To: Motherbear
A deacon or deaconess is a servant....not a (servant) leader. We are all called to be servants. We are not all called to be leaders of the church.
Agreed.
But my point was simply, if the Bible acknowledges a female "Deaconess" and praises her.. Then why would they lie about this female apostle?
The reason femals apostles aren't mentioned is because they didn't exist..
102 posted on
07/06/2002 11:42:04 AM PDT by
Jhoffa_
To: Jhoffa_
In Romans 16:1-2 Paul commends Phoebe to the Roman Church.
He describes her as 'our sister' and in addition as a
minister and a leader.
Diakonos means, as you rightly point out, 'servant.'
It became an important title in the early church and had
secular usage as well. Contextually, in the NT, it is used
synonomously with 'ministry of the word' and/or 'ministry to equip the saints.' Deacon and "minister" became functional equivalents. The secular use was such to have the meaning 'servant or minister of a sovereign.'
1 Peter 4:10 would indicate that the role/office of deacon did indeed meet physical needs as well as proclamation of the word - there are two types of service, of ministry.
Both men and women are described with the noun diakonos in the NT. When it is applied to a male, there has been a
translator's bias toward rendering it "minister" and when
connected to a female as "servant."
Early Church History testifies to the role that women played
--- not as deaconesses, a word that does not appear in the NT but is a later ecclesiastical development ---- as deacons. Two female deacons in Bithynia-Pontus were tortured during Trajan's reign (AD 98-117) as the leaders and most knowledgable persons in their congregations.
The Letters of Pliny, Book 10, 96 reads: "it was all the more necessary to extract the truth by torture from the slave-women, whom they called ministers."
Phoebe is not only a minister, but is commended by Paul as
a ruler (prostatis) in the church. She was a woman set over others. Both elders and deacons are seen as having
authority in the Church.
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