The New Marcionism?

Over the past few months I have come across posts online referring to the ancient heresy of Marcionism. Not only is Marcionism alive and thriving in America today, it has infected the church. Many ministers have been swept away by a form of this destructive ancient heresy, or so the posts have been saying. After some reflection on the subject I have decided to pen a polemic of sorts and deal with what Marcionism actually is and to see if it is truly alive and well in the church today. Before I go any further a word must be said about heresy. There are different kinds of heresy and not all heresy can be considered “damnable heresy” and may fall within the bounds of heterodoxy (which means: sort of heretical or heresy lite). In light of this we must be cautious when tempted to slap the heresy label on a theological point we either do not know or do not understand. Also it must be noted that the history of the church is vast and, contrary to popular belief in many circles, the church did not suffer a great apostasy. The Holy Spirit has always been present from Pentecost to today. The third person of the Holy Trinity did not disappear after the Apostles died only to pop up again later at Azusa Street.

Firstly it must be asked, “Who can judge if something is heresy or not? By what authority can one make a pronouncement of heresy?” All too often in discourse, especially on the internet, well meaning Christians, rightly concerned about the state of the church in America, throw the term around to anyone who disagrees with their point of view. The Evangelical church has reduced Christianity down to what Dr. Bradley Nassif calls “Christological minimalism.” What is the bare amount someone needs to believe to be saved? This is how Christianity is approached and, depending on what group a person fellowships with, this will be different as is their definition of heresy. For example, Oneness Pentecostals consider the doctrine of the Trinity to be a man made addition not something that the Bible, although not mentioning it by name, teaches.

This leaves us with a few problems here: Oneness Pentecostals would be considered by most confessional Christians as heretics due to their refusal to affirm the doctrine of the Trinity. They themselves would consider themselves as biblical literalists and not as heretics. See the problem? By whose authority can one Christian group consider another heretical? This is exacerbated by the subdivision of Protestantism into thousands of independent splinter groups, each one totally free from, and in many cases eschewing, any sort of authority structure beyond their own interpretation of Scripture. The great gift of the Reformation is also its greatest curse namely that the Bible should be available in the regular languages of every Christian. This great blessing is counterbalanced by the consequences of every Christian making their own pronouncements and interpretations divorced from any sort of history or tradition. This is why Christianity has creeds and why Christians, though they may not know the creeds when they come to faith in Christ, should come to know and affirm the historic boundaries of their faith.

So much more can be said on this subject but I will distill it to this point: Independent churches have no guiding confessions beyond their own theological point of view, which is usually a hodgepodge of different theological influences ranging from the dubious to the historic, so they cannot justify charges of heresy because they have nothing to judge heresy by beyond their own interpretation of Scripture. Many would profess affirmation to some of the creeds but many would actually disagree with the creeds and make their own interpretations the primary guiding factor. However, confessional churches do have guiding theological principles based on history and the creeds, and a charge of heresy from them would carry weight.

Now that the groundwork on heresy has been laid we turn to Marcionism. Marcionism is named for the heretic Marcion. The church usually named heresy based on the primary person responsible for its dissemination like Pelagius, Arius, Nestorius, and Sabellius (you get the idea). Marcion was born to a Christian family; his father was the bishop of Sinope near the Black Sea. He was brought up in orthodox Christianity of that time and became a successful merchant. This allowed him to pursue his various theological interests. He began to preach in Asia Minor and eventually went to Rome. The church there excommunicated him around the year 144 and as a result he set up his own “Christian” church. Christian historian Justo Gonzalez said that Marcion did so possibly in order to differentiate Christianity from Judaism as the Romans had, in his lifetime, put down a serious uprising of apocalyptic Jews. Gonzalez also notes that Marcion may have thought that if he could divorce Christianity from its Jewish roots he could help cease persecution against Christians. Regardless of his intentions he did great damage to the church that lasted a few centuries, but great good came from it as well. Marcion developed a very robust though skewed Pauline theology and rejected completely the writings of what came to be known as the Old Testament. The following is a summary of his theology:

·      The God of Israel is wrathful, evil, vindictive, unforgiving, dictatorial God who, although was responsible for creating the world, is vastly different from the loving Father Jesus professed to be sent from.

