CHAPTER I.
THE DIACONATE.
In the ruins of the old cities of Greece and Rome we find buildings that were used for public purposes of all kinds—forums, theaters, amphitheaters, circuses, and temples of worship. Every provision was made for the entertainment of the people, and for their political and intellectual needs. But nowhere do we find the ruins of structures, belonging either to the public or to private individuals, indicating that any attempt was ever made to care for the feeble-minded, the insane, the deaf, the blind, the sick, or the aged; those that in every nation of modern times are the wards of the State and the definite objects of religious ministrations.
The ruins cannot be found because such buildings never existed. No provision was made for those suffering from bodily infirmities, because so far as014/10 the State could control circumstances they were not allowed to exist. Children who were defective in any way were put to death. In Sparta this measure was carried out under government supervision. Even Plato in his model republic has all children of wicked men, the misshapen, or the illegitimate put out of existence, that they may not be a burden to the State.[1]
With the coming of Christ new elements were introduced into the civilization of the world; elements of kindliness, of compassion, of sympathy of man toward his fellow-man, that up to this time had not been known. There was a new revelation of the brotherhood of all men in the fatherhood of God: “We are all one in Christ Jesus.”
This spirit of compassion and of sympathy has grown with every century in the Christian era, and at no time has it been stronger in the history of the world than it is to-day. Well has one American historian said:
“To a generation which knows but two crimes worthy of death, that against the life of the individual and that against the life of the State; which has expended fabulous sums in the erection of reformatories, asylums, and penitentiaries, houses of015/11 correction, houses of refuge, and houses of detention all over the land; which has furnished every State prison with a library, with a hospital, with workshops, and with schools, the brutal scenes on which our ancestors looked with indifference seem scarcely a reality. Yet it is well to recall them, for we cannot but turn from the contemplation of so much misery and so much suffering with a deep sense of thankfulness that our lot has fallen in a pitiful age, when more compassion is felt for a galled horse or a dog run over at a street-crossing than our great-grandfathers felt for a woman beaten for cursing, or a man imprisoned for debt.”[2]
The spirit of Christ has penetrated even where his rule is not acknowledged, and the humanitarianism of the present day is simply the leaven of Christian love working among the masses of men.
In the Christian world the effort to realize the brotherhood of all men in Christ is producing large results. Treasures of money, and infinitely more precious treasures of men, are every year devoted to this one object. The cause of Protestant foreign missions is not yet a century old, but the latest available statistics tell us that the following016/12 sums are being contributed annually for this great work:[3]
| 32 | American societies contribute | $3,011,027 | ||
| 28 | British | " | " | 5,217,385 |
| 27 | Continental | " | " | 1,083,170 |
| 87 | societies contribute | $9,311,582 | ||
With this large sum American societies are employing 986 men, and 1,081 women; British societies, 1,811 men, and 745 women; Continental societies, 777 men, and 447 women. Total, 3,574 men, 2,273 women.
Visible results of faithfulness in work:
| Members in | American societies | 242,733 | |
| " | British | " | 340,242 |
| " | Continental | " | 117,532 |
| Total membership in foreign lands | 700,507 | ||
| Children in the Sunday-schools | 626,741 | ||
The subject of home missions is to-day attracting greater attention than ever before. “Die Innere Mission” of Germany, the various forms the work assumes in England, the many societies in the United States occupied by the questions of city evangelization, work among the Mormons, the treatment of the Indians, care for the colored race, and017/13 other phases of home work show that Christians are fully understanding that it is wise to build over against our own house.
Certainly the reproach cannot justly be made that the Church of Christ is neglectful of the precept, “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men.”
This is genuine service of man to man, and the motive of the service is love to God. Every revelation of God is of ministering love and compassion, and the efforts of his disciples to imitate the divine love have indelibly stamped upon modern civilization the Christian impress.
The service of ministering compassion is so clearly one of the duties of Christ’s Church that of necessity there must be ordinances touching the exercise of this duty. So in Acts vi, 3, we read of the appointment of the deacons, “men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and of wisdom,” to see that the service of the tables was not neglected.
