Spiritual Words: The Problem with Selling Teaching

It is no mys­tery that my main con­ten­tion here—and per­haps I can speak inclusively, our main con­ten­tion here—is that the sale of bib­li­cal in­struc­tion is si­mony. That was the the­sis of last night’s de­bate, it’s the the­sis of this mes­sage, and at the end of the day, it’s the the­sis of this en­tire con­fer­ence.

Last night, I only had the op­por­tu­nity to pro­vide a brief open­ing state­ment and the han­dle some ob­jec­tions. In ad­di­tion, given that the his­tory of the doc­trine of si­mony is so ob­scure, I was also lim­ited in my free­dom to ap­peal to his­tor­i­cal sen­ti­ments. In this mes­sage, I hope to give a fuller ac­count, both with Scrip­ture and his­tory.

Does the Sin of Si­mony Ex­ist To­day?§

Many who read Acts 8Acts 8¹And Saul was consenting to his death. And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church that was in Jerusalem; and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.²And devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him.³But Saul laid waste the church, entering into every house, and dragging men and women committed them to prison.⁴They therefore that were scattered, went about preaching the word.⁵And Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ.⁶And the multitudes gave heed with one accord to the things that were spoken by Philip, when they heard and saw the signs which he did.⁷For [from] many of those who had unclean spirits, they came out, crying with a loud voice; and many who were paralyzed, and that were lame, were healed.⁸And there was much joy in that city.⁹But there was a certain man, Simon by name, who previously in the city used sorcery, and amazed the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one:¹⁰to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, “This man is that power of God that is called Great.”¹¹And they gave heed to him, because for a long time he had amazed them with his sorceries.¹²But when they believed Philip preaching good news concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.¹³And also Simon himself believed, and being baptized, he continued with Philip. And beholding signs and great miracles being performed, he was amazed.¹⁴Now when the apostles that were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John:¹⁵who, when they had come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Spirit,¹⁶for as yet it had fallen on none of them: only they had been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus.¹⁷Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.¹⁸Now when Simon saw that through the laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Spirit was given, he offered them money,¹⁹saying, “Give me also this power, that on whomever I lay my hands, he may receive the Holy Spirit.”²⁰But Peter said to him, “Your silver perish with you, because you have thought to obtain the gift of God with money.²¹You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God.²²Repent therefore of this your wickedness, and pray the Lord, if perhaps the thought of your heart will be forgiven you.²³For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.”²⁴And Simon answered and said, “Pray you for me to the Lord, that none of the things which you have spoken come on me.”²⁵Therefore, when they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem, and preached the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans.²⁶But an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, “Arise, and go toward the south to the way that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a desert [road].)²⁷And he arose and went. And behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was over all her treasure, who had come to Jerusalem to worship;²⁸and he was returning and sitting in his chariot, and was reading the prophet Isaiah.²⁹And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go near and join yourself to this chariot.”³⁰And Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and said, “Do you understand what you read?”³¹And he said, “How can I, except someone will guide me?” And he begged Philip to come up and sit with him.³²Now the passage of the Scripture which he was reading was this, “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and as a lamb before his shearer is silent, so he does not open his mouth:³³In his humiliation his judgment was taken away: his generation who will declare? For his life is taken from the earth.”³⁴And the eunuch answered Philip and said, “Please, of whom speaks the prophet this? Of himself, or of some other?”³⁵And Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this Scripture, preached to him Jesus.³⁶And as they went on the way, they came to a certain water. And the eunuch says, “Behold, [here is] water. What hinders me to be baptized?”³⁷[And Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.” And he answered and said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”]³⁸And he commanded the chariot to stand still; and they both went down into the water, both Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him.³⁹And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip; and the eunuch saw him no more, for he went on his way rejoicing.⁴⁰But Philip was found at Azotus; and passing through he preached the gospel to all the cities, until he came to Caesarea. sup­pose that Si­mon’s sin is one few oth­ers—if any oth­ers at all—will ever com­mit. This was the case even in ear­lier cen­turies, and writ­ers on si­mony would of­ten start with this ob­ser­va­tion. The Pu­ri­tan Henry Bur­ton said, that “in the opin­ion of many, si­mony hath lost its be­ing, in re­rum na­tura, as be­ing long ago an­ti­quated, and out of date, dead and buried with Si­mon him­self.”¹TODO This may be es­pe­cially true in our own times. Many evan­gel­i­cals con­sider them­selves pro­tected from temp­ta­tion to the sin since they op­er­ate in an en­vi­ron­ment rel­a­tively clear of in­sti­tu­tional brib­ery.

I would ar­gue that the ex­is­tence of this pas­sage in Acts 8Acts 8¹And Saul was consenting to his death. And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church that was in Jerusalem; and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.²And devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him.³But Saul laid waste the church, entering into every house, and dragging men and women committed them to prison.⁴They therefore that were scattered, went about preaching the word.⁵And Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ.⁶And the multitudes gave heed with one accord to the things that were spoken by Philip, when they heard and saw the signs which he did.⁷For [from] many of those who had unclean spirits, they came out, crying with a loud voice; and many who were paralyzed, and that were lame, were healed.⁸And there was much joy in that city.⁹But there was a certain man, Simon by name, who previously in the city used sorcery, and amazed the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one:¹⁰to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, “This man is that power of God that is called Great.”¹¹And they gave heed to him, because for a long time he had amazed them with his sorceries.¹²But when they believed Philip preaching good news concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.¹³And also Simon himself believed, and being baptized, he continued with Philip. And beholding signs and great miracles being performed, he was amazed.¹⁴Now when the apostles that were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John:¹⁵who, when they had come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Spirit,¹⁶for as yet it had fallen on none of them: only they had been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus.¹⁷Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.¹⁸Now when Simon saw that through the laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Spirit was given, he offered them money,¹⁹saying, “Give me also this power, that on whomever I lay my hands, he may receive the Holy Spirit.”²⁰But Peter said to him, “Your silver perish with you, because you have thought to obtain the gift of God with money.²¹You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God.²²Repent therefore of this your wickedness, and pray the Lord, if perhaps the thought of your heart will be forgiven you.²³For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.”²⁴And Simon answered and said, “Pray you for me to the Lord, that none of the things which you have spoken come on me.”²⁵Therefore, when they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem, and preached the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans.²⁶But an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, “Arise, and go toward the south to the way that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a desert [road].)²⁷And he arose and went. And behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was over all her treasure, who had come to Jerusalem to worship;²⁸and he was returning and sitting in his chariot, and was reading the prophet Isaiah.²⁹And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go near and join yourself to this chariot.”³⁰And Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and said, “Do you understand what you read?”³¹And he said, “How can I, except someone will guide me?” And he begged Philip to come up and sit with him.³²Now the passage of the Scripture which he was reading was this, “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and as a lamb before his shearer is silent, so he does not open his mouth:³³In his humiliation his judgment was taken away: his generation who will declare? For his life is taken from the earth.”³⁴And the eunuch answered Philip and said, “Please, of whom speaks the prophet this? Of himself, or of some other?”³⁵And Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this Scripture, preached to him Jesus.³⁶And as they went on the way, they came to a certain water. And the eunuch says, “Behold, [here is] water. What hinders me to be baptized?”³⁷[And Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.” And he answered and said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”]³⁸And he commanded the chariot to stand still; and they both went down into the water, both Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him.³⁹And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip; and the eunuch saw him no more, for he went on his way rejoicing.⁴⁰But Philip was found at Azotus; and passing through he preached the gospel to all the cities, until he came to Caesarea. im­plic­itly re­quires us to as­sume si­mony ex­ists. Bib­li­cal nar­ra­tive is given as an ex­am­ple to in­struct dis­ci­ples against temp­ta­tions that con­tinue to en­snare men in every age (1 Cor. 10:61 Corinthians 10:6Now these things happened as examples for us, that we should not desire evil things, as they also desired.; 2 Tim. 3:162 Timothy 3:16Every scripture inspired by God [is] also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction that is in righteousness.). It is also nec­es­sary to as­sume it ex­ists on ac­count of the dan­ger it en­tails. If you’ve ever learned any­thing about gun safety, you know the first rule: treat every gun as if it were loaded. The same goes for si­mony. In the words of John Wyc­liffe, “On ac­count of the con­ta­gion of this dis­ease, the Church must guard against it all the more war­ily. In treat­ing si­mony, then, one must pre­sup­pose that it ex­ists.”²Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 1 (2:1–4).

