Women Serving the Church as Deacons: What are the Biblical Historic Origins of Women Deacons in the Church?

The next few posts I will be breaking up my one huge post that considered if women ought to serve the church as ordained Deacons into seven smaller posts.

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At the RPCNA Synod meeting of 2015 the Canadian and American Reformed Churches (CanRef) asked the RPCNA two questions:

1. What are the historical origins of women deacons within the church?
2. Does the adopted report of Synod 2002 over-state its argument when it cities 1 Timothy 3:11 as the "clearest and most decisive text" for answering the question of women deacons?

I am not going to restate the paper; however, I thought I would highlight some important points mentioned in the paper by the Interchurch Committee. The report highlighted that the position of the RPCNA, currently, is that Acts 6 primarily does not categorically describe the origin of the office of Deacon. The report then refers the CanRef churches to Dr. Wayne Spear's book, Covenanted Uniformity in Religion. In the book, Dr. Spear has a section on how the Assembly debated the relationship between the office of Deacon and the events in Acts 6. Two minority views were formed on the issue. Presumably, however, the majority view was that Acts 6 was the creation of the diaconate. I have the book, but have not read it yet. The story does not end there, however. Out of these two minority views a committee formulated a two point response to the minority's arguments. Those two points — reported on by December 19, 1643 — read as follows:

1. The office of a deacon is perpetual in the church. I Tim. iii. 8, Rom. xii. 8. 2. It hath been debated in the committee whether it pertain to the office of deacon to assist the minister in preaching of the word, and administration of the sacraments; but it was not determined upon, but referred to the judgment of the Assembly.

The report then discusses some historical issues surrounding the debate. Apparently, a statement was adopted later in the Assembly which says:

The scripture doth hold out deacons as distinct officers in the church. Phil. 1:1; I Tim. 3:8 Whose office is perpetual. Acts 6:1 ‐ 4 To whose office it belongs not to preach the word, or administer the sacraments, but to take special care in distributing to the necessities of the poor.

Notice how the Assembly's adopted position used Acts 6. The Assembly only used Acts 6 to establish the Deaconate as perpetual office in the church, but not as the origin of the office and not to show that the office of the Deacon was distinct from the office of Elder.

In addition, the 2015 report cities two writings published in the Reformed Presbyterian and Covenanter magazine in 1888. The RP Archives has all the issues of this publication available for download. The two issues of particular interest are the October and November editions (pgs. 394 - 396; 424 - 448 of the pdf). In the November issue a committee of Synod known as the Small Committee published a detailed statement to explain the Synod's actions. Two other articles can also be found: one article expresses a dissenting opinion from the 1888 vote; and the other article is a transcript of the opening lecture given by Prof. D. B. Willson to start the academic school year at RPTS in 1888 on the question, "Should a Woman Be Ordained a Deacon?"

The work of the Small Committee is presented in three points:

