Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?

168 FEMINIST VIEWS BASED ON UNTRUTHFUL CLAIMS

time to minister, she shall despise the grace of God and give herself

in marriage, she shall be anathematized and the man united to her.^3

An explanatory note to this canon refers the reader to an excursus
on deaconesses that says,

The principal work of the deaconess was to assist the female candidates

for holy baptism. At that time the sacrament of baptism was always

administered by immersion... and hence there was much that such an

order of women could be useful in. Moreover they sometimes gave to the

female catechumens preliminary instruction, but their work was wholly

limited to women, and for a deaconess of the Early Church to teach a

man or to nurse him in sickness would have been an impossibility. The

duties of the deaconess are set forth in many ancient writings....

[The author then quotes Canon 12 of the Fourth Council of

Carthage (398)] “Widows and dedicated women... who are chosen

to assist at the baptism of women, should be so well instructed in their

office as to be able to teach aptly and properly unskilled and rustic

women how to answer at the time of their baptism to the questions put

to them, and also how to live godly after they have been baptized.”^4

In light of this evidence, it is misleading for Belleville to say that
these deaconesses were placed “in the ranks of the clergy.” Women who
were deacons in the early church were honored, and they performed
valuable functions, but they did not teach or govern men, and they were
not counted among the clergy.
Were women actually deacons at the time of the New Testament?
There are differences of opinion among New Testament scholars with
regard to that question. In fact, the question is not easy to decide. But it
does not make much difference regarding the question of whether
women can be pastors or elders today, because in the New Testament
the office of deacon does not include the governing and teaching author-
ity that is reserved for elders.^5

(^3) Cited in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser., 14:279.
(^4) “Excursus on the Deaconess of the Early Church,” unsigned article in ibid., 14:41, italics
added.
(^5) For further discussion of the question of women as deacons, see Wayne Grudem, Evangelical
Feminism and Biblical Truth (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah, 2004), 263-268.