Commissions under God, Church, and Spirit
Commissions under God, Church, and Spirit
Christian literature has so far furnished no indication that Christians created a terminology for “diakonia” based on the cognates under study. One phrase in the prescript to Paul's letter to the Philippians is translated in many ways, from “the bishops and deacons” to “church leaders and helpers”. Whether or not Paul introduced the title in the prescript of the Philippians as an honorific designation or takes up from the Philippians a title for officers of the “overseers” within their Hellenistic community, there is no doubt that in I Tim. 3 we meet such officers who with some certainty we can call “deacons”. To delineate the role of the deacon in Ignatius accurately it is necessary, as in the Pastoral epistles, to distinguish usage in respect of deacons from occasional other usage denoting the bishop's godly commission as head of the church or signifying that certain individuals, whether deacons or other members of the community, are godly representatives of one church to another on a godly mission.
Keywords: Paul, Philippians, Ignatius, diakonia, bishops, deacons, church leaders, overseers
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
