Meredith will be reading Discovering Biblical Equality, the Voice of the Psalms, and They Like Jesus but not the Church.

I will be plugging away at Justification and The End of Ancient Christianity.

Saturninus: If you begin to speak evil of our sacred rites, I will give you no hearing; but wear rather by the genius of our Lord the Emperor.

Speratus: I do not recognize the empire of this world; but rather I serve that God, whom no man has see nor can see.  I have not stolen, but if I buy anything I pay the tax, because I recognize my Lord, the King of Kings and Emperor of all peoples.

I don’t have the time right now, but the rest of the account is fantastic; I hope to post it later.

What we see is that during the 3-6th centuries, there were definitely women elders and deacons in various locations within the Roman Empire.  Women are in positions of leadership in the early church, both as elders and deacons, as bishops and presbyters.

1) Elder Kale, Centuripae, Sicily, 4th-5th Century CE

Here lies Kale the Elder.  She lived 50 years blamelessly.

2) Elder Ammion, Ucak, Phrygia, 3rd Century CE

Diogas, the bishop, for Ammion [f.], the elder, in memory

3) Sophia the Deacon, the Second Phoebe, Mount of Olives, Jerusalem, late 4th Cent. CE

Here lies the servant and bride of Christ
Sophia the deacon, the second Phoebe,
Falling asleep on the 21st of the month of March
In the 11th indiction
…Lord God…

4) Deaconess Athanasia, Delphi, Greece, 5th Cent. CE

The most pious deaconess Athanasia,
having lived a blameless life modestly,
having been ordained a deaconess by the most holy bishop Pantamianos,
made this monument: in it lie her remains.
Anyone who dares to open this monument,
in which the deaconess has been deposited,
will have the portion of Judas,
the betrayer of our Lord, Jesus Christ…

5) Deacon Maria, Archelais, Cappodocia, Turkey, 6th Century CE

Here lies Maria the deacon, of pious and blessed memory,
who in accordance with the speech of the apostle [3] reared children,
practiced hospitality, washed the feet of the saints, shared her bread with the afflicted.
Remember her, Lord, when you come into your kingdom.

6) Monument erected by Domna, the Deacon, Bulduk, Turkey, unknown date

Domna the deacon, daughter of Theophilos the elder, set up [the monument] to her father-in-law, Miros, and to her husband, Patroklos, in memory.

7) A Vow fulfilled by the Deacon Agrippiane, Patrae, Greece, unknown date

The Deacon Agrippiane, most beloved of God, made the mosaic because of her vow.

8) A Vow Fulfilled by a Deaconess, Stobi, Macedonia, 4th or 5th Century CE

Because of her vow, Mat(rona?) [or “of the vow of the maton], the most pious deaconess, paved the exedra with mosaic.

Notes:

If you notice, most of these are from later antiquity [2] .  I am sure that for some of you, this delegitimizes the validity of the claims.  You need to realize the nature of our sources.  Any physical sources for Christianity before the 3rd century are almost non-existent.  This is because of two interrelated factors.

1. Christians are persecuted both by the state intermittently and by the Roman “pagan” populace for being a supertitio.
2. There just aren’t that many Christians in the empire up until this point.  I’d be like looking for female Mormon headstones in the late 19th century compared to today.

Secondly, we also see a variation of gendering of the term deacon.  Sometimes it is used in the feminine and sometimes it is used with females in the masculine.  What is uncertain about the terms deacon and deaconess is the responsibilities that each conveyed.  There is abundant literary and physical evidence for deaconesses who’s job it was to minister to women to avoid suspicions of lewdness.  Male deacons were charged with men; women deacons were charged with women.  However, the pairing of deacon in the masculine with a female creates some confusion.  Is this just a regional naming practice or does it denote something deeper?  Were there deacons who were charged with the ministering to the entire congregation?  Given the evidence of Pliny’s letter to Trajan, this seems to be the case.  However, it is still uncertain as to which is the case.

