15 August 1999
Mike Tueller
I've titled this lesson "conversion stories" because of two stories that we will see in it, of Simon the magician and of Saul/Paul. However, the range of material covered by today's lesson is really quite broad. I had to have some title!
1. Church leadership grows in response to church growth.
As you remember from last week, the church grew from about 120 people to several thousand in a fairly short period in Jerusalem. The only church leaders you've heard about, though, are the twelve. Now, the inevitable result of having so few leaders is that something is going to be left undone. And the inevitable result of having so many members is that there will be conflict between different groups of people. Let's read the inevitable:
Read Acts 6:1.
Now, there's a lot about this verse to be explained. First, of all, the terms here translated "Greeks" and "Hebrews" do not refer to nationality: both groups were Jews. Rather, it refers to the language they spoke: Greek or Aramaic. Along with this is a class division. Greek speakers were often members of the upper classes, and were also those who tended to have less attachment to Judaism generally. Now they are complaining that, when it comes to the sharing of meals ("daily ministration"), their widows are being neglected.
The apostles quickly realize that this is a problem they could solve once, but they could not solve it forever. So, they make a decision:
Read Acts 6:2.
By the way, the phrase "serve tables" is from the verb diakoneô, from which we get our word "deacon."
These seven are set apart by the laying on of hands (6:6).
The result of so much preaching and work is set out in verse 7:
Read Acts 6:7.
The church is growing. That presents a threat. Even more of a threat can be seen in the fact that a number of priests also join. With this rapid a growth, Jewish leaders, so sanguine about their prospects earlier (Gamaliel seemed rather upbeat in chapter 5), may be seeing that this new Jesus group stands a chance of becoming normative Judaism. It's no surprise, then, that the first stories of persecution now begin to bubble to the surface.
2. Stephen's revisionist history of Judaism.
Despite the fact that the seven were ordained to attend to the physical needs of church members, all the stories we have of them show them doing pretty much the same things the twelve did: preaching the gospel to those who did not yet believe. Our first story is of Stephen: it occupies Acts chapter 7.
Starting in chapter 6, we see that Stephen is falsely accused. Let's hear the specifics of the charges:
Read Acts 6:12-15.
Stephen has a chance to respond, and so he does. In his response, he re-tells the a story the council already knew very well, the story of Israel, beginning with Abraham, up to Solomon. The story is familiar, but Stephen puts his own twist on it, a twist that would have really stood out to the council. Let's try to recover their sense of shock by selecting some parts to read from the Old Testament and comparing what Stephen says.
Read Ex. 2:11-15.
Before we move on to Stephen's version, let's digest this. Why did Moses kill the Egyptian in verse 12? (The text doesn't say. We may presume that it is because he felt the Israelites were being treated unfairly, but the text does not tell us this.)
Why did Moses flee Egypt? (Two reasons: he realized that the deed he had done was not a secret, and Pharaoh was trying to kill him.)
Keep those answers in mind as we read how Stephen tells the story.
Read Acts 7:23-29.
Here, why did Moses smite the Egyptian? (He wants to avenge his oppressed brethren, and is trying to show by this means that he has been chosen by God to be their deliverer.)
And why does he flee? (Because he is rejected by Israel as their deliverer, ruler, and judge.)
Stephen points out the irony a few verses later:
Read Acts 7:35.
Why is Stephen telling the story in this way? (He is making Moses a figure analogous to Christ, showing how he was rejected by the Jews, as Jesus has been.)
After the Israelites come out of Egypt, they continue to disobey, worshipping idols and the host of heaven.
It gets worse. Stephen now speaks--only in hints--against the temple.
Read Acts 7:47-50.
Solomon himself had admitted doubts about whether God would really inhabit a physical house. In the very dedicatory prayer of the temple, he asked this question:
Read 1 Kgs. 8:26.
You can see that Solomon partially answers this question in the next two verses. Essentially, he says, even if God won't actually live here, it will be a center of His attention. If we make it a center of our attention too, then we will make a connection with God.
Stephen disregards Solomon's philosophical solution to the problem, and focuses on the temple as literally what it claims to be--the house of God. He contends that this is a false claim. What exactly is he trying to get across by this? (It seems that he is saying that the temple has become an object of idolatrous veneration. Just because it is the temple of the true God does not exempt it from the problems of worship focused on a physical object.)
The sum of these hints is that the Jews have a habit of disregarding real prophets and focusing their worship on physical objects that are not likely to ask them for any sort of real obedience. Stephen doesn't rely on the Jews getting these hints, though:
Read Acts 7:51-53.
Last week we talked about parrêsia, "frankness of speech." That word certainly applies to Stephen here. With a preaching style like that, it's no wonder he was the first martyr. As he is being stoned, he has just enough to say to confirm both his testimony and their rage:
Read Acts 7:55-56.
