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An important but frequently forgotten episode in the early church was the movement founded by Marcion near 144 A.D. It is known as Marcionism.
It is important because it explains the two gospels in the current New Testament and why they were tolerated. Marcionism was a split in the church that almost divided Christianity in two. Marcion taught only Paul had the correct gospel of Jesus, i.e., faith alone, but the twelve apostles presented a Jesus who supposedly had a superceded gospel that did not apply to Gentiles. Marcion said the twelve taught a gospel of Law where disobedience caused loss of salvation, especially found in Matthew's Gospel.
A prominent leader of early orthodox Christianity was Tertullian. In 207 A.D. Tertullian in Against Marcion rebutted Marcion by attacking Paul. He questioned whether Paul was an apostle of Jesus Christ, saying a self-serving claim, as Paul made of being an apostle of Jesus, does not suffice. Tertullian suggested Paul was a false prophet. He also called Paul the "apostle of the heretics." See immediately below, Marcionism - Excerpt from JWOS]
Has the last four hundred years been a waste? Has the descent into cheap grace at odds with Jesusâ doctrine all this time been an unprecedented error? No. This has been a valuÂable period of cleansing of doctrinal errors. However, our response to those errors ended up in over-reaction. We need to come back to Jesus. It is that simple. We can take encourÂagement from the fact that this very same error happened once before. Letâs see how the early church escaped, and perÂhaps we can simply repeat the measures taken back then.
Most Protestants are utterly unaware that Paulinism, in particular faith alone doctrine, previously threatened to overwhelm Jesusâ salvation doctrine and destroy it. In 144 A.D., there arose a ship-builder from Pontus named Marcion. He founded a church system that rivaled in numbers and influence that of the orthodox Christian church. By 150 A.D., Justin wrote that Marcionites had expanded âto the uttermost bounds of the earth.â [Justin, Apology 1.26.] It required three hundred years for the orthodox church to eventually rout out the heresy of Marcion.
Marcion was not battling the Roman Catholic church. It did not yet exist. Instead, there was a large orthodox church led from Jerusalem. The Roman bishop was just one bishop among many throughout the Mediterranean. Even if Peter was in Rome at one point, there was no effort to exercise superiority from Rome until many centuries later.
What happened is that Marcion declared in 144 A.D. that Paul alone was the true apostle for the era of grace; the twelve apostles, in particular their gospel of Matthew, were tainted by legalism; the Jesus of the twelve belonged to the God of the Old Testament; and the Jesus of Paul represented the son of a loving Father who now accepted us by faith alone.
In Marcionâs book known as the Antitheses, which exists only in fragments quoted by others, we find endorseÂment of everything Pauline, including faith alone. Marcionâs primary antithesis involved faith and law. On one hand, there was the Law given Moses, which the apostolic twelve endorsed in Matthewâs gospel. On the other hand, there was the faith alone doctrine of Paul. To solve this antithesis, MarÂcion invented the idea that Christ had two personages â the one of the twelve and the one presented by Paul. The Jesus of the twelve represented the Creator-God of the Old Testament. The Jesus of Paul represented the Good God or the Father of the New Testament. The Antitheses of 144 A.D. reads:
18.The Jewish Christ [of Matthew et al] was designated by the Creator [i.e., the God of the Old Testament] solely to restore the Jewish peoÂple from the Diaspora; but our Christ [present in Paulâs writings] was commissioned by the good God [of the new testament] to liberate all mankind.
19. The Good [God] [of Paulâs Jesus] is good toward all men; the Creator [God of the Jesus of the twelve], however, promises salvation only to those who are obedient to him [i.e., legalÂism]. The Good [God of Paulâs Jesus] redeems those who believe in him, but he does not judge those who are disobedient to him; the Creator [God of the twelveâs Jesus], however, redeems his faithful and judges and punishes the sinners.
29. The Christ [of the Creator God represented by the twelve] promises to the Jews the restoraÂtion of their former condition by return of their land and, after death, a refuge in Abrahamâs bosom in the underworld [i.e., Sheol/hell]. Our Christ [of the Jesus presented by Paul] will establish the Kingdom of God, an eternal and heavenly possession.
(Source: Dr. Peter M. Head (New Testament Research Fellow, Tyndale House), The History of the Interpretation of the Apostle Paul (2001).)
The Jerusalem church previously replied to anti-Law and faith-alone doctrine by saying Paul was an apostate and did not represent true Christianity. As Professor James Dunn notes: âThe most direct heirs of the Jewish-Christian groupÂings within earliest Christianity [i.e., the early Jerusalem church] regarded Paul as the great apostate, an arch enemy,â citing Epistula Petri 2.3; Clem. Hom. 17:18-19. (James D. G. Dunn, The Cambridge Companion to St. Paul (Cambridge University Press, 2003) at 2.)
