Death Note and Divine Justice 1: Judge of All the Earth

“I will become the god of this new world.”

Death Note E1, ‘Rebirth’ (2006)

Suppose, then, that you somehow get hold of a notebook whose inside cover is inscribed with a proclamation that any human whose name is written in it shall die. And suppose, for argument’s sake, that you give in to curiosity and try it out – not really believing that it might work, but nonetheless using the name of some good-for-nothing criminal you saw on the news, just in case. And suppose said good-for-nothing criminal immediately drops dead. All of a sudden you find yourself in possession of the power of life and death over virtually everyone around you. What do you do?

 

My thanks to the talented oroy2041 at newgrounds.com for this stylish portrait of our mass-murdering protagonist.

Hopefully your response doesn’t correspond too closely to that of Light Yagami, the intriguing and, as time progresses, increasingly infuriating protagonist of Death Note.¹ It’s a great little series: compelling from the start, packed with unpredictable twists and turns, and spilling over with enough blog-post fodder to keep me busy for a long time (though you needn’t worry; I only plan on writing about it for three weeks including this one). To entice you further, there are only thirty-seven episodes of a little over twenty minutes apiece, so it’s not too vast a commitment; and it’s also very accessible for audiences generally unused to the weird and wacky world of anime (which I say as someone who by and large fits into that category). But if I still haven’t managed to persuade you to give it a watch before reading further, then count yourself warned that there are spoilers ahead.

Not that it’s much of a spoiler that Light decides to use the Death Note to execute his idea of justice by filling its pages with the names of vast numbers of people whom he deems unworthy of continuing to take up space and oxygen. The following chunk of his internal monologue (as per Netflix’s English subtitles, with a few changes to pronunciation for flow) outlines the thought process whereby he reaches this decision:

I – I killed them! Two men – I killed them! Human lives shouldn’t be taken so lightly. Do I have the right to judge people like that? No … I’m not wrong. I always thought about this: the world is rotten, and that rotten people should die. Someone – someone must do it, even if it means sacrificing one’s conscience and life. Things can’t stay like this. Even if someone else had picked up the Death Note, would they be able to erase unwanted people from this world? No way! But I can – I can do it. In fact, only I can do it. And I will, with the Death Note: I’ll change the world.

And so to a montage of Light scribbling name after name in the Death Note, soundtracked in dramatic choral fashion.² Mind you, he does have a point. The world is rotten. Things can’t stay like this. And rotten people do deserve to die. That much is clearly laid out in the scriptures; try Jeremiah 25:31, as one fairly randomly chosen instance: “The clamour will resound to the ends of the earth, for the LORD has an indictment against the nations; he is entering into judgement with all flesh, and the wicked he will put to the sword, declares the LORD.”³

Light’s not wrong, then, about the state of the world and its need for judgement. What he’s wrong about is whose job it is to fix it: the LORD’s, and not his. Light erroneously construes the fact that he has the capability to pass judgement on other people as proof that to do so is his responsibility. His initial pang of doubt on this matter is quickly overcome by a certainty that he is uniquely placed to serve the world at large in the role of judge, jury, and executioner.

Fast forward several episodes, and ‘Kira’ – the name that the general public uses for whoever it is that keeps killing all these criminals, Light having taken every precaution to prevent the deaths being traced back to him, even to the point of joining the team of detectives tasked with identifying and apprehending Kira – is so well established that even some national governments have pledged to cooperate with him. As the president of the United States is televised making such a pledge, Light’s colleagues erupt into uproar at his cowardice. One of them, Matsuda, has doubts, however. He remarks that the world is, after all, a much safer place to be these days, at least for law-abiding citizens, and so he can see why some people support Kira. “Honestly, I don’t think he’s completely evil,” he admits.

“Do you believe that Kira is justice?” retorts his colleague Aizawa.

And it’s a fair question, because those are really the only two options on the table. Either Kira really is enacting fair and right judgement on the guilty, or he’s just another mass murderer. Either he sets the ultimate standard for justice, or he majorly needs to be brought to justice himself. It’s got to be one or the other.

