Marcion (c. 85–c. 159)

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MARCION
(c. 85–c. 159)

Marcion was one of the most significant and, in a way, perplexing figures of the second century CE—significant both for founding the Marcionite Church and for providing the stimulus for the formation of the New Testament canon, and perplexing because of the difficulty of classifying him among contemporary thinkers. He is often called a Gnostic, and there are certainly distinct affinities with Gnosticism in his cosmology and soteriology; but his lack of a mythical anthropology and of any syncretistic tendency sets him apart.

A native of Sinope in Pontus, he was born c. 85 and must have died c. 159, since there is no suggestion in our sources that he survived until the reign of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (161–180). According to the ecclesiastical writer Hippolytus, Marcion was the son of a bishop, and indeed there are indications that he grew up within the Christian faith. Excommunicated by his own father because of his unorthodox views, he traveled first to Asia Minor, then to Rome (c. 138–140), where he was at first closely associated with the church. In 144 he was again excommunicated, and he founded a church of his own that was for a time a serious menace to "orthodox" Christianity.

Marcion was a Bible critic and theologian rather than a philosopher; indeed, Adolf von Harnack describes him as "fundamentally a Biblicist and an opponent of all philosophy." The root of his teaching lies in the Pauline antithesis of Law and Gospel, but he exaggerated this contrast to the extent of distinguishing the Creator (the God of the Old Testament) from the true God, in himself unknown and alien to this world but manifested in the person of Jesus. This conception of the "alienness" of the true God Marcion shared with the Gnostics, but for him this concept developed from the study of the Scriptures rather than from philosophical speculation. Rejecting allegorical interpretation, he was unable to reconcile the Old Testament description of God with the New Testament portrayal of God as the father of Christ. Unlike the Gnostics as well as some of his followers, Marcion himself held that the Creator is not evil but merely just. Only the true God is good, a God of love. From this initial contrast the whole of Marcion's system follows naturally. This world, which is the work of the Creator, is imperfect. The Jewish law, and indeed all positive morality, is a means by which the Creator exercises control over humankind and is therefore to be rejected. Marcion's conclusions, however, led not to licentious antinomianism but to asceticism: Marriage and sexual intercourse, for example, were prohibited as devices for the continued procreation of subjects of the Creator. Salvation is deliverance from the world and its God and is effected at the price of Christ's blood, solely by God's grace and not because the redeemed were considered "akin" to the supreme good God, as the Gnostics believed.

The gospel brought by Jesus was misunderstood and falsified by the apostles: Only Paul had the truth of the matter. Marcion therefore rejected not only the Old Testament but also those parts of the New Testament that, according to him, were contaminated by Judaism. His canon consisted of ten letters of Paul, beginning with Galatians, and an expurgated Gospel of Luke. He also set out his teaching in his Antitheses, which was largely composed of contrasts between the two Gods. Marcion's works have not survived, and we are dependent on information provided by his opponents (especially Tertullian) His followers (especially Apelles) later modified his teachings so that they were in closer conformity with ordinary Gnosticism. Some of the "Gnostic" elements in his own theology have been attributed to the influence of the second-century Gnostic Cerdo.

Marcionism was at its height in the latter half of the second century. Thereafter it tended to decline in the West, and the remnants of Marcionite churches were often absorbed into Manichaeanism. In the East it had a longer history, surviving down to the fifth century or later.