Your View on Women as Deacons

I could not find deaconess in the scripture. Are there other offices of the church that are secretly written somewhere?

 

This is not to make an excuse for women serving as deacons or any other church office, but, in many cases, men are not coming to church with their wives, and in some local congregations, women filling some of these rolls is looked upon as better than them going vacant. In the Sunday schools, there is a definite lack of male influence in the classes across the nation. So where are all the guys? Even in a small church like mine, there are some husbands I have only seen two or three times in my entire life.

 

of which there is no scriptural support for.

Which has nothing to do with scripture and therefore is not authoritative. In other words useless.

 

You won't because there was not a word for female deacons at the time. That makes about as much sense as finding the word "jet" or the word "computer" there are thousands of words in modern Greek that have been added since the days of koine Greek.

There is a distinct difference between women and men deacons. Both are servants in ministry but serve different roles and does have authority over the other.

The women have qualifications too
1. Who are the women? Look at the verses before and after.
a. We know that Phoebe in Rom. 16:1-2 is called a diakonos
Rom. 16:1 2 _ "I commend to you our sister Phoebe, who is a servant of the church which is at Cenchrea; that you receive her in the Lord in a manner worthy of the saints, and that you help her in whatever matter she may have need of you; for she herself has also been a helper of many, and of myself as well."

She obviously was a servant in the church. Paul refers to her as a servant, a diakonos, the same word used for deacon. As we look at Paul's writings he does not emphasize the office, but rather the function.

b. In Hebrew there is no word for wife. The way it was expressed was "the woman of him." This very same expression is used in the NT. In Greek there is only one word for woman and it can mean either woman or wife.

"wife" - the woman of him
- the woman of a man's name

c. In the Greek text there is not a definite article before women or at least a genitive pronoun following the word "woman". This would lead one to translate that word "women" and not "wives"

d. Another point is this: if Paul did mean wives of deacons, then why did he not include a corresponding set of qualifications for the wives of pastors?

e. You might ask "if Paul meant deaconess, why didn't he use that word?" At that time there was not a word for deaconess.

f. There is plenty of evidence that the early church utilized women in ministry. There were women whose responsibility was to work with other women and children. They performed pastoral work with the sick and the poor and helped at baptism. From the earliest times deaconesses visited the sick, acted as door-keepers at the women's entrance to the church, kept order among church women, taught females in preparation for baptism and acted as sponsors for homeless children. They also carried official messages. There was a clearer line drawn between the sexes than there is today. Women deacons were not on the same level as men deacons. They could not teach and minister to mixed groups of people or men, and they were not ordained.

For the first 1200 years of Christianity there is loads of evidence of woman deacons in the church. However, the Western Roman Catholic church never had them. Whereas the eastern church did

Many countries outside of the U.S. have women deacons in Baptist churches.

g. The emergence of deaconesses is unclear. But in the third and fourth centuries the office of deaconess developed greatly. In a letter dated 112 A.D. Governor Pliny wrote a letter to the emperor Trajan. In it he mentions a couple of deaconesses. "This made me decide it was all the more necessary to extract the truth by torture from two slave-woman, whom they call deaconesses." (Book X, XCVI, 8, 289)

Do you think the persecuted Christian church at the time were a bunch of liberals?

h. The relationship between the male and female deacon.
pastor-deacon-deaconess-female

If the pastor in a congregation wanted to contact a female he went through the male deacon who contacted the deaconess who then spoke to the female. Even today I was told by a missionary friend of mine that it is done much the same way in some countries. That would do a lot to prevent pastor to female contact and the appearance of evil and immorality happening.

If the pastor needed to contact a woman he did it through the channel of a deacon and the deacon contacted the deaconess who contacted the woman.

 

I've already supported my position with scripture, as have you.

I don't make a practice of shutting you out with short, disengaging responses, so please refrain from doing so with me or other Christians who are called by the same God but disagree with you. That is not beneficial for discussion.

 

No, of course it doesn't mean women can't be in any sort of ministry leadership. But those are all things that men can do too. The fact that there's no female perspective from the pulpit is a striking loss.

 

I'm quite honestly shocked by this statement. We are not required to follow scriptural rules concerning the church? Really? Ok.

That means anyone can fill the pulpit. Go ahead and get a sodomite, or an adulterer, or a drunkard, or someone covetous of financial gain. After all, how can we keep them out, we have rejected the scriptural rules. And you know, if I get tired of giving to church I can just quit because Paul's statement that I ought to give as God has put in my heart isn't binding on me today. And another thing, why should we discipline anyone in the church? Who cares how they live? Wait, Paul wrote something about that? Not to worry, we don't have to follow the letter of that today. And who says preachers should preach the word? Paul? Well, we don't have to follow that. Why not have preachers read philosophy and pop psychology from the pulpit? I mean, if the word isn't binding on us why preach it? And really why should preachers feed the flock taking the oversight thereof? I know Paul and Peter instructed us to, but that was first century stuff, not 21st century.

