Marcionism was an Early Christian dualist belief system that originated in the teachings of Marcion of Sinope at Rome around the year 144; see also Christianity in the 2nd century.

Marcion believed Jesus Christ was the savior sent by God and Paul of Tarsus was his chief apostle, but he rejected the Hebrew Bible and the God of Israel (YHWH Elohim). Marcionists believed that the wrathful Hebrew God was a separate and lower entity than the all-forgiving God of the New Testament. This belief was in some ways similar to Gnostic Christian theology; notably, both are dualistic.

Marcionism, similar to Gnosticism, depicted the Hebrew God of the Old Testament as a tyrant or demiurge (see also God as the Devil). Marcion was labeled as gnostic by Eusebius. Marcion's canon consisted of eleven books: A gospel consisting of ten chapters from the Gospel of Luke edited by Marcion (the current canonical Gospel of Luke has 24 chapters); and ten of Paul's epistles. All other epistles and gospels of the 27 book New Testament canon were rejected. Paul's epistles enjoy a prominent position in the Marcionite canon, since Paul is credited with correctly transmitting the universality of Jesus' message. Other authors' epistles were rejected since they seemed to suggest that Jesus had simply come to found a new sect within broader Judaism. Religious tribalism of this sort seemed to echo Yahwism, and was thus regarded as a corruption of the Heavenly Father's teaching.

Marcionism was denounced by its opponents as heresy, and written against, notably by Tertullian, in a five-book treatise Adversus Marcionem, written about 208. Marcion's writings are lost, though they were widely read and numerous manuscripts must have existed. Even so, many scholars (including Henry Wace) claim it is possible to reconstruct and deduce a large part of ancient Marcionism through what later critics, especially Tertullian, said concerning Marcion.

History

According to Tertullian and other writers of the mainstream Church (which scholars refer to as Proto-orthodox Christianity), the movement known as Marcionism began with the teachings and excommunication of Marcion from the Early centers of Christianity Catholic Church around 144. Marcion was reportedly a wealthy shipowner, the son of a bishop of Sinope of Pontus, Asia Minor. He arrived in Rome c. 140, soon after Bar Kokhba's revolt. That revolution, along with other Jewish-Roman wars (the Great Jewish Revolt and the Kitos War), provides some of the historical context of the founding of Marcionism; see also Anti-Judaism in the Roman Empire. Marcion was excommunicated from the Catholic Church because he was threatening to make schisms in the church.

Marcion used his personal wealth, (particularly a donation returned to him by the Catholic Church after he was excommunicated), to fund an ecclesiastical organization. Marcionism continued in the West for 300 years, although Marcionistic ideas persisted much longer.

The organization continued in the East for some centuries later, particularly outside the Byzantine Empire in areas which later would be dominated by Manichaeism.

Schism within Marcionism

By the reign of emperor Commodus Marcionism was divided into various opinions with various leaders; among whom was Apelles, whom Rhodo describes as: "...priding himself on his manner of life and his age, acknowledges one principle, but says that the prophecies are from an opposing principle, being led to this view by the responses of a maiden by name Philumene, who was possessed by a demon".

But others, among whom were Potitus and Basilicus, held to two principles, as did Marcion himself. Others consider that there are not only two, but three natures. Of these, Syneros was the leader and chief.

Teachings

Marcion declared that Christianity was distinct from and in opposition to Judaism, see also Anti-Judaism. He rejected the entire Hebrew Bible, and declared that the God of the Hebrew Bible was a lesser demiurge, who had created the earth, but was (de facto) the source of evil.

The premise of Marcionism is that many of the teachings of Christ are incompatible with the actions of the God of the Old Testament. Focusing on the Pauline traditions of the Gospel, Marcion felt that all other conceptions of the Gospel, and especially any association with the Old Testament religion, was opposed to, and a backsliding from, the truth. He further regarded the arguments of Paul regarding law and gospel, wrath and grace, works and faith, flesh and spirit, sin and righteousness, death and life, as the essence of religious truth. He ascribed these aspects and characteristics as two principles, the righteous and wrathful God of the Old Testament, who is at the same time identical with the creator of the world, and a second God of the Gospel, quite unknown before Christ, who is only love and mercy.

Marcionites held maltheistic views of the God of the Hebrew Bible (known to some Gnostics as Yaltabaoth), that he was inconsistent, jealous, wrathful and genocidal, and that the material world he created was defective, a place of suffering; the God who made such a world is a bungling or malicious demiurge.