And so ends Stephen's ministry. Acts next turns to Philip's ministry. There are two principal events in his ministry. One of them I'm going to deal with next week, because it has more to do with the themes of that lesson. The other I'm going to talk about this week.
First, there's a plot development that shouldn't go unnoticed. In Acts 8:1, you see that the persecution that began with Stephen and Saul is having real effects: the saints are leaving Jerusalem in droves, scattering throughout Judea and Samaria. Bad as this is, it has the salutary effect of increasing the range of the church. Philip does his missionary work in Samaria.
Samaritans were not Gentiles. As we noticed in the gospels, the general Jewish opinion of them was that they were essentially Jews who had gone astray and now believed a variety of weird things. This may have made them worse than Gentiles, but they were still a subject for what we might today call "outreach," in a way that Gentiles were not.
We can see that the stereotype had at least some basis in truth from the first person mentioned by name in Samaria here:
Read Acts 8:9-10.
Notice the description of Simon: is he a "bad guy" or not?
The key here, I think, is one word: "beforetime." In other words, Simon was a former sorcerer. He has given up his wicked ways.
Read Acts 8:13.
So Simon now has joined the saints. I find it interesting that he "wondered"--that is, he was amazed--at the miracles he saw the disciples do. As a former practitioner of a false power, he would know better than anyone else what was beyond his abilities. So he has every right to be amazed at the real power of God exercised by Philip as a representative of God.
Now, Philip didn't have the power to give the gift of the Holy Ghost (presumably, as we understand it, he held the Aaronic priesthood), and must call on Peter and John to come down and give that gift. When the apostles arrived, Simon is even more impressed:
Read Acts 8:18-19.
Why did Simon think and act this way? (It has everything to do with his own background: he recognizes the power in Peter and John, and thinks that perhaps it can be acquired by purchase, just as his own previous abilities probably were.)
Is this type of thinking entirely unexpected in someone who, like Simon, is new to the gospel? (It's not: it's very easy to make mistakes that derive from our former understanding.)
So, Simon has done something wrong, but it was a fairly easy mistake to make. He needs to be corrected gently but firmly. Peter gives the correcting; he's always been more on the "firm" than on the "gentle" side. Let's see how it goes:
Read Acts 8:20-23.
That's quite a rebuke! Simon is getting quite a test of his faithfulness. Will he repent, or will he be offended? We get only a small hint to answer that question:
Read Acts 8:24.
I don't know about you, but it appears to me that Simon is repenting.
Now, this story ends, as far as Acts is concerned. But the story of Simon, known as Simon Magus, goes on. In numerous apocryphal works and writings of Christians from the 2nd and 3rd centuries (there is a good summary from the Catholic Encyclopedia), we hear that Simon was never really converted, that from the beginning his intention was to use his association with the saints to gain increased magical powers. From there he went on to become the first heretic, preaching a doctrine that contained many elements of later gnosticism.
Unfortunately, a great deal of this information derives from purely legendary sources, at least partially influenced by an odd coincidence: at Rome, there was a Sabine god known as Semo Sancus. Saints there saw statues set up to this god and interpreted them as set up to someone named Simon the Holy God. Presumably, they then created the stories that circulated in Rome that Simon the sorcerer had opposed Peter there. A whole book was written on their conflicts.
Luke is apparently aware of none of this, but only of the failed attempt to purchase the priesthood. However, we must be careful not to import the idea of who Simon is from other sources. Scholars generally agree that our only even marginally reliable information comes from Acts and perhaps one passage in Justin Martyr, which just tells us the name of Simon's home town. I might add that it is not impossible that, if stories of Simon as a heretic were circulating in Luke's time, he might have included this story to show that things weren't nearly as bad as everyone said, and that Simon had begun to repent immediately. Personally, as far as I can see, I'm impressed with what appears to be Simon's continued faithfulness after being harshly rebuked by Peter.
The story in chapter 9 of Acts is a truly amazing one. This is the conversion of Saul (who, of course, came to be known as Paul). The truth is, this story is even more amazing than it sounds. To show you how, I'd like to tell this story in a fairly unusual way. First, let's read both the beginning and the end points.
Read Acts 9:1-2, 20.
That's quite a change of attitude! Let's contemplate this for a moment. I have been on a mission, as have many members of the church. Here's a question of anyone who has been on a mission or otherwise engaged in missionary work: based on your experience, what can you do to actually convince people to believe the church is true?
