What do we know about the deacons in past times?
To what extent does a historical study of the New Testament, early Church writings and later historical documents tell us about what deacons were and did and are? Does it enable us to find what was the original, the most primitive form of the diaconate? The answer is that the history of the diaconate, and particularly on what the first deacons were and did, is not clear. Similarly, the idea that the current three-fold order of Bishop, Priest and Deacon accurately represents ancient Biblical or early church tradition and practice is misguided. It does not and we need to look with fresh eyes at what a deacon is and does (as well as at what other clergy do).
This is not to say that the historical evidence does not show the high regard in which the early diaconate was held by the early church. This is seen very clearly in the words of the martyred Bishop Ignatius of Antioch who said that the three fold ministry was an essential sign of the Church: “Apart from these, there is no Church”. Also from Ignatius we get a sense of the powerful independent role of deacons as ministers of the gospel in the early church. This high regard for deaons withered away in the Western Church because of historical circumstances. Now, it is clear that worldwide there has been a gradual and fruitful restoration of the distinctive diaconate in a number of denominations. The general trend in the Anglican communion is the same.
The Anglican Church has, since its inception as the Reformation period Church of England, had, as its ordained ministers, Bishops, Priests and Deacons. So in this tradition the threefold form of ordained ministry is a given and so it has remained and continues to do so.
A subsidiary aspect of that tradition is to ascribe the start of the diaconate to events described in Chapter 6 of the Acts of the Apostles – so much so that the South African Anglican Lectionary for December 26 states “St Stephen, deacon and martyr”. So in this tradition the origins of the diaconate are present in that New Testament text (Acts 6:1-7), though this belief has now come under serious contestation.
The New Testament evidence
Since the Church’s understanding of the work of the deacon partly developed from its reading of the New Testament, it is necessary to re-look at the New Testament evidence about deacons and the other ‘ministers’ of the young Church. Unfortunately there is no simple answer to the question of what a ‘minister’ is, that is, if we restrict ourselves to the New Testament writers and to the reported words of Jesus on ‘ministry’.
Jesus saw his followers as a “flock” (that is, a group of people, not just isolated individuals) guided, protected and overseen by a shepherd, a kinship band who were the new temple, a true worshipping community, whose members have the authority to forgive sins and who are “sent” to bring the good news to all. Ministers are those who are the servants to this community. Mandated-by-God-service (diakonia) is the principle of this ministry and the authority and esteem of the minister depends on this humble service (Luke 22:24-27 expresses this particularly well). In sum, service, leadership and mission are all expressed in what Jesus says about ministry, and leadership is seen as arising out of this diakonia. The New Testament writers also concur that diakonia is the qualification for ministry (1 Corinthians 16:15-16).
Unfortunately the terms used for actual ‘ministers’ are confusing and can be summed up by saying that in the New Testament church there was not yet a fixed order of ministries. Nor is the New Testament particularly clear about what these ministers actually did. So what kinds of ‘ministers’ seem to have been in operation? There were:
- those who received direct and different gifts of grace to minister as apostles, prophets, teachers, miracle workers, healers, administrators, ecstatics, interpreters, evangelists, pastors, etc. (1 Corinthians 12:4-11, 28; Ephesians 4:11-12).
- bishops and deacons (the latter certainly including women), with the bishops exercising responsibility, oversight and shepherding (Philippians 1:1) and deacons exercising ministry. The bishops came to exercise a particularly important role in being responsible not only to the local congregation but to the wider church (as the church was never considered as a loose federation of autonomous congregations but as a single body).
- elders (presbyters) who appear to have been a group of the leading senior people in the local congregation and who clearly have some authority. Paul, for example, appointed leaders in the congregations he founded (Acts 14:20-23) and he describes them as his fellow workers (1 Corinthians 16:5, 2 Corinthians 8:23, Ephesians 6:21, Philippians 2:25, Colossians 1:7, 4:7). They have a governance and advisory role. [Note that the Eglish word priest is derived from the Latin word for an elder. No Christian ministers are priests in the Old Testament sense of the word.]