1. "The institutions and provisions of the apostolic church were not all formally introduced at once, but from time to time, as they were found necessary to the comfort and edification of her members." — The Committee notes that the context of the need in Acts 6:1 - 7 was specifically to a certain group (Hellenists) and that the election was targeted to elect people within that group. The Small Committee agreed that by the time Paul wrote to the church in Philippi the office of Deacon was "recognized as a divine and permanent institution in all the churches."
2. "That the offices in the New Testament church are indicated both by official names given to the office‐bearers, and also by terms descriptive of their work." — New Testament words are used in two senses – the ordinary and the appropriated. In the New Testament church, the various names for office-bearers can only be determined by a careful study the context. "In its primary and ordinary signification the term rendered deacon simply means one who renders a service to another, and both it, and verb formed from it, are often used in this sense . . . But in time it has come to be chiefly used as a designation of a church office‐bearer, and though as a substantive it is not used of the seven (Acts 6:1 - 7), yet as a verb it is employed to express the nature of their work, 'to serve tables' (diakonein trapezais). We find this to be the case when we come across the word pastor, elder or deacon in an epistle, though no one is named specifically, we understand such persons exist in the congregations addressed. Hebrews 13:17 is such an example. Romans 12:6 - 8 presents us with “the several office‐bearers in the church are wholly designated by their work . . . Among these, ‘ministry’ (diakonia), the deacon’s work and office, is in its operations doubly described as ‘giving with liberality,’ and ‘showing mercy with cheerfulness.’ Therefore, when either the term deacon is used in connection with the church and her work, or when the work proper to the deacon’s office is clearly referred to, it is reasonably certain that a church officer is intended."
3. "That how far any ordinance or institution is to be enjoyed or exercised by members of the church, can only be learned by subsequent facts, not from the account of its first institution." — As a general rule, all members of the church enjoy all of the rights and privileges unless otherwise excluded from those same rights and privileges. The 2015 paper gives two examples of this idea outside of considering the office of Deacon: Baptism; the Lord's Supper. If we based our practice only on the sacraments when they were first given women would be excluded from receiving both New Covenant sacraments. Considering the practice of the administration of baptism, we have no example of women receiving baptism until twenty years after Jesus' ascension when Paul baptizes Lydia and her household (Acts 16:14 - 15). The Lord's Supper has a very similar pattern, Paul's instructions in 1 Cor. 11:28 may prohibit women from the Table. However, the practice of this sacrament in Acts 1:14 - 2:42 demonstrates that Mary and other women were with the Apostles during Sabbath Day services and we can infer that the women were included because the text does not say anything about the women being excluded from the Table later in the passage. With these two examples demonstrating the rule being considered, we can now observe how the Small Committee applied this rule to the question of women Deacons. The Committee believed that the Acts 6 men were Deacons, but argued that this evidence alone does not exclude women from the office based on how the Deaconate was created. The new institution was adapted to the needs of the church when they appeared. After Acts 6:1 - 7 we have this new office created because of a need. Based on the Committee's second point, do we find in the rest of the New Testament any examples of women doing the work or being called Deacons in relation to a visible church and meeting the qualifications to be a Deacon? The paper says that if the second and third points are true of women then "they must be admissible to that office [the Deaconate]." It is at this point that the 1888 paper brings in Phoebe. Phoebe is a member of the church at Cenchrea (Rom. 16:1); she is commended by Paul (Rom. 16:1) "to all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints" (Rom. 1:7); she is called "a servant (διάκονον = deacon/servant) of the church at Cenchrea" (Rom. 16:1). The 2015 paper makes the observation that the Greek word διάκονον cannot mean Deaconess because the word is common gender, meaning that Paul did not intend to distinguish Phoebe's servant status on Phoebe's gender. The Committee concludes this third point by saying,

Now, we hold, that the word deacon is here used of Phoebe, not in its  primary or ordinary sense, but in its appropriated sense of a church officer, because she is spoken of in church relation. Had it been ‘a servant of God,’ or ‘a servant of the Lord,’ it would have proved nothing as to her holding office, because these expressions are applicable to all who are of the household of faith. But we are not aware that ‘servant of the church,’ or any similar expression, is ever used of persons except in official positions.

The 2015 report adds four additional examples of third point being demonstrated throughout the Bible as a type of short hand for other offices of official authority in the church:

1. Prophets and teachers at Antioch (Acts 13:1).
2. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor‐teachers in Ephesus (Eph. 4:11 - 16).
3. Moses was a servant in his house, no doubt referring to his official position in Israel, the Old Testament expression of the church (Heb. 3:5 - 6).
4. Paul assures Timothy that the church is the pillar and the ground of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15).

Therefore, when Paul calls Phoebe a Deacon of the church of Cenchrea he must mean that she was an office-bearer based Paul's speech patterns in other writings. When Paul adds that "she has been a patron of many and of me also" (Rom. 16:2), the word translated "patron" is used to mean those who go before or are over others in any work. Paul uses this same word in 1 Tim. 3:3 - 4 to describe the qualifications of an overseer ruling their house. It was not uncommon for Paul to send "messengers of the church" (2 Cor. 8:16 - 24) to raise or distribute money.

The Small Committee summarized its entire argument by saying,

The principle is plain. To a woman belong all corporate rights in the church unless specifically excepted, as is the case as regards the ministry and eldership, whilst it cannot be shown that the deaconship is excepted but the contrary is established. In fact her rights here are fuller and plainer than her right to the Lorde’s table.

The Small Committee's conclusion has been the RPCNA position as of 1888 on women serving as ordained Deacons in the visible church, with some clarification and additional insight by the 2015 Interchurch Committee of the RPCNA.