There are a number of techniques that we use to present the gospel, but, when it comes right down to it, I think we all end up realizing that there is nothing we can do to actually convince others that the church is true. Ultimately, that conversion is a very personal encounter between that person and the Spirit. We can tell them how to access that Spirit and give them the information they need to ask the right questions, but ultimately they must choose to want to find out, and they must find out the truth on their own.
So, in that respect, every conversion is just as miraculous as Saul's. I'm not saying that everyone sees a bright light and is struck blind, but everyone who is really convinced has become so through revelation.
The truth is, though, that there are some ways in which Saul's conversion is amazing beyond those we talk about today--and I'm not talking about the personal visitation. To see the difference, let's focus on some words.
The first two words and phrases we've already seen in verses 1 and 2. They are "the disciples of the Lord" and "way." Next, look at the last phrase in verse 14:
Read Acts 9:14.
Why am I focusing on these? Because you see a distinct absence of two words that you would probably expect, "religion" and "member." Why is that? Well, let me start with "religion."
There was no ancient word for "religion." The concept simply did not exist. Can you picture that from our modern viewpoint? Certainly there were gods, and there were rituals that were practiced toward them, but, on the whole, there was very little disbelief in other people's gods. Devotion to one particular god was not a matter of thinking that that god had the right way, but rather that that god had done, or was likely to do, some good for you personally. Commandments given by that god were not a matter of lifestyle choice, but rather something that had to be done if you wanted to retain that god's favor and get what you wanted.
The Jews were, to some degree, an exception to this. They did, in fact, believe that their way was right and everyone else was wrong. However, others would have seen their one God as being the same being as the chief of their gods. Many Jews bristled at this comparison, but it was common enough among the Gentiles, and some of the Jews themselves believed it. So, for the Jews, then, and for them alone, the concept of "religion" could be said to exist. However, since the Jewish religion was co-extensive with the Jewish nation, their was no words that set them apart on a purely religious basis. Even the terms "Jew" and "Gentile" divide people by their nationalities, not religions.
Something that must be noticed here is that, even if we have found one example of a "religion," we have not found the possibility of conversion, because the Jews considered joining their people to be the same as joining their religion, so the question is again one of adoptive nationality, not of choosing belief. In other words, there is no case of becoming convinced of the truth of something, joining a religion, and changing your life on that basis. It simply wasn't heard of.
There was a small exception to this, but we probably wouldn't call these groups "religions" today. These are the Pharisees and the Sadducees. These were more or less defined groups that had made a choice of how to believe. Each disbelieved the other's tenets. Now, what did the ancients call these groups? Josephus famously called them haireseis, a word that is probably best translated "schools of thought." He borrowed the term from Greek philosophical schools, each of which had its individual way of looking at life, ethics, and the universe. The term literally means "a choosing," so you can see that we are now moving much closer to the idea of conversion, because you could really choose which way to believe.
Some people called Christianity a hairesis. We're going to turn to where that happened in a minute, but first I have to warn you that the word is badly mistranslated in the King James Version. It is rendered "heresy," a meaning the word came to have many centuries later. In early New Testament times, it means only "school of thought" or perhaps "sect." Here is the passage, from Paul's defense before Felix:
Read Acts 24:14.
You notice that Paul expressly denies that Christianity is a "school of thought." What does he call it? (He calls it a "way.")
Interestingly, that is exactly what it is called in Acts 9:2--a "way." Why this term?
Well, a hairesis was, of course, a choice, and Paul repeatedly said that he had not made the choice--God chose him (see Paul's own recitation of this experience in Gal. 1:15). Of course, Paul chose to follow the way after it was revealed to him, but Paul has a tendency to always try to downplay what he has done and emphasize what God has done. And it is true that Paul did not actually choose to believe the way--he was forced to believe it, and at a time when he was not even looking for it.
So what did Paul do? He changed his belief! Not just his devotion, but his actual belief! Not only did he do it based on personal revelation, but he did it in an environment when the idea of doing so had never even occurred to anyone. You could change your point of view, based on evidence, or your devotion, based on results or hopes, but to actually change what you believed required two elements: personal revelation, which people weren't looking for, and the presence of some exclusive choice, which did not really exist until Christ. In this way, Paul paved the way.
What's more, this change that Paul made was all-consuming. The change of belief brought on a change in devotion--now he would call upon Jesus's name--and a change in behavior: he would follow a different way. The word, in Greek, is hodos: it literally means a "path." The path to where? Many have given the answer, but probably none better than Nephi:
Read 2 Ne. 31:20-21.
Hopefully all of us have experienced that moment of conversion. Some may have been converted before Paul (in the Book of Mormon, surely, though Paul wouldn't have known that), but none more dramatically. Jesus may have led the way, but, in the respect of sudden and revelatory change of belief, Paul showed us all the possibilities.
Last update: 20 July 1999