[English transliteration: kosmokrator/cosmocrator]). As the law which governs the world is inflexible and yet, on the other hand, full of contradictions, just and again brutal, and as the law of the Old Testament exhibits the same features, so the God of creation was to Marcion a being who united in himself the whole gradations of attributes from justice to malevolence, from obstinacy to inconsistency."}}

In Marcionite belief, Christ was not a Jewish Messiah, but a spiritual entity that was sent by the Monad to reveal the truth about existence, and thus allowing humanity to escape the earthly trap of the demiurge. Marcion called God, the Stranger God, or the Alien God, in some translations, as this deity had not had any previous interactions with the world, and was wholly unknown. See also the Unknown God of Hellenism.

In various popular sources, Marcion is often reckoned among the Gnostics, but as the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd ed.) puts it, "it is clear that he would have had little sympathy with their mythological speculations" (p. 1034). In 1911 Henry Wace stated:

A primary difference between Marcionites and Gnostics was that the Gnostics based their theology on secret wisdom (as, for example, Valentinius who claimed to receive the secret wisdom from Theudas who received it direct from Paul) of which they claimed to be in possession, whereas Marcion based his theology on the contents of the Letters of Paul and the recorded sayings of Jesus — in other words, an argument from scripture, with Marcion defining what was and was not scripture. Also, the Christology of the Marcionites is thought to have been primarily Docetic, denying the human nature of Christ. This may have been due to the unwillingness of Marcionites to believe that Jesus was the son of both God the Father and the demiurge. Classical Gnosticism, by contrast, held that Jesus was the son of both, even having a natural human father; that he was both the Messiah of Judaism and the world Savior. Scholars of Early Christianity disagree on whether to classify Marcion as a Gnostic: Adolf Von Harnack does not classify Marcion as a Gnostic, whereas G. R. S. Mead does. Von Harnack argued that Marcion was not a Gnostic in the strict sense because Marcion rejected elaborate creation myths, and did not claim to have special revelation or secret knowledge. Mead claimed Marcionism makes certain points of contact with Gnosticism in its view that the creator of the material world is not the true deity, rejection of materialism and affirmation of a transcendent, purely good spiritual realm in opposition to the evil physical realm, the belief Jesus was sent by the "True" God to save humanity, the central role of Jesus in revealing the requirements of salvation, the belief Paul had a special place in the transmission of this "wisdom", and its docetism. According to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article on Marcion:

Marcionism shows the influence of Hellenistic philosophy on Christianity, and presents a moral critique of the Old Testament from the standpoint of Platonism. According to Harnack, the sect may have led other Christians to introduce a formal statement of beliefs into their liturgy (see Creed) and to formulate a canon of authoritative Scripture of their own, thus eventually producing the current canon of the New Testament.

Marcion is believed to have imposed a severe morality on his followers, some of whom suffered in the persecutions. In particular, he refused to re-admit those who recanted their faith under Roman persecution; see also Lapsi (Christian).

Marcionite canon

Tertullian claimed Marcion was the first to separate the New Testament from the Old Testament. Marcion is said to have gathered scriptures from Jewish tradition, and juxtaposed these against the sayings and teachings of Jesus in a work entitled the Antithesis. Besides the Antithesis, the Testament of the Marcionites was also composed of a Gospel of Christ which was Marcion's version of Luke, and that the Marcionites attributed to Paul, that was different in a number of ways from the version that is now regarded as canonical. It seems to have lacked all prophecies of Christ's coming, as well as the Infancy account, the baptism, and the verses were more terse in general. It also included ten of the Pauline Epistles (but not the Pastoral Epistles or the Epistle to the Hebrews, and, according to the Muratonian canon, included a Marcionite Paul's epistle to the Alexandrians and an epistle to the Laodiceans) In bringing together these texts, Marcion redacted what is perhaps the first New Testament canon on record, which he called the Gospel and the Apostolikon, which reflects his belief the writings reflect the apostle Paul and Jesus.

The Prologues to the Pauline Epistles (which are not a part of the text, but short introductory sentences as one might find in modern study Bibles ), found in several older Latin codices, are now widely believed to have been written by Marcion or one of his followers. Harnack notes :

Conversely, several early Latin codices contain Anti-Marcionite prologues to the Gospels.

Reaction to Marcion by early Christians

According to a remark by Origen (Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew 15.3), Marcion "prohibited allegorical interpretations of the scripture". Tertullian disputed this in his treatise against Marcion, as did Henry Wace:

Tertullian, along with Epiphanius of Salamis, also charged that Marcion set aside the gospels of Matthew, Mark and John, and used Luke alone. Tertullian cited Luke 6:43-45 (a good tree does not produce bad fruit) and Luke 5:36-38 (nobody tears a piece from a new garment to patch an old garment or puts new wine in old wineskins), in theorizing that Marcion set about to recover the authentic teachings of Jesus. Irenaeus claimed,

Tertullian also attacked this view in De Carne Christi.

