330 - Diaknoia in the Classical Reformed Tradition and Today

Diaknoia in the Classical Reformed Tradition and Today
By Elsie Anne McKee
Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1989. 139 pp. $12.95.

Elsie A. McKee, Associate Professor of Church History at AndoverNewton, is highly regarded among sixteenth century scholars for her work on Calvin and the diaconate and the history of the exegesis of New Testament passages on the diaconate. Now a wider readership will benefit from the application of her rigorous scholarship to the ecumenical dialogue on the diaconate and to the problem faced by many laity of understanding of how worship relates to the needs of the world-or how "Sunday relates to the rest of the week," as McKee likes to put it.

McKee's conclusions about the Reformed teaching on the diaconate can be grouped around two points. First, the diaconate is an essential and therefore permanent part of the church's ministry. She demonstrates an appreciation of the dual problems of relating the diaconate to other ministries and preventing a devaluation of the ministry of the laity. However, McKee's thoughtful description of how the contemporary diaconate might function is itself a testimony to the difficulties in clarifying the relationship between ministries.

The survey of the diaconate in the sixteenth century clearly portrays the differences between various groups. McKee argues that the Reformed view is particularly relevant to twentieth-century church-state relations, because the Reformed understanding saw the diaconate as an ecclesiastical office without dissociating this office from the welfare programs of civil governments.

Second, while McKee's appreciation of the Reformed position-and Calvin in particular-is profound, she concludes that Calvin's teaching on the "double diaconate" is untenable. Calvin's comments reveal how much modern biblical criticism differs from that of the sixteenth century-even from that of a non-literalist such as Calvin. In assuming that scriptural teaching on the diaconate constituted a unity, Calvin argued that one group in the diaconate collected the needed funds while the second group provided the care for individuals. Biblical allusions to widows were seen as references to the care-givers, while men were the ones who administered the funds. McKee grants that Calvin's theoretical understanding of the role of women in the Church was more liberal than his practice, but it is impossible to accept a view which accords female ministers a lower status.

Readers will be impressed with the author's careful handling of the historical material and her thoughtful consideration of contemporary concerns; however, for this reader the soul of the book is McKee's criticism of individualism and her plea that Christians realize that the church is not a voluntary organization created by the agreement of

331 - Diaknoia in the Classical Reformed Tradition and Today

individuals. Christians do not agree to form a church and then decide what the church's ministry should be. The church is the Body of Christ into which women and men are baptized. And in the Body of Christ one cannot separate pietas and caritas, leitourgia and diakonia.

This excellent study is a model of the union of academic and ecclesiastical concerns and of a sound methodology that recognizes we benefit most from the past when we reflect on how our own perspective influences what we can accept and what we can see in Scripture and tradition.

David Foxgrover
The Congregational Church
Batavia, Illinois