Light offers a pragmatic response to Matsuda’s doubts: “We shouldn’t argue over whether Kira is good or evil. We just have to catch Kira. If Kira is caught, he is evil. If Kira rules the world, he is justice.”

I suspect that Light’s words here may be designed to prepare his colleagues for the scenario he expects to play out: he is fully anticipating that he, as Kira, will soon rule the world, and if he can sow the seeds of the detectives’ transferral of allegiance to him when he does, so much the better. After all, if this isn’t about good and evil – if the only ultimate measure of justice is whichever one is acknowledged by the world at large – then the detectives’ zeal for justice, logically speaking, ought to be redirected into support for Kira’s policies upon his accession to the role of supreme judge. Still, Light doesn’t – can’t – really believe what he says here. If he really thought justice so arbitrary, he would never have started using the Death Note to bring about the justice he perceived to be lacking in the world. He would never have felt that dissatisfaction with the way things were, and that hunger to put them right. Light believes justice is a real, objective standard; he just also believes that he knows exactly where that standard sits.

Moreover, he understands precisely the role in which he’s casting himself by claiming to know what justice is and undertaking to enact it appropriately. Already at the end of that first episode, having described the world he intends to create – devoid of crime and filled only with kind and honest people – he declares, “And I will become the god of this new world.” Credit to him, in a way, for at least acknowledging the implications of what he’s trying to do. It turns out that he does get that dispensing justice is God’s job; he just plans on taking on the title as well as the workload.

Leaving aside the way he claims God’s judgement seat for himself, then, there’s quite a lot about divine justice that Light understands rather well. Justice is a real, objective standard, and it’s God who knows exactly where that standard sits and so has the right – and not merely the life-and-death power – to execute judgements over human beings according to it. Consider, if you will, the bit of Genesis where Abraham intercedes on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah:

Then Abraham drew near and said, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?”⁴

Look at the grounds on which Abraham makes his intercession here. Justice isn’t arbitrary, “if Kira rules the world, then he’s justice” style, as if God were to simply decide whom to smite on a whim and then demand regardless that his actions be endorsed as just. Rather, justice is a real, objective standard, such that Abraham can tell God that it wouldn’t match up with that standard for him to destroy the city were there fifty righteous people in it. (Note, incidentally, that God has not, at this point, actually told Abraham he’s going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, only that he’s going to go and have a look at how sinful they really are.) Equally, though, it is by God that that standard is set, because he is Judge of all the earth. That means there is no higher authority to which one can take a case: he has the ultimate say on every sentence, and there is never any grounds for appeal.

Light merely plays at being judge of all the earth: he doesn’t really know what true justice looks like. God, on the other hand, is just in his very nature; to select another fairly random example from Deuteronomy 32:4, “his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice.” Because God is in essence just, every judgement he enacts – along with everything else he does – is perfect. That’s the basis of Abraham’s appeal: shall you not behave in accordance with your character?

In later years, many a prophet and psalmist would appeal to God on the same grounds in the face of injustice. Look at the first chapter of Habakkuk, for instance, or the ninety-fourth psalm.⁵ These people are on the same wavelength as Light in that they acknowledge that the world is rotten; rotten people should die; things can’t go on like this – but instead of claiming the role of judge of all the earth for themselves, they cry out to the true Judge of all the earth, to the effect of, shall you not do what is just?

Because we don’t have Death Notes, it’s sometimes hard to see when we’re attempting to usurp God in the same way Light did – thinking we know what justice is and even that actually, we’d do a better job of dispensing it ourselves than seems to be being done at the moment. Still, such attempts still amount to sin and idolatry. By contrast, the fitting response to the injustice in the world is to cry out to its Judge, knowing that he doesn’t tend to enact judgement in the way we would enact it ourselves, but that that’s because his understanding of justice is better than ours, not worse. Which of us, after all, would have dreamed up that God’s own Son, whose work is perfect and whose ways are justice, should bear the judgement that we, rotten as we are, deserve?