Hippolytus reported that Marcion's phantasmal (and Docetist) Christ was "revealed as a man, though not a man", and did not really die on the cross. However, Ernest Evans, in editing this work, observes:

Recent scholarship

In Lost Christianities, Bart Ehrman contrasts the Marcionites with the Ebionites as polar ends of a spectrum with regard to the Old Testament. Ehrman acknowledges many of Marcion's ideas are very close to what is known today as "Gnosticism", especially its rejection of the Jewish God, the Old Testament, and the material world, and his elevation of Paul as the primary apostle. In the PBS documentary, From Jesus to Christ, narrated by Elaine Pagels, Ehrman, Karen King, and other secular New Testament scholars, Marcion's role in the formation of the New Testament canon is discussed as pivotal, and the first to explicitly state it. There were early Christian groups, such as the Ebionites, that did not accept Paul as part of their canon.

Robert M. Price, a New Testament scholar at Johnnie Colemon Theological Seminary, considers the Pauline canon problem: how, when, and who collected Paul's epistles to the various churches as a single collection of epistles. The evidence that the early church fathers, such as Clement, knew of the Pauline epistles is unclear. Price investigates several historical scenarios and comes to the conclusion and identifies Marcion as the first person known in recorded history to collect Paul's writings to various churches together as a canon, the Pauline epistles. Robert Price summarizes,

If this is correct, then Marcion's role in the formation and development of Christianity is pivotal.

Marcionism in Modern history

Historic Marcionism, and the church Marcion himself established, appeared to die out around the 5th century, although similarities between Marcionism and Paulicianism, a later heresy in the same geographical area, indicate that Marcionist ideas may have survived and even contributed to heresies in Bulgaria and France. Whether or not that is the case, Marcion's influence and criticism of the Old Testament are discussed to this very day. Marcionism is discussed in recent textbooks on early Christianity, such as Lost Christianities by Bart Ehrman. Marcion claimed to find problems in the Old Testament; problems which many modern thinkers cite today (see Criticism of the Bible and Biblical law in Christianity), especially its alleged approval of atrocities and genocide.

Many atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists agree with Marcion's examples of Bible atrocities, and cite the same passages of the Old Testament to discredit Christianity and Judaism. Most Christians agree with Marcion that the Old Testament's alleged approval of genocide and murder are inappropriate models to follow today. Some Christian scholars, such as Gleason Archer and Norman Geisler, have dedicated much of their time to the attempt to resolve these perceived difficulties, while others have argued that just punishments (divine or human), even capital punishments, are not genocide or murder because murder and genocide are unjustified by definition (see Christian Reconstructionism).

On the other hand, because of the rejection of the Old Testament which originates in the Jewish Bible, the Marcionites have been believed by some Christians to be anti-Jewish. Indeed, the word Marcionism has sometimes been used in modern times to refer to anti-Jewish tendencies in Christian churches, especially when such tendencies have been thought to be surviving residues of ancient Marcionism.

For some, the postulated problems of the Old Testament, and the appeal of Jesus are such that they identify themselves as modern day Marcionites, and follow his solution in keeping the New Testament as sacred scripture, and rejecting the Old Testament canon and practices. A term sometimes used for these groups is "New Testament Only Christians". Carroll R. Bierbower is a pastor of a church he says is Marcionite in theology and practice. The Cathar movement, historically and in modern times, reject the Old Testament for the reasons Marcion enunciated. It remains unclear whether the 11th century Cathar movement is in continuation of earlier Gnostic and Marcion streams, or represents an independent re-invention. John Lindell, a former Methodist and Unitarian Universalist pastor, advocates Christian deism, which does not include the Old Testament as part of its theology.

See also

God as the Devil

Christology

Antinomianism

Montanism

Gnosticism

Antitactae

Christianity and Judaism

Mormonism

Notes

References

Baker, David L., Two Testaments, One Bible (second edn; Leicester: Inter-Varsity, 1991): pp. 35, 48-52.

Legge, Francis, Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity, From 330 B.C. to 330 A.D. (1914), reprinted in two volumes bound as one, University Books New York, 1964. LC Catalog 64-24125.

McGowan, Andrew, Associate Professor of Early Christian History at the Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts Journal of Early Christian Studies, Vol. 9

Mead, G.R.S., Gospel of Marcion Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, London and Benares, 1900; 3rd Edition 1931.

