Research Plan

0 Reassessing the Leading Functions of a Deacon (ReLeFuD) Abstract: The “Reassessing the Leading Functions of a Deacon” project seeks to bring crucial light to the discussion of diaconia and deacons. The project focuses on the most important early church orders, the Apostolic Constitutions, from the end of the fourth century. These will be illuminated with other material of that time, especially by the Testamentum Domini. The analysis has three sub-questions: 1) What are the functions of the deacon as an assistant leader in these documents?; 2) Is it possible to assess the differences between the way various redactional layers of these documents are dealing with the ministries?; and 3) What are the differences and similarities between the function of male and female deacons in the early church? The background to the project is a change in the understanding of “diakonia,” a word often used to mean providing humble Christian relief to one’s neighbour. A study published about 30 years ago showed that this usage is based on a misunderstanding of ancient sources. Research has later shown that early Church texts about deacons, even in modern times, have been frequently interpreted in a biased way. Furthermore, in those texts, the relationships between deacons and other ministries in the early Church may have been more different than previously believed, and there are unidentified layers in the documents concerning them. Additionally, when churches are seeking unity, the texts of early Christianity have become increasingly important, not least because the churches seek new avenues for women to hold offices in the Church. The two researchers of the project are working with text-critical, linguistic, and pragmatic/rhetorical analysis combined with a general view of the period in which the documents were written. The first findings will be discussed in specialist webinars and in contact with other research projects. The results will be published in open-access documents. As a result, the project will shed new light on what early church orders reveal about the offices of the church, and especially about the assistant leader known as the deacon. In documents, it may reveal new layers that have not been previously seen due to closed interpretations and also help to understand a woman's role in the Church better. All of this can also affect the role of assistant leaders in society and, in particular, a woman's position. An assistant leader may not be a humble servant but a determined commander. This would be a paradigm shift. Research plan 1 Aim and objectives 1.1 Significance of the research project in relation to current knowledge, premise underpinning the research: This research project aims to determine whether John Collins’ philological scrutiny of “diakonia,” providing new insight into the role of the deacons in the New Testament, applies to the early eastern church orders and whether it may assist us to identify different editorial levels within it. This goal is motivated through an ongoing paradigm shift in the understanding of “diakonia,” modern discussions about the role and functions of ministries in the early church, recently documented misunderstandings of patristic material, as well as fresh technical avenues of research, including the gender aspect. Outside academic research, there is also a growing interest in topics like this, not only when discussing assistant leadership. The perceptions of diaconia are changing in academia. Until the end of the twentieth century, diaconia was mostly understood—to quote Encyclopædia Britannica of 1 today—to be a “Christian service,” and the deacon was “originally the holder of a charismatic office of selfless service” [lemma Christianity, 22.9.2019]. What Britannica describes had been the dominant Protestant paradigm since German discussions of the mid-19th century (Theodor Fliedner, Wilhelm Löhe, among others), which depicted a caritative and selfless, humble deacon, whose primary task was to show neighbourly love. However, recent international, academic discussion has been inspired by the studies of Dieter Georgi (1964), and developed by John N. Collins (1990), and subsequently, in Germany, Anni Hentschel (Hentschel 2006; cf. Collins 2014, 3–54; Latvus 2017,17–22; Koet 2019, 7–12). According to this thesis, the mostly German 19th-century idea was based on a misreading of ancient sources regarding “diakonia” and had no basis in the documents from the time of the New Testament. According to this new interpretation, the deacon is one of the leading figures of the congregation, and he/she was not at all a selfless servant of other ministers e.g., the presbyters. Deacons were agents of the bishop, assistant leaders, who took care of things the bishop did not have time to do. The new thesis also differs significantly from the definition of the deacon’s caritative role and tasks presented by German Catholic scholars Rahner and Vorgrimler (1962) before the