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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: MAL-MAR |
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MARCION and THE MARCIONITE CHURCHES. In the period between 130 and 18o A.D. the varied and complicated Christian fellowships in the Roman Empire crystallized into close and mutually exclusive societieschurches with fixed constitutions and creeds, schools with distinctive esoteric doctrines, associations for worship with peculiar mysteries, and ascetic sects with special rules of conduct. Of ecclesiastical organizations the most important, next to Catholicism, was the Marcionite Community. Like the Catholic Church, this body professed to comprehend everything belonging to Christianity. It admitted all believers without distinction of age, sex, rank or culture. It was no mere school for the learned, disclosed no mysteries for the privileged, but sought to lay the foundation of the Christian community on the pure gospel, the authentic institutes of Christ. The pure gospel, however, Marcion found to be everywhere more or less corrupted and mutilated in the Christian circles of his time. His undertaking thus resolved itself into a reformation of Christen-dom. This reformation was to deliver Christendom from false Jewish doctrines by restoring the Pauline conception of the gospel, Paul being, according to Marcion, the only apostle who had rightly understood the new message of salvation as delivered by Christ. In Marcion's own view, therefore, the founding of his churchto which he was first driven by oppositionamounts to a reformation of Christendom through a return to the gospel of Christ and to Paul; nothing was to be accepted beyond that. This of itself shows that it is a mistake to reckon Marcion among the Gnostics. A dualist he certainly was, but he was not a Gnostic. For he ascribed salvation, not to " knowledge " but to" faith "; he appealed openly to the whole Christian world; and he nowhere consciously added foreign elements to the revelation given through Christ. It is true that in many features his Christian systemif we may use the expressionresembles the so-called Gnostic systems; but the first duty of the historian is to point out what Marcion plainly aimed at; only in the second place have we to inquire how far the result corresponded with those purposes. The doctrines of Marcion and the history of his churches from the 2nd to the 7th century are known to us from the controversial works of the Catholic fathers. From Justin onwards, almost every eminent Church teacher takes some notice of Marcion, while very many write extensive treatises against him. The most important of those which have come down to us are the controversial pieces of Irenaeus (in his great work against heretics), Tertullian (Adv. Marc. i.v.), Hippolytus, Pseudo-Origen Adamantius, Epiphanius, and the Armenian Esnik.l From these works the contents of the Marcionite Gospel, and also the text of Paul's epistles in Marcion's recension, can be settled with tolerable accuracy. His opponents, moreover, have preserved some expressions of his, with extracts from his principal work; so that our knowledge of Marcion's views is in part derived from the best sources. Marcion was a wealthy shipowner, belonging to Sinope in Pontus. He appears to have been a convert from Paganism to Christianity, although it was asserted in later times that his father had been a bishop. That report is probably as untrustworthy as another, that he was excommunicated from the Church for seducing a virgin. What we know for certain is that after the death of Hyginus, bishop of Rome (or c. 139 A.D.), he arrived, in the course of his travels, at Rome, and made a hand-some donation of money to the local church. Even then, how-ever, the leading features of his peculiar system must have been already thought out. At Rome he tried to gain acceptance for them in the college of presbyters and in the church; indeed he had previously made similar attempts in Asia Minor. But he now encountered such determined opposition from the majority of the congregation that he found it necessary to withdraw from the great church and establish in Rome a community of his own. This was about the year 144. The new society increased in the two following decades; and very soon numerous sister-churches were flourishing in the east and west of the empire. Marcion took up his residence permanently in Rome, but still undertook journeys for the propagation of his opinions. In Rome he became acquainted with the Syrian Gnostic Cerdo, whose speculations influenced the development of the Marcionite theology. Still Marcion seems never to have abandoned his design of gaining over the whole Church to his gospel. The proof of this -is found, partly in the fact that he tried to establish relations with Polycarp
sharp
