Was Marcion a heretic?

[prodromos]

But who is the human arbiter of correctness?

The Church.
Matthew 18:15-17
1 Timothy 3:15

 

[The Liturgist]

I was thinking of putting this in the Christian history section but I'm not so much concerned with Marcion but with the issues he raised.

Marcion and Marcionism is quite a multi topic subject but I'm focussing on his reason for generating a cut down version of the Holy Scriptures (which some say spurred the Early Church to decide on a canon of scripture)

Marcion decided on 10 Pauline epistles (not the pastoral ones) and a cut down version of Luke's gospel. Marcion and his followers were concerned that the "God of the Old Testament" whom he regarded as inconsistent, jealous, wrathful and genocidal did not tally with the God of the NT gospel.

Now I don't agree with Marcion given how much of the OT is quoted in the NT. But I prefer to think he was mistaken rather than condemn him as a heretic as there are many passages in the OT which are problematic.

A typical example would be in Joshua 8:

When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the wilderness where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword, all the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it. 25Twelve thousand men and women fell that day—all the people of Ai. 26For Joshua did not draw back the hand that held out his javelin until he had destroyed a all who lived in Ai. 27But Israel did carry off for themselves the livestock and plunder of this city, as the Lord had instructed Joshua.

28So Joshua burned Ai b and made it a permanent heap of ruins, a desolate place to this day. 29He impaled the body of the king of Ai on a pole and left it there until evening. At sunset, Joshua ordered them to take the body from the pole and throw it down at the entrance of the city gate. And they raised a large pile of rocks over it, which remains to this day.

So not just the combatants but the women and children as well. This is what the Waffen SS did in Oradour-sur-Glane in France - now a permanent memorial (note the parallel!)
Oradour-sur-Glane, 10 June 1944 (a war-time tragedy in France)

Fun fact: the Nazis revived Marcionism, and imposed the core Marcionist doctrine on the Protestant churches in Germany, after unifying them into a single Reichskirche. The Reichskirche then taught “Positive Christianity,” which was a blend of Marcionism with elements of Nazi ideology, specifically, with our Lord misrepresented as an Aryan hero killed by “savage Jewish” worshippers of “the evil Old Testament god” who wanted to suppress his message of liberation. This was a futile effort on the part of the Nazis, which is unsurprising considering the fact that even Marcion was unable to cleanly separate his heavily edited New Testament from the Old, nor strip our Lord of His Jewish character; what they were doing was immediately obvious and gave rise to the anti-Nazi Confessing Church and heroic martyrs like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who I venerate as a hieromartyr (a holy martyr who was also a presbyter). It is worth considering that Marcionism was long gone by the fourth century; the only Gnostic cults that had staying power were those like Valentinism and Tatianism which produced their own scriptures.

So not only was Marcion a heresiarch (a ruling heretic who founded his own cult), but he was Hitler’s heresiarch. So your citation of an atrocity of the Waffen SS (accompanied by a screenshot from a video game rather than a photograph of the actual town) is really strikingly out of place, when you consider that a number of murderous Waffen SS thugs were actually neo-Marcionists.

The only extent to which “Positive Christianity” did not immediately follow in the footsteps of Marcionism was the modified New Testament canon, but I have no doubt an ideologically “purified” New Testament stripped of “Jewish Influences” was being developed by Goebbels before the Allies invaded Germany, forcing Hitler’s propaganda man into the Fuhrerbunker, where he and his wife, in a horrific act, murdered their own children with cyanide capsules before shooting each other with pistols, and of course Hitler and Eva Braun also killed themselves.*

Positive Christianity, the monstrous revival of Marcionism which was even more anti-Semitic than the second century original, was what the Confessing Church and heroic martyrs like St. Dietrich Bonhoeffer were fighting a spiritual war against. It was because of his opposition to Positive Christianity and the Holocaust that Bonhoeffer was ultimately killed.

