Philip the Deacon

Overview

Philip the Deacon, also called Philas, was a first-century saint identified in The Coptic Encyclopedia as one of the seven deacons described in Acts; his feast day is 14 Babah.¹ His ministry joined service to the Christian community with the proclamation of the Gospel: the encyclopedia’s account of the diaconate describes him preaching the Word, proclaiming the Messiah, effecting cures, and performing miracles among attentive hearers.⁴

Philip is also explicitly called an evangelist in Acts 21:8, as noted in the encyclopedia’s article on that term.⁵ These two designations emphasize related aspects of his ministry rather than competing identities: he belonged to the seven appointed for communal service, while his preaching exemplified the wider spiritual activity that some of those seven undertook.²⁴

History and origins

The needs of the early community

The appointment of the seven arose from practical difficulties within the growing Christian community. According to the encyclopedia’s account of Saint Stephen, Greek-speaking converts complained that their widows were being neglected in favor of the widows of the Hebrews. The Twelve therefore placed seven men in charge of ministering to the needs of the Hellenists, identified in that account as converts from among the Greek-speaking Jews resident in Jerusalem.³

The article on the diaconate explains the appointment from the complementary perspective of the apostles’ responsibilities. The apostles needed to devote their full attention to the nascent Church, so they chose seven reputable men, filled with the Spirit, to serve at tables, attend to the poor, and distribute alms to widows. The ministry was thus a response both to material need and to the demands placed upon the apostles.²

The seven named in the account are Stephen, Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus of Antioch. The apostles prayed and laid their hands upon them, an action the encyclopedia relates to Acts 6:5–6.²⁴ Philip’s earliest setting in these passages is therefore collective: he appears as one member of a group entrusted with an essential responsibility for the life of the community.²

The seven and the origin of the diaconate

The supplied encyclopedia articles differ in how firmly they identify this appointment with the later office of deacon. The article “Deacon” treats it as the establishment of the diaconate as a recognized ecclesiastical office, whereas the article on Stephen states more cautiously that the seven “are sometimes assumed to be deacons and ministers.” The brief notice of Philas or Philip nevertheless directly identifies him as one of the seven deacons described in Acts.¹²³

This difference concerns the interpretation of the seven’s office, not Philip’s inclusion among them. A reference account should preserve both the traditional designation Philip the Deacon and the more qualified wording used by the article on Stephen when discussing the historical development of the ministry.¹²³

Ministry and evangelistic activity

Preaching, healing, and miracles

The encyclopedia presents Philip and Stephen as examples of members of the seven whose work extended into the spiritual sphere. Stephen reasoned with others with inspired wisdom and performed miracles; Philip preached the Word, proclaimed the Messiah, effected cures, and accomplished miracles. Philip’s audience is described as listening eagerly to his preaching, with Acts 8 cited as the scriptural basis.⁴

This presentation does not reduce their original service to an unimportant preliminary stage. The same account calls the practical task of the seven secondary but essential, while describing their subsequent evangelistic activity as a further expression of ministry. Philip’s career consequently illustrates the connection between provision for the community and proclamation of its faith.²⁴

The Samaritan mission

The Rudder, in a discussion of ecclesiastical authority, explicitly identifies Philip as both one of the seven deacons and one of the seventy. It describes him teaching and baptizing the Samaritans, after which Peter and John came to Samaria to impart the Holy Spirit.⁶

The passage uses this sequence to distinguish Philip’s teaching and administration of Baptism from the activity subsequently undertaken by the two members of the Twelve. Its interest is therefore not simply biographical: Philip’s mission becomes an example through which the source discusses different kinds of ministerial authority.⁶

The Ethiopian eunuch and a question of designation

The encyclopedia’s article on the Apostles’ Creed recalls the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch who had gone to Jerusalem. It quotes his confession, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God,” with a reference to Acts 8:37, and uses the episode in its explanation of early baptismal professions of faith.⁷

That article calls the baptizer “the Apostle Philip,” rather than “Philip the deacon.” Its wording should be retained as a feature of the source rather than silently harmonized with the other passages, which identify Philip as a deacon, one of the seven, or an evangelist.¹⁵⁷ The episode’s explicit theological function in the Apostles’ Creed article is to illustrate the confession of faith associated with baptism.⁷

Theology and meaning

Service and proclamation

The encyclopedia derives deacon from the Greek diakonos, meaning “servant.” It explains that the word could designate someone performing ordinary tasks such as waiting at table, but that its New Testament usage also embraces daily assistance to the needy and the service of the Word. In Paul’s epistles, according to the same account, the term covers both temporal and spiritual services.⁸