What Was Si­mon’s Sin?§

We have just heard Mi­chael on the text of Acts 8Acts 8¹And Saul was consenting to his death. And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church that was in Jerusalem; and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.²And devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him.³But Saul laid waste the church, entering into every house, and dragging men and women committed them to prison.⁴They therefore that were scattered, went about preaching the word.⁵And Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ.⁶And the multitudes gave heed with one accord to the things that were spoken by Philip, when they heard and saw the signs which he did.⁷For [from] many of those who had unclean spirits, they came out, crying with a loud voice; and many who were paralyzed, and that were lame, were healed.⁸And there was much joy in that city.⁹But there was a certain man, Simon by name, who previously in the city used sorcery, and amazed the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one:¹⁰to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, “This man is that power of God that is called Great.”¹¹And they gave heed to him, because for a long time he had amazed them with his sorceries.¹²But when they believed Philip preaching good news concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.¹³And also Simon himself believed, and being baptized, he continued with Philip. And beholding signs and great miracles being performed, he was amazed.¹⁴Now when the apostles that were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John:¹⁵who, when they had come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Spirit,¹⁶for as yet it had fallen on none of them: only they had been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus.¹⁷Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.¹⁸Now when Simon saw that through the laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Spirit was given, he offered them money,¹⁹saying, “Give me also this power, that on whomever I lay my hands, he may receive the Holy Spirit.”²⁰But Peter said to him, “Your silver perish with you, because you have thought to obtain the gift of God with money.²¹You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God.²²Repent therefore of this your wickedness, and pray the Lord, if perhaps the thought of your heart will be forgiven you.²³For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.”²⁴And Simon answered and said, “Pray you for me to the Lord, that none of the things which you have spoken come on me.”²⁵Therefore, when they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem, and preached the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans.²⁶But an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, “Arise, and go toward the south to the way that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a desert [road].)²⁷And he arose and went. And behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was over all her treasure, who had come to Jerusalem to worship;²⁸and he was returning and sitting in his chariot, and was reading the prophet Isaiah.²⁹And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go near and join yourself to this chariot.”³⁰And Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and said, “Do you understand what you read?”³¹And he said, “How can I, except someone will guide me?” And he begged Philip to come up and sit with him.³²Now the passage of the Scripture which he was reading was this, “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and as a lamb before his shearer is silent, so he does not open his mouth:³³In his humiliation his judgment was taken away: his generation who will declare? For his life is taken from the earth.”³⁴And the eunuch answered Philip and said, “Please, of whom speaks the prophet this? Of himself, or of some other?”³⁵And Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this Scripture, preached to him Jesus.³⁶And as they went on the way, they came to a certain water. And the eunuch says, “Behold, [here is] water. What hinders me to be baptized?”³⁷[And Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.” And he answered and said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”]³⁸And he commanded the chariot to stand still; and they both went down into the water, both Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him.³⁹And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip; and the eunuch saw him no more, for he went on his way rejoicing.⁴⁰But Philip was found at Azotus; and passing through he preached the gospel to all the cities, until he came to Caesarea., so I do not need to belabor the de­tails. Si­mon’s sin is stated di­rectly by Pe­ter: he thought the grace of God could be bought with a price.

First, that means it’s not just about buy­ing. A num­ber of mideval au­thors were will­ing to dis­tin­guish be­tween si­mony (si­mo­nia) proper and what they called “ge­hazia” (gesia), where si­mony is buy­ing spir­i­tual thing and ge­hazia—named af­ter Ge­hazi in 2 Kings 52 Kings 5¹Now Naaman, captain of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master, and honorable, because by him Jehovah had given victory to Syria: he was also a mighty man of valor, [but he was] a leper.²And the Syrians had gone out in bands, and had brought away captive out of the land of Israel a little maiden; and she waited on Naaman’s wife.³And she said to her mistress, “I wish that my lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria! Then he would recover of his leprosy.”⁴And one went in, and told his lord, saying, “This is what the maiden said that is of the land of Israel.”⁵And the king of Syria said, “Go now, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel.” And he departed, and took with him ten talents of silver, and six thousand [pieces] of gold, and ten changes of clothes.⁶And he brought the letter to the king of Israel, saying, “And now when this letter has come to you, behold, I have sent Naaman my servant to you, that you may recover him of his leprosy.”⁷And it came to pass, when the king of Israel had read the letter, that he tore his clothes and said, “Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man sends to me to recover a man of his leprosy? But please consider, and see how he seeks a quarrel against me.”⁸And it was so, when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, that he sent to the king, saying, “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come now to me, and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel.”⁹So Naaman came with his horses and with his chariots, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha.¹⁰And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh will come again to you, and you shall be clean.”¹¹But Naaman was angry and went away and said, “Behold, I thought, ‘He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of Jehovah his God, and wave his hand over the place, and recover the leper.’¹²Are not Abanah and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? May I not wash in them, and be clean?” So he turned and went away in a rage.¹³And his servants came near and spoke to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do something great, would you not have done it? How much rather then, when he says to you, ‘Wash, and be clean’?”¹⁴Then went he down, and dipped [himself] seven times in the Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God; and his flesh came again like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.¹⁵And he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and came, and stood before him; and he said, “Behold now, I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel. Now therefore, please take a present of your servant.”¹⁶But he said, “As Jehovah lives, before whom I stand, I will receive none.” And he urged him to take it, but he refused.¹⁷And Naaman said, “If not, please let there be given to your servant two mules’ burden of earth, for your servant will no longer bring burnt offering or sacrifice to other gods, but to Jehovah.¹⁸In this thing Jehovah pardon your servant: when my master goes into the house of Rimmon to worship there, and he leans on my hand, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon, when I bow myself in the house of Rimmon, Jehovah pardon your servant in this thing.”¹⁹And he said to him, “Go in peace.” So he departed from him a little way.²⁰But Gehazi the servant of Elisha the man of God, said, “Behold, my master has spared this Naaman the Syrian, in not receiving at his hands what he brought: as Jehovah lives, I will run after him, and take something from him.”²¹So Gehazi followed after Naaman. And when Naaman saw one running after him, he alighted from the chariot to meet him and said, “Is all well?”²²And he said, “All is well. My master has sent me, saying, ‘Behold, even now there have come to me from the hill country of Ephraim two young men of the sons of the prophets; please give them a talent of silver and two changes of clothes.’”²³And Naaman said, “Be pleased to take two talents.” And he urged him, and bound two talents of silver in two bags, with two changes of clothes, and laid them on two of his servants; and they bore them before him.²⁴And when he came to the hill, he took them from their hand, and put them them in the house; and he let the men go, and they departed.²⁵But he went in and stood before his master. And Elisha said to him, “From where do you come, Gehazi?” And he said, “Your servant went nowhere.”²⁶And he said to him, “Did my heart not go [with you], when the man turned from his chariot to meet you? Is it a time to receive money, and to receive garments, and oliveyards and vineyards, and sheep and oxen, and menservants and maidservants?²⁷The leprosy therefore of Naaman will cling to you, and to your seed forever.” And he went out from his presence a leper [as white] as snow.—is sell­ing spir­i­tual things.³Lom­bard, Sent. IV, d. 25, c. 2 (p. 909); TODO wyc­liffe. How­ever, they agreed that both are wrapped up un­der the name si­mony be­cause si­mon sought to buy in or­der that he could sell.⁴Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 1, qc. 1, ad 4; Os­wald of Laskó, Ro­sa­rium, IV, s.v. Si­mo­nia; Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. un. (fol. 145vb); Thomas of Stras­bourg, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 1, a. 4, qc. 1, ad 1 (fol. 150r); Al­bert the Great, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 6, ad 1 (p. 95b). This isn’t di­rectly stated in the text, but it seems ob­vi­ous enough, given that Si­mon asked for the power to lay hands on oth­ers (Acts 8:19Acts 8:19saying, “Give me also this power, that on whomever I lay my hands, he may receive the Holy Spirit.”). The Pu­ri­tan Henry Bur­ton joked that it bears Si­mon’s name be­cause it is “sin-money,” which sounds a lot like his name.⁵“But Si­mon hath ob­tained to bear the bell, and to carry the name away for both; sith the money so given and taken be­comes Sin-money, bear­ing the im­age and su­per­scrip­tion of Si­mon.” Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie, 31.

Sec­ond that means it’s not just about or­di­na­tions. This should be ob­vi­ous enough, but one who sells any kind of spir­i­tual thing treats the Spirit as sal­able. Yes, Si­mon asked for hands to be laid on him, but it wasn’t for church of­fice but the empowerment of the Spirit. Even if the same, ex­ter­nal sign of lay­ing on hands is used in each, these are en­tirely dif­fer­ent things. As Chrys­os­tom re­ported, and oth­ers who wrote on si­mony af­ter him agreed, the empowerment of the Spirit through the lay­ing on hands was unique to the apos­tles.footnotes:[TODO chrys­os­tom, cf. Bur­ton]

There­fore one com­mits the sin of si­mon when he sells or buys—or even just de­sires to sell or buy—any spir­i­tual thing.

What Is a Spir­i­tual Thing?§

First, a spir­i­tual thing is some­thing that is of the Holy Spirit, it is not a syn­onym for im­ma­te­rial things. It is not some­thing of cre­ated spir­its, like the inventions of an engineer or the judg­ments of a judge, but things gra­ciously given by the un­cre­ated Spirit, the third Per­son of the Trin­ity.

Sec­ond, a spir­i­tual thing is not nec­es­sar­ily a spir­i­tual thing in es­sence. In fact, spir­i­tual things in es­sence—grace, vir­tues, the work of the Spirit him­self—can­not ac­tu­ally be sold di­rectly. In­stead, spir­i­tual things are of­ten causes of things that are spir­i­tual in es­sence. For ex­am­ple, the sac­ra­ments—bap­tism and the Lord’s sup­per—are spir­i­tual as means of grace, causes of a gra­cious ben­e­fit from the Spirit to those who re­ceive them by faith. When Pe­ter ac­cused Si­mon, Si­mon could not re­spond, “I was not buy­ing the Spirit, I was only buy­ing the lay­ing on of hands.” The Spirit him­self is spir­i­tual by es­sence, but the lay­ing on of hands are spir­i­tual by cause.

