By Rev. Dr. Chris Jameson1
The question of whether women may occupy offices in the Church like that of the Deacon, though addressed repeatedly throughout Church history, has become a perennial question in our modern era. Numerous interpreters claim biblical support for women serving as Deacons, and these conflicting interpretations confuse the average believer in the pew. Usually, Christians simply want to obey Scripture and be faithful to God’s will; the trouble is that they have become unsure of just what God’s will is on this topic.
This issue has come to the fore especially within the PCA (Presbyterian Church in America), of which I am a minister and of which my church, Trinity Presbyterian Church in Crofton, Maryland is a part. The PCA notably does not permit women to serve as Elders nor as Deacons. For the sake of faithful but confused Christians at Trinity, in the PCA, and beyond, I hope to provide clarity by addressing problematic exegetical and historical points often made in favor of female Deacons and by supplying other resources which handle the data admirably.2 While articles on this topic are abundant, I offer a few arguments here that I have not seen in other treatments but which nonetheless contribute to the conversation.
1 Tim. 3:1-13
1 Timothy is often the battleground on which this debate is held, and so I begin here as referee to help spectators sort out where legal and illegal moves are made. Paul gives requirements for elders, then deacons, then for ‘the women’ before returning back to deacons. The order, interruption, and wording has led even conservative interpreters like Schreiner and Moo to claim that Paul, while not indicating that women can be elders, indicates that they can be deacons. I recommend that you have the text on hand while I explain how this is best interpreted.3
Do the requirements for wives/women in 3:11 imply that women can be Deacons?
This argument puzzles me, as it seems self-defeating. The very fact that Paul makes a distinction “likewise women/wives…” should first cause interpreters to consider what difference Paul sees between women/wives and Deacons. If women can already be Deacons, why would Paul now consider it necessary to address women apart from Deacons by use of the adverb “likewise” (ὡσαύτως)?” After all, Romans 16:1 (if indeed it means that Phoebe is a Deacon) had already been written (56-58 AD) before this passage in 1 Timothy (62-64 AD), so if women already were Deacons, why differentiate them now? I suggest that the discontinuity of the “likewise” necessarily excludes “women/wives” from Paul’s category of Deacons. “Likewise” in 3:11 surely indicates continuity as well (more on this to follow). But the discontinuity of addressing women apart from deacons and elders, yet with relation to them, has not been given due attention by interpreters.
In 3:8, “likewise” functions to introduce a similar set of qualifications, but for a different group of people, namely Deacons. Deacons do not have exactly the same qualifications as elders, but a similarly high standard of moral behavior is required. Therefore, the use of “likewise” in 3:11 speaks to a third group which, though separate from Deacons and Elders, requires behavioral conformity to a similar standard. I have not encountered any argumentation from those who advocate for female deacons which accounts for this distinction.
Leaving the passage to supply context for us, who might this third group be? Is it a third office made up only of women? No. In fact, among both Elders and Deacons, there is already a third contextual group mentioned, namely their wives. Both Deacons and Elders must be “the husband of one wife,” or more literally “a one-woman man” (3:2, 12). Leaving aside the obvious masculine identity indication here, which even more strongly supports male-only offices, my point is that wives are already in view with reference to both offices, using the same term found in 3:11 (γυναῖκας). Not only this, but behavioral standards for the whole “household” are requirements for both Elders and Deacons (3:4, 12). Linguistic context demands that 3:11’s γυναῖκας be translated as those wives which have already come into mention, while logical context demands that not only Elders and Deacons, but their family, including their wives, are under behavioral standards, to which 3:11 “likewise” refers. Therefore the “likewise,” as has been done in 3:8, again introduces a new group (wives of Elders and Deacons) with similar behavioral standards.
Why does Paul only give instructions for wives of Deacons, not Elders?
This is not the case. Again, the “likewise” is our through-line here. In its first use in 3:8, “likewise” links together Elders to Deacons, while introducing distinctions. 3:11’s use of “likewise,” should lead interpreters to link this instance back to 3:8’s use of “likewise” and therefore back to Elders. This means that these requirements “likewise” apply to the wives of both Deacons and Elders.
