Follow-Ups to Answer from Expert Hoyt Roberson

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Marvin Howard wrote at 2009-04-07 01:22:59
Hoyt is not correct in his assessment of Romans 16:1. He states it uses the masculine form of deacon. The text does not. Strong (the concordance writer) is the one who uses the masculine.I am going to give the contrasting truth in this.



Here are the two forms of the word, masculine and feminine, side by side:



διάκονος (masculine)   διακονον (feminine)



The first is masculine; diakonos. The second is feminine; diakonon. Romans 16:1 does use the feminine that Hoyt so desperately needs not to be used. In fact, the parsing code for the word is, " N-ASF," with the "F" standing for feminine.



Below is the entire verse in Greek. The word under discussion is in the ninth position so that you may locate it more easily:



Romans 16:1  "συνιστημι   δε   υμιν   φοιβην   την   αδελφην   ημων   ουσαν   διακονον   της   εκκλησιας   της   εν   κεγχρεαις"



In fact, every word in the text of this verse, that has masculine or feminine parsing codes has one that indicates female. Thus God indicates, contrary to Hoyt's personal opinion and doctrine, that this is not the male office for which qualifications are listed in 1st Timothy 3:8ff.



To further shoot a hole in Hoyt's false theory and false doctrine, these qualifications , enumerated by God, demand that a deacon in the office be the husband of a wife. I would ask any woman claiming to be a deacon who would be her qualifying wife. She cannot have one and be blameless, for she would then be committing homosexuality.



Hoyt already admits that support for female deacons cannot be found anywhere else. Since it likewise is not truly in this verse either, there is no authority for it anywhere in Scripture. To use female deacons is substituting man's foolishness for the Word of God and is not of faith since it is not in Scripture (Romans 14:23). To appoint female deacons is condemnatory sin unless there is repentance and removal of the female deacons.



Hoyt needs to retreat and try again with his liberal brush.



An Expert in this category in the service of the King,

Marvin Howard

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Joe Norman wrote at 2009-04-07 03:18:05
By the way, another excellent book is by Everett Ferguson titled, "Women in the church". That is about the best one I know of on this topic. I don't recommend anything that is not conservative.

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dan wrote at 2009-04-17 19:37:58
Cindi, the answer to your question can be found in I Tim. 3, where the deacon is the "husband of one wife." The woman cannot be a husband, therefore she cannot be a deacon. There are literally hundreds of jobs she can do, but being a deacon in the Lord's church is not one of them.

God bless db

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Hoyt Roberson wrote at 2009-04-22 03:06:54
Actually, the feminine version of diaconos is diaconissa. Unfortunately, this form of the word didn't develop until post-Biblical times. The term used here is diaconon, a masculine version of the word. As a result, this term is generic, not specifically requiring male persons.



None of the reference books I have - and there are more than a couple, describe this version of the word as feminine.



The requirements in Timothy are generic and describe the character of people rather than hoops through which they must jump to be acceptable to God for ministry.



But....Marvin is correct in arguing the traditional Church of Christ position. The rub of course, is that there isn't anything that guarantees that simply because it's Church of Christ, it is necessarily correct.  

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