Deaconesses

Dr. Couch, did the early church have deaconesses?

ANSWER: The earliest of the churches followed the NT which does not call for deaconesses. The word diaconnas means servant. So there were women who did things for carrying out the ministry of the church but there were no deaconesses officially in the congregation. However around the third century some churches began to form deaconess boards, but in the west, in the Latin churches this ended around AD 441. In the Greek orthodox churches it ended around the 12th century.

The churches began to have problems with the women who wanted to lead the men. This is happening today with the liberal churches. Women are not to lead men. However in some conservative seminaries today (with some in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area) they are supposedly training women “to be leaders.”

In the church Council of Orange around the fifth century they banned women from being officially deaconesses. It was not biblical nor was it working! Women who want to be elders/pastors are foolish and are stepping out of their key roles as wives and mothers. Yes, women can help around the church to help serve or clean up the church but this is not an official position. It is women who think they are “men.”And they are not! Can you believe what is happening in our military! Some women are taking our military to court because they won't let the women go into combat. Can you imagine the men who think it is ok to place women into harms way! It is now acceptable to allow the women to defend the men! It is ok to kill wives and mothers on the front lines. Women are 50% less physically capable of doing what men do. They have only 50% upper body strength and have only 50% stamina that men have. So it is a social agenda and a social argument that wishes to place them where only men are supposed to go!

Some women who are very ignorant try to use Romans 16: 1-2 to argue that there were women deaconesses in the early church are just plain wrong. The passage says that the church was to receive Phoebe “who was a servant (deaconess) of the church at Cenchrea.” But then it says she was to be received “in the Lord in a manner worthy of the saints, and that you help her in whatever matter she may have need of you; for she herself has also been a helper of many, and of myself as well.”

She was to be accepted as an ordinary “saint” or church member, not as one in a special role of a formal deaconess. She certainly did have a ministry, and she must have traveled about doing special spiritual work but this does not mean she was formally a deacon of an assembly.

Think carefully when you read a passage of Scripture! Don't read into it what is not there. Some women have a hidden ambition to rule over men and to take their positions.

Thanks for asking.
Dr. Mal Couch (6/11)

Hatred Against Premillennialism

Dr. Couch, I just read a review of your wonderful and helpful Handbook of Revelation (Kregel) in which the reviewer blasts premillennialism and pretribulationalism. He says such works are influenced by the Left Behind series, and by Hal Lindsey. Why is there such hatred against the premillennialism of the early church? 

 

    ANSWER: This is a question that is hard to understand. There is one thing I have noted about the Preterists and the Amils, and that is, it is impossible for them to exegete both OT and NT prophecies. They are long on criticism, and short on exegesis and biblical explanation. 

    They are also foolish to think we get our eschatology from the Left Behind series, Hal Lindsey, John Darby, C. I. Scofield, or any other Bible teacher of the past. (I personally have never read anything from Darby.) We get our eschatology from sound, consistent exegesis, and detailed observation, of the biblical texts. Church history shows that in the past 175 years there began a growing return back to premillennialism by some of the greatest scholars of both England and America. Many were carefully observing that the church had to do something about what the Bible said about the regathering of the nation of Israel. No longer could the argument simply be that the church replaces Israel, or that God is finished with the Jews. The great OT passages about the return of the Jews to the land, the great tribulation, and the literal coming of the Messiah, could no longer be ignored. 

    Reformed folks are stuck in a time-warp with the great Reformers, in regard to eschatology. I admire these men and we all owe them a great debt of gratitude. But while they espoused literal interpretation, they did not apply their own principles of literalness to prophecy. Their inconsistency is glaring! And yet in other areas of theology they are basically biblical (except in their made-up and un-biblical Covenant theology!). 

    Thanks for asking.

    Dr. Mal Couch

Did Paul Know When The Canon Was Going To Be Closed?

Dr. Couch, how do you understand 1 Corinthians 13:10 which speaks of “when the perfect has come, the partial will be done away.” Some Bible teachers are saying this refers to the close of the canon of the NT, not the second coming of Christ. Did Paul know when the canon was going to be closed? What do you think? 

 

    Of course Paul did not know when the canon of Scripture would be closed, i.e., when the final book of the NT would be written. It happened to be, of course, the book of Revelation that was written by the last apostle, John, around AD 90-95. To understand what is going on in 13:10, one must look at the context of verses 8-11. Paul is discussing the issue of communicating the truth. His point is that spiritual truth is not simply communicated by one of the “communication” gifts (prophecy, tongues [languages], or knowledge), but by love. 

    These three gifts were used by the early church to convey spiritual truth that had not be recorded or written down yet. That was what these three gifts were all about. Some believer had the special gift of teaching (prophecy), or the gift of sharing truth in a mixed linguistic setting, or had an additional dose of spiritual knowledge that others did not have. When the canon was completed these gifts gradually faded away. 

    We know this especially about the gift of “languages” (tongues). In my book The Coming of the Holy Spirit, I quote Eusebius, Irenaeus, Chrysostom, and Augustine, who tells us tongues was a language and that it was with the early church but had ceased. This would fit what Paul said. 

    The apostle said (in Greek), “Prophecy will in the future be made inoperative, will be set aside.” “Tongues will in the future stop themselves.” He says of knowledge, “It will in the future stop itself.” The early church concurs this happened! These statements of Paul work perfectly with what we know in church history. 

    By the way, when Paul writes “when the perfect comes,” the word perfect is teleion and means that which is complete or whole. In is in the neuter gender and could not refer to Christ. He is masculine! I have the greater proof that Paul is referring to the cessation of the special gifts for communicating spiritual truth than others have that it is referring to the second coming. And besides, the rapture comes before the second coming. The church will be gone in the rapture. Paul has something else in mind in this passage besides the rapture! 

    You need my book "The Coming of the Holy Spirit". 

   Thanks for asking,

   Dr. Mal Couch