Footnotes

¹ You can get it on Netflix, either in the original Japanese or with English dubbing: https://www.netflix.com/title/70204970.

² If you’re into things of a dramatic and choral nature, might I recommend Puccini’s Gloria Mass, which the orchestra I play in tackled in our recent spring concert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOfrCYPKb1Q.

³ It’s that chapter about the cup of God’s wrath that’s really important for understanding certain sayings of Jesus: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jeremiah+25&version=ESVUK.

⁴ It’s from Chapter 18: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+18&version=ESVUK. By the way, the Hebrew in that last sentence I quoted works particularly neatly: the word translated ‘Judge’ in the ESV is an active participle from the root שפט (špṭ, ‘to judge’), and the word translated ‘what is just’ is a noun formed from the same root, so the question comes out as even more of a no-brainer than it does in the English – shall not the one who dispenses justice dispense justice, kind of thing.

⁵ Here’s the Habakkuk, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=hab+1&version=ESVUK, and the psalm, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ps+94&version=ESVUK.

Martyrs

“So now I’m facing the blaze, facing the pain,

By grace putting faith in his name.

He says: Last call for a recant.

I say: We can’t.

So he ignites me in flames.”

Shai Linne, ‘Martyrs’, Storiez (2008)¹

As I understand it, this is a piece of artwork entitled ‘Martyr’ by Sigurjon Olafsson, photographed in the Hallgrímskirkja (Hallgrímur Church) in Reykjavík. Not bad for a stock photo. Thanks to Phil_Bird at freedigitalphotos.net.

So I was reading Foxe’s Book of Martyrs the other day.² As one does. To be fair, what I was actually looking for was a list of the ten great persecutions that Christians endured under the Romans, to copy for side-note-esque reference into my notes on Revelation 2, but let’s not get distracted. In any case, while skimming through the account that our dear sixteenth-century friend John Foxe relates of these ten distinct periods of horrendous mistreatment to which the Roman authorities subjected followers of Jesus during the first three centuries after he lived, died, rose, and returned to the Father, I could hardly fail to apprehend the occasional detail pertaining to an individual gruesome martyrdom. And they really are gruesome. A brief selection of examples:

Rhais had boiled pitch poured upon her head, and was then burnt, as was Marcella her mother.

Hippolitus [was] tied to a wild horse, and dragged until he expired.

Julian … was put into a leather bag, together with a number of serpents and scorpions, and in that condition thrown into the sea.

Peter [was] stretched upon a wheel, by which all his bones were broken, and then he was sent to be beheaded.

Trypho and Respicius … their feet were pierced with nails; they were dragged through the streets, scourged, torn with iron hooks, scorched with lighted torches, and at length beheaded.

Agatha … was scourged, burnt with red-hot irons, and torn with sharp hooks … she was next laid naked upon live coals, intermingled with glass, and then being carried back to prison, she there expired.

Not pleasant reading, I know, but you did rather bring that on your own head by clicking on a link to a post about martyrdom. Anyway, aware as I am that better-informed persons than myself could probably generate a merry debate about quite how reliable Foxe’s facts are likely to be on these particular matters, nobody at all, I believe, can dispute that, for just about as long as there have been human beings worshipping Jesus of Nazareth as God, there have been other human beings subjecting them to horrendous mistreatment on that account. For just about as long as there have been witnesses to the good news about Jesus Christ, there have been martyrs in his name. And the particular manners of their martyrdoms have often been gruesome indeed.

