"Why did he kill them?", not "why did he kill them?"
So in the story, they didn't offer up all of the proceeds of the sale of their property. Lots of Christians try to say that it's because they LIED that they were killed, not because they failed to offer up all their property. But there is no dialogue of Ananias lying--so there must have been an understood impetus to donate ALL of the proceeds... but I digress. whether it is due to the lie of omission, or due to him not having donated 100%...why strike him dead on the spot for it?
That seems...pretty harsh. How is this even remotely justified? I thought that God was done with all this smiting business? Did Ananias go to hell? How is that fair? He didn't really get a chance to repent for his sin, because he didn't die a natural death. God killed him the instant he sinned.
Are there other instances in the new testament of God just straight up mercing people on the spot?
edit: did a little research and it seems the only other named person god kills in the New Testament is Herod, who was smote for blaspheming.
I've been reading up on Ananias and Sapphira in Luke 5, and I noticed several interpretations both ancient and modern which suggest that Peter was to blame for Ananias and Sapphira's death.
Porphyry of Tyre 234 – c. 305 AD
>"This Peter is convicted of doing wrong in other cases also ... Peter put them to death, although they had done no wrong"
Fragment 25, line 2 of the Contra Christianos
In modern scholarship Marc Pernot (not a PhD as far as I'm aware) has written similarly:
>"Jesus never instituted a system requiring people to liquidate all their capital ... Luke, the author of the book of Acts thus presents Peter and his first church rather critically."
What I'm wondering: is there any academic merit to the idea that Luke was critical of Peter in his literary workings?
To quote Matt "Amaaaaaaa!" Pareja:
"Tama ba kami? O hindi kami mali?"
(Am I right? Or am I not wrong?)
It is easily forgotten, year to
year, exactly where the plot is,
though the place is entirely familiar—
a willow tree by a curving roadway
sweeping black asphalt with tender leaves;
damp grass strewn with flower boxes,
canvas chairs, darkskinned old ladies
circling in draped black crepe family stones,
fingers cramped red at the knuckles, discolored
nails, fresh soil for new plants, old rosaries;
such fingers kneading the damp earth gently down
on new roots, black humus caught in grey hair
brushed back, and the single waterfaucet,
birdlike upon its grey pipe stem,
a stream opening at its foot.
We know the stories that are told,
by starts and stops, by bent men at strange joy
regarding the precise enactments of their own
gesturing. And among the women there will be
a naming of families, a counting off, an ordering.
The morning may be brilliant; the season
is one of brilliances—sunlight through
the fountained willow behind us, its splayed
shadow spreading westward, our shadows westward,
irregular across damp grass, the close-set stones.
It may be that since our walk there is faltering,
moving in careful steps around snow-on-the-mountain,
bluebells and zebragrass toward that place
between the willow and the waterfaucet, the way
is lost, that we have no practiced step there,
and walking, our own sway and balance, fails us.
Acts 5:1-11 is such a strange passage and it's hard to know what to make of it. It doesn't outright say that A & S were killed by God for their oddly petty sin of lying about how much their property sold for (!). But it does seem to be the implication.
How on earth can this be reconciled with the character of God revealed through Christ, the loving saviour who would rather die himself than allow anyone to perish from their own sins? The one who criticised the disciples for assuming that God would kill people for being worse sinners than others (Luke 13:1-5) and restrained his disciples from even striking the people who had come to illegally arrest him.
Obviously by posting here I'm not interested in the standard calvinist response that God is both a loving Father and a cruel Tyrant and which face he turns to each person changes depending purely on His will - which is as capricious as it is impenetrable.
As progressive Christians, assuming that God is fully the God revealed by Christ and no other, how can we interpret this passage?
I've been reading up on Ananias and Sapphira in Luke 5, and I noticed several interpretations both ancient and modern which suggest that Peter was to blame for Ananias and Sapphira's death.
Porphyry of Tyre 234 – c. 305 AD
>"This Peter is convicted of doing wrong in other cases also ... Peter put them to death, although they had done no wrong"
Fragment 25, line 2 of the Contra Christianos
In modern scholarship Marc Pernot (not a PhD as far as I'm aware) has written similarly:
>"Jesus never instituted a system requiring people to liquidate all their capital ... Luke, the author of the book of Acts thus presents Peter and his first church rather critically."
What I'm wondering: is there any academic merit to the idea that Luke was critical of Peter in his literary workings?