Third, a spir­i­tual thing is some­thing that is spir­i­tual in prin­ci­ple, not just its end. For ex­am­ple, a min­is­ter does the work of ad­min­is­ter­ing the sac­ra­ments or read­ing the Gospel by a spir­i­tual prin­ci­ple since it pro­ceeds from a spir­i­tual of­fice. But other sorts of ac­tiv­i­ties for no­ble pur­poses are only spir­i­tual in end. For ex­am­ple, though one who teaches a sub­ject like gram­mar or logic does not do so by a spir­i­tual prin­ci­ple even if they have a spir­i­tual pur­pose like the in­crease vir­tue or prep­a­ra­tion for theo­log­i­cal stud­ies.⁶See Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 2, qc. 2; Aqui­nas, Quod­li­bet, VIII, q. 6, a. 1 (p. 175).

Is Bib­li­cal Teach­ing a Spir­i­tual Thing?§

Now we come to the main ques­tion. If bib­li­cal teach­ing is a spir­i­tual thing, than the sale of bib­li­cal teach­ing is si­mony. If bib­li­cal teach­ing is not a spir­i­tual thing, then sell­ing it is not si­mony. Which is it?

1 Co­rin­thi­ans 2:131 Corinthians 2:13These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Spirit teaches; combining spiritual things with spiritual [words]. makes it clear (“And this is what we speak, not in words taught us by hu­man wis­dom, but in words taught by the Spirit, ex­press­ing spir­i­tual truths in spir­i­tual words”). The pre­cise mean­ing of the fi­nal phrase “πνευματικοῖς πνευματικὰ συνκρίνοντες” re­mains de­bated, but in any case, the teacher speaks words taught by the Spirit.

The sub­ject of bib­li­cal teach­ing, re­gard­less of fo­cus or form, is ul­ti­mately the Scrip­ture as given by the Spirit (2 Tim. 3:16–172 Timothy 3:16–17¹⁶Every scripture inspired by God [is] also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction that is in righteousness.¹⁷That the man of God may be complete, furnished completely to every good work.). Fur­ther­more, though it may have reached him through the work of other men, it is at last re­vealed to the teacher by the Spirit, who en­ables him to com­pre­hend the thought of God (1 Cor. 2:10–111 Corinthians 2:10–11¹⁰But to us God revealed [them] through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.¹¹For who among men knows the things of a man, except the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so the things of God none knows, except the Spirit of God.). The learner, on his side, ap­pre­hends it not by his nat­ural ca­pac­i­ties alone but by spir­i­tual dis­cern­ment, since “the nat­ural man does not re­ceive the things of the Spirit of God. For they are fool­ish­ness to him; and he can­not know them, be­cause they are spir­i­tu­ally dis­cerned” (1 Cor. 2:141 Corinthians 2:14Now the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness to him; and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged.). The con­trast Paul drew be­tween the spir­i­tual and the nat­ural is not a con­trast be­tween the ma­te­rial and im­ma­te­rial as­pects of the hu­man ra­tio­nal mind, but be­tween the op­er­a­tions of the Spirit and the un­aided fac­ul­ties of man. The godly teacher’s proper hope, then, is to be made by grace an in­stru­ment through which the Spirit him­self works upon the hearer. Such teach­ing is spir­i­tual in each of the three senses ear­lier dis­tin­guished: as this teach­ing is de­riv­a­tive of Scrip­ture, it is of the un­cre­ated Spirit (a spir­itu in­cre­ato); as it pro­duces a spir­i­tual ef­fect, it is spir­i­tual by cause (per cau­sam); and as it pro­ceeds from the Spirit at work in the words of the teacher who has re­ceived that same Spirit (1 Cor. 2:12–131 Corinthians 2:12–13¹²But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, that we might know the things that were freely given to us by God.¹³These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Spirit teaches; combining spiritual things with spiritual [words].), it is spir­i­tual as to its prin­ci­ple (ex parte prin­ci­pii). To set a price on it there­fore meets the def­i­ni­tion of si­mony, dif­fer­ing in es­sence not at all from Si­mon Ma­gus’s orig­i­nal pro­posal.

The chief ob­jec­tions that the tra­di­tion has raised against si­mony all ap­ply to the case of bib­li­cal teach­ing. We will ex­am­ine three of those here and, in each, re­spond to a po­ten­tial de­fense of its sale.

Stew­ard­ship of the Word§

In any le­git­i­mate sale, the seller must have a proper au­thor­ity to con­duct the trans­ac­tion. If one owns the thing, he can de­cide of his own ac­cord; if one is a stew­ard, such a sale needs to be au­tho­rized by the owner. As we have seen from 1 Co­rin­thi­ans 4:11 Corinthians 4:1Let a man so account of us as of servants of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God. (“Let a man so ac­count us as min­is­ters of Christ and stew­ards [οἰκονόμους] of the mys­ter­ies of God”), the one who teaches God’s word is a stew­ard rather than an owner. Adam was charged to sub­due the earth and ex­er­cise do­min­ion over it (Gen. 1:28Genesis 1:28And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”), and from that grant flows the au­thor­ity by which men buy and sell the goods of the earth as their own. The con­tent of bib­li­cal teach­ing, how­ever—whether it be the bare words of Scrip­ture or the doc­tri­nal truths con­tained therein—was not given as part of na­ture or com­mit­ted to man un­der this kind of do­min­ion. These mys­ter­ies may be pos­sessed only un­der a stew­ard­ship. The stew­ard an­swers to the Mas­ter, who sets the terms of their ad­min­is­tra­tion and has strictly pro­hib­ited the sale of his goods.

Paul re­vis­ited this truth in 1 Co­rin­thi­ans 9:171 Corinthians 9:17For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I have a stewardship entrusted to me. (“If I do this will­ingly, I have a re­ward. But if un­will­ingly, I am still en­trusted with a stew­ard­ship [οἰκονομίαν]”). Many have in­ter­preted this as a con­trast be­tween a min­i­mal re­quire­ment Paul was un­der and his cho­sen ap­proach of go­ing above and be­yond.⁷E.g., “the one is a thing com­manded, whereas the other is an achieve­ment of my own choice.” Chrys­os­tom, Ho­mil­iae in epis­to­lam ad Co­rin­thios pri­o­rem, hom. 22.3 (p. 261). How­ever, the apos­tle con­sid­ered it un­think­able to do any­thing less (1 Cor. 9:15–161 Corinthians 9:15–16¹⁵But I have used none of these things; and I do not write these things that it may be so done in my case, for [it were] good for me rather to die, than that any man should make my boasting void.¹⁶For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast of, for necessity is laid on me, for woe is to me, if I do not preach the gospel.).⁸E.g., “he did noth­ing but what the ne­ces­sity of his of­fice (though it was an ex­tra­or­di­nary ne­ces­sity) de­manded.” Cal­vin, Com­men­tary on the Co­rin­thi­ans, 1 Cor. 9:18 (p. 303). To preach the gospel for a price is to do so “un­will­ingly” (1 Cor. 9:171 Corinthians 9:17For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I have a stewardship entrusted to me.), the la­bor be­ing com­pelled by con­tract. Be­cause such a man trans­acts with the Mas­ter’s goods as an owner rather than as a stew­ard, he for­feits all re­ward of stew­ard­ship. Thus, Paul pre­sented the gospel free of charge (1 Cor. 9:181 Corinthians 9:18What then is my reward? That, when I preach the gospel, I may make the gospel without charge, so as not to use to the full my right in the gospel.).

Paul ac­knowl­edged a min­is­ter’s right to re­ceive. More­over, he did not ab­so­lutely re­ject funds on ac­count of the gospel in Cor­inth; he re­peat­edly an­tic­i­pated the Co­rin­thi­ans send­ing him on his way (1 Cor. 16:61 Corinthians 16:6but with you it may be that I will abide, or even winter, that you may set me forward on my journey wherever I go.; 2 Cor. 1:162 Corinthians 1:16and by you to pass into Macedonia, and again from Macedonia to come to you, and of you to be set forward on my journey to Judea.).⁹The word “send” (προπέμπω) used in each of these verses im­plies a ma­te­rial equip­ping. Bauer, A Greek-Eng­lish Lex­i­con, 873. In­stead, his com­mit­ment, as stated here and else­where, was to never ex­change his teach­ing for a price (2 Cor. 2:172 Corinthians 2:17For we are not as the many, corrupting the word of God; but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God, we speak in Christ.; 11:7, 122 Corinthians 11:7Or did I commit a sin in humbling myself that you might be exalted, because I preached to you the gospel of God free of charge?).

In fact, it is that stew­ard­ship that makes one fit to live of the gospel; to ac­cept a price for one’s teach­ing is to for­feit the grounds by which one can rightly re­ceive ma­te­rial sup­port in any mea­sure. Con­sider Paul’s ap­peal to the Old Tes­ta­ment priest­hood in 1 Co­rin­thi­ans 9:131 Corinthians 9:13Do you not know that those who minister about sacred things eat [of] the things of the temple, [and] those who wait on the altar have their portion with the altar? (“those who serve at the al­tar par­take of its of­fer­ings”). The priests re­ceived from the Lord as their in­her­i­tance pre­cisely be­cause they did not pos­sess an in­her­i­tance of their own (Num. 18:20Numbers 18:20And Jehovah said to Aaron, “You shall have no inheritance in their land, nor shall you have any portion among them: I am your portion and your inheritance among the children of Israel.). To take own­er­ship over that which one was given to stew­ard is to lose the re­ward the Lord of­fers for such ser­vice. The la­borer is wor­thy of his wages, but the work that God has given is not un­spec­i­fied; it is the work of stew­ard­ship. For this rea­son, Mi­cah con­demned the priests who taught for a price (Mic. 3:11Micah 3:11The heads of it judge for reward, and its priests teach for a fee, and its prophets divine for money; yet they lean on Jehovah, and say, “Is not Jehovah in the midst of us? No evil will come on us.”).

