Marcion: The Notorious Heretic of the Early Church
From its earliest times, the church has battled its share of heretics. This should come as no surprise seeing that Jesus warns, “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves” (Mt. 7:15).
Jesus knew that false teachers were a real threat to the church, and based on two thousand years of combatting heretics, it seems he was on to something. Heresy has been and will be a problem for the church until Christ returns. And fundamental to the false teacher’s success is his ability to deceive.
Notice again how Jesus describes false teachers. They’re wolves in sheep’s clothing. That is, they don’t just come right out and tell everyone they’re heretics. They mask what they’re saying with little kernels of truth so as to make their teaching sound biblical and attractive.
Case in point. Nobody in the church is tempted to worship Satan because there’s nothing scriptural about that. The heretic would have to be extremely skilled to demonstrate how worshipping Satan is the Christian thing to do. But when someone points to a Scripture text that says “you are not under the law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:14), and proceeds to tell you that the Old Testament is irrelevant, they’re more successful in gaining followers.
Truth be told, most contemporary heresies have been around since the early church. And knowing how the church dealt with these false teachers in the past will go a long way in helping us combat them today.
In this post, I want to highlight one of the most notorious heretics in church history, who among other deviant views, rejected the Old Testament. His name is Marcion.
BACKGROUND ON MARCION
Marcion (AD 85-160) was the son of a Christian bishop and teacher in Rome. While information on his life is scant, we know he was a wealthy ship owner with excellent organizational skills.
Around AD 140, Marcion arrived in Rome and made large financial donations to the church. Almost immediately, he used his newfound status in the church and began disseminating his heretical views. By the year AD 144, however, the Roman church excommunicated him and refunded his money to him.
Marcion, though, didn’t go quietly. Because of his wealth and organizational skills, he was able to establish alternative churches sympathetic to his doctrinal views all around the Mediterranean. Renowned church historian Henry Chadwick calls Marcion “the most radical and to the church the most formidable of heretics.”1
GNOSTIC INFLUENCE
Gnosticism was an already existing heresy which had radical effects on Marcion. Fundamental to Gnosticism was dualism — a dichotomy between the physical world (which is evil) and the spiritual world (which is good).
Gnosticism concocted a creation myth which suggested that the one true God who is pure spirit didn’t create the universe. Instead, an “aeon” (a lesser god), who emanated from his being, rebelled against him and created the world we live in with all its evil. This rebellious aeon is “Elohim” — the God of Judaism.
In order to achieve salvation one must obtain a “secret knowledge” (gnosis in the Greek) which was only revealed from another “aeon” named Jesus. By receiving this secret knowledge one could escape the physical world to the spiritual domain. Thus, salvation only included a spiritual soul, not a physical body.
MARCION ON THE BIBLE
Because of Marcion’s gnostic leanings, he rejected the Old Testament since it came from the rebellious “aeon” Elohim. We see this rejection most clearly in his work, Antithesis, where he pits the New Testament against the Old Testament.
Marcion’s main contention was that the God from the Old Testament was a God of vengeance, jealousy, and wrath, whereas Jesus from the New Testament was kind, merciful, and loving. And because Marcion didn’t think these qualities were compatible, he concluded that they’re two different Gods.
Marcion’s Bible, therefore, excluded the entire Old Testament. Additionally, he rejected most of the New Testament because of its strong Jewish overtones. He loved Paul though. Reason being, he believed Paul shared his disdain for the Old Testament with his repeated declaration that “we’re no longer under the law but under grace.”
Marcion also rejected three of the Gospels and parts of Luke which seemed to speak highly of Judaism and the Old Testament. In the end, Marcion’s canon of Scripture included a mutilated version of Luke, and ten letters of the Apostle Paul. He rejected everything else.
MARCION ON JESUS
Because Marcion had gnostic leanings, he believed everything material was evil, including physical bodies. Thus, when it came to his view of Jesus, he denied the incarnation — the belief that Jesus really had a flesh-and-blood body. Nothing so pure, according to Marcion, could be mixed with something so vile as humanity. Instead, it only appeared that Jesus took on flesh. This view, known as Docetism (taken from the Greek word dokeo which means “to seem” or “to appear”) was common among the gnostics.
Marcion flatly denies the physical birth narratives of Jesus, and instead, argues that the divine Jesus came down to earth at the start of his ministry to save us from Elohim’s wrath. Furthermore, because he wasn’t truly human, Jesus never suffered and died on the cross.
THE CHURCH’S RESPONSE TO MARCION
As you can imagine, the church did not think too highly of Marcion. As I previously mentioned, his church excommunicated him after listening to him present his views.
Beyond his local church in Rome, several church fathers soundly rejected Marcion as well. These fathers include Justin Martyr who complained that Marcion “has caused many of every nation to speak blasphemies, and to deny that God is the maker of the universe.”2Irenaeus, another church father, also spoke out against the heretic. He especially lambasts Marcion’s view of the Scriptures in this quote:
Wherefore also Marcion and his followers have betaken themselves to mutilating the Scriptures, not acknowledging some books at all; and, curtailing the Gospel according to Luke and the Epistles of Paul, they assert that these are alone authentic, which they have themselves thus shortened.3
While many church fathers spilled ink over Marcion, none matched Tertullian’s critique. Tertullian, writing late in the second century, wrote a five volume work titled Against Marcion. In this work Tertullian declares that Marcion’s denial of Christ’s humanity is detrimental to the Christian faith. After all, if Jesus wasn’t human, how could he suffer and die for our sins?
Additionally, Tertullian raised concerns about Marcion’s authority. He challenged any Marcionite church to trace their roots back to the apostles. Tertullian recognized that no Orthodox church ever sanctioned Marcion’s views or his missionary activity. Bottom line, Marcion had rejected the teaching of the apostles and had gone rogue.
While addressing Marcion’s false dichotomy between the wrathful God of the Old Testament and the loving God of the New, Tertullian argued that God is both merciful and just, and this combination of traits is seen most visibly at the cross. It was there that God poured out his wrath on sin while demonstrating his love and grace toward all who would believe.
Finally, Tertullian demonstrates that Jesus was the creator (Jn. 1:1-3), rather than a different deity who had come to rescue humanity from a different creator. In other words, Jesus isn’t some different deity from the Old Testament.
FIGHTING HERESY TODAY
Truth be told, some of Marcion’s views still circulate today, even in Evangelical circles. Most prominent is the view that we should divorce ourselves from the Old Testament and focus exclusively on Jesus.
The problem with this take is that Jesus loved the Old Testament. He quoted from it frequently, as did the apostles. Moreover, Jesus taught that he was the fulfillment of the Old Testament. In other words, without the backdrop of the Jewish Scriptures, much of Jesus’ mission doesn’t make any sense. For example, without the sacrificial system in the Old Testament, Jesus’ atoning sacrifice on the cross becomes insignificant.
As we’ve seen, the church went to great lengths to refute Marcion’s false teaching. And when you read these church fathers, you quickly discover that one of their motivations for combatting heresy was their love for people. They loved their fellow man too much to allow heresy to lead them away from the true Gospel of Jesus Christ.
As diligent as the early church was to fight for sound doctrine, the Christian’s calling is the same today. We can’t afford to be apathetic toward doctrinal error. We can’t be good with the peril of human souls. Instead, we must speak the truth. For speaking the truth is the loving thing to do.