·      The Father’s purpose was to have a spiritual world but the Old Testament God, YHWH, corrupted his plans and created a physical world and populated it with humanity.

·      Similar to the Gnostics he saw the created world as a sham and saw Jesus’ Incarnation as an illusion. If the Father wanted a spiritual world and YHWH corrupted that world then Jesus’ Incarnation is an illusion. If Jesus were physically born of the Virgin Mary then he would have been under the control of YHWH. So, for Marcion, Jesus had to be a spirit being that only looked like a grown human man (which was the heresy of docetism that the church, specifically St. Ignatius, had already condemned in the early 100’s).

·      Christians should completely reject what came to be known as the Old Testament since the OT God is not the same as the God Christians worshipped (even though Jesus and the Apostles quoted from the Septuagint which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures).

·      Since there was no canon at this time Marcion made his own canon comprised of the Gospel of Luke, due to it’s indirect attachment to St. Paul, and the Pauline Epistles except 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus. This is problematic as St. Paul’s Epistles refer to Judaism but Marcion justified its presence in the Pauline corpus by accrediting it to later Judaizers.

·      Since the material world is not the ideal world then people must live as free from the material world as possible. Celibacy and extreme asceticism was the order of the day for the Marcionites.

·      Lastly Marcion rejected the Old Testament entirely because of the contrast it created between law and gospel. If the God of the OT was not the true God of love then law itself had to have been evil as well since the law required justice and punishment for infractions.

As a result of these theological aberrations Marcion caused great damage to the still burgeoning church chiefly because he organized his own church complete with hierarchy, liturgy, and a canon of scripture. It was so similar to the Christian church of it’s day that it was difficult to distinguish between the two and bishops had to warn their flock to be on the lookout. So Marcion not only was a polytheist he also had flavors of Gnosticism and docetism in his theology. In his mind the Old Testament should be rejected in its entirety and only a select number of Epistles from St. Paul should be considered binding.

What does the heresy of Marcion then have to do with the church in America today? If some preachers are to be believed then Marcionism is still very present in the church as something to be overcome. But is this assertion true? I think it is true that the effects of Marcionism can still be seen but that Marcionism itself as a belief system is no longer with us in various forms. To be sure there are some Christian denominations that will not preach often from the Old Testament and there are those who have oversimplified the relationship between law and gospel in order to make the idea of a loving God more palatable. The charge though that Marcionism is still in the church is a charge we can discard. Many charges of Marcionism come from Christian groups themselves that may not have an accurate understanding of law and gospel. Some Christian groups believe that the Old Testament is the key to understanding how government should function in the life of the United States of America irrespective of the context of the law, who it was given specifically for, and for what purpose. Those that do not agree with this theological viewpoint are labeled as heretics, or as severely misguided as scripture clearly teaches that the Old Testament law is the standard form of God’s perfect government applicable to all men at all time.

The tension between the law of the Old Testament and the grace of God is something that theologians have been grappling with since the early days of the church itself. Some have even noted that, and I agree, the giving of the law itself IS an act of grace from a loving God. We can reject the charges of popular Marcionism because the Evangelical church as a whole rejects the notion that YHWH is a different God, rejects dualism, rejects the docetic view of Jesus, affirms the goodness of the created world even though it has been marred by sin, affirms the Old Testament as part of God’s written word to us, and affirms that God’s love and his law are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the grace of God actually gives us the ability to follow the moral principles as laid out by the law. As Gonzalez wrote, “Jesus does not abandon the moral law of Israel but helps us grow into people who are more able to live by it.”

So why then have these trumped up charges of Marcionism arisen? Historian Diarmid MacCulloch, commenting on Marcion, wrote something that is also applicable to those who foster the charges of popular Marcionism. He wrote, “… It is clear that he (Marcion) was a literalist who despised any figurative or allegorical interpretation of scripture and rather took the first apparent sense. If that sense clashed with his own sense of true religion, he simply rejected the text.” Unfortunately there is nothing more American, and in most cases heretical, then that.

Sources:

Gonzalez, Catherine & Gonzalez, Justo L. Heretics for Armchair Theologians. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008.

Gonzalez, Justo L. The Story of Christianity Vol. 1. New York: HarperOne, 2010.

MacCulloch, Diarmid. Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. New York: Viking Penguin, 2009.