Understanding the Diaconate: Historical, Theological, and Sociological Foundations by W. Shawn McKnight (review)

W. Shawn McKnight, bishop of the Diocese of Jefferson City, Missouri, has written what should by all rights become the comprehensive treatment of the diaconate with which all future discussions must wrestle. Combining scriptural exegesis, historical inquiry, dogmatic exposition, sociological theory, and theological reflection, McKnight has provided a kind of summa of the diaconate that draws together most of the relevant theological engagements with the diaconate since its renewal in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. Even if one disagrees with McKnight’s approach to the topic, his framing of the question of the nature of the diaconate cannot be ignored or dismissed.

The book is divided into four sections. Part 1 examines the theological foundations of the diaconate, focusing on the biblical sources as well as the teachings of Vatican II. In examining the biblical material, McKnight’s perspective is shaped by the work of the Australian exegete John N. Collins, who has argued at considerable length and in great detail that the Greek term diakonia does not, as has been claimed since the early twentieth century, imply humble or menial service, but is instead a term implying a rather exalted status as an emissary of some noble person. As McKnight puts it, not a “waiter” but a “go-between” (7). He argues that it is, moreover, a Christological term (to engage in diakonia is to emulate Christ’s obedience as the emissary of the Father), a pneumatological term (diakonia is one of the Spirit’s gifts), and an ecclesiological term (the work of diakonia, as the Letter to the Ephesians notes, is for “the building up of the body of Christ”). In looking at the actual office of deacon in the New Testament (primarily 1 Timothy), McKnight acknowledges that “the scriptures raise more questions than answers” (26), apart from suggesting a close but subordinate relationship to the episkopos.

Looking at Vatican II, McKnight focuses primarily on Lumen Gentium, which called for the restoration of the diaconate as an office permanently exercised, and in particular its statement, drawn from the early Christian text known as The Apostolic Tradition, that deacons are ordained “not to the priesthood but to the ministry” (LG 29). He shows how Lumen Gentium establishes ordination to the diaconate as a genuine participation in the sacrament of order that is, at the same time, nonpriestly in character. He also shows how this teaching is affirmed by Pope Benedict XVI's October 26, 2009 motu proprio amending the Code of Canon Law. The Church's law now clearly distinguishes between episcopal and presbyteral ordination on the one hand, which empowers the recipient to act in persona Christi Capitis, and diaconal ordination on the other, which confers sacramental character for diakonia. McKnight also compares the teaching on the diaconate in Lumen Gentium with that found in Ad Gentes, suggesting that one can only truly understand the diaconate if one attends to both documents. The latter not only focuses, as might be expected, less on the intraecclesial and more on the extraecclesial ministry of the deacon, but also reflects, as Lumen Gentium does not, Karl Rahner’s view that ordination to the diaconate is a confirmation and sacramentalization of a diaconal charism that is already present and being exercised, “though in an anonymous way” (57, citing Rahner’s “The Theology for the Restoration of the Diaconate”). Finally, McKnight looks at Paul VI’s 1972 apostolic letter Ad Pascendum, one of a series of documents restoring the diaconate as a permanent office, and in particular his description of the diaconate as an “intermediate order” (medius ordo) between the hierarchy and the people of God.

McKnight sees in this notion of the diaconate as a medius ordo an echo of Collins’s understanding of diakonia as service as an emissary or go-between, and he...