Price, Robert M. The Evolution of the Pauline Canon.

Riparelli, Enrico, Il volto del Cristo dualista. Da Marcione ai catari, Peter Lang, Bern - Berlin - Bruxelles - Frankfurt am Main - New York - Oxford - Wien 2008, 368 pp. ISBN 9783039114900

External links

The Marcionite Research Library

Category:144 establishments Category:Nontrinitarianism Category:Christianity-related controversies Category:Schisms in Christianity Category:Ancient Christian controversies Category:Christian denominations, unions, and movements established in the 2nd century Category:Christian terms

Marcion of Sinope' (Greek: Μαρκίων Σινώπης, ca. 85-160) was a well known bishop in early Christianity. His theology, which rejected the deity described in the Jewish scriptures as inferior or subjugated to the God proclaimed in the christian gospel, was denounced by the Church Fathers and he was excommunicated. His rejection of many books contemporarily considered scripture in the catholic part of the church prompted this church to develop a catholic canon of scriptures.

Life

Hippolytus records that Marcion was the son of the bishop of Sinope, in Pontus. His near-contemporaries Rhodon and Tertullian described him as a ship owner. Marcion probably was consecrated a bishop, likely an assistant or suffragan of his father at Sinope. This account has been doubted by many scholars, who consider it "malicious gossip". More recently, Bart D. Ehrman suggests that this "seduction of a virgin" was a metaphor for his corruption of the Christian Church, with the Church portrayed as the undefiled virgin.

Bishop Marcion had travelled to Rome about 142/143.. But since the Marcionite church was already widespread at the time of his excommunication, it is more likely that his founding of Marcionite style churches had started much earlier. Bishop Marcion made a notable donation of 200,000 sesterces to the church.

Conflicts with the bishops of Rome arose and he was eventually excommunicated by the Church of Rome, his donation being returned to him. After his excommunication, he returned to Asia Minor where he continued to lead his many church congregations and teach the christian gospel in its Marcionite or Pauline version.

Teachings

Study of the Jewish Scriptures, along with received writings circulating in the nascent Church (the majority of which were eventually incorporated into the New Testament canon) led Marcion to conclude that many of the teachings of Jesus were incompatible with the actions of the god of the Old Testament. Marcion responded by developing a dualist system of belief around the year 144. This dual-god notion allowed Marcion to reconcile supposed contradictions between Old Covenant theology and the Gospel message proclaimed by Jesus.

Marcion affirmed Jesus to be the saviour sent by the Heavenly Father, and Paul as His chief apostle. In contrast to the nascent Christian church, Marcion declared that Christianity was distinct from and in opposition to Judaism. Marcion did not claim that the Jewish Scriptures were false. Instead, Marcion asserted that they were to be read in an absolutely literal manner, thereby developing an understanding that YHVH was not the same god spoken of by Jesus, e.g. in the Genesis account of YHVH walking through the Garden of Eden asking where Adam was, Marcion read this to mean that YHVH physically walked through the Garden without foreknowledge of Adam's whereabouts. Marcion argued that this proved YHVH inhabited a physical body (unlike the Heavenly Father) and that YHVH was ignorant and without universal foreknowledge, attributes wholly incompatible with the Heavenly Father professed by Jesus.

According to bishop Marcion, the god of the Old Testament, whom he called the Demiurge, the creator of the material universe, is a jealous tribal deity of the Jews, whose law represents legalistic reciprocal justice and who punishes mankind for its sins through suffering and death. Contrastingly, the god that Jesus professed is an altogether different being, a universal god of compassion and love who looks upon humanity with benevolence and mercy.

Marcion held Jesus to be the son of the Heavenly Father but understood the incarnation in a docetic manner, i.e. that Jesus' body was only an imitation of a material body. Marcion held that Jesus paid the debt of sin that humanity owed via his crucifixion, thus absolving humanity and allowing it to inherit eternal life. and the Apostolikon, a selection of ten letters of Paul the Apostle who Marcion considered the correct interpreter and transmitter of Jesus' teachings. Both sections were purged of elements relating to Jesus' childhood, Judaism, and material challenging Marcion's dualism. Marcion also produced his Antitheses contrasting the Demiurge of the Old Testament with the Heavenly Father of the New Testament.

Marcion and Gnosticism

Marcion is sometimes described as a Gnostic philosopher. In some essential respects, Marcion proposed ideas which would have aligned well with Gnostic thought. Like the Gnostics, he argued that Jesus was essentially a divine spirit appearing to men in the shape of a human form, and not someone in a true physical body.

