NOTES for Act 8:1-25

Today's reading gives us an opportunity to look at the Kingdom from a new, perhaps somewhat unexpected angle. It concerns the story of a magician named Simon (vv. 9–24). What immediately strikes us on reading the account is that, very soon after Philip arrived in the city, Simon became one of his most attentive listeners and seemed ready to become one of his followers (vv. 9–13). But when the apostles came to the city and prayed for the Spirit to be sent down upon the new converts, Simon approached them, offering money and asking in return for that power of prayer which made the Spirit's descent possible upon those for whom they prayed (vv. 18–19). Such a desire in a magician for God's power might seem strange and unnatural. Yet if we consider the nature of magic, we will see nothing particularly strange here. Magicians have long regarded the world as the expression and embodiment of a supernatural force or energy, mastery of which was considered the goal of magic and the meaning of a magician's life. Apparently, Simon too had achieved some success in this respect, perhaps considerable success (vv. 10–11). But then an unknown man appears in the city who seems to know this force better and to command it masterfully. Naturally, Simon wanted to become the mysterious stranger's disciple; once he had decided this, he never left his side (v. 13). He probably neglected baptism, considering it unnecessary for himself. Like most magicians, Simon was apparently a practical atheist. If he thought about God at all, it was probably in the sense that God could neither help nor hinder him, for a magician must acquire the force himself, without appealing to any gods or spirits. When he became convinced that the apostles really possessed an utterly real power capable of changing a person, he naturally wanted to learn to wield it as they did. But matters turned out to be both simpler and more complicated than Simon expected. It was not simply about power, but about the Kingdom entering the world, with power only one of its manifestations. Simon, however, wanted the power without the Kingdom. It is no accident that Peter judges his spiritual state in the harshest terms (vv. 22–23). The issue is not that the force the magician wants to control is bad in itself. Ultimately, nothing in the world is inherently demonic, for the devil cannot create; he can only spoil and distort what he did not create. What is frightening is something else: even when coming into contact with the Kingdom, the magician always remains closed to others, including God, remaining utterly self-centered. The Kingdom, by contrast, requires complete openness to God and neighbor. Judging by Simon's response to Peter's words (v. 24), he is probably beginning to understand this. Perhaps, in doing so, he is taking his first step toward the Kingdom.

How astonishing and frightening it is to find oneself in Jerusalem during the persecution, to feel the people’s agitation, fear, and trembling, and at the same time their ever-growing faith and joy in following Christ. Before us is something very much like the events of the Gospel: persecution, confusion, and mourning for the one who was killed. Only this time it is Christ’s disciples who are involved, and Stephen has been killed. As before, “devout men” are found to bury the martyr. The mourning for Stephen subsides, but an echo can already be heard: people grieve because Saul is putting their relatives in prison. Yet at the same time we see Philip proclaiming the good news of Christ, the Messiah who has come. We see miracles and healings, people attentive to the word, and “great joy” (Acts 8:8). So it is in our own time as well: difficulties can become fertile ground for sensing God’s presence, for deep prayer, and for joy. This is precisely why the Lord asks us to accept without resistance everything He gives, since “all things work together for good for those who love the Lord” (Rom 8:28). Every kind of difficulty is meant to strengthen us on the path of following Him.

The term “simony” entered Church usage as far back as the Middle Ages. It meant the buying and selling of ecclesiastical offices. Clearly, the term derives from the magician Simon mentioned in Acts, who seemed to have converted and renounced magic, yet... in a certain sense remained a magician. Admittedly, the medieval followers of the biblical Simon had become decidedly petty: they wanted an ecclesiastical office for their money, whereas Simon aimed higher. He wanted to buy himself a little grace—as much as he could afford. That is something more serious than a Church office. This is where things become most interesting and revealing. The sale of Church offices is easy to understand: all ecclesiastical structures are the work of human hands. In human terms, buying and selling places within them is understandable too, however repugnant. Grace, however, is genuinely interesting. What did Simon imagine grace to be, if he was certain it could be bought or sold?

Probably something like the supernatural energy he himself had sought to master all his life. He had likely achieved some success, if his many acts of “sorcery” worked. A magician is always certain that the energy whose presence he senses, even if he does not consciously recognize it—the energy underlying the universe—is real. It can be mastered. Most importantly, he will succeed in mastering it. Without that certainty, there is no magician. Nor any magic. But now the magician encounters manifestations of God's power: the power of the Kingdom.

And... he converts quickly and easily. Then he asks to buy some grace. An interesting conversion! Yet on reflection, there is nothing strange about it. Nor, of course, is there any real conversion. What there is instead is recognition of a fact obvious to the magician: a power exists in the world greater than anything he has dealt with before. There are people who possess this power—that is how the magician sees the situation. He must get along with such people. He must accept their religion: for a magician, Christianity will always be merely a religion; by definition, he knows nothing of it as the life of the Kingdom. In the end, a magician may even accept God's existence if he sees that the power comes from Him. But he will never be able to entrust himself to God. For to trust Him means recognizing Him not simply as stronger, but as higher than oneself.

