Diakonia: Re-interpreting the Ancient Sources

384 Pages·1990·7.929 MB·English

by  John N. Collins

DIAKONIA
Re-interpreting the Ancient Sources
JOHN N. COLLINS
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1990
Oxford University Press
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Berlin lbadan
Copyright© 1990 by John N. Collins
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Collins, John N. (John Neil), 1931-
Diakonia : Re-interpreting the Ancient Sources I John N. Collins.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-19-506067-9
I. Service (Theology) 2. Clergy-Office.
3. Diakonia (The Greek word) I. Title.
BT738.4.C65 1990
262'.14--dc20 89-36612 CIP
135798642
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To my wife Carolyn
with love
and in memory especially of
Richmond, Muswell Hill, Mecklenburgh Square
1971-1976

Preface
There was a time in 1970s when I would look at newly published theological
theses and take good note of the length of years between presentation of the thesis
and its publication. On one such book I recall a loving dedication to the scholar's
children "without whom" --or some such words-"the book would have been
written sooner. ' ' This too is the book of a thesis of many years ago. The research
and writing were originally done in the Department of New Testament Studies in
the University of London King's College under the astute and benign guidance of
Christopher F. Evans, then head of the department, during the period October
1971 to October 1975. The thesis, "6.LaKoveiv and Associated Vocabulary in
Early Christian 1;radition," was successfully examined in June 1976. The same
month the thesis was accepted for publication with the request that the Greek be
made more accessible to the nonspecialist-a word about this later-and that the
sections of the thesis devoted to separate examinations of the Greek verb and the
Greek nouns be combined around common themes for the purpose of eliminating
repetition. The latter task has occupied me in subsequent years and proved so
complex that in the main I could undertake it only in term holidays from teaching
when I could enjoy some opportunity for extended periods of concentration.
The common themes I refer to are now in the form of chapters 5, 6, and 7
under the titles "Word," "Deed,'' and "House and Table." In the writing of
these chapters the material has been enriched at different points by sources that
either had not been available to me when I was working on the thesis or I had not
been able to fit into the thesis for reasons of space. I might instance additional
matter arising from the Greek novel, relating to the ancient banquet, to The Tes
tament of Job, and to "the ministry of love." I have reworked chapter 8, which
deals with an interpretation of Epictetus disputed between Dr. Dieter Georgi and
me. Ironically, the day after I had completed the manuscript of the book I entered
my theological bookshop in Melbourne's Mitcham to find on display the English
translation of his Die Gegner, in the epilogue to which he takes issue with my
viii Preface
1974 article; I have entered a note or two to take up his points. In discussing the
papyri in chapter 9-a difficult task once I was no longer within reach of a spe
cialist library-! had to take account of Zbigniew Borkowski's Une description
a
topographique des immeubles Panopolis, which the author most kindly sent to
me from New York in April 1976.
As well as these rearrangements and additions, a major piece of new writing is
chapter 1. The thesis contained only fifteen pages sketching the issues of "dia
konia'' and church order discussed at length here; much more had indeed been
written but, at the last minute and again for reasons of space, had to be discarded.
This chapter developed in its present form in the course of a fellowship which the
thesis attracted from the British Trust for Tantur at the Ecumenical Institute of
Tantur near Bethlehem. The chapter reviews ideas that went into the making of
contemporary views of ministry and ministries, and this is meant to give relevance
to the breadth of research undertaken in part 11 of the book where a new enquiry
begins, on an unprecedented scale, into the meaning of the ancient Greek words
underlying early Christian perceptions about ministry. The pages may also be seen
as an invitation to the reader to keep pace with the long enquiry-in effect, to
sidestep the urge to jump ahead to summaries that are to be found in an appendix
or to consult only the new interpretations of early Christian sources that are pre
sented in part Ill. Read only in such ways, the study could give the impression
here and there of seeking mainly to be provocative or of being idiosyncratic in
places, whereas its claims are rooted in the linguistic and cultural matters teased
out in part 11.
A word about the use of the ancient Greek language. Since the matters at issue
revolve around the meaning of a small set of Greek words, both writer and reader
have no option but to tangle with the original language in ancient sources of
various kinds. If readers are to feel confident that the writer is not leading them
astray, they will want to enter as closely as possible into the process of interpret
ing these sources. For those who read Greek this does not present a problem and
could indeed be a stimulating exercise, even if I seem to spell things out in more
detail than is necessary. The spelling out in such detail is of course n9t for them
but for the larger number of readers who do not read Greek but who may be
directly affected by issues raised. These readers, I suggest, would bert~fit from
familiarising themselves with at least the main Greek words that recur 6ver and
over: i>taKovia (transliterated and pronounced diakoni' a), 8tt'xKovoo;; (dia;'konos),
and &aKove'iv ( diakonein' ); if readers go to this trouble, they will find thenl:selves
not just gliding over meaningless symbols but actually reading words and entering
that much more closely into the ancient Greek mind. (A note on endings to Greek
words: the three words listed are, in order, an abstract noun ending in -ia, a
common noun ending in -os, and a verb ending in -ein; these are the endings of
the words in what we might call their pure state-nominative case for the nouns
and the infinitive form for the verb--whereas in the living language the endings
vary enormously.) An appendix provides a key to the Greek alphabet, and some
readers may wish to take advantage of that for the purpose of reading other words
and phrases. In any case, with very few exceptions-and reasons for the excep
tions are given in such instances--everything in Greek, and indeed almost every-
Preface lX
thing from other non-English sources, is translated. Unless otherwise attributed,
the translation is my own.
