DEACONESSES IN CHURCH HISTORY
The presence of women deacons or deaconesses throughout Christian history has not been uniform, nor always even common. Nevertheless, they have always existed in the church, and so the practice cannot fairly be dismissed as a recent trend. Here is a historical sampling.
Pliny the Younger, Governor of Bithynia, Letter to the Emperor Trajan (AD 111–113):
Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition.
Clement of Alexandria (AD 150–215):
We are also aware of all the things that the noble Paul prescribed on the subject of female deacons in one of the two Epistles to Timothy.
Origen of Alexandria (AD 184–253):
[Romans 16:1] teaches … two things: that there are … women deacons in the church, and that women, who have given assistance to so many people and who by their good works deserve to be praised by the apostle, ought to be accepted in the diaconate.
Olympias (AD 368–408):
Olympias, a widowed deaconess of the church in Constantinople, leveraged her immense wealth to become a generous patron of the church. She donated many of her estates to the church, supported the ministries of such church leaders as John Chrysostom and Gregory of Nazianzus, ransomed exiled captives, sustained a community of 250 virgins, and cared for the poor.
Apostolic Constitutions (AD 380):
Ordain also a deaconess who is faithful and holy, for the ministrations toward women. For sometimes he cannot send a deacon, who is a man, to the women, on account of unbelievers. Thou shalt therefore send a woman, a deaconess, on account of the imaginations of the bad. For we stand in need of a woman, a deaconess, for many necessities.
Let the deacons be in all things unspotted, as the bishop himself is to be, only more active; in number according to the largeness of the church, that they may minister to the infirm as workmen that are not ashamed. And let the deaconess be diligent in taking care of the women; but both of them ready to carry messages, to travel about, to minister, and to serve.… Let every one therefore know his proper place, and discharge it diligently with one consent, with one mind, as knowing the reward of their ministration.
O Eternal God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Creator of man and of woman, who didst replenish with the Spirit Miriam, and Deborah, and Anna, and Huldah; who didst not disdain that thy only begotten Son should be born of a woman; who also in the tabernacle of the testimony, and in the temple, didst ordain women to be keepers of thy holy gates—do thou now also look down upon this thy servant, who is to be ordained to the office of a deaconess, and grant her thy Holy Spirit, and “cleanse her from all filthiness of flesh and spirit,” that she may worthily discharge the work which is committed to her to thy glory, and the praise of thy Christ, with whom glory and adoration be to thee and the Holy Spirit forever. Amen.
John Chrysostom (AD 349–407):
Some have thought that [1 Tim. 3:11] is said of women generally, but it is not so, for why should [Paul] introduce anything about women to interfere with his subject? He is speaking of those who hold the rank of deaconesses.
Jerome (AD 347–420):
Salvina, however, consecrated her life to deeds of piety, and became one of Chrysostom’s deaconesses.
John Calvin (1509–1564):
Deaconesses were appointed, not to soothe God by chantings or unintelligible murmurs, and spend the rest of their time in idleness, but to perform a public ministry of the church toward the poor, and to labor with all zeal, assiduity, and diligence, in offices of charity.
Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892):
Deaconesses, an office that most certainly was recognised in the apostolic churches.
It would be a great mercy if God gave us the privilege of having many sons who all preached the gospel, and many daughters who were all eminent in the church as teachers, deaconesses, missionaries, and the like.
Matt Smethurst, Deacons: How They Serve and Strengthen the Church, 9Marks: Building Healthy Churches (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021), 148–152.
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