Therefore, Paul does not give instructions to the wives of Deacons only, but also to Elders. This is already implicit in the fact that Elders must “manage their household well,” including their wives. That the management of one’s household explicitly concerns the behavior of their family members is plain by the next phrase, “with all dignity keeping his children submissive.” If dignified and submissive children ought to be a test of qualification, how much more a “dignified” (σεμνάς) and submissive wife, as even 3:11 says by use of the same term (cf. 1 Tim 2:11; Eph 5:22; 1 Pt 3:1)? Schreiner errs here in his fourth argument on this passage, for he assumes that because women/wives of Deacons must be held to a certain standard that therefore they must be candidates for the office. But are children also candidates? After all, Paul gives requirements for their behavior as well. Schreiner’s interpretation fails to give the necessary depth of nuance to this passage and so fails to account for the “interruption” of 3:11.
In addition to 1 Timothy, some who argue for female Deacons point to an alleged example in Phoebe. Their arguments stem from the use of the term “deacon” in connection with her service at Cenchrae, her role as a patron and letter-carrier, and some grammatical minutiae. We will examine each of these in turn. Schreiner gives only a small paragraph here, deeming that the reference to Phoebe as a servant or Deacon “can go either way.” However, the linguistic evidence is not so ambivalent. Διάκονος, the term for “servant/Deacon,” is used 31 times in the New Testament, but only three instances are undoubtedly recognized as referring to the office of Deacon. This is understandable, as the word originally only meant servant; only later was it adopted and transformed for Christian use. Therefore, far from going “either way,” an honest hermeneutic must conclude that the far more common use (servant) is more likely in a doubtful case like Rom. 16:1 than is the rare use (Deacon).
Schreiner also alludes to the mention of the “church in Cenchrae” to build the theory of a Deacon Phoebe. This is a thin argument, as Schreiner seems to admit. In fact, people could be named as servants of churches even when they have no formal office. I, for example (and likely you too), have volunteered to serve in a variety of ways at different churches without holding an office, perhaps by leading a Bible Study, serving in the nursery, or greeting newcomers. In 1 Thess 3:2, Timothy is called a “servant” (διάκονος)4, but the best evidence suggests that Timothy is an Elder, not a Deacon. We can conclude that the use of this term, even with the mention of a specific local church, more often means servant, not Deacon.
Other arguments, such as that Phoebe was a “patron” and so perhaps a Deacon, or that she carried the letter of Romans and so had an “official capacity” are weak. For example, Lydia was a patron, but no Deacon (Acts 16:14-15, 40). Letter-carriers need not be Deacons either, for Epaphroditus carried Philippians but was labeled “an administrator” [λειτουργός] when Paul had ample opportunity to instead label him the cognate term διάκονος (Phil. 2:25). Likewise, the masculine διάκονος, in reference to the female “Phoebe,” does not at all indicate she held the office. This is a common gender noun at this point (διακόνισσα was not used) and lacks a feminine article; in other words, this argument, according to basic Greek grammar, falls very flat. Phoebe in Rom. 16:1 is therefore a decidedly poor place to ground an argument for female Deacons.
Ironically, the discussion of 1 Timothy 3 is often done without accounting for 1 Timothy 2, which says “Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet” (1 Tim 2:11-12). While we could go to greater lengths discussing office bearers in general here, I will instead speak to the supposed possibility of female Deacons. This question therefore immediately springs up:
Our answer to the first question will inform the second. Jesus holds all authority in heaven and earth, given personally into His hand by God the Father (Mt 28:18; Jn 3:35, 17:2; Eph 1:20-22). This includes power within the Church, as is evident by the fact that it was He who gave the keys of the kingdom in the first place (Mt 16:19). But He did, in fact, give those keys to the Church (Mt 18:18).5 However, this authority does not have its source in the apostles themselves; no, theirs is a delegated authority. 2 Cor. 5:20 says “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us” (cf. Eph 6:20; Mal 2:7). Thus, any power that Paul, Peter, James, or any other Elder in the Church possesses is solely delegated from Christ, the head (Col 1:18).
