The Origin of the Diaconate

The Church has long read the appointment of the Seven (Acts 6:1–6) as the institution of the diaconate, and venerates Stephen as the first deacon and “archdeacon.” Yet Acts never calls the Seven diakonoi; it uses only the verb and noun of “service” (diakonein, diakonia), and the Seven’s recorded ministry — preaching, baptizing, disputing, evangelizing — looks little like the later deacon’s. This file holds the traditional identification and the scholarly caution together, and traces the relation of the Seven to the developed threefold order.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Protomartyr)

The Traditional Reading

From an early date the Church identified the Seven of Acts 6 as the first deacons and Stephen as the first and chief among them — the archdeacon (Greek archidiakonos). The reading is natural: the Seven are appointed to the diakonia of the tables (Acts 6:1–2), they are set apart from the apostolic ministry of word and prayer (Acts 6:4), and they are ordained by prayer and the laying on of hands (Acts 6:6) — a structure that maps readily onto the later distinction of the deacon, who serves the bishop and the community’s charity, from the presbyter and bishop, who preside at word and sacrament. Irenaeus already in the second century speaks of “Stephen, who was the first deacon chosen by the apostles” and “Nicolaus… one of the seven who were the first that were ordained to the diaconate by the apostles” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.26.3; 3.12.10; 4.15.1; trans. ANF Vol. 1). The liturgical tradition follows: the Byzantine and Latin rites alike hail Stephen as protodeacon and archdeacon, the model and patron of the diaconal order, and his feast is kept with the deacons in mind (on the office itself, see Holy Orders). Within the developed threefold ministry — bishop, presbyter, deacon — the Seven are read as the apostolic origin of the third order, and Stephen as its protomartyr and head.

The Scholarly Caution

Modern scholarship has pressed a caution that the tradition’s confidence can obscure: Acts never calls the Seven “deacons.” The text uses only the cognate words for service — the widows are neglected in the “daily diakonia” (Acts 6:1), the apostles will not “diakonein tables” (Acts 6:2), they keep to the “diakonia of the word” (Acts 6:4) — and these same words it applies to the apostolic ministry itself, which is also a diakonia (Acts 1:17, 25; 6:4; 20:24; 21:19). The Seven are simply “the seven” (Acts 21:8), never hoi hepta diakonoi. [Disputed: whether Acts 6 narrates the institution of the diaconate. The traditional view (Irenaeus, *Adv. Haer.* 1.26.3; the liturgical tradition; and many older commentators) takes the Seven as the first deacons. A long line of modern critics (E. Haenchen, *Acts*, 1971, 264–266; C. K. Barrett, *Acts*, ICC, 1994, 1:308, 311–312) holds that Acts does not present the Seven as deacons of the later type but as leaders of the Hellenist wing, since their actual recorded ministry — Stephen's preaching and Philip's evangelizing and baptizing — is that of missionaries and preachers, not table-servers. J. N. Collins, *Diakonia* (1990), further argues that *diakonia* in the period denotes agency and commissioned service generally, not specifically "waiting at table" or "charity," loosening the supposed link between the word and the later deacon's role].

The force of the caution is sharpened by the Seven’s own conduct in Acts. Stephen, no sooner appointed to the tables, is “doing great wonders and signs” and disputing in the synagogues (Acts 6:8–10), and delivers the longest speech in Acts (Acts 7); Philip preaches in Samaria, works signs, and baptizes (Acts 8:5–13, 38). Neither is shown serving a table. Their ministry is indistinguishable in kind from the apostles’ preaching mission, which is why some scholars read the Seven less as the first deacons than as the leaders and missionaries of the Greek-speaking community — its apostles, in effect — whose scattering after Stephen’s death carries the gospel beyond Jerusalem (Acts 8:1–4; 11:19–20; Hengel, Between Jesus and Paul, 1983, 9–11).

Holding Both Together

The Orthodox tradition need not choose between veneration and honesty about the text, and METHODOLOGY §3 commends naming the positions rather than collapsing them. What the text gives securely is this: the Seven were appointed by the apostles, by prayer and the laying on of hands, to a diakonia — a commissioned service — within the one ministry of the Church; and Stephen, the first of them, was the first to die for Christ. That the later, more differentiated diaconate looked back to this scene as its charter is a fact of the Church’s own self-understanding, attested from Irenaeus onward; that Acts itself does not yet use the title “deacon” or describe the later deacon’s liturgical role is a fact of the text. The tradition’s identification is a reading-back — a recognition, in the apostolic seed, of the order that grew from it — and it is none the worse for that, provided it is not mistaken for a claim that Luke wrote “the institution of the diaconate” at the head of Acts 6 (cf. the wider history of the order in Deaconess History).

The Diaconate That Grew

By the time of the Pastoral Epistles the diakonos is a recognized office, with qualifications listed alongside those of the episkopos (1 Tim 3:8–13; cf. Phil 1:1; Rom 16:1, where Phoebe is a diakonos of the church at Cenchreae). By Ignatius of Antioch, a generation later, the deacon is one of the three orders — “deacons… most dear to me, entrusted with the diakonia of Jesus Christ” — without whom “there is no Church” (Ignatius, To the Trallians 3.1; To the Magnesians 6.1; trans. Holmes 2007; and see St. Ignatius of Antioch). The threefold order of bishop, presbyter, and deacon is thus securely in place within a half-century of Stephen — and it is to this developed order that the Church traced its origin in the Seven, and crowned that origin with the figure of Stephen, archdeacon and protomartyr, in whom the service of the tables and the witness unto blood are joined.

See Also

References

  • The Holy Bible — Acts 1:17, 25; 6:1–8; 8:5–40; 20:24; 21:8, 19; Rom 16:1; Phil 1:1; 1 Tim 3:8–13. Cited by book chapter:verse.
  • Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies 1.26.3; 3.12.10; 4.15.1. Trans. in Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1. (Stephen and the Seven as the first deacons.)
  • Ignatius of Antioch. To the Trallians 3; To the Magnesians 6. Trans. Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers, 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007. (The deacon among the three orders.)
  • Haenchen, Ernst. The Acts of the Apostles: A Commentary. Oxford: Blackwell, 1971. (The Seven as Hellenist leaders, not deacons of the later type.)
  • Barrett, C. K. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles. Vol. 1. ICC. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994. (Acts never calls the Seven deacons.)
  • Collins, John N. Diakonia: Re-interpreting the Ancient Sources. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. (The semantic range of diakonia.)