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Phoebe as an Example of Female Authority Exercised in the Early Church V.K. McCarty “There is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.” --Rom. 13:11 “Many women have been enabled by the grace of God to perform deeds worthy of heroic men.” --First Letter of Clement 55:32 The Apostle Paul’s glowing witness to the Deacon Phoebe in Rom.16:1-2 3 reflects a hard-working church leader who might have been surprised to discover that she is the first person in the history of the church, male or female, to be formally designated “deacon” by name in scripture.4 The example of Phoebe represents one of the ways authority was exercised in the life of the Church during the earliest generations of believers confessing that Christ, the source of authority, is Lord. In the collaborative ministry of Paul and Phoebe, we see an example of “the Lord himself working through the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church.”5 Like many of the earliest Christians, Phoebe may have been a far-flung traveler and it is likely that she was Paul’s chosen courier for his Letter to the Romans; his gratitude expressed for Phoebe’s generosity, to himself and many others, rings true in the witness of scripture. In a 1 Unless otherwise noted, all scripture is quoted in the NRSV; The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version: with the Apocrypha; 4th edition, Michael D. Coogan, ed. (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 2 The Apostolic Fathers: A New Translation and Commentary, V.2: First and Second Clement, Robert M. Grant, Holt H. Graham, eds. (New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1965), 87. 3 “I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church of Cenchreae, so that you may welcome her in the Lord as is fitting for the saints, and help her in whatever she may require from you, for she has been a benefactor of many and of myself as well.” The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version: with the Apocryoha, 4th edition, Michael D. Coogan, ed. (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 4 James D.G. Dunn, Beginning from Jerusalem (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2009), 635. Even the seven in Acts 6 are elected to serve (diakonein) at table but not specifically designated as deacons. This does assume that Philippians was written after Romans, although the “deacons” in Phil. 1 are not actually named. 5 Bradley Nassif, “‘Authority’ in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition,” in By What Authority? The Vital Questions of Religious Authority in Christianity, ed. Robert L. Millet (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2010), 36. 194 patriarchal culture, where it was often assumed that women were properly to be considered an invisible component of society and justifiably under-reported,6 Paul acknowledges a “genuine pneumatic endowment” in the women co-workers he singles out for praise.7 Phoebe is remembered by Paul--and in the canon of scripture--as a sister, as a benefactor, and as a deacon. She is a useful New Testament figure to study since the witness of her authority is attested so early in the history of the Church that it transcends the differences between Eastern and Western traditions. Depictions of Phoebe cross a broad range from those that affirm, or acknowledge the possibility of, some sort of authoritative status in interpreting diakonos and prostatis, to those commentators who oppose it in varying degrees. It appears that Phoebe was a local church leader8 at a time when the gifts of the Holy Spirit were experienced, thus empowering the formation of the early Church. As Albrecht Oepke wisely observes about the authority she exercised, “The description of Phoebe as the diakonos of the church at Cenchreae indicates the point where the original charisma is becoming an office.”9 The terms which Paul used to describe Phoebe—both diakonos and prostatis—have been at times misunderstood and mistranslated. This has been compounded by the tendency to understand early Christian women as only marginal figures or to regard them in subordinate “feminine” roles.10 Yet Phoebe’s faith inspired her to embark on a mission as Paul’s ambassador to the earliest communities of believers in Rome, at a time when faith in Jesus Christ was a dangerous and costly enterprise. Thus, the example of Phoebe’s life “testifies that early Christian women leaders officially represented early Christian communities.”11 The possible meanings of diakonos and prostatis are of considerable interest in determining “the internal governance of the early Christian groups and for questions about the role of women.”12 6 John Anthony McGuckin, The Westminster Handbook to Patristic Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 365-366. 7 Albrecht Oepke, ThDNT, v.1, 787. 