The Doctrine of Simony: A Theological Retrieval and Appraisal

The prohibition of simony filled canon law from the patristic period, occupied the schoolmen, and entered the confessional standards of the Reformation. Today, most Christians have never heard the word. The Doctrine of Simony brings that scattered inheritance into a single account, expounding simony's definition clause by clause and recovering the tradition's answers to the standard questions that accompanied it. What does Scripture say of the sin? How severely should it be regarded? How may a minister receive support without committing it? The book then addresses the practices of our own day that run afoul of that doctrine. The Protestant Reformation itself began in a dispute over the sale of spiritual things. What new reformation awaits a church that learns again to discern the sin of simony?