When you deny the authority of NT scripture over the church of Jesus Christ in all ages, you can't help but end up with a lawless church. If I can disregard one church commandment, why not more of them, why not all of them? Which are binding and which aren't, and how can one know the difference? Please rethink your position.

 

No, no, no. Please don't misunderstand me.

We cannot just pick and choose with Biblical authority. There are standards that are salient for Christians for all time. For instance, Paul's moral lists (such as is found in Romans 1) describe behaviors and attitudes that are clearly borne out of sin. They are not instructions given to a particular place and time and there is no trajectory of change throughout the Bible. These are the things that make up Church discipline issues.

A pick and choose attitude like the one you describe toward tithing is not consistent with a faithful heart and attitude toward Scripture. Please understand that my position on female leadership is no borne out of a desire to see it happen, but out of a desire to hear what God is saying to the Church today through what He said to the Church in the 1st century.

Blessings, friend.

 

No you made a failed attempt. Since scripture is clear there is no support for your position.

 

You are picking and choosing what is binding and what isn't, and you cannot deny that. You are saying one thing is valid today and another isn't concerning scriptural governance of the church. What He is saying to the church today is the same thing He said to the church in the 1st century. If it wasn't the scriptures would be worthless. He said here are the qualifications for these two offices. It's clear and plain. Women don't meet those qualifications. Either you accept God's governance of the church and follow those rules or you throw them off, rebel against God's governance, and set up your own standard by what you think.

You cannot be faithful to the scriptures and put women in the offices of elder and deacon.

 

Again, you are shutting me down, along with every other committed Christian who believes as I do.

 

No, I'm doing my best to listen to what Scripture is saying. Again, Paul's words were to a specific group of people during a time when women were property and only just beginning to be educated in any way. He also instructed people how to treat their slaves, even though most of us would find slavery to be horrific today. We cannot deny that Paul wasn't writing to specific people in a particular place and time.

Please understand that this is a position I've come to after much prayer, study and struggle. I was raised believing the same as you and initially approached Scripture in the attempt to make it prove the same point, but in the end, I could no longer do that in good conscience.

 

No sir. You are trying to defend the indefensible. Saying you are a committed Christian does not change that and is irrelevant. But your agenda has been made clear:

 

No, sir. You are handling my words as many do with Scripture: by cutting and pasting them to mean what they do not.

My quote that you cut out and pasted here was using a logical reason to augment a Biblical point.

Just because you say it is indefensible doesn't make it so. That isn't even an argument. You are upholding your own agenda - the very thing you claim I am doing.

 

So tell us what your very own words, which was a separate point, mean?

No it was a man made point based on Political Correctness and nothing more. Which obviously is the main thrust behind your agenda. Scripture does not need your augmentation.

I use the clear teaching of the word of God. You use vague obscurity and man made notions to dismiss the word of God.

 

Political correctness? The point that I was making was that men and women are both created in God's image and we need to hear the perspective and approaches represented by both. That is theological, not political.

Why is it so hard to understand that people can disagree and they can both be doing their best to interpret Scripture correctly? That's sin - it's two people whose minds are renewed but still afflicted by the sinful parasite. This is what happens. I have clearly said over and over again that I am approaching this as honestly as I can. I have studied the Biblical text, read many, many viewpoints on both sides of the issue (all by God-fearing evangelicals). I even started out on the other side of this issue with all intentions to keep it up, but I got to the place where I couldn't in good conscience do so.

Everyone augments Scripture. What do you think sermons and commentaries are? That's augmentation.

It's so very sad that you feel you must draw lines in the sand between yourself and other Christians. I'm not doing that. I'm doing my best to be approach discussion with a generous and respectful tone instead of trying to manipulate those with dissenting opinions so that they sound liberal or dishonest. And I'm neither one of those.

So, unless you would like to contribute to this discussion with a spirit of reconciliation and love, I have nothing more to say here. My prayers are that that spirit would be nurtured and fostered in both of us.

 

Its not theological in the least.But it is a Non Sequitur.

Not hard to understand at all. Scripture is clear on this issue. Your position is vague and obscure.

Everyone does not augment scripture. And neither are you in this case. You are twisting to fit your pre-concieved notion.

 

go2church: Know how to handle this guy?