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, and at one time was almost the most popular form of Christianity.
Marcionism was denounced by its opponents 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.
History
- Main article: Marcion of Sinope.
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 a Roman Catholic writer to have been the most dangerous foe Christianity has ever known.["Marcionites"] by J.P. Arendzen. The Catholic Encylopedia, 1910. Marcionism continued in the West for 300 years, although Marcionistic ideas persisted much longer.[Berdyaev Online Library]
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.[Mandaean Official Site]
Teachings
An ordained bishop of Sinope, Asia Minor, Marcion declared that Christianity was distinct from and in opposition to Judaism. Marcion rejected the entire Hebrew Bible, and declaring 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 (not Jesus — Marcion treated Jesus as being distinct from Christ) are incompatible with the god of the Jewish religion. 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.Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma, vol. 1, ch. 5, [p. 269] Marcion gathered scriptures from Jewish tradition, and juxtaposed these against the sayings and teachings from Gospel of Luke and the Pauline Epistles (but not the Pastoral Epistles or the Epistle to the Hebrews, and adding the Laodiceans)G.R.S. Mead, [Gospel of Marcion] in the book Fragments of a Faith Forgotten in a work entitled the Antithesis.[Gnostic Society Library] presentation of Marcion's Antithesis Marcion's version of Luke did not resemble the version that is now regarded as canonical.[Center for Marcionite Research] presentation of The Gospel of Marcion It not only lacked all prophecies of Christ's coming but the differences with the now canonical version had other serious theological implications as well. In bringing together these texts, Marcion redacted what is perhaps the first New Testament canon on record.
Marcionites hold maltheistic views of the god of the Hebrew Bible (mockingly known to them as Yaltabaoth), that he was inconsistent, jealous, wrathful and genocidal, and that the material world he created is defective, a place of suffering; the god who made such a world is a bungling or malicious demiurge. "In the god of the [Old Testament] he saw a being whose character was stern justice, and therefore anger, contentiousness and unmercifulness. The law which rules nature and man appeared to him to accord with the characteristics of this god and the kind of law revealed by him, and therefore it seemed credible to him that this god is the creator and lord of the world (κοσμοκράτωρ). 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."Harnack, idem., [p.271] In Marcionite belief, Christ is 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.
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, Valentinius found in the Letters of 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. The Christology of the Marcionites was primarily Docetic, denying the human nature of Christ. 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.[Article on Adolf Von Harnack] 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 transcedent, 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.
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. "As for the main question, however, whether he knew of, or assumes the existence of, a written New Testament of the Church in any sense whatever, in this case an affirmatory answer is most improbable, because if this were so he would have been compelled to make a direct attack upon the New Testament of the Church, and if such an attack had been made we should have heard of it from Tertullian. Marcion, on the contrary, treats the Catholic Church as one that 'follows the Testament of the Creator-God,' and directs the full force of his attack against this Testament and against the falsification of the Gospel and of the Pauline Epistles by the original Apostles and the writers of the Gospels. He would necessarily have dealt with the two Testaments of the Catholic Church if the Church had already possessed a New Testament. His polemic would necessarily have been much less simple if he had been opposed to a Church which, by possessing a New Testament side by side with the Old Testament, had ipso facto placed the latter under the shelter of the former. In fact Marcion’s position towards the Catholic Church is intelligible, in the full force of its simplicity, only under the supposition that the Church had not yet in her hand any 'litera scripta Novi Testamenti.'"Harnack, Origin of the New Testament, appendix 6, [pp. 222-23]
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.[Wace's article on Marcion]
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)[Tertullian "Against Marcion" 1.2] 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)[Tertullian "Against Marcion" 4.11.9], in theorizing that Marcion set about to recover the authentic teachings of Jesus. Irenaeus claimed, "[Marcion's] salvation will be the attainment only of those souls which had learned his doctrine; while the body, as having been taken from the earth, is incapable of sharing in salvation."Against Heresies, [1.27.3] 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.[Tertullian Adversus Marcionem ("Against Marcion")], translated and edited by Ernest Evans 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 himself does not appear to be anti-Semitic, rather he rejected Jewish scriptures in the same way as most modern Christian apologetics does not appeal to the texts of Hinduism.
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 [link]), found in several older Latin codices, are now widely believed to have been written by Marcion or one of his followers. Harnack notes [link]: "We have indeed long known that Marcionite readings found their way into the ecclesiastical text of the Pauline Epistles, but now for seven years we have known that Churches actually accepted the Marcionite prefaces to the Pauline Epistles! De Bruyne has made one of the finest discoveries of later days in proving that those prefaces, which we read first in Codex Fuldensis and then in numbers of later manuscripts, are Marcionite, and that the Churches had not noticed the cloven hoof.". Conversely, several early Latin codices contain Anti-Marcionite prologues to the Gospels.
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 teachings.
Modern Marcionism
Historic Marcionism, and the church Marcion himself established, appeared to die out around the fifth century. However, 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, 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. [Biblical Atrocities], compiled by Donald Morgan Some Christians agree with Marcion that the Old Testament's alleged approval of genocide and murder are inappropriate models to follow today. Others, 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).For some, the alleged problems of the Old Testament, and the appeal of Jesus are such that they identify themselves as modern day Marcionite, and follow his solution in keeping the New Testament as sacred scripture, and rejecting the Old Testament canon and practices. Carroll R. Bierbower is a pastor of a church he says is Marcionite in theology and practice.[The Antithesis], by Dr. Carroll R. Bierbower. The Cathar Church, the assembly of Good Christians, call themselves "a 'New Testament Church'" and do not use the Old Testament as part of their scripture. The Cathar movement, historically and in modern times, reject the Old Testament for the reasons Marcion enunciated. [General Conference Cathar Church] 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. [The Human Jesus and Christian Deism] Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine are famous Christian deists. Thinkers as diverse as Voltaire, Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, Mohandas Gandhi, and Albert Einstein have expressed disapproval of Jehovah of the Old Testament, and admiration for Jesus. Simone Weil has been described as a modern day Marcionite, though obviously this would be following a reconstruction of Marcion's viewpoint, rather than a continuation of a historic legacy.
John Spong, an Anglican Bishop, writing in Sins of Scripture, have claimed that fundamentalist Christians have opposed Grace with the Law, or believe the New Testament Covenant has superseded the Old Covenant; that they primarily study and utilize the New Testament, and that these ideas are echoes of Marcion. Controversial passages of the Old Testament are rarely, if ever, discussed or sermonized in mainstream churches it is alleged.The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love. Spong, John Shelby. 2005, HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 0-06-076205-5
See also
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 modified by his critics to 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 (the modern writer, not to be confused with John Knox the Protestant Reformer) in Marcion and the New Testament: An Essay in the Early History of the Canon (ISBN 0404161839) was the first to propose that Marcion's Gospel may have preceded Luke's Gospel and Acts.[link]
References
- 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.
- ["Marcion, the Canon, the Law, and the Historical Jesus] by Christopher Price
External links
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