The Jerusalem churchâs response is directly reflected in our New Testament. As Augustine noted in 413 A.D. in his treatise Faith and Works, the epistles of James (the first bishop of Jerusalem), Jude (the second bishop of Jerusalem), and Second Peter were specifically written to destroy âfaith aloneâ doctrine as inferred from Paulâs epistles. (See page 523n supra.) Second Peter even said many would fall from their âsteadfastness in Christâ by relying upon âdifficult to understandâ passages in the writings of Paul. These passages were seen as giving a âlibertyâ that Second Peter said was foreign to the true gospel. (See pages 500-504 supra.)
Tertullian, an orthodox church member in Carthage, Africa, wrote in 207 A.D. his famous rebuttal to Marcion. In it, Tertullian raised every ground possible to dispute whether Paul was truly an apostle of Jesus Christ. Tertullian even sugÂgested Paul was a false prophet as warned of by Jesus Christ. We previously quoted this daring analysis from Tertullian. (See pages 395-400 Jesus Words Only at this google-books full view link.) In that passage, Tertullian says that Paulâs claim to apostleship is totally self-serving, and by Jesusâ standards is invalid. Scholars generally now recognize this is a valid criticism of Paulâs claims. In the end, Tertullian even suggested â[Paul] is the apostle of the heretics.â (TertulÂlian, Adversus Marcion 3:5, âhaereticorum apostolusâ.)
Often, Protestant historians try to obscure the real nature of Marcionâs heresy. They focus on every other dispute than the problem of Marcionâs teaching of faith alone. While it is true that Marcion said there was a different God for the new versus the old testaments, and this claim was battled vigÂorously by Tertullian, they ignore what was at stake. MarÂcionâs goal behind that argument was to justify two different salvation doctrines. Once he divided salvation into two disÂpensations â the old and the new, Marcion could defend the new is by faith alone and the old one is by obedience. MarÂcion hence was trying to rationalize Paulâs doctrine of faith alone as belonging to a distinct dispensation of Paulâs Jesus. Thereby, it could be valid despite contradicting Jesusâ salvaÂtion doctrine in the gospel of Matthew and John (properly translated). As Arthur Cushman McGiffert, in A History of Christian Thought (C. Scribnerâs Sons: 1949) at 59 explains:
For the gospel of the free grace of God and salÂvation by faith alone had been substituted [by the twelve apostles in their gospels], so MarÂcion believed, [by] a legalism of a genuinely Jewish character.
Hence, to destroy the significance of the different salÂvation doctrine in the twelve apostlesâ gospels, Marcion claimed Paul had the right to proclaim a superseding one.
Thus, Marcion represented a vigorous effort to erase any role of repentance and obedience in the Christian docÂtrine of salvation.
Marcion expounded his main position in a work entitled Antitheses....[The God of the New Testament] was the God of grace who offered salvation to all by faith alone;.... (T. Alec Burkill, The Evolution of Christian Thought (Cornell University Press, 1971) at 42.)
After Simon Magus, it was Marcion above all whom the Fathers regarded as the arch-hereÂtic:... the law is discarded and salvation depends on faith alone. (Hans Kung, The Church (Image Books: 1976) at 316.)
Tertullian in rebuttal to Marcion conceded that the ceremonial law of the old testament was no longer applicable (the temple was destroyed a century earlier), but the moral commandments in the Law remained. To this end, TerÂtullian taught repentance and obedience remained absolutely essential to salvation. (See my prior work, Jesusâ Words Only (2007) at 405-425.)
When I encountered this history, I was shocked and in disbelief. David Bercot, a Protestant attorney like myself, was as equally startled by encountering Marcion as I was. After Bercot did a comprehensive survey of the doctrines of the early Church in his exhaustive 705 page Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs (1998), he wrote Will The Real Heretics Please Stand Up (1999). In that work, Bercot admits he disÂcovered that the early church, in âcontradiction to many of my own theological views,â taught doctrines that universally rejected teachings which we all recognize as part of modern accepted Pauline teaching. When Bercot discusses Marcion, he expresses the same shock I experienced when I first read what Marcion taught:
As surprising as all of this may be to you, what Iâm about to tell you is even more bizarre. There was a religious group labelled as hereÂtics by the early Christians, who strongly disÂputed the churchâs stance on salvation and works [i.e., that salvation depended on works]. Instead, they [i.e., the heretics] taught man is totally depraved. That we are saved solely by grace. That works play no role in salvation. And that we cannot lose our salvation once we obtain it.... (Will The Real Heretics Please Stand Up, supra, at 66.)(Emphasis added.)
It is obvious that Marcionism has revived. Many ProtÂestants likewise today argue a dispensational division exists between old and new, so that Jesusâ contrary salvation docÂtrine to Paulâs doctrine can be honestly dismissed as irreleÂvant. (See dispensationalist claims on pages 209-210 supra.)