So too with Deacons, for theirs is an authority delegated to them by the Elders, as Acts 6 describes. In fact, the institution of these servants of the Elders required the very authority of “the twelve” apostles who then went so far as to “summon[ ] the full number of the disciples.” The dignity of the “office” (χρεία Acts 6:3)6 of Deacon includes the laying on of hands (Acts 6:5) just as with elders (1 Tim 4:14), and an “appointment to authority” over others (καθίστημι Acts 6:3).7 For those contending that these Deacons have no authority, it is instructive to notice that they carry out the task which was originally given to the Elders. If Elders entrust Deacons to solve these issues which originally would have required the authority of Elders, in what sense do Deacons not exercise authority in doing the same task? Authority in the Diaconate should not unsettle us, for it is a delegated authority as ambassadors of the Elders, and always subject to them. Christ’s authority is real, and he delegated it to the Elders. They likewise delegated real authority to the Deacons.
Because Deacons do indeed have authority in the Church, they cannot be women, for Paul does “not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man” (1 Tim 2:12). On the contrary, they are to be “submissive.” This command does not merely precede the qualifications for all office holders, but in fact is a potent preface to them that excludes women from consideration as subjects for ordination to authoritative office like Deacon.
Many cite different practices of those throughout Church history, but we must note two things: 1) Respected people throughout Church history have been very wrong on issues which we now consider to be settled. So we must be careful not to commit a genetic fallacy, wherein historical figures are invested with undue authority. If a historical figure’s case rests on bad evidence, the case is not bolstered merely by attaching the name of the figure to it, no matter how illustrious they may be. 2) We must be careful to be honest in our citation of history.
For example, Schreiner cites a letter from Pliny to Trajan (Pliny, Letters 10.96-97) in which they use the Latin ministrae or “minister” to refer to two female Christian slaves. Schriener says that “a good translation” must translate this term to the Greek διάκονος or Deacon. He concludes “we thus have an early example of women serving as deacons.” This is quite the leap, for many words could be translated from the Latin ministrae, including ὑπηρέτης, θεράπαινα, and δούλη (slave), the last of which is notable because the women Pliny references were also “slaves.” If Pliny had in mind their connection to religious office, the more ready translation would be λειτουργός (temple servant) or ἱέρεια (priestess). Regardless, “Deacon” is not used of them, nor can it be demonstrated that this office is necessarily what Pliny had in mind. When Church Fathers make the same poor assumptions merely because they see the use of διάκονος, we must acknowledge that they make a mistake.
Many posit that Calvin himself approved female deacons, as Overture 37 to the 54th General Assembly of the PCA from Pacific Presbytery claims.8 Rather than rehash this argument, I point you to this wonderfully thorough article on the subject from Rev. Russel Dykstra, which convincingly shows that Calvin did not in fact have female Deacons, and that he made this quite clear himself.
Another misunderstood support is the Didascalia Apostolorum, a Syrian collection written in the 3rd century, which some claim to support female Deacons. However, while it says “Suitable women should be ordained as deaconesses” its primary reference for their entire service is “for the ministry of women,” rather than the unrestricted ministry to all which Deacons carry out. But the Bible does not know of an office of Deacons which ministers only to women. The Didascalia Apostolorum has some other confused ideas as well, such as that men ought not to baptize women. A contextual evaluation of the document shows that it is plagued by very specific preoccupations of what is allowed between males and females, which cause it to say more than Scripture does, not least in the prescription for female Deacons. Likewise, no Christian church today considers the Didascalia Apostolorum to be authoritative in any way, and certainly not more so than Scripture.
Some later Church Fathers interpreted Phoebe as a Deacon, such as Chrysostom, Basil, and Origen. However, my claim is not that everyone has always considered Deacons to be a male-only office. Rather, my claim is that many, even Church Fathers, have misinterpreted the Bible on this topic. Misinterpretations in the ancient Church happened frequently, especially because their manuscript traditions and their breadth of comparative material is dwarfed by our own. Famously, Tertullian and Cyprian were adversely impacted by their mistranslation of Mt. 3:2, for they read “do penance” rather than the more accurate “repent,” leading to the creation out of whole cloth of an entire branch of penance theology due to a faulty Latin translation. The same is true when Chrysostom and Tertullian misunderstood “baptism for the dead” in 1 Cor. 15:29. It is likely that the majority of Christians throughout time restricted authoritative offices from women, but regardless of what some Church Fathers believed, we must rest our case on better evidence or else repeat the same long-lasting mistakes.