Second Vatican Council, although in that council, the ministry of the deacon was described more broadly to “serve in the diaconate of the liturgy, of the word, and of charity” (Lumen Gentium 29; Koet 2019, 5). The new thesis also differs significantly from the more traditional monarchic view of the bishop and his leadership, as known in the Orthodox and Catholic traditions. A real “paradigm shift” (in the language of Kuhn 1970) in the understanding of diaconia has therefore begun, but is not yet complete. The most serious attempt to open the scholarly discussion was an academic congress held in the Augustinianum, in Rome (at the Vatican) in 2009, organized at Bart J. Koet’s initiative, in which Collins presented his thesis. Some studies have also tested Collins’ thesis in the light of early Christian documents and archaeological material (Koet 2014 and 2019; Pylvänäinen 2017; congresses at UEF 2015/2017; Koet – Murphy – Ryökäs (ed.) 2018; a workshop organized at the International Conference on Patristic Studies in Oxford 2019). All these analyses have shown that the thesis applies to even wider material than just the New Testament. As a result, some modifications in the lemma “diaconia” in lexica has already come to pass (cf. Collins 2014, 175, 227, 244; Latvus 2017, 77). Hereafter we call the above-presented thesis inspired by Collins the “new paradigm,” while the 19th century Protestant way is the “old paradigm.” The question about the relationship between bishop, presbyters, and deacons in early Christianity has simultaneously received more light through another discussion: the academic discussion about church orders. In his habilitation thesis, Georg Schöllgen showed (1998) that there was an ongoing modification to the role of the deacon in the Didascalia Apostolorum during the third-fourth century. Since Alistair Stewart published his analysis of the Apostolic Tradition (Stewart 2001), there has been a continuing discussion (e.g., Bradshaw 2002) as to whether one or two central editors of the text exist. One of the most significant critical points is, were the role and tasks of a deacon on the same level as those of a presbyter? In her analysis of Apostolic Constitutions (AC), Pauliina Pylvänäinen has shown (2017) that when the AC are read in the light of the new paradigm, the tasks and roles of female deacons are different from the earlier Protestant understanding. 2 A part of the possible paradigm shift is to determine the extent to which the modern academic discussion about the role and tasks of a deacon has been influenced by the ecclesiastic preconceptions of the 19th-century tradition of the humble tasks of a deacon. According to Ryökäs (2015), even modern and high-quality dictionaries are not without tendentious ways of reading sources, missing elements identified by the new paradigm. Academic scrutiny in Finland has not used one textual edition, which has been available for 200 years (Ryökäs – Voitila 2018). For example, in Finland, the literature often contains more than one of two citations from the early Church that are not accurate (Ryökäs 2019). The understanding of diaconia is based at least partially on presentations where up to 80% (Theodor Fliedner) of the references to the early Church have been misguided (Ryökäs 2011, Ryökäs 2015; also, Malkavaara 2015, Latvus 2017). A more in-depth analysis in Finland, Sweden (Ryökäs 2000b) and Germany (Ryökäs 2017) has shown that there is not a deep consensus on the role of a deacon. According to Annette Noller, a comprehensive, critical academic scrutiny of ancient sources that refer to the ministry of deacons has been missing (Noller 2016, 39; cf., Koet – Murphy – Ryökäs (ed.) 2018). The research by Georgi, Collins, Hentschel, and Koet has provided the necessary background for researchers to disentangle themselves from the 19th-century understanding, although this has not yet happened on a large scale. We have reason to ask whether the paradigm of diaconia in the 19th century has had some effect on the academic understanding of the role of the deacons in church orders, and especially the AC (on the important role of AC, cf., Harris 2016). For a successful analysis, the project needs to be as free as possible from the paradigm of the 19th century. Here, a brand-new young scholar is of importance. The results by Pylvänäinen (2017) have shown that to correctly understand the role and tasks of the female deacons in the AC, an analysis of both male and female deacons is necessary. At the moment, we have an overview only of female deacons in the early church (Madigan & Osiek 2005). Further, Brepols Publishers have recently made it possible to work with Apostolic Constitutions in an advanced research database based on the latest critical text edition (Metzger 1985/1986/1987). Electronic tools open a new window for research into church orders. Now we have five motivations for the project (Figure 1).

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