Perhaps this is just me, but my natural reaction to such accounts as are cited above – after the initial shudder and sharp intake of breath at their sheer horribleness – is actually a kind of frightened, self-censuring guilt. I call it a ‘natural’ reaction very meaningfully: this is an attitude that belongs firmly to my fleshly self in all her deadly sin and selfishness, and not to my spiritual self resurrected after the pattern of Christ. (You can tell that much by the way it consists of a kind of frightened, self-censuring guilt.) I think something to the effect of: oh crikey, I could never, ever endure that. Granted, I'm not afraid of death in the abstract – in the abstract, indeed, it would constitute a desirable honour to lose my life in service of the gospel – but I altogether recoil from the blood-and-guts particulars of the process of dying. I know in my head that Jesus is everything and that earthly distress, however bitter, is worth bearing for his sake, with the certain hope of everlasting life before me, but I actually deal really badly with physical pain and even the merest thought of suffering trials a fraction as horrible as those suffered by these martyrs is enough to turn my insides to absolute jelly. I am so, so relieved that the happy fact of the time and place I live in makes it seem highly unlikely I shall ever be called to do so. But then, shouldn’t I be completely ready to suffer for the sake of the name by which I am saved? Shouldn’t I be ready even to consider such suffering joy, as the first disciples did?³ How far short I fall, then! Look at the pure unshakeable courage of these men and women who were prepared to lose everything and undergo anything for their God and his gospel. Look at their relentless, steadfast faithfulness; look at their all-consuming love for their Lord. I’m not like that. I’m weak and cowardly and more than anything else I love comfort and pleasure and ease. I haven’t got it in me to be a martyr. If God ever does place me in a situation where I have to suffer, really suffer like that, for his sake, I can't imagine I’ll do anything but fail him. And what will I say to him then? And even if he never does place me in such a situation, well, weakness untested is still weakness, and not hidden from his eyes. I’m still as guilty as if I really had denied him.

So proceed my thoughts on the matter when left unchecked. Hopefully you’ve been able to discern in the above something of the profitless desperation to justify myself by works which ever continues to plague me, and that’s certainly one aspect of my attitude that begs rebuke: however far short I fall, the entire point of the gospel I’m so worried about being unprepared to suffer for is that God himself suffered in my place, in order that my shortfall might be made up to overflowing. I deny the gospel as surely when I try to hang my salvation on my own virtue – my own faithfulness in the face of trouble, rather than Jesus’ – as if I had recanted explicitly. Nonetheless, more fundamentally even than that, my natural reaction is looking at martyrdom totally upside down. Check out another extract from Foxe’s magnum opus:

At the martyrdom of Faustines and Jovita, brothers and citizens of Brescia, their torments were so many, and their patience so great, that Calocerius, a pagan, beholding them, was struck with admiration, and exclaimed in a kind of ecstasy, “Great is the God of the Christians!” for which he was apprehended, and suffered a similar fate.

My natural reaction to accounts of martyrdom is to look at myself and despair. How crazy is that when the more fitting response is to look at God and be awestruck? Calocerius understood: he beheld these patiently tormented brothers and thought, wow, what a God they have. He did not think, wow, these guys clearly have an impressive talent for enduring severe pain, which they currently happen to be employing in service of the one they worship. He did not marvel at the martyrs but at their God.

In like fashion, then, ought I to marvel – not at how much these impressive individuals proved capable of enduring in the name of God, but rather at how much he, ever all-impressive, made them capable of enduring in his name. If I attribute their steadfastness to some inherent quality in them that I fail to find in myself, I belittle the work of God. Do I really think that ordinary human beings can face such trials merely of themselves and by their own power, for the sake of a God whom they have not seen and an inheritance of which they have no worldly proof? Is it not rather that God takes ordinary human beings, perhaps sometimes ones who are of themselves as weak or cowardly or comfort-loving as even me, and testifies to his own glory by rendering them able to face phenomenal suffering, even unto death, for the sake of him whom they love despite not having seen him, through his free gift of faith? I’m not by any means suggesting that we shouldn’t commend the martyrs for their faithfulness and uphold them as worthy examples to follow on that count, but that’s all got to be done under the premise that it was only by the grace of God that they were able to do what they did. I hardly think any of them would affirm anything to the contrary.

Perhaps, as I say, it’s just me. Perhaps, O Wise and Discerning Reader, your natural reaction to accounts of martyrdom bears no resemblance to mine, and I’m merely stating the obvious as far as you’re concerned. Still, even if that’s true, to prevent it having been a waste of time for you to read this far, don’t depart without taking a little encouragement. Look at the kind of faithfulness and courage and self-sacrifice God works in his people, fashioning them in the likeness of Christ their Lord. Look at the profound understanding he grants them of the incomparable worth of their heavenly inheritance next to even the most horrendous earthly trials. Look at how he uses what he works in them to proclaim his glory and increase his kingdom, so that ever more voices should exclaim, “Great is the God of the Christians!”

