Originally posted by webdog:
Diakonos means more than a position of leadership.
Many forget that it is a position of responsibility too.
The meanings of the word are: minister, SERVANT, deacon, with the meaning servant and minister being the majority of the phrases used according to the greek lexicon. Phoebe was obviously a servant in the church, not a leader according to the qualifications of church leadership in 1 Timothy.
Take a look at the role women played in the leadership of the early church. They were a servant leader among women and children. There was a hierarchy as well just as there is today in many of those same countries.
The following is a part of an outline of a sermon I gave years ago.
H. (11) 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.
Of the 215 uses of the word for woman, only one seems to be controversial in its translation.
Most of scripture uses Jewish or Hebrew phraseology because the writers came form that background. Greek was a second language for them.
"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
Almost every country outside of the U.S. has women deacons in Baptist churches.
g. The emergence of deaconesses is unclear. But in the third and fourth centuries the office 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.
(Book X, XCVI, 8, 289)
h. The relationship between the male and female deacon.
pastor-deacon-deaconess-female
The pastor never spoke directly to a woman in church. He went through a deacon who spoke to a deaconess who spoke to the woman in a congregation.
