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Marcionism

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Marcionism is the dualist belief system that originates in the teachings of Marcion of Sinope at Rome around the year 144 CE (115 years and 6 months from the Crucifixion, according to Tertullian's reckoning in Adversus Marcionem, xv). Marcionism reflects a different understanding of the roots of Christian belief than that commonly held today. To the early church, the source of the most persistent persecution of Christians was from Judaism,[1] and they understood that the Old Testament's theology of wrath was different from the New Testament's theology of love and salvation.

Marcion took advantage of this conflict to preach his belief that a Demiurge, an evil god, had created the universe. This is the key to understanding the ancient Marcionites.

Marcionism was denounced as heresy, and written against; notably by Tertullian, in a five-book treatise Adversus Marcionem, written about 208. However, the strictures against Marcionism predate the authority, claimed by the First Council of Nicaea in 325, to declare what is heretical against the Church. 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.

1 History
2 Teachings
3 Criticisms
4 See also
5 Footnotes
6 References

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History

Main article: Marcion of Sinope.

The ecclesiastical organization known as Marcionism began with the excommunication of Marcion from the Church of Rome around 144. Marcion was a rich Christian from Pontus, the son of a bishop; he arrived in Rome circa 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.

Marcion used his personal wealth, returned to him after he'd donated it to the Church of Rome, to fund an ecclesiastical organization. This organization grew to rival that of the Church of Rome; for this reason, they are considered by the Roman Catholic Church to have been the most dangerous foe Christianity has ever known. [2] Marcionism continued in the West for 300 years, although Marcionistic ideas persisted much longer. [3].

The organization continued in the East for some centuries later, particularly outside the Byzantine Empire in areas which later would be dominated by Manichaeism. This is no accident: Mani is believed to have been a Mandaean, and Mandaeanism is related to Marcionism in several ways. For example, both Mandaeanism and Marcionism are characterized by a belief in a Demiurge. The Marcionite organization itself is today extinct, although Mandaeanism is not. [4]

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Teachings

An ordained bishop of Sinope, Asia Minor, he declared that Christianity was distinct from and in opposition to Judaism. This was nothing new to the church of his contemporaries. Indeed, a great number of early church fathers attacked Judaism; for example, St John Chrysostom believed that the Jews "worship the devil." Marcion went much further. First, he rejected the whole Bible but the Gospel of Luke. Second, he adopted belief in two gods. One was good, the other was the Jewish god who was evil but somehow created the universe.

The premise of Marcionism is that many of the teachings of the Christ are incompatible with what is now called the Old Testament. Marcion gathered scriptures from Jewish tradition, and juxtaposed these against the sayings and teachings of the Christ [5] in a work entitled the Antithesis [6]. Marcion's source for the sayings and teachings of the Christ was the Gospel of Luke, which Marcion called simply the Gospel [7]. This not only removed all prophecy of Christ's coming but had other serious theological implications as well.

Marcion also produced the Apostolicon, which may have consisted of 10 traditional Letters of Paul. Hebrews and the Pastoral Epistles were apparently not included and instead of Ephesians was Laodiceans. In compiling these texts, he redacted what is perhaps the first New Testament canon of record.

Marcionites hold that the god known as YHWH is inconstant, jealous, wrathful, and genocidal. The material world he created was defective, a place of suffering; the god who made such a world was the bungling or malicious demiurge. In Marcionite belief, Jesus was not the Messiah; the person to whom religious Jews look forward, who is to be a conqueror and a political leader.

Rather, according to the Marcionites, the Christ was sent by the Elohim, which is either one god or a community of gods believed to be greater than YHWH. The role of the Christ was to reveal the supreme God of light and pure mind, different in character from YHWH. This supreme God is held by the Marcionites to be free from passion and wrath, wholly benevolent; and the Christ was sent to lead believers out of subjection to the limited, wrathful YHWH.

Marcionism is not identical to, but is related to, the various beliefs together called Gnosticism. In various 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 modern divine would turn away from the dreams of Valentinianism in silent contempt; but he could not refuse to discuss the question raised by Marcion, whether there is such opposition between different parts of what he regards as the word of God, that all cannot come from the same author." A primary difference between Marcionites and Gnostics was that the Gnostics based their theology on secret wisdom, (as for example described in the Letters of Paul, see Valentinius), 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 wasn't scripture. The Christology of the Marcionites was primarily Docetic, denying the human nature of Christ.

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

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Criticisms

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:

"The story proceeds to say that he asked the Roman presbyters to explain the texts, "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit," and "No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment," texts from which he himself deduced that works in which evil is to be found could not proceed from the good God, and that the Christian dispensation could have nothing in common with the Jewish. Rejecting the explanation offered him by the presbyters, he broke off the interview with a threat to make a schism in their church." [8]

Tertullian, along with Epiphanius of Salamis, also charged that Marcion set aside the gospels of Matthew, Mark and John, and used Luke alone¹. Tertullian cited Luke 6:43-45 (a good tree does not produce bad fruit)² 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)³, in theorizing that Marcion set about to recover the authentic teachings of Jesus. Irenaeus claimed, "[Marcion's] salvation is of souls only, those souls which have learned his doctrine: the body, derived from the earth, cannot possibly partake of salvation. (Irenaeus, I.xxv.1) 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. [9]. However, Ernest Evans, in editing this work, observes:

This may not have been Marcion's own belief. It was certainly that of Hermogenes (cf. Tertullian, Adversus Hermogenem) and probably other gnostics and Marcionites, who held that the intractability of this matter explains the world's many imperfections.

Because of the rejection of the Old Testament which originates in the Jewish Bible, the Marcionites are believed by some Christians to be anti-Semitic. Indeed, the word Marcionism is sometimes used in modern times to refer to anti-Jewish tendencies in Christian churches, especially when such tendencies are thought to be surviving residues of ancient Marcionism. For example, on its web site, the Tawahedo Church of Ethiopia claims to be the only Christian church that is fully free of Marcionism. On the other hand, Marcion did not claim Christians to be the New Israel of Replacement theology, and did not try to use the Hebrew scriptures to support his views.

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. Others of his followers, such as Apelles, created their own sects with variant teaching.

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Footnotes

Note 1: From the perspectives of Tertullian and Epiphanius, (when the four gospels had largely canonical status, perhaps in reaction to the challenge created by Marcion), it appeared that Marcion rejected the non-Lukan gospels, however, in Marcion's time, it may be that the only gospel he was familar with from Pontus was the gospel that would later be called Luke. It is also possible that Marcion's gospel was actually corrected by his critics and became the gospel we know today as Luke, rather than the story from his critics that he changed a canonical gospel to get his version. For example, compare Luke 5:39 to 5:36-38, did Marcion delete 5:39 from his Gospel or was it added later to counteract a Marcionist interpretation of 5:36-38? One must keep in mind that we only know of Marcion through his critics and they considered him a major threat to the form of Christianity that they knew. John Knox in Marcion and the New Testament was the first to propose that Marcion's Gospel may have preceded Luke's Gospel and Acts.
Note 2: Tertullian Against Marcion 1.2[10]
Note 3: Tertullian Against Marcion 4.11.9[11]