And may we omit the testimony of
Pliny the Younger, Roman governor of Bithynia (112 AD), who reports that he
arrested a group of Christians whose two female leaders bore the title of
ministrae (Latin for diakonoi)?
All this becomes more than speculation if we remember
the detailed ordination rites for women deacons, just as for male deacons, that
have been preserved, dating back to at least the 4th century. In
those rites the bishop calls on the Holy Spirit to pour out the grace of the
diaconate on the woman ordinand ‘as you granted to Phoebe the grace of
your diaconate whom you had called to this ministry’.
John Wijngaards
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