Footnotes:

1. Source: Ross Shepard Kraemer, Women’s Religions in the Greco-Roman World: A Sourcebook (Oxford University Press, USA, 2004). [↩]
2. to use Peter Brown’s conception of the ages [↩]
3. 1st Tim 4:10 [↩]

One of the topics that is very dear to me is the role and function of women in early Christianity (both canon and post-canon).  A few days ago, I came across a post by the warm and fussy Jim West who linked to Gary Macy’s podcast on women being ordained until the 12th Century.  Edgar asked me why none of this shows up anywhere.

In this series, I’d like to highlight some of the primary sources for women being ordained in the early church.  I’ll cover official church documents, Roman sources, and unofficial church documents.  Today I am going to look at a letter dated in the early second century concerning a Roman governor’s report of Christian activity to the Emperor.

We see in unbiased Roman sources women serving as leaders in the early Church.

Source one: Pliny the Younger’s Letter to Trajan.

If there was one thing the Roman’s did not get, it was supertitio such as Christianity.   Christianity befuddled the Romans.  Why should a group Jews[1] revere an executed Roman criminal as a God?   Furthermore, why would people show such an excessive devotion to this person.  As weird as the Jews were to the Romans, these Christians  were even more excessive.

Viewing Christians through the eyes of the Romans helps us negate a certain bias inherent in any internal Christian writing. Quite naturally, Christians writers were/are heavily invested in painting their brand of Christianity as the correct one over and against all other brands of Christianity, including internal dissenters within their own community (Think about a Cowboys or Boston fan writing about the NFL or the NBA).  Roman sources, while handicapped as mentioned above, bypass this bias.

In this letter from a Roman governor to the Emperor, Pliny asks Trajan what he should do with these darn Christians that have been rounded up.  There are a couple of telling passages in this letter, both about early Christian practice and for our immediate purposes, women’s roles in the early Church:

…They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food–but ordinary and innocent food. Even this, they affirmed, they had ceased to do after my edict by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had forbidden political associations. 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.

I therefore postponed the investigation and hastened to consult you. For the matter seemed to me to warrant consulting you, especially because of the number involved. For many persons of every age, every rank, and also of both sexes are and will be endangered. For the contagion of this superstition has spread not only to the cities but also to the villages and farms. But it seems possible to check and cure it…

What do we see here?  We see, around 110CE, a local assembly of Christians in the Bithynia-Pontus province that consisted of the complete strata of Roman society.  Slaves, freed persons, rich, poor, young and old.  Pliny, in his quest to find something prosecutable among their deeds, tortures two of the leaders of the community.  Horrifyingly enough (for an elite Roman, and for certain leaders in the Xian community today) the leaders of this community were two slave women.

Thus, we see in unbiased Roman sources that historically women served as deacons in the early Church and, at least in Bithynia-Pontus, they were the leaders of the community, as least as it related to outsiders.

Now, there are some things that need to be held in tension here.  First, is this representative of Christianity of this period?  It is only one source, after all.  Secondly, how do we know that these were the leaders.  All Pliny really mentions is that they are deaconesses (the female form of deacon).  To be minimal in our interpretation of the letter, perhaps that there were women deacons is all we can say.  But, we can say that.  Additionally, it is these two and only these two that Pliny plucked out and tortured.  He would have gone right to the top of the community’s hierarchy to do this.  So, assuming these were the only leaders is a bit of a stretch, but, as stretching goes.  It is about two miles short of the gymnastics Christian historians go through when they try to make the whole of the Bible historically accurate and consistent.  So, as leaps go, it is pretty small.

1. Romans saw them all as Jews

Amazing, no?

HT: The Source

The world is filled with boys who can shave by “Pastor” Mark Driscoll

vs.

If 40 is the New 30 Then is 20 the New Junior High? by Don”ald” Miller.