It’s true: I haven’t got it in me to be a martyr. But when he suffered and died to secure the truth of the good news, the Lord Jesus Christ proved that he had it in him. So only let him be my single plea before man and God, and I need never be afraid of how short I fall, nor any suffering that should befall me. If God made these martyrs capable of enduring even as much as they did, that’s all the more reason to trust that he will make me capable of enduring whatever might be in store for me as I seek to follow him. And the fact that naturally, my insides turn to absolute jelly at the mere thought of suffering a fraction of what they did – well, that will only make such steadfastness as God should nonetheless produce in me even more marvellous.

Footnotes

¹ If you like the faith/fiction dynamic of my blog, and have any taste at all for rap music, I suspect you’ll be a fan of Storiez. But don’t listen to it in public unless you don’t mind random strangers seeing you cry. Here’s a lyric video for ‘Martyrs’ that some kind human has gifted the Internet with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abchW9hmfq8.

² Or, as it’s officially entitled, the Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days, Touching Matters of the Church, by John Foxe, which is so much less catchy that it’s really no surprise that the alternative designation I gave in the main text tends to be preferred. You can get the whole thing free online, here for example, http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/martyrs/fox101.htm, though all my references in this post are drawn from Chapter Two.

³ “Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonour for the name.” – Acts 5:41. Whole chapter: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+5&version=ESVUK.

On Where I Wrote It

Miranda:         Today, I helped my lovely little friend by putting the boxes away.

Stevie:              Thank you – and not in the kitchen, slash workstation, slash break area, slash my personal space.

Miranda S1 E1, ‘Date’ (2009)¹

What are you doing for the rest of the day? a friend will sometimes ask me as we part ways. Oh, I’ll be blogging, I reply; don’t know what about yet. My friend, hoping to offer the beginnings of a resolution to my uncertainty, responds by inquiring as to whether there’s any feature of our trip together that might spark off a few hundred words of commentary on my part. I try to explain that my blog doesn’t tend to work like that. I’m far, far more likely to write about an episode of a television series I used to watch when I was at primary school, or a question of scriptural interpretation that’s been bothering me for some time, or indeed both of those things together, the former supplying an analogy for my take on the latter, than to reflect on anything that’s actually happened in my life since I last uploaded a post.

But, as they say, there’s a first time for everything, and, stranded as I am away from my usual stock of reference material for posts about television series I used to watch when I was at primary school and so forth, what I want to talk about this week is where I’m sitting to write this post.

 

A not-very-good photo by me. The desk I mention below is just at the top of those stairs.

I am writing a paper draft of this post sitting at an antiquey-looking desk on the mezzanine floor of a building in Chester called Storyhouse.² Behind me and sweeping round the back wall, and then the opposite wall to my left, are numerous wooden bookshelves stacked with library books, indications of subject sections being chalked on small blackboards topping each one. In the middle of the mezzanine is a single-screen cinema; I believe it’s currently showing The Greatest Showman, which I have had recommended to me from more quarters than I care to mention and should really get round to actually seeing at some point. Around the edges of the cinema room (which kind of looks like some sort of futuristic pod, bright white lit with red round the edges, in contrast to the vintage wooden style of the furniture outside it) is a long desk bearing several computers. Straight ahead of me is the theatre auditorium where a good friend and I went yesterday evening to see a thoroughly ridiculous, thoroughly entertaining sci-fi farce called Police Cops in Space,³ though the advertising informs me that the same room has been playing host to plenty else this year, including musicals, stand-up comedy, opera, family theatre, and so forth. Beneath my feet, I recall from earlier, are more bookshelves, laden, of course, with more books, and a selection of squatter tables and comfier chairs than up here on the mezzanine; on the same level, further to my left, is a café and restaurant, though where the library ends and the restaurant begins is far from clearly delineated. Under the stairs in front of me is a children’s dressing-up area; another area off to my right as I entered the building bore the title of ‘children’s den’; not being a child or having one with me, I refrained from investigating that particular corner of the building any further.

