Deacon Phoebe of Cenchreae
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icon of Deacon Phoebe of Cenchreae
“I commend to you my sister Phoebe,
the deacon of the church at Cenchreae.”
Romans 16,1
Some critics just dismiss Phoebe’s status in the apostolic Church by saying that diakonos in Greek only means ‘servant’. If this applies to Phoebe, then why not to all the words that referred to ministries in apostolic times: presbuteros (elder), episkopos (overseer) and even apostolos (delegate)? If we argue as these critics do, we might as well discount all such New Testament terms as having no more than secular implications.
Diakonos denotes a very ancient ministry. It was instituted by the apostles even before presbuteroi or episkopoi were. Diakonoi were properly ‘ordained’ by the imposition of hands and the invocation of God’s Spirit (Acts 6:1-6). Paul mentions ‘bishops and deacons’ in one breath (Philippians 1:1). In the early Christian communities everyone knew that diakonos, no less than episkopos, indicated a person with an ‘ordained’ ministry. It is therefore highly significant that Paul calls Phoebe not only a ‘diakonos’, but, as the text says literally: ‘(also) being (the) deacon of the church in Cenchreae’. Would Paul use the term loosely in this context?
The early Greek Fathers certainly understood Phoebe to have been an ordained minister. St. Clement of Alexandria (150 – 215) speaks of the ‘women deacons’ (diakonoi gunaikes) whom ‘the noble Paul mentions in his letters’. Origen (185 – 255) states: ‘This text (Romans 16,1-2) teaches with the authority of the Apostle that also women are institued as deacons in the Church’. And may we omit the testimony of Pliny the Younger, Roman governor of Bithynia (112 AD), who reports that he arrested a group of Christians whose two female leaders bore the title of ministrae (Latin for diakonoi)?
All this becomes more than speculation if we remember the detailed ordination rites for women deacons, just as for male deacons, that have been preserved, dating back to at least the 4th century. In those rites the bishop calls on the Holy Spirit to pour out the grace of the diaconate on the woman ordinand ‘as you granted to Phoebe the grace of your diaconate whom you had called to this ministry’.
-John Wijngaards
For more information, see the work of Women’s Ordination Worldwide member group, Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research (WICR). For specific information about women deacons, see their website, womendeacons.org. The website provides an extensive library of scholarly research, manuscripts of ancient ordination rites, videos and discussion material.
Their work shows the tens of thousands of women who served as fully ordained deacons in Catholic parishes during ten long centuries. Some of them ministered in Italy and Gaul, but the vast majority lived and worked in Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine and Egypt. At that time the Orthodox East was still part of the Catholic Church.
WICR also runs the celebrated website, womenpriests.org which provides the full case for women’s ordination in the context of scripture, theology, Tradition, and history. They show how the exclusion of women from Catholic priesthood rests on cultural prejudice against women instead of anything authentic to Christianity.
