Abstract
Abstract The classical paradigm before the 1990 s unanimously considered the early apostolic and biblical age as a special time for the diaconal ministry. According to this view, in the early church, the deacons had a prominent position in their local churches and took the major responsibility in the social-caritative actions. Recent biblical studies have argued that the traditional outline is not historically true, or at least we need some new evidence to argue for the biblical origin of the social-caritative diaconal ministry. In this article, the analysis of the reception aims to clarify the historical steps of this process: how has Acts 6:1 - 6 been understood and interpreted during the different historical periods? As a summary of the analysis, the following steps or stages can be noticed. The first stage was the identification of the seven men as deacons (diakonoi) by Irenaeus and others. The second stage of the development was the identification of deacons as caritative functionaries in Trullo and ...
Published Version
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