One other way of facilitating closer study of the work is to make use of the
index of sources. Very often in the run of discourse or argument, references to
various ancient sources are provided in brackets in the main text or in footnotes;
such sources are cited in support or in illustration almost only when they are
themselves discussed elsewhere in the book. To confirm their relevance and weight,
the reader will need to consult the index for referral to pages where each is ex
amined.
The reader may be interested to know that the research was not undertaken with
questions of church, ministry, or ecumenism in mind, nor for the writer are such
questions, in spite of the prominence given to them in the opening chapter and in
the afterword, necessarily the major import or interest of the finished work. The
research into the meaning of the ancient Greek became necessary, rather, in the
pursuit of an answer to a much narrower question about the connection between
two ideas in a totally significant saying attributed to Jesus in the Gospel according
to Mark: the first noted that the Son of man came to serve, and the second that
he would give his life as a ransom (Mark 10:45). What kind of relationship did
the author intend us to see between service (&aKoveiv in his language) and the
giving of a life for others? Once having begun to answer this question, however,
I was very soon to realise that the enquiry along this line could not proceed until,
as chapter 2 illustrates, there was agreement as to what a writer of Greek in the
first Christian generations would have had in mind with talk of l>taKoveiv. Ac
cordingly, my reflections on what I first set out to come to grips with conclude
the book.
The rest of what I want to say here consists of expressions of thanks to people
who have helped me at various stages of the work. First, to Peter R. Ackroyd,
then professor of Old Testament at King's c;:ollege, who, late at night in Septem
ber 1970, after a lecture in Melbourne on his Australian tour, was kind enough to
give me his time and then set about, while he was still on tour, arranging an
introduction to his colleague at King's in New Testament studies, Christopher F.
Evans. Second, to Christopher Evans himself, who directed my thesis ever firmly
but was tolerant of enthusiasms, requiring only accountability and clarity. I was
conscious of the privilege of working with someone as highly respected and widely
loved as he. He was always kind in the midst of busy-ness, and his own lively
sense of church as "a continuing, developing community" encourages both back
ward and forward vision.
To other members of King's College at the time I express thanks for assistance
in particular matters: to Dr. Gossage for advice on an early draft of the chapter
on Plato; to M. A. Knibb for considering and advising on a proposal concerning
the Aramaic background of Mark 10:45; and to C. J. A. Hickling for introducing
me to Ernest Best's Society for New Testament Studies Seminar on 2 Corinthians.
A fellow visitor to King's College, Giinter Unger of Erlangen, was of the greatest
assistance to me in 1974 in providing me at that late stage with a copy of Brandt's
Dienst und Dienen; two years later he was also a solicitous host on my visit to
the Evangelical Faculty of Theology in Munich. That same visit to Germany al-
Preface
X
lowed me to meet Hannes Kramer, his wife, and colleagues at the International
Centre for the Diaconate in Freiburg im Breisgau, where I was a guest of the
ever-kind Alex Gondan, for many years editor of the centre's journal Diakonia
Christi. I am indebted to two scholars who have contributed to questions of early
church order: Manuel Guerra y Gomez-whose contributions have not received
the attention they deserve-for the stimulation of a meeting with him during a
pleasant interlude in Burgos, and Andre Lemaire for helpful correspondence. I am
indebted too to Dr. Waiter Wegner, rector of the Ecumenical Institute of Tantur
during my fellowship 1976-1977, for supporting my candidature for the Israeli
government's Rose Zweitel Memorial Scholarship, as I am to John Todd, then of
the publishers Darton, Longman and Todd of London, and to Bishop Alan C.
Clark of East Anglia for supporting my earlier candidature for the fellowship by
the British Trust for Tantur. John Todd initiated the idea of this book at a time
when I was asking him to support a simpler project. I understood him as saying
that scholarship has something to offer churches that are struggling to express
themselves in a new age; everything he does, from his work on Luther to his
reviewing of religious literature, seems to be coloured by this vision of newness.
To both of these men I am grateful also for the warmth of friendship, expressed
in Bishop Clark's case in special ways to myself, my wife, and our children both
in Norfolk and happily also on the bayside of Melbourne. To Miss J. S. M.
Dannatt and to Miss J. C. Morrogh, then warden and deputy warden respectively
of William Goodenough House in Mecklenburgh Square, London, my wife and I
would like to record a particular word of thanks for their care.
In Melbourne, which has been home again since late in 1977, I have appreci
ated the encouragement of Dr. Francis J. Moloney, S.D.B., and indeed the way
he has urged me towards the finish; for support of a similar kind, expressed over
the past two years in several particular and time-consuming ways, I am grateful
also to Dr. William J. Dalton, S.J., presbyter extraordinary and unpretentious
patron. Lastly, in Australia, I would like to thank Dr. G. H. R. Horsley, then of
The Ancient History Documentary Research Centre of Macquarie University,
Sydney, for providing me with items of value to this study in the late stages of its
completion.
To unnamed staff of several libraries I am also indebted. In order, these have
been the invariably helpful staff of the then British Museum, where, in the Venice
edition 1486 of Rufinus's Latin translation of Josephus, the most beautiful book
of my experience came into my hands, the libraries of King's College, University
College, and of the Senate House in the University of London; then of Dr. Wil
liams's Library-so intriguingly rich-of Gordon Square, and on the other side of
the square the Classical Institute, where most of the Greek was eventually pur
sued. In the Institute I had the good fortune of encountering and of being advised
in some papyrological details (these are noted in chapter 9) by Dr. Borkowski,
whose other kindness has already been recorded. Finally, to the Benedictine monks
who were librarians at Tantur at the time-in temporary exile from Montserrat
a very warm word of thanks not only for their care of the library and of its clients
but for showing in their life and liturgy the heart of ecumenism.
As noted earlier, in Australia the rewriting has been advanced slowly in the