What is Marcionism?

Marcion, in the second century, was another Gnostic heretic, but differed perhaps from all others. He taught that the God of the Old Testament was not the same as the God of the New, nor the Messiah of the Old the same as the Christ of the New; and other foolish and hurtful things. Tertullian answered him, pointing out many passages in the Old Testament quoted in the New. It is recorded that in his latter days, he repented of the schism he had caused, and sought to be restored. He was told that he must seek to restore those he had led astray; but he died soon afterwards.

100 Marcion's recension of Luke begins here. He passed over the Baptist as one belonging to the Old Dispensation. Marcion may be regarded as the first Biblical critic (Harnack, "History of Dogma," pp. 237-240; cf. Bebb, art. in Hastings' "Dict. of Bible," and Burkitt, chapter 9). What we know of him, (cf. notes 14, 17, above) comes chiefly from Tertullian, Adv. Marc. 5, and Epiphanius, Haer. xlii. Irenaeus says that he "mutilated the Scriptures … curtailing the Gospel according to Luke and the Epistles of Paul" (iii. 12, 12). Semler suggested that our Gospel and Marcion's were compiled from the same original source; and after his time arose the idea that the Gospel according to Luke was an expansion of that used by Marcion; but critics seem now all to have returned to the old view. The passages omitted by this Gnostic are enumerated in Gloag's work.

Marcion's system was strongly Anti-Jewish; he questioned our Lord's speaking as in Matt. 5:17 (Tertullian, Adv. Marc. 4:7, v. 14; but cf. Luke 16:17). The third Gospel was the only one that he seems to have recognized; and the use which he made in connection with it of some of the Pauline Epistles, may have sustained the impression that there is a strong Pauline cast upon Luke's record. See Godet, "New Testament Studies," p. 44. This Pauline colouring has been specially investigated by Resch in vol. xii. (1904) of the New Series of Monographs edited by Gebhardt and Harnack (see in particular p. 571 ff. of his Dissertation). Cf. Swete, "St. Paul assimilated that side of our Lord's teaching which this Gospel has specially preserved" (" Studies in the Teaching of our Lord," p. 119). It is generally admitted that there are passages in LUKE alien to parts of the Epistles, e.g., Luke 12:35 compared with Eph. 6:14; Luke 18:1 with 2 Thess. 1:11; Luke 21:34 with 1 Thess. 5:3; Luke 24:34 with 1 Cor. 15:5; whilst Luke 21 may be read throughout alongside of 1 Thess. 5. As for Luke 10:7 (cf. 1 Tim. 5:18 and 1 Cor. 9:14) see note there. The Expositor, it will be seen, compares Luke's Gospel with the Epistle to the Romans.

Marcion, to serve his own evil purposes, attempted to make a new gospel out of the Gospel by Luke. He altered and cut out what he pleased. This caused the Fathers Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Ephiphanius to compare carefully Marcion's gospel with that by Luke and point out the alterations.

These things naturally caused the Fathers to exercise the greater care and watchfulness over the text of the word of God, and would have caused them to be the more cautious in making their quotations. Some of them may have fallen into errors themselves, but they wished to pass off as orthodox, and did not attempt to alter the word of God as Marcion had done.

Besides speaking of a certain class of beings, half-gods of different rank, they denied that God had created the world, but that an inferior being had called it into existence. This system taught that matter is evil and that the only way to escape from evil would be to repudiate matter completely. The worst feature of these Gnostic teachings was a denial of the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ and His work of redemption. It was a philosophical, theosophical speculation, anti-Christian throughout. Well did Polycarp say to the Gnostic Marcion, "I know thee, thou firstborn of Satan." While this evil system had not yet fully developed in the Colossian church, the foundation for it had been laid and the Holy Spirit anticipated its coming, and in sending this document to the Colossians answers the false teachings of Gnosticism. This is of equal interest and importance to the Church in the twentieth century. "Christian Science," so-called, that philosophical-theosophical-mystical cult, is a satanic revival of ancient Gnosticism. The Epistle to the Colossians must, therefore, be an effectual weapon against this cult, which denies the two pillars of Christianity, the Son of God and the finished work of the cross.

Upon the connection of the Synoptic with the Textual problem, see Salmon, p. 108 f. Had Luke's Gospel been a mere enlargement of Marcion's, the canonical document would have been as late as 130 A.D. Scholars now commonly agree that Marcion mutilated it for dogmatic purposes, although a few cling to the idea that he used the first or shorter edition. See further, Thirlwall, pp. li. — lxiv.