There continue to be debates by scholars as to whether bishops were the same thing as elders, or a select group within the elders, or (maybe in a later development) a special person selected out of the elders to be their president, and as to how the final arrangement of the three orders of ordained ministers, bishops, presbyters and deacons, developed.
The problem is that the New Testament names these ministerial offices but never tells us what they do (the readers of that time would of course have known what they did) and never speaks of bishops (overseers/supervisors), presbyters (elders), and deacons (ministers) all together in one string of words. All we know that in this first century the deacons played an important role in leading the diakonia, the ministry of Christian community. They were entrusted with important tasks. It is implied that deacons were subservient to the bishop, but their ministry was not an inferior one, as there is no rigid hierarchical order in New Testament times.
The early Church evidence
The fourth Bishop of Rome, Clement, writing about AD 96, said that bishops and deacons had been appointed by the apostles. He does not clearly distinguish between bishops and presbyters and it may be that the bishop was a presbyter elected by fellow presbyters to preside over the Eucharist and that deacons related to the bishop in this liturgical role.
A very early document, The Lord’s teaching through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations (the Didache), written between AD 70 and AD 100, speaks of bishops and deacons also doing the ministry of the prophets and teachers. They ensured the regular celebration of the Eucharist.
Polycarp, martyred in AD 155, says that presbyters have to take care of widows, orphans, and the destitute. Deacons, are “of God and not of men” (Letter to the Philippians 5:1) and are to “walk according to the truth of the Lord, who became diakonos of all”. Justin, martyred in AD 165, said that deacons distributed the Eucharistic bread and wine.
Hippolytus, a conservative contender for the bishopric of Rome, states in his Apostolic Tradition of about AD 228 that:
“The deacon is not ordained to the presbyterate but to the hypēresia [the work of a public official, functionary, or executive officer] of the bishop, that he may do only what the bishop commands him. For he is not appointed to be the fellow-counsellor of the whole clergy but to take charge of property and report to the bishop whatever is necessary. He does not receive the Spirit which is common to all the presbyterate, in which the presbyters share, but that which is entrusted to him under the bishop’s authority.”
Another early church document, the Teaching of the Apostles (Didascalia Apostolorum), a manual on Church order and practice written in Syria about AD 230, describes the deacon as being in the service of the bishop, acting as a manager and reporting to the bishop what is necessary. The deacon is first of all the bishop’s assistant. The bishop is an overseer and the deacon his executive. In fact, according to the Didascalia, the bishop is so supreme that the laity have no access to him save through the deacon, who acts as a liaison officer.
So it seems that deacons were a distinctive ministry of service and agency, working to inspire, equip and mobilise the congregation in their ministries of service, healing, care and justice. They were the agents of the bishop who presided over the church’s liturgical and spiritual life. They presented the offerings of the community at the gathering, saw that they were shared, and ensured that those who could not get to the gathering (the sick, the imprisoned, women unable to leave the confines of the homes, slaves) were served. They checked out Christians who came from another congregation before admitting them into the assembly. The number of deacons would be proportionate to the size of the congregation to enable them to know and to minister to all. (One known example from a court record of AD 303 had a bishop, three presbyters, two deacons and four sub-deacons serving a congregation of little over a hundred.)
Liturgically, the deacons handled the offerings and kept order in the assembly, including finding places for the old and infirm to sit (even if the bishop had to give up his seat and sit on the ground!). Female deacons played an important role, partcularly visting women in their homes to which men were not admitted.
The move towards the threefold order
After the beginning of the Second Century we witness a gradual transformation into a stable and accepted order of the three-fold ministry of bishops, presbyters and deacons (1 Timothy 4:6). There are various scholarly theories about a merging of a Jewish model of synagogue elders (with a president) and a Greek model of bishop(s) and deacons.