As I entered, the floor proclaimed: Come in. Sit down. You’re safe with us now. There is poetry on the walls here. There is even poetry on the underside of the stairs and on the mirrors in the ladies’ room (I obviously can’t speak for the gents’, but I expect there’s some there too). If I look up and slightly towards my right, I see a life-size peacock perched on a shelf jutting out from the wall. What a space this is: theatre, cinema, library, eatery, and general lovely hangout spot, seamlessly rolled into one.

And it makes so much sense as a concept that I slightly wonder why I’m marvelling at its innovation quite so keenly. ‘Storyhouse’ is the name, and I can think of none more fitting, because this is a building full of stories of all kinds. So fond of stories as I am, it’s little wonder that I’m excited at so many varieties of them clustering together in one handy location which not only understands their curious ability to make everything a little bit better, but spills its understanding thereof onto walls and floors for all to see. This building gets it. I have never been in a building that gets fiction the way this one does. Why is that? Surely it’s not some sheer coincidence that the way I think about stories happens to chime with the way whichever committee designed the Storyhouse collectively thought about stories. Why don’t we put libraries in theatres (and have them stay open as late) and coffee shops in libraries (in such a way that one can actually take one’s chosen beverage with one while browsing the shelves) and splash poetry all over the walls (because when else does the average person actually encounter poetry on any sort of regular basis?). One of the many grudges I bear against most modern cinemas is the way they make me feel like nothing more than a consumer being processed – but if I could have been curled up with a library book and a hot chocolate for an hour downstairs before seeing my film, I wouldn’t feel that way about the proceedings at all. Or, to take another angle, the major issue faced by public libraries at the moment is insufficient funding for staff, which results in reduced opening hours or, in some cases, being forced to convert to ‘community libraries’ run by volunteers (pointing no fingers, *ahem* Lincolnshire County Council *ahem*⁴) – but if your library shares its building and at least some of its staff with one or two more lucrative enterprises, and can stay open according to their timetable, the problem is solved.

So, I reiterate, why don’t we have more Storyhouses about? Why isn’t that the norm for the way access to arts and culture works? Why not have one lovely, welcoming, creative space that does practically everything? And on that note, I’d better type up and tidy up this post, and get it uploaded, before I have to leave – making use of one of those computers at the long desk I mentioned earlier. See, this one space really does do practically everything…

Footnotes

¹ All right, not the most superbly relevant opening quotation I’ve ever managed to think of, but I’m in a rush and I’ve got Miranda on the brain because I’ve been introducing the friend I’m about to mention to it over the past couple of days, so I just ran with the idea of one space serving multiple purposes. Thanks to Springfield! Springfield! for the transcript: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=miranda&episode=s01e01.

² You might want to check out what they have to say about themselves, as well as what I have to say about them: https://www.storyhouse.com/.

³ Created by these talented humans, http://www.thepretendmen.com/, who will apparently be at the Edinburgh Fringe and things this year, so do check out their stuff if you get the chance.

⁴ Only fifteen of the libraries in Lincolnshire are now actually council-run; the rest are staffed by volunteers, to whom as many hats as one has should be gratefully taken off: https://thelincolnite.co.uk/2016/04/new-providers-take-over-lincolnshire-libraries-service/.

And Servant of All

“You claim titles don’t matter to you, but you behave like a prince and expect me to wait on you like a servant! Saying it means nothing if your actions betray you!”

Merlin S2 E2 ‘The Once and Future Queen’¹

 

So it turns out that the search term ‘servant’ doesn’t yield an awful lot in the way of stock photos, but I thought this guy’s expression was hilarious. He is so done. Thanks to artur84 at freedigitalphotos.net.