The extreme views range between the last decade of the first century and the year 120 (Jülicher), In considering such opinions one must work back from about the year 160, i.e., from the time of Justin Martyr. While not naming our Evangelist, Justin speaks of "the Gospel," a term current in his time for all four records, which make up the "Diatessaron" of his pupil Tatian, an English translation of which may be seen in J. Hamlyn Hill's "The Earliest Life of Christ" (1910). Thirlwall (Introduction to Schleiermacher's "Essay of Luke," p. lxiv. ff.) considered that Justin's looseness in quotation (dwelt on by Cassels in "Supernatural Religion") was due to his regarding the New Testament as a commentary on the Books of the Hebrew Canon, which he quoted more carefully (p. lxxiii.). Somewhat earlier was Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, whose date is put by Harnack at 145; by Stanton, at 140; by Abbott, at 115-130. The testimony of this old bishop is of less account because he avowedly preferred oral to written accounts. But in Marcion, son of a bishop of Synope in Pontus, who was at Rome about 140 A.D., we have a witness of prime importance, because the substance of a Pauline gospel put forth by him is manifestly drawn from some recension of our third Gospel: see Westcott, on the Canon, chapter 4. Akin to Marcion's doctrinal system was that of his fellow Gnostic Valentinian (circ. 130), who, with Basilides, a contemporary heretic, seems also to have been acquainted with the contents of Luke's Gospel. We are thus carried back to the early years of the second century; and then, for the last decade of the first, are met by the question whether Luke had read Josephus' Antiquities (published in the winter of 93-94) because of similarity in the language used by the Evangelist and by the Jewish historian.

It is said the human mind never was so active as it was at this time. They said that matter was evil, that the principle of evil was the God of the Old Testament, etc. That Satan inspired these vain thoughts and speculations, there can be no doubt. They denied Jesus Christ, come in flesh, not simply that He was come in flesh, which was something about Him, but they denied Himself, when so come. They denied that Jesus was the Christ, they denied also that He was the Son of the Father; that is, they denied Him, first, in His Person, and then in His relations, both to man and to God the Father, as Messiah — Anointed Man; and as Son of the Father; a threefold rejection. "He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son." (1 John 2:22.) They maintained also the eternity of matter.

539 "This is My body given for you." The unleavened cake declared His sacrificial death. Cf. 1 Cor. 11:29, the Lord's "body," which cannot mean the Church, described in Scripture as the "body of Christ." Tertullian uses the words against Marcion (book iv., chapter 40) by saying, "That is, the figure of My body. … It would not contribute very well to the support of Marcion's theory of a phantom body, that the bread should have been crucified." This was before the days of Transubstantiation!

The two Epistles to Timothy and the one to Titus are generally called the pastoral Epistles, because they were addressed to these servants of the Lord who had been put in charge of important churches. Timothy ministered in Ephesus (1 Tim. 1:3) and Titus in Crete (Titus 1:5). There never was a doubt expressed in the early Church that these epistles were written by the Apostle Paul. Quotations from them are found in the writings of Clement of Rome (96 A.D.); Polycarp of Smyrna (110 A.D.); Ignatius of Antioch (110 A.D.); Irenaeus (175 A.D.); Theophilus of Antioch (168 A.D.); Justin Martyr and others. The Syriac version, known by the name Peshito, made about 135 A.D., contains these Epistles, as well as other ancient versions. The greatest scholars of the early Church attested them as genuine. Some of the heretics, like the Gnostic Marcion, and Tatian, rejected them, and so do the destructive critics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is hardly necessary to say that the style and internal evidences establish fully the Pauline authorship.

In harmony with this evidence is the testimony of the oldest fourth century Greek manuscripts, which give the title of the Epistle as "Joannou-A"--that is--"John 1." Its rejection by the gnostic Marcion is of no importance, for he excluded from the Scriptures all the writings of the Apostle because they deal a death-blow to his anti-Christian inventions. Lucke, one of the great scholars of bygone days, states that the Gospel of John and the Epistles of John are the genuine works of the apostle, and he adds, "Incontestably, then, our Epistle must be numbered among those canonical books which are most strongly upheld by ecclesiastical tradition."