The first time we have a clear statement of the Church having a threefold ministry comes from the letters of Bishop Ignatius of Antioch who was martyred in about AD 110 – probably less than fifty years Peter and Paul. In these letters we find some of the earliest references to things we now take for granted – such as the centrality of the Eucharist, Sunday as a replacement of the Sabbath, and the term “catholic” (meaning "universal") applied to the Church. His letters serve to record the rapid development of a stable threefold church hierarchy (though we must not impose our modern and somewhat authoritarian ideas of what ‘hierarchy’ meant onto those times). Ignatius is the earliest known Christian writer to emphasize loyalty to a single bishop in each city (or diocese) who is assisted by both presbyters and deacons. Indeed for Ignatius, having this three fold ministry was an essential sign of the Church.
From what Ignatius tells us we can get a sense of the powerful independent role of deacons in the early church. Ignatius placed enormous value on their work. In his Letter to the Trallians (3) he says “let all reverence the deacons as an appointment of Jesus Christ.” This is what he says about the bishops, presbyters and deacons (Letter to the Magnesians 6):
“Take care to do all things in harmony with God, with the bishop presiding in the place of God, and with the presbyters in the place of the council of the apostles, and with the deacons, who are most dear to me, entrusted with the diakonia of Jesus Christ, who was with the Father from the beginning and is at last made manifest.”
So there we have a very clearly delineated threefold ministry and we can get a sense of what function each of the three roles involved:
- The bishop was the presider over the church in a particular place, the “spiritual crown of your presbytery”.
- The presbyters, the elders, were the council of senior people in the church who govern and advise.
- The deacons who are “entrusted with the diakonia of Jesus Christ” minister and serve.
The deacons were the people who most directly heard the concerns of the people of the Church and community and could inform the Bishop of what was needed – for relief for the poor, taking the Eucharistic sacrament to the sick and imprisoned, raising money to pay for relief, handling communications during times of persecution and, even at times, acting as the bodyguards of the Bishop in danger from pagan mobs. There were both male and female deacons and the latter had a particular ministry to women who might never be allowed to leave their homesteads. Deacons also had an important liturgical role in the Eucharist and in Baptism and the Eucharist.
It is clear from Ignatius that the deacon, like the bishop and presbyter, belongs to the altar. The deacon still combined liturgical and welfare functions. The deacon cared for widows and orphans and visited the faithful, reporting their needs to the bishop. The requirement to inform the bishop shows that the deacon was subordinate to him. Ignatius insisted that the deacon was “subject to the bishop as to the grace of God and to the presbyterium as to the law of Christ”. But the deacon is not some lesser official serving human superiors but is still seen as someone who in their own right carries out an important function in Christ’s redemptive work. Ignatius speaks of two deacons, Burrhus and Sotio, as being his fellow-servants and of another, Philo of Cilicia, “a man of reputation, who still ministers to me in the word of God”.
To sum up in more modern language, the deacons are the information gatherers, the intelligence agents of the local Christian community and the information they gather is to be used to galvanize the diaconal action of the congregation. The diakonia of the disciples also needs leadership and when it comes to people who are ordained to be deacons, they are those who have been authorised by the Church to lead and guide these diaconal activities – and these activities are far more expansive than simply distributing food to the poor. As Ignatius also put it:
“They are not deacons of food and drink but are officers of the Church of God.”
With the 3rd century the picture changes, the fluidity of ministries found in the New Testament had fully hardened into the three-fold hierarchy of bishops, presbyters and deacons. The environment was also changing, after AD 313 Christianity was no longer prohibited and eventually became the state religion with access to state resources for welfare. Bishops no longer presided over congregations of a hundred or a couple of hundred but now of thousands, and more ministers were required.
So far as the diaconate was concerned, emphasis now came to be laid not on the deacons’ work but on the deacon’s status. The deacon now was a subordinate member of a fixed threefold order. We read in Hippolytus’ The Apostolic Tradition that when a deacon is ordained “the bishop alone lays on hands, for the deacon is not ordained to the presbyterate but to the bishop’s service, to do what the latter tells him”. His ministry is to be the bishop’s helper.
