9 DEACONS
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Hippolytus, Antipope and Easton, Burton Scott
The development of the diaconate in the first century is extremely obscure, but in the Pastoral Epistles and 1 Clement “presbyters” are divided into “bishops and deacons”—in these works the three terms are never used together—indicating specializations within the presbyterate. Some presbyters were especially concerned in “overseeing” the community and others with “serving” it—particularly in charitable works; compare the “governments” and “helps” in 1 Corinthians 12. 28. 80 When monarchical episcopacy was introduced, the now more or less supernumerary “overseers” were less important than the “servers”, who became the personal assistants of the bishops. The respective status in the third century is set forth in Didascalia, chapter 9 (= Constitutions II, 26, 4-7): “Let the bishop ... be honoured by you as God.... The deacon is with you as a type of Christ, so let him be loved by you. Let the deaconess be honoured by you as a type of the Holy Spirit. Let the presbyters be looked on by you as a type of the apostles”.
1. The reference is apparently to chapter 2, with no explanation how choice by the people is reconciled with 3. 6. The Sahidic, the Testament and the Canons agree with the Latin, but the Arabic, Ethiopic and the Constitutions speak only of the bishop. But the close relations between the bishop and the deacons would seem to make his freedom of choice necessary.
Does the absence of any provision for election in chapter 8 indicate that the presbyters were still chosen by the presbytery?
2-4. Any (surviving?) remnant of the conception of deacons as “serving presbyters” is dismissed summarily.
5-8. Hippolytus is attempting to reconcile a ceremonial survival of the days when presbyters ordained with the doctrine that ordination is the prerogative of bishops. The result is incoherent; if a presbyter has no power to “give”, what is said of the “common and like Spirit” is pointless. And, although the passage appears intact (or expanded) in the other versions, 7-8 read like a later addition. But perhaps these are a theory of Hippolytus’s, glossed on a traditional phrase.
10-12. The original text of this passage is very uncertain. The Latin breaks off with “offere”, and the 81 following words in the Ethiopic and the Testament stress what in Hippolytus is a minor and not characteristic function of the deacons (4. 2), while their chief duties are ignored. Moreover, neither the Constitutions, the Canons nor Sarapion have anything corresponding; all three—in widely different terms—petition for “faithfulness” and “wisdom”; all three, incidentally, quote Acts 6. It is worth noting that none of the sources call the deacons “Levites”; this title[191] appears to come in a later age when—through the change from local to diocesan episcopacy—the deacons became the assistants of the presbyters.
The Ethiopic[192] and the Constitutions speak of the diaconate as a preparation for the presbyterate: this conception belongs to the fourth, not the third, century.