Neo-Marcionist “Positive Christianity” was one of two religions that would have existed over the medium term in the Third Reich, the other being Hitler’s preferred Nazi adaptation of Nordic Paganism, which I expect would eventually have been forcibly substituted for Neo-Marcionism, which has all the markings of a stopgap intended to placate Protestants and ensure their loyalty. Roman Catholicism likewise waw initially tolerated, both due to the large Catholic population and the alliance with Mussolini, but I expect Hitler hoped to work with Mussolini at some point to take over the Vatican and assume control of the Catholic Church, just as Hitler had already assumed control over the old state-run Protestant churches of Saxony, Prussia, Hannover, Hesse, Rhineland-Westphalia, and elsewhere, which were forcibly united into the Reichskirche and then used as a vehicle for the dissemination of neo-Marcionism.

*There is a very good film set in the living hell that was Berlin and the Fuhrerbunker during the last days of the war entitled Downfall, with the late Austrian actor Bruno Ganz (requiescat in pace) providing the most realistic depiction of Hitler ever to be shown in cinema (the experience of playing Hitler actually seriously traumatized Bruno Ganz; based on his description of the effects of it I suspect it gave him PTSD). Many of you have probably seen a little bit of Downfall as one scene in it is commonly re-subtitled for the “Hitler Finds Out” parody videos.

 

[The Liturgist]

Had Marcion simply been mistaken, that would be one thing. But he chose to deliberately start a brand new church and religion where his views were championed. Marcion wanted to lord himself over and against the Christian Church.

So heretic is a very appropriate term.

-CryptoLutheran

Although I would argue Heresiarch is an even better term; a heresiarch is the founder of or a leader in a heretical sect or cult, whereas heretic can refer to any adherent of that cult. So if I went out and joined the LDS church, I would become a heretic, whereas Joseph Smith and his successors, such as the modern day Quorum which runs the LDS church and presides over its vast commercial enterprises (which occupy several massive office buildings in downtown Salt Lake City), are heresiarchs. Likewise, Tom Cruise is a heretic, whereas L Ron Hubbard and his successor David Miscavige are heresiarchs.*

*Scientology just barely qualifies as a heresy, because of its appropriation of Christian symbols, its use of Christian theming at lower levels in order to recruit the unwary, and its theology, which is a cheap sci-fi interpretation of Gnosticism.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I was thinking of putting this in the Christian history section but I'm not so much concerned with Marcion but with the issues he raised.

Marcion and Marcionism is quite a multi topic subject but I'm focussing on his reason for generating a cut down version of the Holy Scriptures (which some say spurred the Early Church to decide on a canon of scripture)

Marcion decided on 10 Pauline epistles (not the pastoral ones) and a cut down version of Luke's gospel. Marcion and his followers were concerned that the "God of the Old Testament" whom he regarded as inconsistent, jealous, wrathful and genocidal did not tally with the God of the NT gospel.

Now I don't agree with Marcion given how much of the OT is quoted in the NT. But I prefer to think he was mistaken rather than condemn him as a heretic as there are many passages in the OT which are problematic.

A typical example would be in Joshua 8:

When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the wilderness where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword, all the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it. 25Twelve thousand men and women fell that day—all the people of Ai. 26For Joshua did not draw back the hand that held out his javelin until he had destroyed a all who lived in Ai. 27But Israel did carry off for themselves the livestock and plunder of this city, as the Lord had instructed Joshua.

28So Joshua burned Ai b and made it a permanent heap of ruins, a desolate place to this day. 29He impaled the body of the king of Ai on a pole and left it there until evening. At sunset, Joshua ordered them to take the body from the pole and throw it down at the entrance of the city gate. And they raised a large pile of rocks over it, which remains to this day.

So not just the combatants but the women and children as well. This is what the Waffen SS did in Oradour-sur-Glane in France - now a permanent memorial (note the parallel!)
Oradour-sur-Glane, 10 June 1944 (a war-time tragedy in France)

I've always taken Marcion as someone we can learn from---we can learn from him the way we shouldn't do theology.

 

[Vanellus]

He was expelled for his erroneous opinions. It was a good thing too.

Correct but I was responding to ViaCrucis' "But he chose to deliberately start a brand new church"
and making the point that it wasn't just Marcion going off to found his own church - he was pushed out.

One could also say that Luther "chose to deliberately start a brand new church" but many would say that was a good thing, and Luther was pushed out as well.

 

[Vanellus]

The Church.
Matthew 18:15-17
1 Timothy 3:15

Which person or persons in the church? Which church i.e. denomination? This doesn't answer the question.