A later set of documents, the Constitutions of the Holy Apostles, probably from Syria about AD 375, provides further details of the status of deacons in the 3rd and 4th centuries. The deacon has to report everything to the bishop “as Christ does to the Father” but can deal alone with the delegated work, reducing the burden on the bishop.
In the liturgical assemblies the deacons are the managers. Many deacons are elected as bishops.
The fall of the diaconate
The diaconate, as is clear from the Didascalia and the letters of Ignatius, had a powerful position as the executives of the bishop. As the Church grew in size and persecution waned, their position began to be contested by the presbyters, who were growing in numbers as the Church expanded.
The desire to subordinate the deacons to the presbyters was brought into sharp focus by the Synod of Arles in Gaul in AD 314. This Synod ruled that the deacon was subordinate not only to the bishop but to the presbyter as well: “the deacon should not be arrogant, he should honour the presbyter and do nothing without his knowledge”. It also ordered that the practice of delegating a deacon to preside over the Eucharist should cease. This negative attitude to the deacons was particularly prevalent among the presbyters of Rome and in AD 375 a pamphlet was published there On the arrogance of deacons. Though the reasons for this might have been many, one thing seems clear, it is the importance and high status of the diaconate that contributed to this state of affairs. Both bishops and especially the presbyters, might have felt threatened by the deacon’s significant role.
In Rome the situation was made worse by the what had now become the established misreading of Acts 6:1-7, it was assumed that there could only be seven deacons per bishop. So Rome had a maximum of seven deacons, who, in effect became the executive heads of the seven ecclesiastical districts of Rome and managers of all the Church assets. Of all Bishops of Rome elected between 432 and 684, only three were previously ordained presbyters – the others were all deacons (who, like the bishop, were elected by the whole body of the church). Indeed being ordained as a presbyter usually ended your chances of becoming Pope! It was usually the deacons who had the requisite experience to lead the Church.
But the downside was that seven deacons were simply insufficient in the huge city like Rome – yet hundreds of presbyters were available. Over time they took over.
Enright (2006, p. 17) puts this change in wider perspective:
“Increasingly, from the late third century into the fifth century and thereafter, the importance of an individual order called “deacon” became less and less important. There is, if you will, a reduction from a threefold ministry to a twofold ministry. ... As Christianity increased in size and began to move out into the countryside, however, the bishop, who remained in the city, needed to provide for the celebration of the Eucharist; he therefore began to assign presbyters to take over the priestly role that once was solely his in the small city congregations. The deacon, by his very ordination, being assigned to the bishop, did not accompany the presbyters out into the countryside. Thus, eventually the diaconate ceased to be a distinct permanent ministry and became a step to the priesthood.”
In the Western church this conflict ended badly for the diaconate and by AD 700 the ordination of permanent deacons fell away completely, and only transitional deacons, en route to the presbyterate, remained. From then on until the 20th century Second Vatican Council of 1962-65, the diaconate in the Roman Catholic Church was regarded as simply a stage on the road to the priesthood and Canon Law only allowed bishops to ordain deacons who were to go on to the priesthood.
So, although the deacons were the first full-time and professional ministers at a time when the presbyters were hardly more than a small advisory board, over a few centuries the presbyter gained the position as the normal minister in charge of a congregation. The diaconate lost many of its real functions in the West (though they remained a distinctive order in the Eastern churches).
From the Middle Ages to Modern times
By the time of the Middle Ages in the West the influence of the deacon declined and his functions were restricted to the liturgy, though as Collins (2002, p. 10) states, “they almost disappear except for performers dressed in dalmatics at high liturgical festivals, who are actually priests disguised as deacons.” There were of course exceptions – St Francis was a deacon who refused to go further and get priested.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church the diaconal ministry remained but tended to become increasingly liturgical, with the social welfare ministry falling away. Generally this is seen as partly due to the fact that for many centuries Orthodoxy remained largely under Muslim rule, or, in the 20th century, under Communist regimes. The only exception to this was Tsarist Russia, where in the 19th century deacons were re-established as part of the normal parish ministry for each church having more than 700 members and were made responsible for religious and public education. This ended with the suppression of the Church under Communist rule.