On the second question, asking about if the 2002 report over-stated the importance of 1 Timothy 3:8 - 12 as "the clearest and most decisive text" on women serving as Deacons? The Committee points out that this question must assume that Acts 6:1 - 7 is of the exact same importance to the CanRef churches about women Deacons as they are accusing the RPCNA of attaching to 1 Timothy 3:8 - 12. The difference between the two churches on this issue is that the RPCNA is acknowledging that the church was in a period of development during the days of the Apostles, and when all the Apostles died new revelation in the areas of doctrine and practice stopped. The church had all she needed until Christ's second coming. The CanRef churches, then, are not willing to acknowledge any period of development in doctrine and practice once church institutions and ordinances were first instituted. The report stresses that while Elders are necessary for the being of congregations the Deaconate is only necessary for the well-being of congregations. The distinction explains why Paul only wrote to Titus about the qualifications for one office instead of two. Since Paul's words to Timothy are fuller than they are to Titus the statements of the 2002 report are entirely justified.

This paper was adopted with the larger report by an overwhelming majority of Synod. That does not mean that this issue is resolved within the RPCNA. The vote only meant that nobody wanted to change our current position in a discussion with another church.

Overall, I am pretty happy with this response. The paper does seem to say that Acts 6:1 - 7 is not the institution of the Deaconate at the beginning, but then this distinction becomes lost when the paper discusses the work of the Small Committee and the paper never quite recovers the distinction afterwords. While I am glad that it defended the 2002 report, as I have already noted, I believe that the 2002 report does not give enough weight to Paul's commendation of Phoebe. I found the work of the Small Committee very helpful, but it does need some of the improvements that I have mentioned earlier in the current post. Although, even the Small Committee's work is currently being ignored in the RPCNA discussions on this issue so any reference to the work is appreciated. Rev. Bruce Backensto was the primary author and should be congratulated for his research and writing on this issue.

Important dates in The Westminster Assembly and Judicial Law articles by Coldwell and Winzer

Over the past five years I have been subscribing to The Confessional Presbyterian journal (CPJ) and finding out how much more I desire to find out about my Presbyterian heritage. Every journal is filled with articles, original translations of usually writings that have never been available in English, a Psalm to set to an original meter, and then book reviews. It's really been a great reading experience, and it has also helped me learn more about being a Reformed Presbyterian (RP) because a fair amount of the articles have come from members on pastors of various RP churches, and most of their editors are RPs.

Over the past number of years I have become more convinced that a teaching called Theonomy is a harmful and dangerous teaching because it misunderstands God's Law at every possible point - I'll demonstrate proof for this claim in a later post. In 1998, however, the General Assembly of the Free Church in Scotland produced a report titled, Theonomy and the Confession of Faith, which declared,

... that the teachings commonly known as Theonomy or Reconstructionism contradict the Confession of Faith and are inconsistent with Biblical doctrine. It is also essential that the Assembly communicate that declaration to the Church and the grounds on which that judgement has been made. To this end the Committee is recommending that this section of the Report together with the relevant part of the Deliverance be circulated to all Presbyteries and Kirk Sessions.

My church's first pastor was a Theonomist, and more pertinently when he left some of the members that still remain alive and in my church still believe that Theonomy is biblical and the solution to societies social ills. As far as I currently know, the RPCNA hasn't issued a statement for or against Theonomy as a Synod. It has, for the most part only lost its influence. Two of the most important works for Theonomy was R.J. Rushdoony's The Institutes of Biblical Law which was published in 1973 and then Greg L. Bahnsen's Theonomy in Christian Ethics in 1977. More importantly, and parts of this narrative is speculative, from an RP perspective some of the Theonomic voices sounded very similar to the Mediatorial Kingship of Christ over the nations doctrine which is a distinctive that the Reformed Presbyterian Church worldwide has held to since the mid-to-late 17th century, in various ways. However, there are very important distinctions that either were not deemed important or were ignored at the time for the sake of the "culture wars", which I'll get into at another time.

All of the above was setting the context for what I'm about to explain. One of the claims of Theonomy is that their position has historical precedence before Rushdoony and Bahnsen. Additionally, since Dr. Bahnsen was also minster in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church he needed to explain how Theonomy did not conflict with Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) 19.2-4, which presents the Threefold Division of the Law as follows:

II. This law, after his fall, continued to be a perfect rule of righteousness; and, as such, was delivered by God upon Mount Sinai, in ten commandments, and written in two tables: the first four commandments containing our duty towards God; and the other six, our duty to man.
III. Besides this law, commonly called moral, God was pleased to give to the people of Israel, as a church under age, ceremonial laws, containing several typical ordinances, partly of worship, prefiguring Christ, His graces, actions, sufferings, and benefits; and partly, holding forth divers instructions of moral duties. All which ceremonial laws are now abrogated, under the New Testament.
IV. To them also, as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the State of that people; not obliging under any now, further than the general equity thereof may require.

