Ananias (VII)

Acts v. 1, 2,3,& seq.VII. ANANIAS, one of the first Christians of Jerusalem, who being converted, together with his Wife Sapphira, sold his estate, and reserved part of the purchase-money to himself; then went and carried the remainder to S. Peter, telling him that this was the whole price of his Inheritance. But the Apostle, to whom the Holy Ghost had revealed this falshood, reproached him very sharply for it, telling him that he had lied to the Holy Ghost, and not unto men. At the same time God smote Ananias, and he fell dead at the Apostle’s feet. Some few hours after his Wife Sapphira came in; and S. Peter having put the same question to her which he had before proposed to her Husband, she too was guilty of the like falshood, and was suddenly struck dead in the same manner. This fell out in the year 33 or 34 of the vulgar Æra, in a little time after the Ascension.

Some have been so curious as to enquire wherein the sin of Ananias and Sapphira consisted; and whether their fault was punished with eternal damnation, or with bodily death only. As to the first question, many of the Antients have thought,¹ that when the first Believers embraced Christianity, and resolved to make sale of their estates, this resolution included at least a kind of implicit vow to reserve nothing to themselves, but to have every thing in common; and that Ananias and Sapphira having violated this vow, were guilty, in some sort, of perjury and sacrilege, by reserving to themselves a part of that which they had sold. They who are of this opinion make no doubt but that Ananias and Sapphira did herein commit a mortal sin. If to this you add their lying to the Holy Ghost, and the affront offered to God in tempting him, and questioning in some degree his power, their crime will appear still greater.

But we are not to conclude absolutely from hence that they were damned, because God might have inspired them with a lively sense of their fault, and have punished them with temporal death, to prevent their suffering those eternal torments which they had merited, if they had died obdurate and impenitent. Origen², S. Jerom³, S. Austin⁴, Petrus Damianus⁵, and some Moderns⁶, have followed that opinion which is most in favour of Ananias’s salvation. But S. Chrysostom⁷, S. Basil⁸, and some others, are of the contrary opinion. There is no mark of their repentance visible, nor any interval between their crime and their death. It is safest in questions of this nature, which are more curious than necessary, to leave the decision of them to God.

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