Driscoll and Miller see the same problem, but use significantly different motivational strategies.  And I think those strategies are telling of each’s brand of Christianity.  I’ll leave it to you to evaluate.

Plato and Aristotle were wrong in thinking that humankind’s most distinctive and praiseworthy capacity is to know things as they really are – to penetrate behind appearance to reality. […]

My candidate for the most distinctive and praiseworthy human capacity is our ability to trust and to cooperate with other people, and in particular to work together so as to improve the future.

That is such a breath of fresh air.  It reminds me of the best of Marx when he said that “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it,” and returns philosophy back to it’s original and most basic charge – wisdom.

This  jives with my religious values.  While I would direct Rorty’s eyes to God for the most praiseworthy capacity, the Christian’s primary calling is to bring about the Kingdom of God upon the earth.  We see this primarily as the reconciliation of all things.  And in that sense, we too say that we must work together to build a better future.

What do you think is the true aim of philosophy?

1. 
   thepomoxian From tonight’s discussion – Can you be an angry Xian pacifist? 19 Aug 2010 from HootSuite
2. 
   Thom1st @thepomoxian Most certainly. Jesus expressed anger. 19 Aug 2010 from web in reply to thepomoxian
3. 
   jakemalloy @thepomoxian probably not according to Matthew 5 #angrypacifist 19 Aug 2010 from TweetDeck in reply to thepomoxian
4. 
   thepomoxian @Thom1st was Jesus’ expression more indignation or an angry disposition? 19 Aug 2010 from HootSuite in reply to Thom1st
5. 
   thepomoxian Were Jesus’ expressions of anger remembered in the NT indignation or something else? 19 Aug 2010 from HootSuite
6. 
   kempisosha @thepomoxian Or something else like what, for example? 19 Aug 2010 from Chrowety in reply to thepomoxian
7. 
   thepomoxian @kempisosha There are other manifestations of anger than indignation at injustice, right? That is whatI invoke but do not name. 19 Aug 2010 from HootSuite in reply to kempisosha
8. 
   kempisosha @thepomoxian Do you mean, was he just PO’d? Was he jealous? Was he offended? etc. 19 Aug 2010 from Chrowety in reply to thepomoxian
9. 
   kempisosha @thepomoxian I think indignation is a fine definition for what his anger was. I’m not sure there’s any way to refine it more in English 19 Aug 2010 from Chrowety in reply to thepomoxian
10. 
    tiffanymalloy @thepomoxian i agree that jesus expressed anger, but he wasn’t an “angry person” 19 Aug 2010 from mobile web
11. 
    Thom1st @thepomoxian I c. Is this part of a larger convo you’re having somewhere? Id really need to b part of that to kno the distinctions ur makin. 19 Aug 2010 from web in reply to thepomoxian

– this quote was brought to you by quoteurl

From now on, we’ll use the hashtag #AngryJesus.

So, we see in our Scripture that Jesus, the one whom we try to emulate, got angry, specifically, when he turned over the tables.  That example of Jesus’ anger was not paradigmatic of his character, though.  So, how should anger be paradigmatic to us Christians?  Do we use Jesus’ anger to justify our own?  His anger seemed to be rooted primarily in injustice.  So, can injustices allow us to get angry?  What does all that look like?  What about anger in the rest of life?

Just some questions.

The church’s social teaching tells everyone that the Christian religion does not have a merely horizontal meaning, or a merely spiritualized meaning that overlooks the wretchedness that surrounds it. It is a looking at God, and from God at one’s neighbor as a brother or sister, and an awareness that “whatever you did to one of these, you did to me.”

Would that social movements knew this social teaching! They would not expose themselves to failures, to shortsightedness, to a nearsightedness that sees no more than temporal things, the structures of time. As long as one does not live a conversion in one’s heart, a teaching enlightened by faith to organize life according to the heart of God, all will be feeble, revolutionary, passing, violent.

None of these is Christian.

- Oscar Romero