OF CONSUMERISM AND FAITH (19 OF 56)
Scripture: Acts 8:9-25
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Of Consumerism and Faith (19 of 56)
Series: The Church in ACTSion
Wyman Richardson
Acts 8:9-25
Read Acts 8:9-25
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church is a fascinating resource and a valuable one. It is a great big book that contains helpful articles on various issues related to Christianity and the Christian Church. One of the entries in the book describes a particular crime that became widespread pretty early on in Christian history and against which the Church has had to fight in many different places and in many different ways. The crime I am speaking of is what is referred to as ''simony.'' Here is what The Oxford Dictionary of the Church says about simony.
The term ...denotes the purchase or sale of spiritual things...[S]imony became frequent in the Christian Church after the age of the persecutions. The Council of Chalcedon (451) forbade ordination to any order for money. St. Gregory the Great later vigorously denounced the same evil. It came to be very widespread in the Middle Ages, esp. in its form of traffic in ecclesiastical preferment, which was frequently forbidden, e.g. by the Third Lateran Council (1179). It was treated in detail by St. Thomas Aquinas and again strenuously opposed by the Council of Trent...In post-Reformation England the English Canons of 1604 exacted an oath from all ordinands and recipients of benefices to the effect that their offices had not been obtained by simoniacal transactions.
This offense, simony, is still forbidden today. Why is it called simony? It is called simony because of a gentleman we are going to meet tonight: Simon Magus, or Simon the Magician. What Simon did in the passage we will now consider was so shameful and so wrongheaded that has name is now affixed to the ugly act of attempting to purchase a position in the Church.
We have seen that the martyrdom of Stephen unleashed a persecution that led to the scattering of the Church and the spread of the gospel, for as the Church scattered ...
Series: The Church in ACTSion
Wyman Richardson
Acts 8:9-25
Read Acts 8:9-25
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church is a fascinating resource and a valuable one. It is a great big book that contains helpful articles on various issues related to Christianity and the Christian Church. One of the entries in the book describes a particular crime that became widespread pretty early on in Christian history and against which the Church has had to fight in many different places and in many different ways. The crime I am speaking of is what is referred to as ''simony.'' Here is what The Oxford Dictionary of the Church says about simony.
The term ...denotes the purchase or sale of spiritual things...[S]imony became frequent in the Christian Church after the age of the persecutions. The Council of Chalcedon (451) forbade ordination to any order for money. St. Gregory the Great later vigorously denounced the same evil. It came to be very widespread in the Middle Ages, esp. in its form of traffic in ecclesiastical preferment, which was frequently forbidden, e.g. by the Third Lateran Council (1179). It was treated in detail by St. Thomas Aquinas and again strenuously opposed by the Council of Trent...In post-Reformation England the English Canons of 1604 exacted an oath from all ordinands and recipients of benefices to the effect that their offices had not been obtained by simoniacal transactions.
This offense, simony, is still forbidden today. Why is it called simony? It is called simony because of a gentleman we are going to meet tonight: Simon Magus, or Simon the Magician. What Simon did in the passage we will now consider was so shameful and so wrongheaded that has name is now affixed to the ugly act of attempting to purchase a position in the Church.
We have seen that the martyrdom of Stephen unleashed a persecution that led to the scattering of the Church and the spread of the gospel, for as the Church scattered ...
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