 

[ViaCrucis]

Correct but I was responding to ViaCrucis' "But he chose to deliberately start a brand new church"
and making the point that it wasn't just Marcion going off to found his own church - he was pushed out.

One could also say that Luther "chose to deliberately start a brand new church" but many would say that was a good thing, and Luther was pushed out as well.

Lutherans wouldn't see it that way. The Lutheran understanding is that we never left the Catholic Church, so we never ceased to be the western Catholic Church. So from the Lutheran POV we didn't leave, Rome did.

The authority by which Marcion was declared a heretic is apostolic. Marcion did not have the weight of apostolic authority behind his position, the rest of the Church did.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Vanellus]

The thread discussion does seem to have reduced to using labels rather than arguments:

e.g. Marcion was Hitler's heresiarch.
Didn't the Nazis also try to adapt Luther to their cause as well?

e.g. Gnostic, Manichaeism but I think the general consensus is there are similarities and differences between Marcionism and Gnosticism

There has been very little engagement with the passage in Joshua I cited in the OP. Are you all totally comfortable with wiping out a whole community? What if you had been one of Joshua's soldiers tasked with killing the women and children? Or do you all go with "it's in the Bible" so wiping out a whole community is ok.

And there are plenty of similar passages such as God blinding all the horses of the nations Zech 12:4

On that day, declares the LORD, I will strike every horse with panic, and every rider with madness. I will keep a watchful eye on the house of Judah, but I will strike with blindness all the horses of the nations.

Why punish horses?

On that day I will make the clans of Judah like a firepot in a woodpile, like a flaming torch among the sheaves; they will consume all the peoples around them on the right and on the left, while the people of Jerusalem remain secure there. (v6)

There is a nationalistic us v them tone here. Our God is great because he destroys our enemies for us.
Is that the message of the Christian gospel?

I note 2Philovoid's excellent Kierkegaard quote about "making difficulties everywhere" but it seems that the responders reject that idea.

 

[prodromos]

Which person or persons in the church?

The elders/overseers, the επίσκοποι which translates as bishops.

Which church i.e. denomination? This doesn't answer the question.

There is only one Church established by Christ, vested with His authority to bind and loose, and holding fast to the traditions handed down by the Apostles, taught by their word or epistles.

 

[1213]

...Now I don't agree with Marcion given how much of the OT is quoted in the NT. But I prefer to think he was mistaken rather than condemn him as a heretic as there are many passages in the OT which are problematic...

I think it is not necessary to call anyone heretic. But I think he was wrong. OT and NT have the same idea that righteous will live and unrighteous will die. For those who are unrighteous, it is not nice, but they have opportunity to repent. I think it would be wrong and bad to allow evil people to live forever.

 

[Maria Billingsley]

I was thinking of putting this in the Christian history section but I'm not so much concerned with Marcion but with the issues he raised.

Marcion and Marcionism is quite a multi topic subject but I'm focussing on his reason for generating a cut down version of the Holy Scriptures (which some say spurred the Early Church to decide on a canon of scripture)

Marcion decided on 10 Pauline epistles (not the pastoral ones) and a cut down version of Luke's gospel. Marcion and his followers were concerned that the "God of the Old Testament" whom he regarded as inconsistent, jealous, wrathful and genocidal did not tally with the God of the NT gospel.

Now I don't agree with Marcion given how much of the OT is quoted in the NT. But I prefer to think he was mistaken rather than condemn him as a heretic as there are many passages in the OT which are problematic.

A typical example would be in Joshua 8:

When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the wilderness where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword, all the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it. 25Twelve thousand men and women fell that day—all the people of Ai. 26For Joshua did not draw back the hand that held out his javelin until he had destroyed a all who lived in Ai. 27But Israel did carry off for themselves the livestock and plunder of this city, as the Lord had instructed Joshua.

28So Joshua burned Ai b and made it a permanent heap of ruins, a desolate place to this day. 29He impaled the body of the king of Ai on a pole and left it there until evening. At sunset, Joshua ordered them to take the body from the pole and throw it down at the entrance of the city gate. And they raised a large pile of rocks over it, which remains to this day.