One might counter that Paul spoke of “preach­ing,” not teach­ing more gen­er­ally. Yet the con­cern over stew­ard­ship does not lie in what the stew­ard does, but in what he of­fers. The truths of Scrip­ture preached in ser­monic fash­ion re­main just as much “mys­ter­ies of God” as those taught oth­er­wise. Thus, while there may be fac­tors that make charg­ing to hear preach­ing in the for­mal wor­ship of God more rep­re­hen­si­ble than charg­ing for bib­li­cal teach­ing in other forms, noth­ing dif­fers in the vi­o­la­tion of one’s own sta­tus as a stew­ard.

The Grace of the Word§

Typ­i­cally ap­peal­ing to Ro­mans 11:6Romans 11:6But if it is by grace, it is no longer of works: otherwise grace is no longer grace. (“And if by grace, it is no longer by works; oth­er­wise grace is no longer grace”), me­dieval theo­lo­gians con­tended that si­mo­ni­a­cal trans­ac­tions un­der­mine the grace they os­ten­si­bly com­mu­ni­cate. Re­quir­ing some pay­ment—whether of the hand (mu­nus a manu), the tongue (mu­nus a lin­gua), or ser­vice (mu­nus ab ob­se­quio)—vi­o­lates the na­ture of the gift by sub­ject­ing it to the terms of a com­mer­cial trans­ac­tion. This is as true for bib­li­cal teach­ing as it is for the sac­ra­ments or church of­fice. The “word of his grace” (Acts 14:3Acts 14:3Therefore, they stayed a long time, speaking boldly in the Lord, who bore witness to the word of his grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands.; 20:32Acts 20:32And now I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build [you] up, and to give [you] the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.) is not only the word about the grace of God, but is a word that is given by the grace of God. A teach­ing of free grace must it­self be free of charge, or it runs the risk of com­mu­ni­cat­ing a dif­fer­ent gospel.

Paul de­scribed the truths of God the Spirit il­lu­mi­nates as “freely given” (1 Cor. 2:121 Corinthians 2:12But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, that we might know the things that were freely given to us by God.), and Je­sus ap­peals to the same free re­ceiv­ing in Mat­thew 10:8Matthew 10:8Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons: freely you received, freely give. as the grounds for pro­claim­ing the king­dom freely to oth­ers. What has been gra­ciously re­ceived must be gra­ciously given. To do oth­er­wise sug­gests it was never gra­ciously re­ceived in the first place. The same is il­lus­trated in for­give­ness: the one who is for­given much loves much, and to love lit­tle ex­poses a lack of for­give­ness (Luke 7:47Luke 7:47Therefore I say to you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much; but to whom little is forgiven, [he] loves little.”).

It may be ob­jected here that those who charge for bib­li­cal teach­ing—es­pe­cially of the more ad­vanced or spe­cial­ized va­ri­ety—do not charge for the gospel. In fact, al­most all of these would give the gospel for free to any who ask. Yet this ob­jec­tion pre­sumes a dis­tinc­tion the apos­tles re­jected. The gospel should not be seen as in­tro­duc­tory or sep­a­ra­ble from other truth in the course of proper bib­li­cal teach­ing.

First, apos­tolic teach­ing re­gards Christ cru­ci­fied as the es­sence of all true teach­ing. Paul knew noth­ing among the Co­rin­thi­ans ex­cept Christ and him cru­ci­fied (1 Cor. 2:21 Corinthians 2:2For I determined not to know anything among you, except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.) yet told the Eph­esian el­ders that he would have blood on his hands had he shrunk from de­clar­ing the whole coun­sel of God (Acts 20:26–27Acts 20:26–27²⁶Therefore I testify to you today that I am pure from the blood of all men.²⁷For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.). In 1 Co­rin­thi­ans 21 Corinthians 2¹And I, brothers, when I came to you, did not come with excellency of speech or wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God.²For I determined not to know anything among you, except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.³And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.⁴And my speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power:⁵that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.⁶We speak wisdom, however, among those who are mature; yet a wisdom not of this world or of the rulers of this world, who are coming to nothing,⁷but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the [wisdom] that has been hidden, which God foreordained before the ages to our glory:⁸which none of the rulers of this world has known; for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory,⁹but as it is written, “Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, and [which] did not enter into the heart of man, whatever things God prepared for those who love him.”¹⁰But to us God revealed [them] through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.¹¹For who among men knows the things of a man, except the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so the things of God none knows, except the Spirit of God.¹²But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, that we might know the things that were freely given to us by God.¹³These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Spirit teaches; combining spiritual things with spiritual [words].¹⁴Now the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness to him; and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged.¹⁵But he who is spiritual judges all things, and he himself is judged by no man.¹⁶For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ., Paul was not con­fess­ing that he had shrunk from the full­ness of his task; he was show­ing that true bib­li­cal teach­ing re­sides in the power of the Spirit rather than the wis­dom of man. Sim­i­larly, to the Colos­sians, he sum­ma­rized the na­ture of his teach­ing with the phrase “him we pro­claim” (Col. 1:28Colossians 1:28whom we proclaim, admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ;). Je­sus him­self in­structed the apos­tles that to un­der­stand Scrip­ture rightly it must be in­ter­preted con­cern­ing him­self (Luke 24:44–45Luke 24:44–45⁴⁴And he said to them, “These are my words which I spoke to you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which are written in the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the psalms, concerning me.”⁴⁵Then he opened their mind, that they might understand the scriptures;). Rightly prof­fered, doc­tri­nal teach­ing com­mu­ni­cates the gospel.

Sec­ond, when the apos­tles dis­tin­guished be­tween lev­els of in­struc­tion, us­ing the terms “milk” and “meat,” they did not iso­late the gospel to one or the other. The au­thor of He­brews called his au­di­ence to move be­yond the milk (Heb. 5:12Hebrews 5:12For though by this time you should be teachers, you have need again that someone teach you the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of God; and have become those who have need of milk, and not of solid food.), giv­ing ex­am­ples of these el­e­men­tary doc­trines of Christ: re­pen­tance, faith, wash­ings, lay­ing on hands, res­ur­rec­tion, judg­ment (Heb. 6:1–2Hebrews 6:1–2¹Therefore leaving the doctrine of the first principles of Christ, let us press on to perfection; not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God,²of the teaching of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.). These are things that re­late in some ways to Christ, but the par­tic­u­lar in­stance of “meat” that prompted his com­ments was the re­la­tion be­tween Christ and Mel­chiz­e­dek, the su­pe­rior na­ture of his priest­hood that guar­an­tees an eter­nal sal­va­tion (Heb. 5:10Hebrews 5:10named by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.; 7:1–28Hebrews 7:1–28¹For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of God Most High, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him,²to whom also Abraham divided a tenth part of all (being first, by translation, “King of righteousness,” and then also King of Salem, which is “King of peace”;³without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God), abides a priest continually.⁴Now consider how great this man was, to whom Abraham, the patriarch, gave a tenth out of the chief spoils.⁵And they indeed of the sons of Levi that receive the priest’s office have orders to take tithes from the people according to the law, that is, of their brothers, though these have descended from Abraham,⁶but he whose genealogy is not counted from them has taken tithes from Abraham and has blessed him who has the promises.⁷But without any dispute the lesser is blessed by the better.⁸And here men who die receive tithes; but there one, of whom it is witnessed that he lives.⁹And, in a manner of speaking, through Abraham even Levi, who receives tithes, has paid tithes;¹⁰for he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchizedek met him.¹¹Now if there was perfection through the Levitical priesthood (for under it has the people received the law), what further need [was there] that another priest should arise after the order of Melchizedek, and not be reckoned after the order of Aaron?¹²For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change of the law also.¹³For he of whom these things are said belongs to another tribe, from which no man has attended at the altar.¹⁴For it is evident that our Lord has descended from Judah; as to which tribe Moses spoke nothing concerning priests.¹⁵And [what we say] is yet more abundantly evident, if after the likeness of Melchizedek there arises another priest,¹⁶who has been made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life,¹⁷for it is witnessed [of him,] “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”¹⁸For there is a disannulling of a former commandment because of its weakness and unprofitableness¹⁹(for the law made nothing perfect) and a bringing in of a better hope, through which we draw near to God.²⁰And inasmuch as [it is] not without the taking of an oath²¹(for they indeed have been made priests without an oath; but he with an oath by him who says of him, “The Lord swore and will not change his mind, you are a priest forever.”)²²by so much also has Jesus become the guarantee of a better covenant.²³And they indeed have been made priests many in number, because by death they are hindered from continuing,²⁴but he, because he abides forever, has his priesthood unchangeable.²⁵Therefore he is also able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he ever lives to make intercession for them.²⁶For such a high priest was fitting for us, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens,²⁷who does not need, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices daily, first for his own sins, and then for the [sins] of the people; for this he did once for all, when he offered up himself.²⁸For the law appoints men high priests, having weakness; but the word of the oath, which was after the law, [appoints] a Son, perfected forever more.). Sim­i­larly, when Paul chided the Co­rin­thi­ans for not be­ing ready for solid food (1 Cor. 3:21 Corinthians 3:2I fed you with milk, not with solid food, for you were not yet able [to bear it]: no, not even now are you able;), he con­fessed no fail­ure of his own to pro­vide ad­vanced teach­ing be­yond the gospel, but charged them with a fail­ure to re­ceive the full teach­ing of the gospel. The no­tions of “flesh” and “merely hu­man” in 1 Co­rin­thi­ans 3:3–41 Corinthians 3:3–4³for you are yet carnal; for where there is among you jealousy and strife, are you not carnal, and do you not walk after the manner of men?⁴For when one says, “I am of Paul,” and another, “I am of Apollos,” are you not men? are de­signed to con­trast with the mind of the Spirit in the pre­ced­ing chap­ter of the epis­tle, where he al­ready dem­on­strated that the full un­der­stand­ing of spir­i­tual truth de­pends on the work of the Spirit. The “solid food” is noth­ing other than the es­sen­tial mes­sage of Christ and him cru­ci­fied (1 Cor. 2:21 Corinthians 2:2For I determined not to know anything among you, except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.).