However, Marcionism conceptualizes God in a way which cannot be reconciled with broader Gnostic thought. For Gnostics, every human being is born with a small piece of God's soul lodged within his/her spirit (akin to the notion of a 'Divine Spark'). as a catalyst for the development of the catholic canon, the establishment of a centralised church law, and the structuring of the Catholic Church with its orthodox dogmas in general, which remained a relatively unchallenged mainstay in Christendom until the Protestant Reformation.

The church that Marcion founded had expanded throughout the known world within his lifetime, and was a serious rival to the Catholic Church. Its adherents were strong enough in their convictions to have the church retain its expansive power for more than a century. It survived Christian controversy, and imperial disapproval, for several centuries more.

Marcion was the first Christian leader to propose and delineate a canon (a list of officially sanctioned religious works). In so doing, he established a particular way of viewing religious texts that persists in Christian thought today. After Marcion, Christians began to divide texts into those that aligned well with the "measuring stick" (Greek kanōn literally means measuring stick) of accepted theological thought, and those that should be rejected. This essential bifurcation played a major role in finalising the structure and contents of the collection of works now called the Bible. An initial impetus for finalising the catholic version of the christian canon stemmed from opposition to Marcion's first christian canon.

Some ideas similar to those of Marcion's reappeared among the Bulgarian Bogomils of the 10th century and the Cathars of southern France in the 13th century.

Notes

References

Blackman, E.C. Marcion and His Influence 2004 ISBN 1-59244-73

Clabeaux, John James. The Lost Edition of the Letters of Paul: A Reassessment of the Text of Pauline Corpus Attested by Marcion (Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series No. 21) 1989 ISBN 0-915170-20-5

Dahl, Nils Alstrup. "The Origin of the Earliest Prologues to the Pauline Letters", Semeia 12 (1978), 233-277

Epiphanius of Salamis. The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, Book 1 (Sects 1-46) Frank Williams translator, 1987 ISBN 90-04-07926-2

Evans, Ernest (comments and translation): Tertullian, Against Marcion (Oxford University Press, 1972). E-text of Adversus Marcionem and Evan's introduction "Marcion : His Doctrine and Influence"

Grant, Robert M. Marcion and the Critical Method Peter Richardson & John Collidge Hurd, eds., From Jesus to Paul. Studies in Honour of Francis Wright Beare. Waterloo, ON, 1984. p. 207–215.

Harnack, Adolf von 1961. History of Dogma (Neil Buchanan, translating Harnack's Dogmengeschichte 1900), vol I, pp 267 – 313, vol II, pp 1 – 19

Harnack, Adolf von. Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God translation 1990 ISBN 0-939464-16-0

R. Joseph Hoffmann. Marcion, on the Restitution of Christianity: An Essay on the Development of Radical Paulist Theology in the Second Century 1984 ISBN 0-89130-638-2

Knox, John. Marcion and the New Testament 1942 ISBN 0-404-16183-9

Francis Legge, Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity, From 330 B.C. to 330 A.D. (1914), reprinted in two volumes bound as one, University Books New York, 1964. LC Catalog 64-24125.

Livingstone, E.A. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd ed.), pp. 1033–34, 1997 ISBN 0-19-211655-X

Riparelli, Enrico, Il volto del Cristo dualista. Da Marcione ai catari, Peter Lang, Bern - Berlin - Bruxelles - Frankfurt am Main - New York - Oxford - Wien 2008, 368 pp. ISBN 9783039114900

Williams, David Salter. "Reconsidering Marcion's Gospel", Journal of Biblical Literature 108 (1989), p. 477-96

Wilson, R. S. Marcion: A Study of a Second-Century Heretic (London:Clarke) 1933

External links

Marcion's Writings (at the Gnosis Archive): Marcion: Gospel of the Lord and Other Writings

Catholic Encyclopedia: Marcionites

Marcionite Research Library

Tertullian, De Carne Christi (Latin and English), 1956

Wace on Marcion

EarlyChurch.org.uk on Marcion

Marcion: Portrait of a Heretic by Rob Bradshaw

The Marcionite Prologues to the Pauline Epistles

Marcion in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica

Marcionite version of Galatians (reconstructed)

Joseph B. Tyson, Anti-Judaism in Marcion and his Opponents

Category:2nd-century Greek people Category:2nd-century Romans Category:Ancient Pontic Greeks Category:Anti-Judaism Category:Judaism-related controversies Category:Ancient Christian controversies Category:Roman Pontus Category:Christian theologians Category:People from Sinop Category:Gnostics