You run into Simon Magus and the Gnostics yet?
Simon Magus is a shady disciple who shows up in the Book of Acts as a Samaritan sorceror saying, OK, I'll believe in your new faith. He studies with the teachers, but then starts wanting to turn a profit from the miracles he can perform, so they boot him out of the church. There's an old sin, simony, that's named for him -- using a church position for personal gain.
One Christian view of Simon Magus:
Simon was the Samaritan sorcerer who professed conversion to Christianity and sought to buy an apostleship. The Bible records this historic event in Acts 8:9-24.
In spite of Peter's stinging rebuke (verses 20-23), tradition and various legends say Simon presented himself as a Christian apostle, particularly in Rome. He invented a new religion by blending his own version of the doctrine of grace with elements of the old Babylonian mysteries and attaching Christ's name to it.
That site places his heretical beliefs as the origin of Gnosticism, but contemporary scholars believe many elements of that belief-complex (it's too vague to be a single faith) are older than Simon's career, and some go waaaaay back. And aren't really Babylonian.
Here's an older account from the Catholic Encyclopedia:
Excerpts...
For when the Apostles Peter and John came to Samaria to bestow on the believers baptized by Philip the outpouring of the Spirit which was accompanied by miraculous manifestations, Simon offered them money, desiring them to grant him what he regarded as magical power, so that he also by the laying on of hands could bestow the Holy Ghost, and thereby produce such miraculous results. Full of indignation at such an offer Peter rebuked him sharply, exhorted him to penance and conversion and warned him of the wickedness of his conduct. Under the influence of Peter's rebuke Simon begged the Apostles to pray for him (Acts, viii, 9-29). However, according to the unanimous report of the authorities of the second century, he persisted in his false views. The ecclesiastical writers of the early Church universally represent him as the first heretic, the "Father of Heresies".
Simon is not mentioned again in the writings of the New Testament.
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St. Justin of Rome describes Simon as a man who, at the instigation of demons, claimed to be a god. Justin says further that Simon came to Rome during the reign of the Emperor Claudius and by his magic arts won many followers so that these erected on the island in the Tiber a statue to him as a divinity with the inscription "Simon the Holy God". The statue, however, that Justin took for one dedicated to Simon was undoubtedly one of the old Sabine divinity Semo Sancus.
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Simon plays an important part in the "Pseudo-Clementines". He appears here as the chief antagonist of the apostle Peter, by whom he is everywhere followed and opposed. The alleged magical arts of the magician and Peter's efforts against him are described in a way that is absolutely imaginary. The entire account lacks all historical basis. (If you're unfamiliar with the Cath. Enc.'s style, this kind of language is almost always an invitation to read further to figure out what the *other side* really said.)
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Still his doctrine seems to have been a heathen Gnosticism, in which he proclaimed himself as the Standing One (estos), the principal emanation of the Deity and the Redeemer. According to Irenaeus he claimed to have appeared in Samaria as the Father, in Judea as the Son, and among the heathen as the Holy Ghost, a manifestation of the Eternal. He asserted that Helena, who went about with him, was the first conception of the Deity, the mother of all, by whom the Deity had created the angels and the aeons. The cosmic forces had cast her into corporeal bonds, from which she was released by Simon as the great power. In morals Simon was probably Antinomian, an enemy of Old Testament law. His magical arts were continued by his disciples; these led unbridled, licentious lives, in accordance with the principles which they had learned from their master. At any rate they called themselves Simonians, giving Simon Magus as their founder.
That last bit sounds a lot like what you've been talking about. |