Third, such a dis­tinc­tion be­tween in­tro­duc­tory teach­ing that must be gra­ciously given and ad­vanced teach­ing that may be sold sug­gests that the Spirit’s work is only re­quired to un­der­stand the for­mer. If 1 Co­rin­thi­ans 21 Corinthians 2¹And I, brothers, when I came to you, did not come with excellency of speech or wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God.²For I determined not to know anything among you, except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.³And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.⁴And my speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power:⁵that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.⁶We speak wisdom, however, among those who are mature; yet a wisdom not of this world or of the rulers of this world, who are coming to nothing,⁷but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the [wisdom] that has been hidden, which God foreordained before the ages to our glory:⁸which none of the rulers of this world has known; for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory,⁹but as it is written, “Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, and [which] did not enter into the heart of man, whatever things God prepared for those who love him.”¹⁰But to us God revealed [them] through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.¹¹For who among men knows the things of a man, except the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so the things of God none knows, except the Spirit of God.¹²But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, that we might know the things that were freely given to us by God.¹³These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Spirit teaches; combining spiritual things with spiritual [words].¹⁴Now the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness to him; and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged.¹⁵But he who is spiritual judges all things, and he himself is judged by no man.¹⁶For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. were not enough to dem­on­strate oth­er­wise, the apos­tle John taught that the anoint­ing of the Spirit teaches “all things” (1 John 2:271 John 2:27And as for you, the anointing which you received from him abides in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you; but as his anointing teaches you; concerning all things, and is true, and is no lie, and even as it taught you, you abide in him.).¹⁰Cf. John 14:26John 14:26But the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.; 16:13John 16:13Nevertheless, when he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak from himself; but whatever things he will hear, [these] will he speak. And he will declare to you the things that are to come.. The one who claims to dis­tin­guish his own theo­log­i­cal in­struc­tion from the gospel in or­der to ab­solve its sale from charges of si­mony must like­wise as­sert that it lies out­side that which the Spirit would teach. While we may con­cede that John did not em­ploy the term “all things” (πάντων) to in­clude every range of sec­u­lar ex­per­tise, the term can­not be nar­rowed so as to ex­clude any area of bib­li­cal rev­e­la­tion or Chris­tian faith.

The Price­less­ness of the Word§

The chief ground on which the tra­di­tion iden­ti­fied si­mony as her­esy was that it puts a price on that which is price­less. Like Si­mon, who be­lieved the gift of God could be pur­chased with money (Acts 8:20Acts 8:20But Peter said to him, “Your silver perish with you, because you have thought to obtain the gift of God with money.), the si­mo­niac con­fesses by ac­tion that God’s im­mea­sur­able gift is not im­mea­sur­able. This same ob­ser­va­tion ap­plies to the teach­ing of the word. The word of God is more de­sir­able than gold and bet­ter than thou­sands of pieces of gold and sil­ver (Pss. 19:10Psalms 19:10More to be desired are they than gold, yes, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the droppings of the honeycomb.; 119:72Psalms 119:72The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver. YODH.), and wis­dom is more pre­cious than ru­bies such that noth­ing com­pares (Prov. 3:15Proverbs 3:15She is more precious than rubies; and none of the things you can desire are to be compared to her.).

Some may ob­ject to a broad pro­hi­bi­tion on the sale of the teach­ing of the word of God that it fails to dis­tin­guish be­tween that which is nec­es­sary in the Chris­tian life and that which is op­tional. This dis­tinc­tion seems to fac­tor into how one should value a thing. Things like bap­tism would be wrong to sell be­cause they are nec­es­sary, but not all need ad­di­tional theo­log­i­cal in­struc­tion, es­pe­cially at the higher ac­a­demic lev­els. Yet if the core crime of si­mony is the ac­tiv­ity of plac­ing a price on the price­less, this dis­tinc­tion be­tween nec­es­sary and op­tional is ir­rel­e­vant. Both pro­duce spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment in the be­liever, and there­fore both are price­less.

If, how­ever, we are to en­ter­tain the nec­es­sary/op­tional dis­tinc­tion for a mo­ment, we will see how quickly it breaks down, de­pend­ing on what is meant by “nec­es­sary.” First, one may re­fer to that which is re­quired for the Chris­tian life. It is true that ad­vanced theo­log­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion is not needed in an ab­so­lute way by any­one, but nei­ther is bap­tism. Bap­tism is nor­ma­tive and ben­e­fi­cial in the Chris­tian life, but those who find them­selves prov­i­den­tially hin­dered from bap­tism will not thereby lack sal­va­tion.

Sec­ond, one may re­fer to that which would be un­avail­able else­where—e.g., “you don’t have to come here for theo­log­i­cal in­struc­tion, you have other op­tions.” Once again, the same is true for bap­tism, and it is on this count that many of the school­men di­rected a man to seek the sac­ra­ment else­where rather than pay the priest who with­held it. Yet while the rightly prac­ticed bap­tisms of true churches are iden­ti­cal in ben­e­fit, teach­ing dif­fers from teacher to teacher. On this point, theo­log­i­cal in­struc­tion is ac­tu­ally less in­ter­change­able than bap­tism.

Third, one may re­fer to those ac­tiv­i­ties that are re­quired for a church to be faith­ful. In­deed, churches must bap­tize, and they are un­der no uni­ver­sal oblig­a­tion to be­gin higher-level ac­a­demic in­sti­tu­tions, but how would such a dis­tinc­tion ap­ply to other vary­ing func­tions of churches? Those who would make such an ar­gu­ment would likely re­coil at the idea of charg­ing for a mid­week prayer meet­ing, though it is an op­tional ac­tiv­ity of the church, sub­ject to the dis­cre­tion of the lead­er­ship.

His­tor­i­cal Tes­ti­mony§

While theo­lo­gians of the past ad­dressed si­mony in preach­ing and teach­ing, their pri­mary con­cerns lay with the is­sues of their own day. Ac­cord­ingly, the lit­er­a­ture dwells on si­mony in or­di­na­tions more than on any other kind. For many, ques­tions re­gard­ing charg­ing for the preached or taught word were more the­o­ret­i­cal than prac­ti­cal.

This was es­pe­cially the case in the time af­ter the Ref­or­ma­tion. John Go­dol­phin ex­em­pli­fied this in his sur­vey of canon law on si­mony when he de­clined to wade through the de­tails of “whether it be si­mony in ec­cle­si­as­tics to take money for ser­mons or theo­log­i­cal doc­trines,” hav­ing no de­sire to “abuse the reader in per­plex­ing him with ex­otic ques­tions.”¹¹Go­dol­phin, Rep­er­to­rium Canon­icum, 557–58. Some af­ter the Mid­dle Ages still ad­dressed the mat­ter, but such treat­ments grew in­creas­ingly rare.

In our own day, a dif­fer­ent pic­ture ap­pears. Si­mony in or­di­na­tions has all but ceased to be a present dan­ger among Prot­es­tants, and re­lated mat­ters such as sys­tems of pa­tron­age hardly arise, even in es­tab­lished (i.e., na­tional) churches where the prac­tice had once been com­mon.

{ TODO: move a lot of this to 13th cen­tury talk? }

How far the fore­go­ing pro­scrip­tions reach de­pends on how we in­ter­pret the vo­cab­u­lary of “preach­ing” and “the word of God.” Taken nar­rowly, they gov­ern only the for­mal ac­tiv­ity which takes place in a wor­ship ser­vice or dis­tinctly evan­ge­lis­tic en­coun­ters, but many au­thors seemed to ap­ply these terms to doc­tri­nal in­struc­tion more gen­er­ally. Re­gard­less, some au­thors were ex­plicit in their con­dem­na­tion of the sale of teach­ing.

As early as the third cen­tury, Clem­ent of Alex­an­dria counted “the dis­trib­ut­ing of both teach­ings [δογμάτων] and money to those in need” among the sac­ri­fices the true Chris­tian of­fers.¹²Clem­ent of Alex­an­dria, Stro­mata, 7.7.49.5 (GCS 17, 37:7–9). In the fol­low­ing cen­tury, Aphra­hat the Per­sian opened his Dem­on­stra­tions by com­mit­ting him­self to freely teach the one who re­quests it.¹³“For the things you have asked of me were given freely, and freely they are re­ceived as well; and if any­one who has them wishes to with­hold them from one who asks, what­ever he re­fuses to give is taken away from him. Who­ever re­ceives freely ought to give freely.” Aphra­hat, Dem­on­stra­tiones, 1.1 (PS 1.1:6); cf. ibid., 10.8 (PS 1.1:460–64).