earnest endeavour to unite Christians on the footing of the " pure gospel." When he died is not known, but his death can scarcely have been much later than the year 165.The distinctive teaching of Marcion originated in a comparison of the Old Testament with the gospel of Christ and the theology of the apostle Paul. Its motive was not cosmological or meta-physical, but religious and historical. In the gospel he found a God revealed who is goodness and love, and who desires faith and love from men. This God he could not discover in the Old Testament; on the contrary, he saw there the revelation of a just, stern, jealous, wrathful and variable God, who requires from his servants blind obedience, fear and outward righteousness. Overpowered by the majesty and novelty of the Christian message of salvation, too conscientious to rest satisfied with the ordinary attempts at the solution of difficulties, while prevented by the limitations of his time from reaching an historical insight into the relation of Christianity to the Old Testament and to Judaism, he believed that he expressed Paul's view by theEsnik's presentation of the Marcionite system is a late production, and contains many speculations that cannot be charged upon Marcion himself.hypothesis of two Gods: the just God of the law (the God of the Jews, who is also the Creator of the world), and the good God, the Father of Jesus Christ. Paradoxes in the history of religion and revelation which Paul draws out, and which Marcion's contemporaries passed by as utterly incomprehensible, are here made the foundation of an ethico-dualistic conception of history and of religion. It may be said that in the 2nd century only one ChristianMarciontook the trouble to understand Paul; but it must be added that he misunderstood him. The profound reflections of the apostle on the radical antithesis of law and gospel, works and faith, were not appreciated in the 2nd century. Marcion alone perceived their decisive religious importance, and with them confronted the legalizing, and in this sense judaizing, tendencies of his Christian contemporaries. But the Pauline ideas lost their truth under his treatment; for, when it is denied that the God of redemption is at the same time the almighty Lord of heaven and earth, the gospel is turned upside down. The assumption of two Gods necessarily led to cosmological speculations. Under the influence of Cerdo, Marcion carried out his ethical dualism in the sphere of cosmology; but the fact that his system is not free from contradictions is the best proof that all along religious knowledge, and not philosophical, had the chief
original
2 On the relation of matter to the Creator, Marcion himself seems not to have speculated, though his followers may have done so. Marcion's teaching at this point forestalls the patripassian christology of Noetus and Praxeas (see Neander, Church Hist. H. 143).[ED.] the Pauline epistles.1 He likewise composed a book, called the Antitheses,2 in which he proved the disparity of the two Gods, from a comparison of the Old Testament with the evangelical writings. On the basis of these writings Marcion proclaimed the true Christianity, and founded churches. He taught that all who put their trust in the good God, and his crucified Son, renounce their allegiance to the Demiurge, and approve themselves by good works of love, shall be saved. But he taught furtherand here we trace the influence of the current gnosticism on Marcion that only the spirit of man is saved by the good God; the body, because material, perishes. Accordingly his ethics also were thoroughly dualistic. By the " works of the Demiurge," which the Christian is to flee, he meant the whole " service of the perishable." The Christian must' shun everything sensual, and especially marriage, and free himself from the body by strict asceticism. The original
It is not surprising, therefore, that even in the 2nd century the disciples of Marcion diverged in several directions. Rigorous asceticism, the rejection of the Old Testament, and the recognition of the " new God " remained common to all Marcionites, who, moreover, like the Catholics, lived together in close communities ruled by bishops and presbyters (although their constitution was originally very loose, and sought to avoid every appearance of " legality "). Some, however, accepted three first principles (the evil, the just, the good) ; others held by two, but regarded the Demiurge as the god of evil, i.e. the devil; while a third party, like Apelles, the most distinguished of Marcion's pupils, saw in the Demiurge only an apostate angel
worship is Marcionite, and was found on a stone which had stood over the doorway of a house in a Syrian village
1 Marcion was the earliest critical student of the New Testament canon and text. It is noteworthy that he refused to admit the genuineness of the Pastoral
2 Some have seen a reference to this work in i Tim. vi. 20.(ED.)of the 13th century are connected with these, they also may be included in the history of Marcionitism. See A. Harnack, History of Dogma, i. 266, 286; F. Loofa, Dogmengeschichte pp. '11114; G. Kruger, Early Christian Literature, and art. in Hauck-Herzog's Realencyklopadie per Prot. Theol. and Kirche, xii. ; F. J. Foakes Jackson's Christian Difficulties of the Second and Twentieth Centuries, is a study of Marcion and his relation to modern thought. (A. HA.) End of Article: MARCION If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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