This breadth helps explain why Philip’s preaching is presented within an article on the diaconate. Service to widows and the poor, proclamation of the Messiah, and care for those who received his ministry are not treated as unrelated activities; they belong within the source’s wider understanding of Christian service.²⁴⁸

The spiritual qualifications attached to the original appointment are equally important. The seven were chosen as men of good reputation and filled with the Spirit, not merely as capable administrators.² In its subsequent discussion of 1 Timothy 3:8–10, the encyclopedia describes candidates for the diaconate as principled and above reproach, free from hypocrisy or double-talk, excessive drinking, and the pursuit of riches, and firmly grounded in the Christian faith. It observes that these requirements closely resemble those for the episcopate.⁹

Philip and the imparting of the Holy Spirit

The Rudder draws a distinction between Philip’s Samaritan ministry and the imparting of the Holy Spirit by Peter and John. Its initial explanation is that the seventy lacked the gift of imparting the Spirit in the manner exercised by the Twelve; it also cites Chrysostom as making this distinction in relation to Philip.⁶¹¹

The same passage, however, records a qualification attributed to Oecumenios. On that interpretation, the seventy refrained from imparting the Holy Spirit while they were together with the Twelve in Jerusalem out of respect for them. After the seventy dispersed to other regions, Oecumenios’s argument assumes that they ordained and consequently imparted the Spirit.¹⁰

The source thus preserves different explanations of the limits involved: one emphasizes a prerogative of the Twelve, while the other interprets the restraint as dependent on circumstances and respect for the Twelve. These views should be distinguished rather than collapsed into a single unqualified assertion about Philip’s authority.⁶¹⁰¹¹

Ecclesiastical interpretation

The discussion in The Rudder places Philip’s example within a broader account of church ministries. It cites Ignatios, in a letter to the Trallians, as comparing deacons to the angelic hosts and describing their pure and faultless service for the bishop. It also cites Dionysios the Areopagite, who characterizes the bishop’s work as perfective, the priest’s as illuminative, and the deacon’s as purificative.¹¹

These comparisons concern the interpretation of ecclesiastical offices rather than additional events in Philip’s life. Their connection to him lies in the source’s use of his ministry to discuss the relationship between service, baptism, and the authority associated with the gift of the Holy Spirit.⁶¹¹

Saints and figures connected with Philip

Stephen is Philip’s principal companion in the supplied account of the seven. The encyclopedia identifies Stephen as the first named member and as “a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit”; it also describes him as the first follower of Jesus to suffer martyrdom.³ The article on the diaconate pairs Stephen’s inspired reasoning and miracles with Philip’s preaching and healing to illustrate the spiritual activity of members of the seven.⁴

The encyclopedia’s article on the Archdeacon further states that the apostles selected Stephen as chief of the seven. This connects Philip’s group with the source’s account of the apostolic origins of the archdiaconate, without assigning Philip that senior position.¹²

Peter and John are connected with Philip through the Samaritan mission. In The Rudder, their arrival supplies the central comparison between Philip’s teaching and baptism and the imparting of the Holy Spirit by members of the Twelve.⁶

Names, texts, and terminology

Philip and Philas

The encyclopedia’s brief saint notice uses the form “Philas, or Philip,” while its calendar reverses the order to “Philip or Philas.” Both identify the saint by his membership among the seven and associate him with 14 Babah.¹¹³ The index reinforces this equivalence by directing “Philip, Saint” to “Philas, Saint.”¹⁴

The index also separately lists Philip as a deacon, Philip the apostle and saint, and Philip of Anatolia as a bishop. These separate entries make precise identification important when using references that contain only the name Philip.¹⁴

The title “evangelist”

The encyclopedia defines an evangelist as someone who proclaims glad tidings, specifically the Gospel. Although the title is particularly associated with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, it is not restricted to those four writers: Acts 21:8 expressly applies it to Philip the deacon.⁵

The same article places this usage beside Ephesians 4:11, where evangelists appear below apostles and prophets but above pastors and teachers, and 2 Timothy 4:5, where Timothy is urged to proclaim the Gospel. Philip’s designation accordingly belongs to the broader sense of Gospel proclamation, not to a statement that he was one of the four Gospel writers.⁵

Liturgical commemoration

Philip’s feast is given as 14 Babah in both the encyclopedia’s saint notice and its calendar. The calendar entry reads, “Commemoration of Philip or Philas, one of the seven deacons.”¹¹³

In the calendar table supplied, 14 Babah is paired with 11 October. This is the correspondence printed in that table, rather than an independently established statement about present-day civil-calendar observance.¹³

The entry’s wording also deserves attention: it describes Philip’s observance as a commemoration, whereas neighboring entries explicitly identify martyrdoms when that is the occasion being recorded. The calendar therefore supports a feast in his honor but does not itself characterize that feast as the anniversary of his martyrdom.¹³