The Re­form­ers were con­sis­tent with the proto-Re­form­ers on this point. For Lu­ther, teach­ing freely was the nec­es­sary an­tith­e­sis to the “Sa­tanic au­dac­ity” of of­fer­ing for­give­ness of sins at a price.¹⁴In the con­text of si­mony, Lu­ther wrote, “But this is not law­ful, and the Pope with Sa­tanic au­dac­ity es­tab­lished this trade. We are com­manded to teach, con­sole, [and] ab­solve all who re­ceive and be­lieve; and they all re­ceive from us freely, ac­cord­ing to the say­ing: ‘Freely you have re­ceived, freely give.’” Lu­ther, Vor­le­sun­gen über 1. Mose, 23:3–4 (WA 43, 282:23–26).

The Scope of Ap­pli­ca­tion§

Hav­ing iden­ti­fied the sale of bib­li­cal teach­ing as a spe­cies of si­mony, we may now con­sider where this pro­hi­bi­tion bears on con­tem­po­rary prac­tice. The ex­am­ples be­low do not ex­haust po­ten­tial ap­pli­ca­tion, but they do cover a num­ber of the more com­mon ven­ues where spir­i­tual teach­ing is pres­ently of­fered for sale.

Bib­li­cal Coun­sel­ing§

Bib­li­cal coun­sel­ing is a form of teach­ing where one ap­plies the truths of Scrip­ture to the per­sonal life of an­other. Dis­tin­guished from Chris­tian ther­apy, where Chris­tian prin­ci­ples may be ap­plied but the teach­ing of the word does not de­fine the prac­tice, bib­li­cal coun­sel­ing seeks to give that which is price­less. Be­yond the price­less­ness of scrip­tural wis­dom shown above, many who have re­ceived bib­li­cal coun­sel­ing have per­son­ally found it in­val­u­able.

None can ap­peal to the fact that the Bible is al­ready avail­able; pre­sum­ably, such coun­sel is sought be­cause un­der­stand­ing of it is lack­ing. Fur­ther­more, it would be mis­guided to jus­tify com­merce in coun­sel­ing by claim­ing to place the price on time rather than in­struc­tion. If the coun­selor is called to “re­prove, re­buke, ex­hort, with all pa­tience and doc­trine” (2 Tim. 4:22 Timothy 4:2preach the word; be urgent in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all patience and instruction.), then both time and teach­ing must be given gra­ciously. How can the coun­selor who charges by the hour be said to ex­hort with all pa­tience?

Chris­tian Con­fer­ences§

The same re­stric­tions ap­ply to Chris­tian con­fer­ences. By Chris­tian con­fer­ences, we have in view those gath­er­ings whose es­sence is bib­li­cal preach­ing or teach­ing, not events with a merely Chris­tian tone or cul­tural ve­neer. Ad­di­tion­ally, none of this bears on third par­ties who may levy their own in­ci­den­tal charges (for ex­am­ple, a toll for a bridge to reach the con­fer­ence), nor do the re­stric­tions ap­ply to other fac­tors that may limit at­ten­dance (such as a lack of space). How­ever, re­gard­ing at­ten­dance at the con­fer­ence it­self, to charge for ad­mis­sion is to charge for ac­cess to price­less teach­ing.

It may seem that such charges could be war­ranted since the venue is a phys­i­cal thing rather than a spir­i­tual one. How­ever, James’s pro­hi­bi­tion of spe­cial seat­ing should give us pause (James 2:2–4James 2:2–4²For if there comes into your synagogue a man with a gold ring, in fine clothing, and there come in also a poor man in vile clothing;³and you have regard to him who wears the fine clothing, and say, “Sit here in a good place,” and you say to the poor man, “Stand there, or sit under my footstool”;⁴do you not make distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?). Though he may have had in mind wor­ship ser­vices proper, the prin­ci­ple be­hind it is uni­ver­sal: Chris­tians should not show par­tial­ity in hold­ing out the faith (James 2:1James 2:1My brothers, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, [the Lord] of glory, with partiality.). A faith­ful ap­pli­ca­tion of this pre­cept does not per­mit the fi­nance-based par­tial­ity that ad­mits to an in-per­son space those will­ing to pay and re­quires oth­ers to sit at home, per­haps as they watch on­line.

The no­tion of an­nex­a­tion of­fers fur­ther clar­ity here. Be­cause the na­ture of a con­fer­ence is live teach­ing, the phys­i­cal space is not an­nexed to the spir­i­tual thing by mere di­rec­tion (or­di­na­tum) but by de­pen­dence (de­pen­dens). Just as a ben­e­fice pre­sup­poses the of­fice to which it per­tains, so a con­fer­ence space pre­sup­poses the gath­er­ing it hosts. The dis­tinc­tion be­tween de­pen­dence and di­rec­tion may not be in­tu­itive; con­sid­ered dif­fer­ently, we might ob­serve that the money of a ben­e­fice could have been put to an­other pur­pose, as could a con­fer­ence venue. How­ever, just as the grant of a ben­e­fice se­cures an of­fice that can­not be had with­out it, pres­ence in the con­fer­ence space dur­ing the event se­cures a full­ness of teach­ing that can­not be had with­out that ac­cess. Other teach­ing may pre-ex­ist the me­dium that com­mu­ni­cates it, be­ing cap­tured and re­pro­duced with­out loss else­where, but this is not the case with live teach­ing. Re­call that teach­ing is a spir­i­tual ac­tiv­ity that ex­tends be­yond the trans­mis­sion of raw prop­o­si­tions (1 Cor. 2:131 Corinthians 2:13These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Spirit teaches; combining spiritual things with spiritual [words].). These de­tails of ac­cess are there­fore not in­ci­den­tal.

Sem­i­nary Ed­u­ca­tion§

No de­gree of ac­a­demic so­phis­ti­ca­tion ex­empts sem­i­nar­ies from the pro­hi­bi­tion on the sale of bib­li­cal teach­ing. Charg­ing tu­ition for such teach­ing is there­fore si­mony on the ground used by the mas­ters at Paris when they ar­gued that the la­bor of teach­ing theol­ogy could not be sold. Ad­di­tion­ally, as they dis­tin­guished, we should not in­clude the lib­eral arts among the sub­jects that may not be taught at a price; even in­struc­tion in Greek and He­brew is not a spir­i­tual thing that must be given freely. Like­wise, Bible col­leges that of­fer a Chris­tian slant to the hu­man­i­ties need not fall un­der this reg­u­la­tion, save in those courses that teach the word of God and what arises from it.

Schol­ar­ship pro­grams do not re­solve the dif­fi­culty. They do not ex­tend to every stu­dent, and the very re­quire­ment to ap­ply for re­lief is it­self a kind of price. The same is true of the com­mon mech­a­nism of hav­ing churches pay on be­half of their mem­bers who at­tend. As we have seen, pay­ments on be­half of an­other still fall un­der the purview of the doc­trine of si­mony.

The prac­ti­cal con­cerns of the me­dievals should in­struct us as well. In part, they leg­is­lated against both si­mony in of­fice and si­mony in theo­log­i­cal teach­ing li­censes to en­sure that the ranks of bish­ops and mas­ters were kept pure. Ought we not be con­cerned that our com­mer­cial ap­proach to theo­log­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion has low­ered the qual­ity of the church’s pas­tors and pro­fes­sors?

As con­ceded with con­fer­ences, a sem­i­nary need not ad­mit all who ap­ply. While a fi­nance-based par­tial­ity is pro­hib­ited, other forms of par­tial­ity may be ac­cept­able. Sem­i­nar­ies would be wise to ad­mit only the best-qual­i­fied can­di­dates, or even to re­strict ad­mis­sion to stu­dents be­long­ing to a par­tic­u­lar ros­ter of churches. Re­gard­ing ad­di­tional fi­nan­cial lim­i­ta­tions on an in­sti­tu­tion, we may ob­serve the con­clu­sions of me­dieval theo­lo­gians on the same con­cerns with re­spect to re­li­gious so­ci­eties. Should the bur­den of a stu­dent’s pres­ence ex­ceed what the in­sti­tu­tion can ab­sorb, it may gate en­try upon his abil­ity to pro­vide for his own space. What it may not do is gate en­try upon the will­ing­ness to pay for the teach­ing it­self.

Theo­log­i­cal Books§

The pro­hi­bi­tion on the sale of bib­li­cal teach­ing ex­tends to theo­log­i­cal and de­vo­tional lit­er­a­ture. The spir­i­tual thing un­der con­sid­er­a­tion is not a printed vol­ume but the words that com­pose the teach­ing. The prices of dig­i­tal edi­tions of­ten ev­i­dence that it is in­deed these words that are sold, when they run near the price of print edi­tions. One might sug­gest that sub­stan­tial prices re­flect the cost of elec­tronic stor­age and trans­mis­sion, the con­ve­nience of the ser­vice, or some fea­ture of the for­mat­ting. Yet the sim­i­lar­ity in price be­tween print and dig­i­tal re­mains best ex­plained by the one qual­ity they share: the words.