So not just the combatants but the women and children as well. This is what the Waffen SS did in Oradour-sur-Glane in France - now a permanent memorial (note the parallel!)
Oradour-sur-Glane, 10 June 1944 (a war-time tragedy in France)

Marcion`s lack of hermeneutics, brought on by false teachers of his time ,gave him a lens that excluded any and all teachings and historical events laid out in Old Testament Judaism. He did not see Jesus Christ of Nazareth in the Hebrew scriptures rather he only saw an unloving God. The lens in which one reads scripture is so very important. It can lead to an ignorant understanding of Gods plan for humanity.

 

[Silly Uncle Wayne]

I was thinking of putting this in the Christian history section but I'm not so much concerned with Marcion but with the issues he raised.

Marcion and Marcionism is quite a multi topic subject but I'm focussing on his reason for generating a cut down version of the Holy Scriptures (which some say spurred the Early Church to decide on a canon of scripture)

Marcion decided on 10 Pauline epistles (not the pastoral ones) and a cut down version of Luke's gospel. Marcion and his followers were concerned that the "God of the Old Testament" whom he regarded as inconsistent, jealous, wrathful and genocidal did not tally with the God of the NT gospel.

Now I don't agree with Marcion given how much of the OT is quoted in the NT. But I prefer to think he was mistaken rather than condemn him as a heretic as there are many passages in the OT which are problematic.

A typical example would be in Joshua 8:

When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the wilderness where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword, all the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it. 25Twelve thousand men and women fell that day—all the people of Ai. 26For Joshua did not draw back the hand that held out his javelin until he had destroyed a all who lived in Ai. 27But Israel did carry off for themselves the livestock and plunder of this city, as the Lord had instructed Joshua.

28So Joshua burned Ai b and made it a permanent heap of ruins, a desolate place to this day. 29He impaled the body of the king of Ai on a pole and left it there until evening. At sunset, Joshua ordered them to take the body from the pole and throw it down at the entrance of the city gate. And they raised a large pile of rocks over it, which remains to this day.

So not just the combatants but the women and children as well. This is what the Waffen SS did in Oradour-sur-Glane in France - now a permanent memorial (note the parallel!)
Oradour-sur-Glane, 10 June 1944 (a war-time tragedy in France)

Different times - there are plenty of apologetics for the Caananite genocides. Whether they are good or not remains to be seen. In reality, however this is not a particularly good reason for ditching the whole of the Old Testament, just a selection of verses or stories from particular books.

 

[Vanellus]

The elders/overseers, the επίσκοποι which translates as bishops.

There is only one Church established by Christ, vested with His authority to bind and loose, and holding fast to the traditions handed down by the Apostles, taught by their word or epistles.

and I assume that just happens to be your church!

 

[Vanellus]

Different times - there are plenty of apologetics for the Caananite genocides. Whether they are good or not remains to be seen. In reality, however this is not a particularly good reason for ditching the whole of the Old Testament, just a selection of verses or stories from particular books.

I agree with the baby and bathwater analogy but the fact that there is such apologetics for the Canaanite genocide indicates that there were issues, in understanding the OT, to be dealt with and I believe that explains Marcion's theological standpoint - it wasn't completely without reason even if it were wrong.

There's a view that Marcion's teaching and canon forced the mainstream church to decide on the canon of the whole Bible and work out the relationship between Christianity and Judaism. So God turned Marcion's wrong ideas to good.

 

[prodromos]

and I assume that just happens to be your church!

Can you trace the Baptist Church all the way back through history to the Apostles?

 

[Vanellus]

Can you trace the Baptist Church all the way back through history to the Apostles?

So am I right in thinking that the "one Church established by Christ" just happens to be your church. You didn't answer that question.

Maybe you could also define what you mean by "trace" and then explain the scriptural justification for the idea.

 

[prodromos]

So am I right in thinking that the "one Church established by Christ" just happens to be your church.

Doesn't everybody?

You didn't answer that question.

Perhaps you need to ask yourself why the Scriptures don't, in your opinion, answer the question. I believe they do. Christ established one Church, the Apostles held one faith, and they taught that one faith to those they established as elders in the community of believers. Christ promised that He would always be with the Church He established til the end of the age and that His Church would always prevail.