8 Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary (Minneapolis, MN.: Fortress Press, 2007), 945. 9 Albrecht Oepke, “Gune,” ThDNT 2:787. 10 Schüssler Fiorenza points out that commentators attempt to downplay the importance of both titles in their exegesis of the verses describing Phoebe because they refer to a woman. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 170. 11 Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, “Missionaries, Apostles, Coworkers: Romans 16 and the Reconstruction of Women’s Early Christian History,” Word & World 6:4 (1986): 424. 12 Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 60. 195 Phoebe’s background as a Gentile Christian may be inferred from her name, which means “radiant,” or “bright,” or “pure.”13 Although it may sound ironic considering her probable wealth and high social status, the mythological antecedents of Phoebe’s name indicating pagan background also suggest that Phoebe might have been a freed slave. Given its proximity to Corinth, Paul probably visited Cenchreae14 on several occasions and was quite familiar with Phoebe and the Jesus group in that town. In fact, scholars conjecture that the church in Cenchreae must have originated from the evangelization work of Paul’s missionary band, even Paul himself, with 50 CE as the probable date of his arrival in the area.15 Romans 16, which opens with the recommendation of Phoebe, gives us a glimpse of the rich social mix of early Christian communities, as well as picturing the authority women exercised in early Christian life and mission.16 Much can be learned from this chapter about the social realities of early Christian communities and the cultural and religious 13 If she came from a Jewish background, it is highly unlikely that her name would have been chosen from pagan cultural traditions. “The mythical Phoebe was the daughter of Heaven and Earth, the wife of Koios, and the grandmother of Apollo and Artemis.” It is unusual as well that the name “Phoebe” has no patronymic component, and like Lydia’s name, is not labeled in association with the names of her father, or sons, in the same way that Prisca is identified as the wife of Aquila. Jewett, Romans: A Commentary, 943. 14 Of the half dozen towns named Cenchreae upon the map of antiquity, the eastern seaport located seven miles southeast of Corinth is the most probable home town of Phoebe. Cenchreae, with its remains lying partly under water today, was named after a son of Poseidon, a god whose gigantic statue was thought to have graced the south break- water horn of the harbor. The two port towns, Cenchreae to the southeast and Lechaeum to the northwest, served not only Corinth but most of the Peloponnesian Peninsula; Cenchreae facilitated trade with the Eastern Mediterranean, especially Asia Minor and Egypt. While today a canal has been dug across the Isthmus of Corinth, in Phoebe’s day the two Corinthian port cites were unique for the “Diolkos” running between them; this was an ingenious paved roadway built to drag ships overland upon an enormous movable platform across the ten-mile length of the Isthmus, thus avoiding the dangerous sailing around the southern tip of the Peloponnesian Peninsula. Phoebe probably saw a variety of exotic goods from the eastern world beyond the Roman Empire being off-loaded from ships so they could be hauled across the Diolkos. Joan Cecelia Campbell, Phoebe: Patron and Emissary (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009), 41-43. 15 “We must assume that it was a church in Phoebe’s residence that had been founded by Paul or his colleagues operating out of Corinth some time between Paul’s arrival at the center in 50 CE and the writing of Romans in 56-57.” Jewett, Romans, 944. See Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans (New York: Doubleday, 1998), 730. 16 Schüssler Fiorenza, “Missionaries, Apostles, Coworkers: Romans 16,” 432. 196 world in which they lived.17 The link between leadership and household probably had a special significance for the roles of women and the authority they were able to exercise. The fact that the seminal groups of early Christians functioned in much the same way as an extended household, the domain traditionally associated with women, undoubtedly facilitated the leadership of women in Pauline Christianity.18 Of course, it goes without saying that the women explicitly singled out for acknowledgement in Rom.16 were not the only women exercising authority in the communities of early Roman Christianity.19 While there are scholars who challenge the conclusion that the destination of the last chapter of Romans was actually Rome,20 most maintain that these arguments do not constitute a convincing case for an alternate destination 17 “Without this chapter, our knowledge of the ways in which women functioned in the early church would be rather minimal, at least as far as the biblical record is concerned.” Andreas J.

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