But Christian women have ever had special gifts in caring for the poor and sick and helpless, and the women of apostolic times must necessarily have had their part in these services of love. In addition to the diaconate appointed by the apostles recorded in the sixth chapter of Acts, we must look for a female diaconate as an office in the Church.018/14 This we do not fail to find. In Rom. xvi, 1, we read: “I commend unto you Phebe, a deacon of the church which is at Cenchrea.” Such at least would have been the form of the verse if our translators had rendered the Greek word here translated servant as they rendered the like word in the sixth chapter of Acts, the third of the First Epistle to Timothy, and in other passages of the apostolic writings.
“That ye receive her in the Lord as becometh saints, and that ye assist her in whatsoever business she hath need of you: for she hath been a succorer of many, and of myself also.” These words of St. Paul are especially valuable as an apostolic witness for the existence of the office of deaconess at the time when he wrote. They are even more than that. They are an apostolic commendation of the office addressed to the Christian Church of all times to accept the deaconess in the Lord, and to assist her “in whatsoever business she hath need of you.”
Whether Priscilla, spoken of with Aquila as “my helpers in Christ Jesus,” or Tryphena, Tryphosa, and the beloved Persis, who “labored much,” or Julia and Olympas, all mentioned in the same chapter, were or were not deaconesses we have no means of knowing.
Outside of this chapter we do not find other references to the order in the New Testament, unless it be in 1 Tim. iii, 11. In the midst of a lengthy description of the qualifications of deacons is interjected the exhortation: “Even so must their wives be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things.” Now the word wives has no authority from the Greek word, which is simply women. Bishop Lightfoot remarks, in his book on the authorized version of the New Testament, “If the theory of the definite article (in the Greek) had been understood our translators would have seen that the reference is to deaconesses, not to wives of the deacons.”
Many eminent scholars are of the same opinion, among whom are Chrysostom, Grotius, Bishop Wordsworth, and Dean Alvord. Dean Howson adds: “It should be particularly noticed in connection with this that in the early part of the chapter no such directions are given concerning the wives of the bishops, though they are certainly as important as the wives of the deacons; so that it can scarcely be thought otherwise than that the apostle’s directions were for the deaconesses, an order which we find in ecclesiastical records for some centuries side by side with that of deacons.”[4]
Those mentioned in Tit. ii, 3, and in 1 Tim. v, 9, cannot be considered as holding the office of a deaconess. They belong distinctively to the class of widows, who held a position of honor in the Church. St. Paul had clear conceptions of the administrative needs of the Church, and it is not probable that he would set apart to the service of deaconesses, which had many difficult duties, those who were already sixty years old.
The many names of faithful women mentioned in his letters as helpers in the Church are important witnesses for the great apostle’s appreciation of woman’s co-operation in the work of the Church, although his judgment was necessarily limited in some directions by the influence of the times in which he lived.
Let us examine the requirements for the diaconate of the early Church. The word diaconate means service; helpful service. We use the word to designate service for the Church of Christ; service that more particularly concerns itself with administering the charities of the Church and performing its duties of compassion and mercy. The men who were selected for this office were to be men of “honest report.” They must have led a blameless life. Those who had repented of wrong-doing and reformed their lives were excluded from the office,021/17 because they had lost a good report “of them which are without.” Pre-eminently they must be men of spiritual experience, proven Christians, “full of the Holy Ghost and of wisdom.” They were also to have practical gifts that would make them efficient and capable in the duties of every-day life. 1 Tim. iii, 8.
These are some of the qualifications spoken of as belonging to the diaconate, and are the same in application to either sex. The woman deacon must, however, besides possessing the above qualities, be unmarried or a widow. The married woman has her calling at home, and cannot combine with that an official calling in the Church, although she may be a valuable lay helper.
The field of labor of the women deacons of apostolic times and of the present is essentially the same. The conditions of society and of the Church, however, are totally dissimilar. We must, therefore, look to see new adaptations of the same useful qualities. In other words, we shall not expect to take the female diaconate of the days of the apostles and transport it unchanged, into nineteenth century environments. We shall rather expect to see the invariably useful qualities of the diaconate of women adapted to the needs of the sinful, sorrowing, ignorant, and helpless of the age in which we live.
[1] Heidenthum und Judenthum, von Döllinger, p. 692. Regensburg, 1857.
[2] MacMaster’s History of the United States, vol. i, p. 102.
[3] Statistics from North American Review, February, 1889, “Why am I a Missionary?”
[4] Deaconesses, Rev. J. D. Howson, D.D., p. 236.