Why hello, dear reader, how kind of you to stop by. Now what shall we do with the next few minutes? I say, here’s a thought: how about we scrutinise a decision made by certain translators of the Bible into English and make ourselves cross about it? … Yes, I agree, it is a simply splendid idea. So glad you could join me for a jolly time. Such fun.²

To this end, then, I present to you Romans 16:1, according to a selection of English renderings generally considered to be towards the literal, verbatim end of the spectrum as translations go:

I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church at Cenchreae. (ESV)

I commend to you Phoebe our sister, who is a servant of the church in Cenchrea. (NKJV)

I commend to you our sister Phoebe, who is a servant of the church which is at Cenchrea. (NASB)

I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae. (NRSV)

All very similar, right? Leaving aside minor questions of apposition versus relative clause and so forth, the only discrepancy is whether Phoebe was a ‘servant’ or a ‘deacon’ – but if I tell you that the relevant Greek word is διάκονος (diákonos), which means ‘servant’, it becomes clear that all that’s happened is that some English versions have opted for a technical term which is actually derived from the Greek, and others for a word with a different etymology which is nevertheless more readily comprehensible to your average English speaker. Either possibility, therefore, is a completely reasonable translation. Nothing to be cross about so far.

No, the thing to be cross about comes when one compares Romans 16:1 to Ephesians 6:21:

So that you also may know how I am and what I am doing, Tychicus the beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord will tell you everything. (ESV)

But that you also may know my affairs and how I am doing, Tychicus, a beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord, will make all things known to you. (NKJV)

But that you also may know about my circumstances, how I am doing, Tychicus, the beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord, will make everything known to you. (NASB)

So that you also may know how I am and what I am doing, Tychicus will tell you everything. He is a dear brother and a faithful minister in the Lord. (NRSV)

As you can see, those are the same four translations – good, solid, word-for-word-type translations, none of your dynamic-equivalence malarkey here, thank you – and again, aside from a few minor differences, they seem pretty well agreed on what this verse means. The problem I have is that the word they’ve all translated ‘minister’ is in fact διάκονος again.

Now, of course there are often good grounds, when one Greek word appears in two different verses, to render each instance with a different English word. No one English word, after all, is ever going to cover the exact same range of possible meanings as any one Greek word, so sometimes the context of a particular occurrence demands that it be translated differently there to how it is elsewhere. However, I’d like to stress that the reason I picked out Ephesians 6:21 as my point of comparison is because what’s going on in it is so remarkably similar to what’s going on in Romans 16:1. Each of these verses refers to the person charged with delivering the letter, and constitutes Paul’s endorsement of that individual as a committed servant of Christ, a brother or sister in him³ who ought to be warmly received as such. Each, additionally, comes at the exact same point in the structure of the letter, right at the beginning of the very end section devoted to final greetings and/or blessings. The context, therefore, provides absolutely no pretext to translate διάκονος differently in one verse to the other.

That’s all to be taken in light of the fact that ‘minister’ is a perfectly good translation of διάκονος as well. ‘Minister’, as in one who ministers – one who attends to someone else’s needs – a servant, in other words. Indeed, that is, in my opinion, the key thing to grasp about what the word διάκονος as used in the New Testament is getting at. This was the word Jesus used when he told his disciples that they were not to exercise authority over one another like the Gentiles, but rather that whoever would be great among them must be their servant; when he said that whoever would be first among them must be last, and servant of all.⁴ Whatever contrary impressions one might get from the way the word tends to be used today, being a minister is not about being in charge or being important; in fact, it’s about the complete and total opposite. It’s about being a servant. Interestingly, when used as an adjective, διάκονος could even mean something like ‘servile’ or ‘menial’,⁵ which might offer a fuller picture of the kind of role it referred to, although it isn’t used this way in the New Testament. At any rate, the fact remains that, according to Jesus’ own words, being a minister means making oneself least and last for the sake of others, and is something that all of us who follow him ought to be doing for one another.

I hasten to add that in saying this I’m not denying the existence of the specific role of διάκονος, usually translated ‘deacon’, to which some specific individuals within the church are to be appointed, and others, implicitly, not; Paul describes that one in 1 Timothy 3.⁶ But of course, the word still carries the same implications even when it’s being used to refer to that specific role. To be appointed a deacon in a special capacity is to be appointed a servant in a special capacity.