In Africa, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, originally an offshoot of the Coptic Church in Egypt, has numerous presbyters (typically five presbyters concelebrate the liturgy) and a group of deacons assisting the rector of a church. Three deacons are required for any Eucharist. Each church has its own Archdeacon as leader among the deacons.
The Lutheran and Calvinist Reformation leaders aimed at rediscovering the New Testament ministries and thus were willing to restore the diaconate but, following the traditional misinterpretation of Acts 6, the diaconate as reformed only had a social welfare brief and totally neglected the ancient liturgical functions of the deacon.
Calvin for example had two types of deacons, elected by the elders, those who administered the alms and those who cared for the poor and the sick. The deacons collected contributions from the congregation; visited the members, served at the tables with Holy Communion. Elders were usually senior men; deacons junior men. In the Dutch Reformed Churches deacons are also members of the local church council. A special feature of the Dutch Reformed Churches is the fact that the diaconate of each local church is its own legal entity with its own financial means, separated from the church itself, and governed by the deacons.
In the Lutheran Church there was a revival of a religious order of deaconesses in the 1800s as part of a social welfare movement in Germany. It was not engaged liturgically and operated in schools, hospitals, orphanages and general care for the poor and distressed. This deaconess movement spread to the Scandinavian and other European countries and also influenced other denominations, including Calvinist and Methodist.
In Methodism, the Wesleyan Deaconess Order was formed in 1890 and then in 1986 reopened the order to both men and women. Then in 1996, in the United States of America, ended the transitional deacon and a new Order of Deacons established to be equal in status with the Order of Elders. Deacons serve in a variety of specialized ministries including, but not limited to, Christian education, music, communications and ministries of justice and advocacy.
The Church of England kept the three orders, but restricted what the deacon could do liturgically and largely deprived him of social welfare duties (though these duties were noted in the ordination rites – there is a wonderful instruction in the Anglican ordination rite (of 1986) for deacons where they are instructed: “You are to interpret to the Church the needs, the concerns and hopes of the world.” The earlier (1662) wording is more down to earth: “to search out the sick, the poor, the impotent people of the Parish, to intimate their estates, names, and places where they dwell, unto the Curate, that by his exhortation they may be relived with the alms of the Parishioners, or others.” Then in the later part of the twentieth century there were some gradual attempts at restoring a living diaconate.
The Roman Catholic Church’s counter-Reformation Council of Trent (1545-1563) recommended re-institution of permanent diaconate and declared that those who consider the diaconate “useless” to be heretics and that diaconal functions should not be exercised except by deacons (Session 23, Chapter 17).
The proposals was not followed through and not much happened until Vatican II (1962-1965) which reaffirmed the diaconate in accordance with tradition, widened the range of liturgical functions of the deacon, and restored the diaconate as a separate and permanent rank in the hierarchy of the Church. Enacted in 1967 through the document Sacrum Diaconatus Ordinem, single or married men could be ordained to the permanent diaconate. The implementation of these reforms was left to the decision of each episcopal conference according to guidelines issued in 1971. Some 10 percent of ordained clergy are now deacons.
The diaconate in the Anglican Church
For the Anglican churches, the later 20th Century saw the beginnings of a restoration of a true diaconal order (after centuries of neglect in which it was seen as an “inferior” order that was used as a training year of practice for young priests, a custom which was often dysfunctional because deacons were habitually treated as inferiors and they were, anyway, not allowed to do many of the things that the presbyters claimed as their sole prerogative).
The renewal was partly a response to the increasing marginalization of the churches in the Western post-Christian, secularized society, and a rediscovery of their historical and biblical mission to the poor and needy and thus their call to diakonia.
Since the late 1950s there have been various recommendations and resolutions on the restoration of the diaconate in the Anglican Church worldwide. In 2007 a Church of England study, The Mission and Ministry of the Whole Church, urged that the diaconate be taken more seriously and noted that though its theological framework already existed it had remained unrecognised. The distinctive diaconate should be encouraged and the transitional diaconate should take longer than a year. In the same year the Church of England changed the ordinal for the deacon, which reflected an enhanced understanding of the concept of diakonia for which there was a paramount need and for which the diaconate has a signal role in contributing towards meeting.