For phys­i­cal books, the no­tion of an­nex­a­tion is once again help­ful. In this case, the printed vol­ume is an­nexed by di­rec­tion (or­di­na­tum). The es­sence of the spir­i­tual thing in the book is the words, which are sep­a­ra­ble from the phys­i­cal ink and pa­per, per­fectly re­pro­ducible else­where. This dis­tin­guishes books from Chris­tian con­fer­ences as treated above. Live teach­ing is de­fined by that space wherein it is given, but the writ­ten word may be loss­lessly copied and dis­trib­uted, even by an in­de­pen­dent third party. There­fore, the phys­i­cal vol­ume might be sold as a purely ma­te­rial thing.

This does not, how­ever, dis­miss every con­cern raised by the sale of a phys­i­cal book. The price set on the bound vol­ume may dem­on­strate a sale of a spir­i­tual thing. As the school­men ob­served of con­se­crated ves­sels, a high price may in­di­cate a si­mo­ni­a­cal trans­ac­tion since it sug­gests that the thing is not be­ing sold for it­self, but for the sake of its an­nex­a­tion, much as Hus re­marked on sub­stan­tial fees for or­di­na­tion cer­tif­i­cates.

The Ad­vent of Copy­right§

Hav­ing con­sid­ered these ap­pli­ca­tions, we ought to re­flect on what has changed to so in­crease the sale of bib­li­cal teach­ing in our own day. Many fac­tors might be cat­a­logued, but a pri­mary cat­a­lyst ap­pears to be the ad­vent of mod­ern copy­right. While there had pre­vi­ously been the oc­ca­sional reg­u­la­tion of the press that re­stricted the print­ing of cer­tain works to named sta­tion­ers, the Stat­ute of Anne (1710) was the first law that vested a gen­eral pro­pri­etary right over the text in the au­thor him­self. Un­til then, au­thors of theo­log­i­cal works had been fi­nan­cially sup­ported by their own churches or pa­trons. As we saw, Lu­ther never re­ceived money for his works and even re­fused to sell a guar­an­tee of first ac­cess. How­ever, the Stat­ute of Anne opened a le­gal mech­a­nism for roy­alty schemes by which the au­thor could con­trol the work to claim a share of the pro­ceeds rather than rely on the church or pa­tron­age. What Lu­ther de­clined as un­con­scion­able, later au­thors ac­cepted as de­fault. While the ad­vent of copy­right only di­rectly ac­counts for books in our pre­vi­ous list of ex­am­ples where teach­ing is sold to­day, it is not hard to imag­ine how the sale of knowl­edge in book form would nor­mal­ize the same trans­ac­tion in any given me­dium.

Con­sid­ered in the me­dieval cat­e­gories, copy­right pro­vides a le­gal mech­a­nism by which spir­i­tual things may be an­nexed to tem­po­ral things. Re­call the right of pa­tron­age: when law ties a right of pre­sen­ta­tion to the own­er­ship of land, a spir­i­tual thing is so an­nexed to a tem­po­ral thing that sell­ing one sells the other. The same hap­pens in print. One who sells a bound vol­ume with “All Rights Re­served” does not merely sell the pa­per but the right to ac­cess its con­tents, since copy­ing or dis­trib­ut­ing the con­tents oth­er­wise could ex­pose one to lit­i­ga­tion. In our es­tab­lished tech­ni­cal terms, this con­verts the book from a di­rected an­nex into a de­pen­dent an­nex. No longer are the pa­per and ink merely di­rected to­ward the use of read­ing spir­i­tual words; an­nexed to them is the right of read­ing spir­i­tual words. In this sce­nario where rights trans­fer with the printed vol­ume, si­mony is not dis­cerned merely by price as dis­cussed pre­vi­ously; the trans­ac­tion is in­her­ently si­mo­ni­a­cal, at least in re­gard to the seller.

The Pre­ven­tion of Al­ter­ations§

One sup­posed ad­van­tage of copy­right is the pre­ven­tion of al­ter­ations. Whether it ac­com­plishes this is its own ques­tion; any­one may still in­tro­duce cor­rup­tions into copies he makes, with or with­out au­tho­riza­tion. Re­gard­less, both Scrip­ture and the Re­formed tra­di­tion re­quire the adap­ta­tion of di­vine rev­e­la­tion.

Paul in­structed the Colos­sians, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teach­ing and ad­mon­ish­ing one an­other in psalms and hymns and spir­i­tual songs” (Col. 3:16Colossians 3:16Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms [and] hymns [and] spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to God.). The West­min­ster Con­fes­sion ap­peals to this verse to jus­tify Bible trans­la­tion,¹⁵“[the Scrip­tures] are to be trans­lated into the vul­gar lan­guage of every na­tion unto which they come, that the Word of God dwell­ing plen­ti­fully in all, they may wor­ship him in an ac­cept­able man­ner.” WCF 1.8. and it does not re­quire a stretch from there to see how it would also mo­ti­vate ad­di­tional ar­range­ments, such as set­ting the Psalms to me­ter.¹⁶Cal­vin de­fended his own psal­ter on this ba­sis: “For the rest, we must re­mem­ber what St. Paul says: that spir­i­tual songs can­not be well sung ex­cept from the heart. Now the heart re­quires un­der­stand­ing. And in this (says St. Au­gus­tine) lies the dif­fer­ence be­tween the sing­ing of men and that of birds. For a lin­net, a night­in­gale, a par­rot will sing well, but it will be with­out un­der­stand­ing. Now the proper gift of man is to sing know­ing what he says: af­ter the un­der­stand­ing must fol­low the heart and the af­fec­tion, which can­not be un­less we have the can­ti­cle im­printed on our mem­ory, that we may never cease from sing­ing.” Cal­vin, “Pref­ace to the Ge­nevan Psal­ter,” CO 6:171–72. On sim­i­lar grounds, the Sec­ond Hel­vetic Con­fes­sion af­firms that “the preach­ing of the word of God is the word of God.”¹⁷SHC 1.

If the word of God com­mands adap­ta­tions of it­self for the sake of ped­a­gog­i­cal util­ity, and it re­tains power (au­thor­ity and ef­fi­cacy) in the process, then that which is de­riv­a­tive of it must be sub­ject to the same, lest the hu­man au­thor sac­ri­fice the au­thor­ity of his teach­ing, con­ced­ing it to be merely of hu­man wis­dom rather than a trans­mis­sion of di­vine truth that must be prop­a­gated. The use of copy­right to re­strict the al­ter­ation of theo­log­i­cal re­sources does not so much guard the word as it places an ob­sta­cle be­fore the obe­di­ence the word com­mands.

The Pre­ven­tion of Pla­gia­rism§

An­other sup­posed ad­van­tage of copy­right is the pre­ven­tion of pla­gia­rism. While Chris­tians have con­tended for the truth since the apos­tles, this wran­gling over credit, es­pe­cially in theo­log­i­cal works, is a mod­ern de­vel­op­ment. The syn­op­tic gos­pels were given to us through au­thors bor­row­ing from each other with­out spe­cific at­tri­bu­tion.¹⁸See Luke 1:1–2Luke 1:1–2¹Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative concerning those matters that have been fulfilled among us,²even as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word,. Chrys­os­tom met the con­trary in­stinct in his own day and la­mented that any would com­pare to a thief the preacher who uses an­other man’s words with­out credit.¹⁹“If any preacher should chance to weave into his own dis­courses some part of what oth­ers have la­bored to pro­duce, he in­curs greater re­proach than those who steal money. Of­ten, when he has taken noth­ing what­ever from any­one but lies un­der mere sus­pi­cion, he suf­fers the fate of one caught in the act.” Chrys­os­tom, De sac­er­do­tio, 5.1 (PG 48:672–73). Even Hus, as scru­pu­lous a wit­ness against si­mony as this book has quoted, trans­lated large pas­sages of Wyc­liffe’s ear­lier work word for word, with no par­tic­u­lar ac­knowl­edg­ment.²⁰“Hus is in­deed guilty of such a prac­tice, for as a mat­ter of fact he sel­dom men­tions Wyc­lif by name.” Spinka, John Hus and the Czech Re­form, 12.

Waiv­ing the Right§

Even af­ter the ad­vent of copy­right, many Chris­tians have noted its neg­a­tive ef­fects and made ef­forts to waive these rights ei­ther par­tially or wholly.²¹See Jore, Chris­tian Com­mons. To cite one no­table ex­am­ple, Lo­raine Boet­tner placed such a no­tice on the copy­right pages of his books. While the word­ing in some works dif­fers slightly, in Stud­ies in Theol­ogy, it reads:

Any one is at lib­erty to use ma­te­rial from this book with or with­out credit. In pre­par­ing this book the writer has re­ceived help from many sources, some ac­knowl­edged and many un­ac­knowl­edged. He be­lieves the ma­te­rial herein con­tained to be a true state­ment of Scrip­ture truth, and his de­sire is to fur­ther, not to re­strict, its use.²²Boet­tner, Stud­ies in Theol­ogy, 4; cf. Boet­tner, The Mil­len­nium, ii; Boet­tner, Re­formed Doc­trine of Pre­des­ti­na­tion, 4.

At least some oth­ers fol­lowed suit.²³E.g., Rei­sin­ger, God’s Will, Man’s Will and Free Will, Au­thor’s Note. More re­cently, some Chris­tian au­thors have be­gun adopt­ing pub­lic do­main ded­i­ca­tions.²⁴The ded­i­ca­tion chiefly adopted is Cre­ative Com­mons Zero, which pro­vides a li­cense fall­back in ju­ris­dic­tions that do not per­mit a full waiv­ing of rights. See Owens, Do­rean Prin­ci­ple, 129–30.