Maybe you could also define what you mean by "trace" and then explain the scriptural justification for the idea.

Perhaps in another thread where that is the topic.
How does your Church deal with false teaching by one of its elders?

 

[Vanellus]

I'm still waiting for an answer to the original question:

Do you think your church (the eastern orthodox church) is the "only one Church established by Christ"?

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I was thinking of putting this in the Christian history section but I'm not so much concerned with Marcion but with the issues he raised.

Marcion and Marcionism is quite a multi topic subject but I'm focussing on his reason for generating a cut down version of the Holy Scriptures (which some say spurred the Early Church to decide on a canon of scripture)

Marcion decided on 10 Pauline epistles (not the pastoral ones) and a cut down version of Luke's gospel. Marcion and his followers were concerned that the "God of the Old Testament" whom he regarded as inconsistent, jealous, wrathful and genocidal did not tally with the God of the NT gospel.

Now I don't agree with Marcion given how much of the OT is quoted in the NT. But I prefer to think he was mistaken rather than condemn him as a heretic as there are many passages in the OT which are problematic.

A typical example would be in Joshua 8:

When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the wilderness where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword, all the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it. 25Twelve thousand men and women fell that day—all the people of Ai. 26For Joshua did not draw back the hand that held out his javelin until he had destroyed a all who lived in Ai. 27But Israel did carry off for themselves the livestock and plunder of this city, as the Lord had instructed Joshua.

28So Joshua burned Ai b and made it a permanent heap of ruins, a desolate place to this day. 29He impaled the body of the king of Ai on a pole and left it there until evening. At sunset, Joshua ordered them to take the body from the pole and throw it down at the entrance of the city gate. And they raised a large pile of rocks over it, which remains to this day.

So not just the combatants but the women and children as well. This is what the Waffen SS did in Oradour-sur-Glane in France - now a permanent memorial (note the parallel!)
Oradour-sur-Glane, 10 June 1944 (a war-time tragedy in France)

Vanellus, I appreciate the issues involved with Marcion which you're bringing up for us to consider. I think it would be interesting to vet Marcion's thinking by looking at the books/letters which he thought were acceptable and see what they each had to say about where the boundaries of heresy lie. Through that, as a starting point, we might then consider further as to whether or not Marcion was indeed consistent with his own praxis for formulating his view on Christian doctrine.

In looking at your OP above, I'd suggest to anyone who feels a tendency to use Hitler as a litmus test for should pass for 'absolute injustice' to perhaps realize that this form of evaluation is problematic. To reference Hitler or any other 20th century despot as a pattern of immoral measure by which to axilogically evaluate the literary figure of God in the O.T. is rather anachronistic. To reference Hitler as an automatic point of reference for comparison to God is to not only equivocate on terms of justice and injustice, but to sneak in an unspoken assumption that whatever we just happen to articulate for ourselves today as moral absolutes are indeed............metaphysically absolute. That assumption, although reflective of basic moral notions that most of us share in Western societies today, isn't qualified upon an absolute metaphysics that can be concretely demonstrated apart from the actual existence of the God of the Bible.

Futhermore, in retrospect where Marcion is concerned, it seems to be a bit inconsistent for him to demand for the imposition of the idea of a more graceful, merciful God in Jesus when Marcion himself is surmised to have been overly strict and refused to admit persons who suffered in Roman persecutions and recanted their faith.

Moreover, being that Marcion seems to have taken the scissors to the New Testament like a veritable early incarnation of Thomas Jefferson doesn't sit well with me either. (It's like.....Guys! Don't be chopping up the Gospel of Luke to suite your own moral fancies ... )

There's likely other points upon which we could hit regarding Marcion's overall thinking, but I'm just mentioning the above items as points of contention that I have with the inconsistency that seems to have resided within his own take on biblical theology.

After all of that, I now face the question: would I do what Marcion did in addressing those who seem to have 'failed' in their faith or doctrine? .... mmmmm. Probably not. I might even offer someone like Marcion the right hand of fellowship IF he would become open to perhaps studying the Bible a little bit better.

 

[prodromos]

I'm still waiting for an answer to the original question:

Do you think your church (the eastern orthodox church) is the "only one Church established by Christ"?

I wouldn't be a member if I didn't.