On one level, then, it doesn’t actually matter a great deal whether διάκονος is translated ‘deacon’, ‘servant’, or ‘minister’, because at the end of the day they all mean the same thing. On another, though, to choose to translate it ‘servant’ in one instance and ‘minister’ in another, remarkably similar instance – well, I mean, why? Why do that? I hardly think the decision can have been made according to whim, or aesthetic concerns – it doesn’t matter which translation we go for in any given instance, and this one sounds prettier here, kind of thing. For one thing, all of the given translations exhibit the same pattern, and yet none I can find exhibits its reverse, that is, calling Phoebe a minister and Tychicus a servant or deacon.⁷ For another, it’s not very generous towards the translation committees to suggest they took so careless an approach to their work. Mind you, the other forthcoming explanation doesn’t strike me as very generous towards the translation committees either, because that one involves me denouncing them as guilty of misogyny.

I mean, we were all thinking it, right? If there’s no reason from context to call Tychicus a minister and Phoebe a servant, perhaps the decision was based on the fact that he was a man and she was a woman. Perhaps people were uncomfortable applying the term ‘minister’ to a woman, but comfortable enough applying the term ‘servant’ to her. Which is utterly ridiculous, because, as we’ve just seen, ‘minister’ and ‘servant’ are the exact same thing. Even if one takes the most stridently complementarian view one can possibly squeeze out of the scriptures, that fact emerges entirely unaffected. Ministry is service. If you don’t have a problem with a woman being a servant, then you can’t have a problem with her being a minister either. (I speak in purely semantic terms, but of course, purely semantic terms are precisely the issue on the table.)

Frankly, that last fact before the parentheses seems so entirely obvious – and even more so as I articulate it – that the more I look at the translations I cited above, the more I can barely believe what they’ve done. But I’ve racked my brains for any other plausible reason why they should have opted for ‘servant’ in the one instance and ‘minister’ in the other, and I’ve got nothing. If I’m missing something, do be so kind as to enlighten me of it.

On the other hand, if I’m not missing something, and if I’ve merely made you as cross as I am about this whole business, let’s hold back from letting resentment build in us, and instead avail ourselves of the reminder that every one of us, women and men alike, is commanded, by the words of our Lord himself, to act as a διάκονος – a minister, a servant – towards our brothers and sisters in him. We are to do that after the pattern he demonstrated for us, in humbling himself even to the death of the cross in order that we might share in his life and his glory. We are none of us to exercise authority over one another, none of us to seek to be first and greatest, but all to make ourselves least and last, just as he who really is first and greatest made himself least and last for our sake – on which account he has been given the name above every other name, that at it every knee should bow. Praise the Lord.

Footnotes

¹ Thanks to whichever kind human posted the episode transcript on Merlin’s Myth and Magic: https://merlinsmythandmagic.net/.  

² And having said that, I couldn’t very well not give you a Miranda clip, now could I? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIDquJbDFf0.

³ Christ, that is, not Paul. Just in case that wasn’t clear and you were about to denounce me as a heretic.

⁴ I think of Matthew 20 and 23, and Mark 9 and 10. In Matthew 23, Jesus contrasts the servant-like attitude he asks of his disciples with the attitude of the scribes and Pharisees, as part of a pronouncement of seven woes upon the latter, which I think is really, really convicting: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matt+23&version=ESVUK.

⁵ According to the legend that is the Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek dictionary: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=diakonos&la=greek#lexicon.

⁶ Here it is: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+tim+3&version=ESVUK.

⁷ Some have either ‘minister’ in both verses (e.g. NAB), or ‘servant’ or ‘deacon’ in both verses (e.g. NIV, HCSB), and once we head towards the less verbatim end of things some use different renderings altogether (like ‘helper’ in the NCV and NLT), but I can’t find any that has Phoebe as a minister and Tychicus as a servant or deacon, which I think is pretty good evidence for a conscious, agenda-driven translation decision in the versions cited above.