In hermeneutics, or the science of interpreting texts, one factor that is often missed in this debate is that of bias. While everyone has certain biases, the interpreter’s best practice is to admit these up front when known, even if only to strengthen their argument by accounting for it. However, I have not seen those advocating for female office holders (including Deacons) account for possible cultural biases. In an age some deem one of total “feminization,”9 we must recognize that the ruling tendency of our culture will most likely be the elevation of women, the destruction of “glass ceilings,” and “equity” in the form of removing distinctions between men and women, whether this is biblically appropriate or not. These are strong animating motivations, as is evident from the impassioned marches on our streets and invective rhetoric on our social media feeds. Some organizations even explicitly lobby the Church to include female Deacons, admitting that by opening “even a crack” they can then move on to lobby for a female pastorate.10[7] This pressure is significant in all corners of the Church.
To account for the vigor of these formal and informal movements in our age, which loom large above the Church due to its universal impact on this nation, we must acknowledge that all contemporary interpreters are liable to have their hermeneutical method thereby impacted. But that bias only flows in one direction. Those in our culture advocating for social justice for women are part of a uniquely amplified voice in this age, and their message will undoubtedly affect interpreters in the Church as well. Those who instead look at Scripture and discover that God’s design is not for women to hold office in the Church thereby show a submission to a divine standard rather than to a cultural whim. I would like to see more interpreters who argue for female office holders to acknowledge the unique sway which feminism has come to hold in our culture, and what is more, to not simply dismiss the possibility that it has biased them, but to demonstrate how they have taken this likely bias into account.
I am not suggesting that all those who examine Scripture and are convinced that it allows for female Deacons are duplicitous. As the Westminster Confession of Faith helpfully notes, “All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all” (WCF 1.7). However, a thorough examination of all Scripture gives a helpfully consistent view, as I’ve tried to show, that God’s design is not for female Deacons. I have not touched on any of the very many positive arguments made against female Deacons from Scripture, but many have done that admirably already. Nor have I advanced a systematic look at the ways in which women do serve other essential and admirable roles within the Church, though they certainly do. I hope here to have brought a little more depth and clarity to some of the seemingly persuasive arguments for female Deacons, and therefore to have shown the several problems these arguments have.
Footnotes
- Chris Jameson is an ordained Teaching Elder in the PCA, and holds a PhD in New Testament Theology. You can find out more about him and his church @trinitypres.us/leadership/our-pastor/. You can read his writings @furnishingfaith.substack.com/. ↩︎
- For a positive case, see Guy Waters’s treatment. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/bible-support-female-deacons-no/. See also Le Ann Trees’s thorough examination. https://beautifulchristianlife.com/blog/does-god-want-deaconesses-church ↩︎
- Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996), Rom 16:1. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/bible-support-female-deacons-yes/ ↩︎
- Some manuscripts have instead συνεργός or “coworker, ” but many important early manuscripts instead record Timothy is a servant/Deacon (διάκονος) to the church in Thessalonica in 1 Thess 3:2. ↩︎
- “Truly, I say to you (plural), whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” While this was said to Peter in the singular in 16:19, it is repeated here in the plural for all His disciples. ↩︎
- The Greek lexicon BDAG, a standard translation work, identifies Acts 6:3 as appropriately translated as “office” (1088). Frederick William Danker, ed., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). ↩︎
- BDAG likewise states that “authority” is explicitly in view in the more frequent second use of this verb. ↩︎
- https://pcaga.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Overture-37_Pacific_9-3.pdf ↩︎
- See the recent article on “The Great Feminization” by Helen Andrews. https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-great-feminization/ ↩︎
- For examples of formal institutions, see discerningdeacons.org which aims at having female deacons in the Catholic church. The Women’s Ordination Conference goes farther via a “ministry of irritation” to then advocate for further ordained roles. https://www.womensordination.org/2025/12/woc-responds-to-vaticans-latest-no-on-women-deacons/ ↩︎
