(Tim: Given the importance of this correction, we'll leave this post at the top for a few days. Please check below for more recent posts. Thanks.)
Speaking of Bryan Chapell putting forward Phil Ryken for service on a study committee on woman deacons, I held off correcting some significant errors in Phil's commentary on 1Timothy 3:8-13 until I'd been able to notify him of those errors, giving him a chance to correct the text of the PDF available for download. A week and a half after we exchanged e-mails (Phil was quite cordial, by the way), it appears the text hasn't yet been corrected. The errors appear in Phil's commentary issued as part of P&R's Reformed Expository Commentary Series, and specifically his comments on 1Timothy 3:8-13 where the Apostle Paul enumerates qualifications for the office of deacon. In this text, Phil misquotes B. B. Warfield...
Phil placed this section of his commentary on his church's web site
and the document has been widely circulated within the PCA leading up
to this year's assembly. It's the section that deals with the
controversy of woman deacons, giving Phil's position on the matter. But more importantly, this is where Phil gives the position
taken by Princeton's revered B. B. Warfield, and it's Phil's quotes and
summary of Warfield that are in error.
Let me simply quote from my
e-mail to Phil:
* * *
(Two places) you quote from Warfield's essay
which you use to support your position (on woman deacons) are
misleading. Here are the quotes from your commentary, followed by the
actual text of Warfield's article in the original (B. B. Warfield,
“Presbyterian Deaconesses,” Presbyterian Review [1889]):
First, this quote from your commentary:
Closer to our own times, Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield
was a strong proponent of women deacons. Warfield taught at Princeton
and was among the leading conservative evangelicals at the turn of the
twentieth century. He based his argument for deaconesses partly on the
example of Phoebe, and partly on a letter from the Roman governor Pliny
to the Emperor Trajan. The letter, which was written around A. D. 112,
referred to women as holding a servant office in the church. Warfield’s
conclusion was that these women “constituted a female diaconate
similar to and of like standing with the board of deacons which, in the
New Testament, we find in every church.”
(But here is the) text showing Warfield's words as they appear in
context in the original. I have placed the words you chose to quote
from Warfield in italics, below:
When we seek Biblical warrant, we have only the isolated
phrase, “Phebe, the deaconess;” when we ask after the testimony of the
first age of the church, we have only Pliny’s witness that the church
in Bithynia had ancillæ which they called ministræ; and after that all
is darkness until the deaconesses emerge into light again as part of
the already considerably corrupted ecclesiastical system of the third
century. We have no Biblical account of the qualifications for the
office or its duties, and no very early account of the functions it
actually exercised. We are left only to the meager inferences that as
Phebe was “a deaconess of the church that is at Cenchreae,” the office
was a local one and inhered in the individual congregation; that as
Pliny tortured two ancillæ, there may have been a plurality of
deaconesses in each congregation; and that as the name was primitively
the same and the functions exercised by them from the third century
were parallel, they constituted a female diaconate similar to and
of like standing with the board of deacons which, in the New Testament,
we find in every church. Theories aside, this is all we know of the primitive deaconesses.
Seeing these words in context; but more, reading the essay in its
entirety clarifies that Warfield was no strong proponent of
deaconesses, and no proponent at all of deaconesses as they are
employed by churches across the PCA today. More specifically, your use
of the above quote from Warfield's text is made to carry more water
than those reading the original would think his actual words should
rightly bear.
Your readers would hardly be led to the conclusion ...that the
paragraph is filled with words and statements such as "only the
isolated phrase, 'Phebe the deaconess,'" or "only Pliny's witness," or
"after that, all is darkness," or "part of the already considerably
corrupted ecclesiastical system of the third century," or "no Biblical
account," or "no very early account," or "we are left only to the
meager inferences," or "theories aside, this is all we know of the
primitive deaconesses."
...Second, this quote from your commentary:
The church of Warfield’s day did not ordain women to
serve as deaconesses, but Warfield himself recognized the need for
putting the gifts of women into service. He believed that returning
women to the ministry of deaconess would restore order in the church: “If
the people of a particular church would simply elect women as well as
men to the office of deacon, making one board or two separate boards,
at their pleasure, of course ordained with the same vows and
responsible to the same authority . . . the order is restored.”
(But here is the) text showing Warfield's words as they appear in context in the original:
In these arrangements, we observe, “widows” are confused
with deaconesses ; and the success of this revival of the office was
doubtless greatly handicapped by this unfortunate circumstance,
requiring, as it did; that the deaconesses should be at least sixty
years old. It is interesting to note, even in this error, the care that
the Congregationalists took humbly to follow the Scriptural form; and
therefore also it was that they made the office a local one, belonging
like the deacons themselves, to the individual church. It was in this
understanding of it also that Dr. McGill desired its renewal. “If
the people of a particular church” he says, “would simply elect women
as well as men to the office of deacon, making one board or two
separate boards, at their pleasure, of course ordained with the same
vows and responsible to the same authority, as now provided in our
constitution, the order is restored.” He suggested, no doubt,
further that, “from this beginning, a development could be made of
larger boards, in gradation; corresponding to Presbyteries, Synods, and
General Assembly, by way of representation; keeping records at every
step of such gradation, and reporting their work done or projected to
the Judicatories of each plane, composed of ministers and elders.” But
he would scarcely have claimed a direct Scriptural warrant for this
“development,” as he claimed it for the office of deaconess itself; nor
indeed was it wholly congruous with his suggestion that the deaconesses
might be incorporated into the already existing board of deacons, who
are not organized thus into graded bodies. This development thus
appears to be an excrescence on Dr. McGill’s view of the form which the
revival of the deaconess should take; the board of deacons find no
difficulty in working upon the universal church through the proper
officers of the church to which they belong, who represent them along
with the whole church; and no more should the corresponding board of
deaconesses require a separate parallel organization, carrying up their
influence to Presbytery, Synod or Assembly. It is evident that this
extension was due to Dr. McGill’s earnest desire to bring the women’s
organizations at present existing into some sort of vital connection
with the church at large.
Here you see that your assertion that Warfield "believed that
returning women to the ministry of deaconess would restore order in the
church" stands on a foundation of false attribution. The words you use
to support this assertion which you attribute to Warfield himself are
not Warfield's words at all. Rather, they are McGill's words, clearly
delineated by quote marks in the original.
My dear brother, I'm sure you recognize these are serious errors,
and those who have read your commentary, whether hard copy or the
e-text that is hosted on your church web site, will be misled by the
text as it now stands.
* * *
That's the end of this excerpt from my e-mail to Phil.
Now, just a few comments about these errors. First, I'm certain neither
Phil nor the P&R editors were intentional in this error, nor in
failing to correct it later. But now that the error is known, it's
incumbent upon both the author and publishing company not to allow
future distribution of this book without an errata or oops sheet
inserted in the book at the pages containing the errors. Similarly with
what's available on the web: it should be corrected immediately.
Second, it's clear that this error has received the widest
distribution and will be for years to come the most likely place people
learn of Warfield's position on woman deacons. So I encourage our
readers to read Warfield's complete essay on the subject for
themselves, and to give the actual essay the widest possible
distribution so the error that's out there will be corrected by people
who have read the primary source. Yes, Warfield was supportive of something approximating deaconesses, but how he did and didn't support them is critically important.
Third, learn the lesson I learned years ago, that you should never
depend upon modern authors for your knowledge of primary sources. Don't depend on anyone else to read them for you, and to report to you what they say.
