Abstract
This volume completes Collins’s 40 years of groundbreaking linguistic research and argumentation on the Greek term diakonia and on the nature and functioning of Christian ministry. He divides the book into three parts: Diakonia from the Nineteenth Century to Today, Diakonia in the Early Church, and Toward Ministry for the Twenty-First Century. He aims to make his initial reflections on ministry more accessible to new audiences and to stimulate further much-needed discussion and debate. He maintains that both his 1990 volume, Diakonia: Re-interpreting the Ancient Sources, and the research found here will show unequivocally that at no point in ancient Greek usage, Christian or other, did diakonia mean a loving service to those in need, as it is widely taken to mean today. And he points to the many other possible meanings that it did have in the ancient Greek-speaking world. He also notes how the cognate terms “deaconate” and “deacon” advanced in the 1960s from relative obscurity to feature prominently in the leading, ecumenically agreed-upon statement on Christian ministry, namely, the 1982 World Council of Churches document Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry that described the church’s ministry as “threefold,” comprising bishops, presbyters, and deacons.
It is clear that C. places great hope in the future of ecumenism, especially if some of the familiar obstacles can be faced and overcome, namely, the exclusion of women from ordination, mandatory celibacy, lifetime appointments, large congregations of any size that inhibit two-way communication, global uniformity at the expense of regional inculturation, exclusivist language, and lack of ecumenical will.
As one might expect, this book suffers somewhat from the fact that 14 professional papers are presented as chapters: six have already been published in theological journals, five have been chapters in books, one is a reworked public lecture, and one (chap. 3) is completely new. The text concludes with a thorough nine-page index, three pages of the author’s publications, and a list of the sources for each of the chapters.