John Collins, author of the ground-breaking study Diakonia, explores the pastoral implications of a new scholarly understanding of the role of deacons in the Early Church. In many churches today -- Catholic, Anglican, and others -- deacons have come to serve largely as servants of the poor and needy. In Deacons and the Church, Collins argues that this limited role for deacons was based on misinterpretations of key scriptural passages. Following the history of deacons in the Early Church to modern times, Collins offers extensive reflections on the relevant Scriptures, and suggests that we...

Diakonia Studies closes the account on John N. Collins's 40 years of involvement in groundbreaking linguistic research and argumentation concerning the nature and functioning of Christian ministry.

Dispute has swirled around the Greek term diakonia for 50 years. Once seen as enshrining the New Testament value of loving Christian service-what Jerome Murphy-O'Connor called "one of the dogmas of New Testament scholarship"-the word was exposed by Dieter Georgi in 1964 as arguably meaning something quite different. In 1974 John N. Collins published his first paper on the...