Large Lan­guage Mod­els§

A fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion has arisen in our own gen­er­a­tion. Large lan­guage mod­els—the ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gences in­creas­ingly con­sulted on every sub­ject, theol­ogy in­cluded—gather their in­for­ma­tion from the texts avail­able to them, which is to say, pre­dom­i­nantly from texts that are free. From an out­side per­spec­tive, what any par­tic­u­lar train­ing cor­pus con­tains is not known, but a work re­stricted by copy­right is al­most cer­tainly less likely to be in­cluded than one that is not, all else be­ing equal. There­fore, what­ever pic­ture of Chris­tian doc­trine such a sys­tem syn­the­sizes comes dis­pro­por­tion­ately from those who have made their teach­ing freely avail­able. If Christ com­manded his dis­ci­ples to teach all na­tions, and the na­tions now me­di­ate much of their in­quiry through tools fed on open text, a new rea­son has been added for the Chris­tian to forgo the con­trol copy­right af­fords.

Con­clu­sion§

Theo­log­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion, in­so­far as it teaches the word of God, falls un­der the var­i­ous con­cerns of the me­dievals who wrote on si­mony: it fails to rec­og­nize man’s stew­ard­ship of the mys­ter­ies of God, it un­der­mines the na­ture of grace, and it prices the price­less. This ap­plies to var­i­ous forms of bib­li­cal teach­ing, from con­fer­ence tick­ets to sem­i­nary tu­ition to the price of theo­log­i­cal books.

Ar­guably, the prob­lem as it ex­ists to­day arose from the le­gal in­no­va­tion of copy­right in the eigh­teenth cen­tury. Re­gard­less, the his­tory of prac­tices around theo­log­i­cal teach­ing tes­ti­fies to a com­merce that Chris­tians have tol­er­ated only in re­cent cen­turies, one re­quir­ing a new ad­dress that ap­peals back to the foun­da­tions of older sources.

Bib­li­cal teach­ing, prop­erly taught, is not a mat­ter of hu­man wis­dom but that which is taught by the Spirit (1 Cor. 2:131 Corinthians 2:13These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Spirit teaches; combining spiritual things with spiritual [words].). To sell such a spir­i­tual thing is si­mony. The di­lemma it poses to the would-be seller of theo­log­i­cal in­struc­tion is there­fore un­avoid­able. Ei­ther he con­fesses his guilt be­fore God, or he pleads that what he sells is merely the wis­dom of man. The word is manna from heaven, and those who hoard it by with­hold­ing from all but those who pay should not be sur­prised when they find their sur­plus to be rot.²⁵Cf. Deut. 8:3Deuteronomy 8:3And he humbled you, and let you hunger, and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make known to you that man does not live by bread alone, but by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of Jehovah man lives.; Exod. 16:20Exodus 16:20Notwithstanding, they did not listen to Moses; but some of them left of it until the morning, and it bred worms, and became foul. And Moses was angry with them..

Bib­li­og­ra­phy§

• Al­bert the Great. Com­men­ta­rii in IV Sen­ten­tiarum. Edited by Au­guste Borg­net. Op­era om­nia 29–30. Paris: Vivès, 1894.
• Aphra­hat. Dem­on­stra­tiones. In Pa­tro­lo­gia Syr­i­aca, pars prima, to­mus pri­mus, edited by Jean Par­isot, Pa­tro­lo­gia Syr­i­aca, vol. 1. Paris: Firmin-Di­dot, 1894.
• Aqui­nas, Thomas. Quod­li­bet. Edi­tio ter­tia Tau­ri­nen­sis. Vol. 5. Tu­rin: Ex Of­fi­cina Petri Ma­ri­etti, 1921.
• ———. Scrip­tum su­per li­bros Sen­ten­tiarum. Vol. 13. Venice: Jo­seph Bet­ti­nelli, 1750.
• Bauer, Wal­ter. A Greek-Eng­lish Lex­i­con of the New Tes­ta­ment and Other Early Chris­tian Lit­er­a­ture. Edited by Fred­er­ick W. Danker. 3rd ed. Chi­cago: The Uni­ver­sity of Chi­cago Press, 2000.
• Boet­tner, Lo­raine. Stud­ies in Theol­ogy. Phil­lips­burg, NJ: The Pres­by­ter­ian and Re­formed Pub­lish­ing Com­pany, 1985.
• ———. The Mil­len­nium. Phil­lips­burg, NJ: Pres­by­ter­ian and Re­formed Pub­lish­ing Com­pany, 1984. First pub­lished 1957.
• ———. The Re­formed Doc­trine of Pre­des­ti­na­tion. Phil­a­del­phia, PA: The Pres­by­ter­ian and Re­formed Pub­lish­ing Com­pany, 1974. First pub­lished 1932.
• Bul­lin­ger, Hein­rich. Con­fes­sio et Ex­po­si­tio Sim­plex Or­tho­doxae Fi­dei. Zu­rich: Fro­schauer, 1566.
• Bur­ton, Henry. A cen­sure of si­monie, or a most im­por­tant case of con­science con­cern­ing si­monie briefly dis­cussed not al­to­gether per­haps un­par­al­lell for the merid­ian of these times. Lon­don: Wil­liam Stansby for Ed­mund Weaver and John Smeth­wick, 1624.
• Cal­vin, John. Com­men­tary on the Epis­tles of Paul the Apos­tle to the Co­rin­thi­ans. Trans­lated by John Pringle. Vol. 1. Ed­in­burgh: Cal­vin Trans­la­tion So­ci­ety, 1848. First pub­lished 1546.
• ———. “Epis­tre au Lec­teur.” In Io­an­nis Cal­vini op­era quae su­per­sunt om­nia, edited by Guiliel­mus Baum, Ed­uardus Cu­nitz, and Ed­uardus Reuss, vol. 6, 165–172. Bruns­wick: C. A. Schwet­schke et fil­ium, 1867.
• Chrys­os­tom, John. De sac­er­do­tio. In Pa­tro­lo­gia Graeca, edited by Jacques-Paul Migne, vol. 48, 623–692. Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1862.
• ———. Sancti Pa­tris Nos­tri Jo­an­nis Chrys­os­tomi Ar­chi­epis­copi Con­stan­ti­nop­o­li­tani In­ter­pre­ta­tio Om­nium Epis­to­larum Pau­li­narum per Ho­mil­ias Facta, To­mus II: Ho­mil­iae in Epis­to­lam ad Co­rin­thios Pri­o­rem. Edited by Fred­er­ick Field. Ox­ford: J. H. Parker, 1847.
• Clem­ent of Alex­an­dria. Stro­mata. Edited by Otto Stäh­lin. Die grie­chi­schen christ­lichen Schrift­steller der er­sten drei Jahr­hun­derte 17. Leip­zig: J. C. Hin­richs, 1909.
• Go­dol­phin, John. Rep­er­to­rium Canon­icum; or, An Abridg­ment of the Ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal Laws of this Realm, Con­sis­tent with the Tem­po­ral. Lon­don: Printed by S. Roy­croft for Chris­to­pher Wil­kin­son, 1678.
• Jore, Tim. The Chris­tian Com­mons: End­ing the Spir­i­tual Fam­ine of the Global Church. 2nd ed. Dis­tant Shores Me­dia, 2016.
• Lom­bard, Pe­ter. Libri IV Sen­ten­tiarum. Edited by PP. Col­legii S. Bo­na­ven­tu­rae. 2nd ed. Vol. 2. Ad Cla­ras Aquas prope Flo­ren­tiam: Ex Ty­po­gra­phia Col­legii S. Bo­na­ven­tu­rae, 1916.
• Lu­ther, Mar­tin. Vor­le­sun­gen über 1. Mose. In D. Mar­tin Lu­thers Werke: Kri­tis­che Ge­samt­aus­gabe, edited by O. Re­ichert, vol. 43. Wei­mar: Her­mann Böh­laus Nach­fol­ger, 1912.
• Ma­jor, John. In quar­tum Sen­ten­tiarum (redac­tio A). Paris, 1509.
• Os­wald of Laskó. Au­reum sacrae theo­lo­giae ro­sa­rium. Ha­ge­nau: Hein­rich Gran for Jo­hann Ryn­mann, 1508.
• Owens, Conley. The Do­rean Prin­ci­ple: A Bib­li­cal Re­sponse to the Com­mer­cial­iza­tion of Chris­tian­ity. Dub­lin, CA: First­Love Pub­li­ca­tions, 2021.
• Rei­sin­ger, Er­nest C. God’s Will, Man’s Will and Free Will. Pen­sa­cola, FL: Chapel Li­brary, 1998.
• Spinka, Mat­thew. John Hus and the Czech Re­form. Chi­cago: Uni­ver­sity of Chi­cago Press, 1941.
• Thomas of Stras­bourg. Com­men­ta­ria in IIII li­bros Sen­ten­tiarum. Genoa: Apud An­to­nium Ore­rium, 1585.
• West­min­ster As­sem­bly. The West­min­ster Con­fes­sion of Faith. Ed­in­burgh: Evan Tyler, 1647.
• Wyc­liffe, John. Trac­ta­tus de si­mo­nia. Edited by Sig­mund Herz­berg-Frän­kel and Mi­chael Henry Dzie­wicki. Lon­don: Trüb­ner & Co., 1898.