Jesus and the early church had a solution to prevent Paulâs teachings from overturning those of Jesus. They were:
These various attacks on Paulinism were vigorous and well-sustained. Marcion was defeated. These critical analyses must be re-published for a new generation. For four hundred years, we have been entrapped within revived Marcionism. Because Christâs words were so powerful, Christianity lived on despite this albatross hanging on, weighing down His words in the wrong direction. Yet, by our dereliction of duty, Christâs message is obscured. How did this happen?
What took place in the early Protestant Reformation is that this history about Marcion was forgotten. It was primaÂrily Erasmus and Tyndale who initially realized that the reforÂmation had made a significant major mistake. It had treated Paulâs doctrines regarding âfaith aloneâ as a necessity to folÂlow even when at odds with the salvation doctrine of Jesus Christ. These two men bravely changed course. They even obviously caused Luther to change course. He too adopted double justification (i.e., salvation begins by faith but requires works and obedience for final salvation) which essentially matches Jesusâ doctrine. [See Preface to JWOS at this webpage.] Unfortunately, Lutherâs heroism of 1517-18 was not matched by a later bold declaraÂtion that he realized this error. Luther tried to make this change quietly, through an ecumenical conference with the Catholic Church in 1541. Upon Lutherâs death, he left it to Melancthon to continue this effort. Melancthon did so, causÂing the Lutheran church to adopt double justification as an official doctrine. It lasted until a short while after MelancÂthonâs death. [See Preface to JWOS at this webpage.] And thus the true gospel expired from being present in any major Protestant denomination. It survives priÂmarily only in the Pentecostal and Mennonite churches.
Consequently, we need spiritual and historical revival. We need to repent of the misleading âfaith aloneâ doctrine. We also need to refuse anyone else from taking Jesus/Yeshuaâs place as our âsole teacherâ (Matt. 23:10). We need to repent from the stain of Paulinism upon Christâs mesÂsage.
END.
The early church found the following were heresies in Marcion, but these all were doctrines taught by Paul. Hence, these parallels to Marcion whom the early church pre-325 AD universally condemned proves the church's antipathy to everything Pauline in doctrine even if having affection for Paul personally.
"Marcionâs ethics err on the side of asceticism. Tertullian claims that he forbade marriage because procreation was the invention of the Demiurge." (Robert Bradshaw, Marcion - Portrait of a Heretic, citing Benjamin Walker, Gnosticism: Its History And Influence (Wellingborough: Crucible, 1983) at 126.) Bradshaw continues:
"Marcion⊠deemed marriage âa filthiness and an obscenity.â It was a diabolical institution that had upon it the seal of Antichrist and the mark of Satan. It did nothing more than sanction sexual indulgence..." Id.
Paul taught similarly, in contradiction of Christ. In 1 Cor. 10:27-28, Paul says: "Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek marriage."
Paul in Romans 7:1-6 cannot be read to be saying anything but that when Christ died, this represented the death of the husband God who gave the Law. But when Christ rose, we were able to marry a new husband -- obviously a new God -- who did not have any link to the former Law given Moses. This disjunction of what Christ represented in His death versus the God he represented in His resurrection is how Paul explains why the Law was dissolved by Christ's death but is not in force after Jesus's resurrection. For a full discussion, see our webpage "Paul Says The God of Sinai is Dead."
This directly fed Marcion the same idea -- a key heresy that Tertullian exploited to say that Marcion believed in two Gods -- one the creator Demiurge (whom was called Yahweh and supposedly died and lives now in Sheol / hell ruling over Israelites in Sheol, when Jesus died) and one for the NT alone -- the Father -- a kindly loving God superior to the Demiurge.
Dr David L Baker in his book Two Testaments, One Bible (Inter-Varsity Press 1976/1991) at 51-52 says: "There is in the church a habit of simply ignoring the Old Testament.. Bible study groups spend little time on Old Testament passages. It is clear therefore that the modern church, in spite of its official rejection of Marcionism and Neo-Marcionism, has often allowed implicit Marcionism in practice.â
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2. Peter Holmes on Marcion's canon alterations in a footnote on page 364 in his translation entitled Tertullian, The five books of Quintus Sept. Flor. Tertullianus Against Marcion (trans. Peter Holmes) (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1868) .This footnote discusses all the various subtle variants that Marcion made to what was otherwise very similar to Luke's Gospel text.
3. In our webpage "Marcionites - Tampering with the Text" we examine how Marcion's view was that Jesus was God, and as such, Jesus could have no brothers or sisters. Marcionites altered the text to remove reference to the same.
4. For more information, see B. Aland, âMarcion, Marcionites, Marcionism,â Encyclopedia of the Early Church (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co. 1992) Vol. 1 at 524.
5. On James & Jude as bishops, see âAppendix to the works of HippolyÂtus,â The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Fathers of The Third Century (ed. Donaldson, Roberts & Coxe) (1886) Vol. V at 255.
6. On Marcion's work Antithesis trying to prove there is a good NT God v. an evil OT God, see "Antithesis of Marcion" which we preserved at our website.