In Southern Africa the first notable move was in 1979 with the setting up of a Commission on the Diaconate which reported in 1981. The Commission made a large number of general and specific conclusion and recommendations. But the Provincial Synod of 1982 voted not to even consider the report, and few if any of its recommendations have subsequently been addressed, possibly because much of the attention of church leadership in the 1980s was devoted to the then controversial issue of the ordination of women as priests. So the general trend to restore the diaconate in both the Anglican Church worldwide and in other denominations largely passed by the Anglican Church of Southern Africa (ACSA).
Since the 1990s a number of permanent non-stipendiary deacons were ordained in South Africa but only in some dioceses and this impetus soon dwindled, mired as it was in continuing controversy over the status of self-supporting clergy in general.
In 2013 the Highveld Deacons’ Fellowship was established and the first provincial conference of the ACSA Fellowship of Deacons held in 2015 with the blessing of the Archbishop. Connections were also made with the international organisation Diakonia World Federation and its African and Europe region (DRAE). Further provincial conferences were held in 2016 and 2018.
In 2017 representation was granted to the Fellowship on the ACSA Provincial Standing Committee. Dioceses were encouraged to adopt a Resolution of Permanent Force for the Diaconate (as the Highveld diocese had done).
In September 2018 a Provincial Standing Committee resolution called on the Archbishop to set up a commission to investigate the ministry of the distinctive and permanent diaconate and to report to Provincial Synod in 2019. This was delayed until September 2022 when a Commission was established and its final report released in 2024.
At the Provincial Synod held on 25-27 September 2024 the following motion was passed:
"THE DIACONATE
Whereas:
1. The Provincial Standing Committee’s in 2022 called on all dioceses to nurture and promote the ministry of distinctive deacons within ACSA.
2. This Synod is thankful to the Archbishop for the report of the Archbishop’s Commission on the Ministry of the Distinctive and Permanent Diaconate which has clarified the distinctiveness of the ministry of deacons, in relation to the other two orders, and in relation to the crisis-ridden context of our times.
3. This Synod believes God is calling upon us to revitalize the diaconal order.Synod resolves to endorse the following based on recommendations of the Commission:
1. There should be a concerted effort to remove any prejudice and discrimination against the diaconate at various levels, and this also applies to how transitional deacons are treated.
2. Ordination services of deacons and priests should be separated as far as possible.
3. Consideration should be given to lengthening the period of the transitional diaconate so that transitional deacons can be trained for, and have a genuine experience of, the diaconate, rather than only be treated as apprentice priests.
4. Information and study materials about the nature of diakonia and the distinctive diaconate should be produced.
5. Relevant vocational discernment and training information, processes and resources that take the distinctive diaconate into account should be created.
6. Representatives from theological training institutions and diocesan training programmes should be asked to take forward the report’s suggestions on a curriculum and programme for the education and training of deacons.
7. ACSA should endeavour to deal with the inevitable changes that a true restoration of the distinctive diaconate would require: canonical, liturgical, and synodal, and the support needed to develop an effective network for the diaconate (the Fellowship of Deacons).Proposer: Bishop Charles May
Seconder: Revd Prof John Aitchison"
Conclusions
Interesting as the history of the diaconate us, any restoration of a distinctive diaconate will have to be based of first principles, and that means a better understanding of the concept of diakonia and a better theology of the diaconate. As Lawlor (2023) puts it:
“It is my thought, that whatever we do now regarding the diaconate, cannot be based on how things were … or even currently are. The whole way church is done, including the ministerial tasks assigned to being Bishop, Priest and Deacon need to be rethought in line with what the people of God, the Church gathered needs today – in order to grow in faith, love and hope.”
Note: This history is based upon Chapter 1 of the 2024 document, the Report of Archbishop's Commission on the ministry of the distinctive and permanent diaconate.