I shortly hope to provide a defense of the Threefold Division of the Law in a future post, but for the purposes of this post we should assume that the Threefold Division comes from the Bible instead of being read into the Bible.  Anyway, the CPJ in its fifth volume (its an annual journal, by the way) published two articles totaling nearly 90 pages about The Westminster Assembly and Judicial Law by Chris Coldwell and Matthew Winzer. Chris Coldwell compiled in the first article which is all data available from the start of the Assembly through the completion of chapters 19, 20, and 23 of the WCF with a focus on any material that can still be currently found about the subject of judicial law from a member of the Assembly connected with work on the ninth proposition of Article 7 of the Thirty-Nine Articles and chapters 19, 20, and 23 of the WCF.  Just this article alone is 52 pages! Matthew Winzer then provides a detailed analysis article about the first article. Lane Keister in the sixth volume called these two articles "The best treatment of this phrase ['general equity']" on page 205 footnote 4 in his review of Joseph C. Morecraft, III's Authentic Christianity: An Exposition of the Theology and Ethics of the Westminster Larger Catechism.

While Mr. Coldwell and Rev. Winzer are to be commended for their hard work in putting all this data together and then presenting analysis, the thought of reading 90 pages for most people interested in this discussion might be a bit too big to actually read. Therefore, when I went though the two articles for the second time last year I created a "cheat sheet", or a document which helps provide some focus on all the great material found in those two articles to whet the appetite for reading the rest of the articles.  Which is presented below:

Important dates in The Westminster Assembly & the Judicial Law Chronology article by Chris Coldwell as appears in The Confessional Presbyterian 5 (2009)

All the dates are important in Coldwell’s chronology, but since there are so many listed dates and events it is important to narrow down the list for brevity:

May 1, 1645 (pgs. 27 - 29) - A selection of Daniel Cawdrey and Herbert Palmer's book Sabbatum Redivivum: or, the Christian Sabbath vindicated is provides a lot of detail about the Threefold Division 

November 24, 1645 (pgs. 33, 34) – A work against the Brownists by Robert Baillie is reproduced. See Rev. Matthew Winzer’s Analysis article pages 70, 72, 88, and author’s conclusion on 322 for more information on the importance of Baillie’s work against the Brownists

March 26, 1646 (pg. 37) – Coldwell quotes from session 610 Christian Liberty Report about how WCF 20.1 was worded to include Christian’s being free from both the Ceremonial and Judicial Law

October 12, 1646 (pgs. 41 – 44) – Selections of a very helpful sermon preached before some members of the Assembly by Anthony Burgess is printed giving an exegetical explanation of the threefold division of the law of Moses

December 2, 1646 (pgs. 45 – 47) – Selections are printed in the article from Jus Divinum about the difference between two types of commands given by God: Immediate or Mediate; Moral commands and positive commands is another distinction. In addition, a summary statement by William Gouge preaching on Hebrews 7:12 about judicial law is reproduced

December 4, 1646 (pg. 47) – The Minutes of the Assembly record Mr. Gillespie’s request for the alteration of the wording of WCF 23.1 from “Christ” to “God”. See Winzer’s Analysis on pages 74 – 77 (the section titled, “The spheres of nature and grace”) for Winzer’s implications of this change

December 7, 1646 (pgs. 48, 49) – Coldwell reports on the finalized wording of WCF 20 and gives some comments about 20.1 omitting “Judicial Law” from what it was in the minutes on March 26. Coldwell also, in the printed copy, wrongly refers the reader back to March 27 instead of March 26 for original wording. As of writing this – January 09, 2013 – the CPJ has not published an errata about this mistake. Is the March 26 date correct and Coldwell’s reference on December 7 wrong? Is the later reference correct and the chronology as printed wrong? Is Coldwell referring to something else listed under March 27? Mr. Coldwell responded the same day and said that he will look into the error

April 29, 1647 (pgs, 50, 51) – WCF 19.4 is reproduced with Scripture proofs and the margins reads “… Gen. 49.10. with 1 Pet. 2. 13, 14. …”

March 8, 1647/48 (pgs. 53 – 55) – Coldwell prints some excepts from a work by Francis Cheynell which is arguing for Magistrates punishing heretics on the basis of equity between the Moral Law in both Testaments

Now I realize that this assumes you have access to the two articles in question, but the point of this exercise is to encourage you to read the articles. The evidence strongly proves that Theonomy was not an orthodox position held by the writers of the Confession, and that the closest 17th century equivalent to the 20th century Theonomic movement was soundly rejected by the Assembly.