To acknowledge that, a magician must cease to be a magician. He must cease to be what he is. Until that happens, his religion will be based on the principle of “you give to me, and I give to you.” God is stronger, so one must strike a bargain with Him, so that He will share His power. Perhaps through certain people, intermediaries to whom His power is accessible. But... suddenly, quite unexpectedly for Simon, the apostles give him a harsh rebuke. He comes to understand something—if not everything, then at least a little.

He understands that these people bear something money cannot buy. The point is not that God does not want to share His power with humanity. The point is that this power is part of His Kingdom and can be received only by entering the Kingdom, together with God's love, as one of its manifestations. Outside the Kingdom and without God's love, a magician will remain a magician, whatever religion he professes and however often he appeals to God. One cannot strike a bargain with Him. One can only give Him one's whole self and receive everything from Him in return: the whole Kingdom in all its fullness.

Simon Magus is a very contemporary figure. Even in our time it is not hard to meet magicians and psychics who present themselves as someone great, and whose power many confuse with the power of God. For many of our contemporaries it has become usual to place Christianity in one row with other systems of worldview and to "enrich" it by combining it with occult and other "paranormal" practices.

Simon Magus believed and was baptized. But in his example we see the first case of how the inertia of a former spirituality continues to manifest itself and even intensify after conversion. It is understandable that those powers to which a person has long turned do not want to let him go from themselves, but such a person also needs to divide clearly his newly acquired faith from his former fascinations. Simon thought that the power of the Holy Spirit was like the powers with which he had dealt until then, only much more powerful. It seems that Simon's falsehood consisted in this, and not only in the desire to obtain God's gift for money, in the striving to bring relations of buying and selling into spiritual life.

Later many legends arose about Simon Magus, according to which he returned to magical practice, but the Book of Acts breaks off the story of Simon with words about the possibility of his repentance. Simon had such a possibility, and his present-day imitators still have it too, if only they come to their senses. But whether Simon brought repentance is also not said. He asks the apostles to pray for him, apparently considering them stronger than himself, but he does not pray himself. Something, apparently, hindered him...

Sometimes from our parents, sometimes from other people, we happen to hear something close in meaning to: "You are living wrongly, and if things keep going this way, it will go badly for you." And we answer: "Why are you jinxing me?" We are so unwilling to see the cause of troubles, or even disasters, in ourselves that we are ready to find that cause in the fact that someone has rebuked us.

So it is here with Simon the Magician. Exposed by the apostles for his pagan approach to Christian life and called by them to personal repentance, that is, to inner change and turning to God, he asks them to pray for him, supposing that in this way their "curse" will be removed. As though it were not Simon's inner paganism, but the words of the apostles, that were leading him toward a future spiritual catastrophe.

Stephen changes both the subject and the tone of his speech quite unexpectedly. He begins with the evident intention of defending himself before his judges and explaining the meaning of the words that led to the charge against him. His entire, fairly lengthy survey of the history of the Jewish people and of Revelation was meant to bring him to the Temple as a sanctuary and the Torah as an instrument of sanctification.

Apparently, the next step was to turn to the image of Christ as a living sanctuary, a new Temple, and the living Torah. This transition could have explained Stephen's words, repeated after Jesus, about the destruction of the Temple—the very words that provided grounds for the charge. But suddenly, for seemingly no reason, Stephen turns from a calm historical survey to direct accusations against those present, in the spirit and style of the ancient prophets. What happened?

An answer may lie in Stephen's own testimony: he says that he saw heaven opened and Christ Himself, whom he called the “Son of Man,” standing “at God's right hand.” Such a revelation could not fail to interrupt the flow of his speech and change both its subject and its tone. Evidently, what Stephen saw marked the beginning of his departure, the prelude to his death as a martyr. His task had changed. A moment earlier it had been to deliver a speech in his own defense; now, when it became clear that his earthly path and ministry were coming to an end, his new task was to say before departing the essential thing those gathered to hear him needed to hear. Naturally, a speech of self-defense as such no longer made sense in this situation.

What mattered most was what Jesus Himself had said to His listeners during His earthly ministry: in essence, the people's spiritual condition had not changed at all since the later prophets. The predecessors of those now accusing Stephen had killed the prophets because they did not want to hear the testimony from God that the prophets bore. In the same way, those now accusing Stephen had killed the Messiah Himself, because testimony to the Kingdom was as unbearable to them as the prophets' revelation had been to their predecessors. This was the essential thing Stephen's listeners had to hear before the martyr left our world. They heard it all. And they acted just as their fathers had.