Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Mon Feb 26, 2024 11:46 pm
Here we find a doctrine that sounds very similar to what puzzled the church fathers so much about the Marcionites, i.e., that man did not have any knowledge of God before He came. I will at once declare this to be the most interesting feature of the Epistle ..
This is not to say that I am sure that the Epistle to Diognetus is from a "Marcionite.. If instead that separateness of this stream of tradition came into existence through a process of repudiation and self-definition that took many more decades to unfold, then a search for "Marcionites" in the first half of the second century could be an inadequate framing of the question. What we can comment on, however, is a nexus of thought (which may have been expressed variously and not only by Marcion) that is also reflected in later anti-Marcionite accounts. This is termed "the Marcionite nexus" for convenience, rather than on the assumption that everyone under this rubric would consider themselves to be connected with Marcion...
The author later says (quoted above) that nobody had knowledge of God or had received a revelation from God before He came as Jesus (the "previously unknown God" doctrine). The implication of that is that the Jews did not receive a revelation from God, and the author here writes about the Jews in a way that is completely consistent with his idea that nobody (not even the Jews) has received a revelation from God before He came as Jesus.
The singularity of God's revelation in his Son once again implicitly denies the idea that God had been speaking about himself to men before, or trickling out clues regarding His Son over time, or that God had provided imperfect revelations through the Jewish scriptures, Moses, or the prophets. All of these ideas are foreign to the text. The Son of God alone provides the revelation regarding God, who was previously unknown, and this revelation proceeds all at once, unexpected, when all the revelation of God had been kept hidden as a mystery previously. This once again belongs to the "Marcionite nexus," for lack of a better term. It is the kind of idea that would also have been condemned by anti-Marcionite polemic. We can say this even though we don't know what kind of relationship existed between the ideas of the author of this text and the ideas of Marcion (which may not always be well reflected in the anti-Marcionite polemic anyway), who also may have been at odds with each other if they had encountered the other. The term is being used here to describe the kind of thought being criticized as Marcionite, as a way of trying to place where this "nexus" of ideas may be found in earlier texts.
This is a wonderfully suggestive hypothesis, which uses the Epistle to Diognetus primarily as a piece to think with, only secondarily (as it's prima facie undateable) as evidence. What would be helpful would be some additional proof of concept.
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As the crucial point of difference is the relevance, or not, to Christians of the OT, of the 'oracles' of Moses and the prophets, superficially attractive as evidence is the Apology of Aristides. It self-presents as a mid-C2 work, and while praising the Jewish conception of God (Syriac, ch.14), it allows them nothing else and absolutely does not use the argument from oracles.
However, it is so determinedly an exoteric work, that the internals of Christian teaching are evaded. Christians "by going about and seeking have found the truth" (ch.15). The 'writings' the emperor is enjoined to read are not specified beyond a gospel (ch.2). That these 'writings' include the OT is implied by listing from the Decalogue the basis of Christian ethics (ch.15). In short, the absence of the argument from oracles is not a denial of it, there is plenty of space for it. In a similarly 'philosophical' Apology, the Octavius of Minucius Felix, it's not until ch.34 that we get "the philosophers..imitated the shadow of the corrupted truth from the divine announcements of the prophets"; it's an aside, but a significant one.
Much more useful is Clement of Alexandria, Strom.6.5. Strom.6.2 ff repeats the chronological argument familiar from Justin that the Greeks are plagiarists, and the insights they have are derived from 'barbarian philosophy', most particularly Moses and the prophets. It's an argument suitable both for Apologetic purposes and for internal consumption. That the Greeks have had a partial revelation, and that there is a continuum between Moses and Christians, these are both simply assumed.
But chapter 5 takes a detour. Clement feels the need to justify both these assumptions. That this is an internal Christian issue is demonstrated by his method, which is to appeal to the apostolic authority of Peter and Paul, by quotation from their (supposed) writings.
"And that the men of highest repute among the Greeks knew God, not by positive knowledge, but by indirect expression, Peter says in the Preaching : 'Know then that there is one God, who made the beginning of all things, and holds the power of the end; and is the Invisible, who sees all things; incapable of being contained, who contains all things; needing nothing, whom all things need, and by whom they are; incomprehensible, everlasting, unmade, who made all things by the Word of his Power, that is, his Son.'
"Then he adds : 'Worship this God not as the Greeks', - signifying plainly, that the excellent among the Greeks worshipped the same God as we, but that they had not learned by perfect knowledge that which was delivered by the Son. 'Do not then worship', he did not say, the God whom the Greeks worship, but 'as the Greeks', - changing the manner of the worship of God, not announcing another God.
"What, then, the expression 'not as the Greeks' means, Peter himself shall explain, as he adds : '[a list of the follies of pagan cult].'
"And that it is said, that we and the Greeks know the same God, though not in the same way, he will infer thus : 'Neither worship as the Jews; for they, thinking that they only know God, do not know him, adoring as they do angels and archangels, the month and the moon. And if the moon be not visible, they do not hold the sabbath, which is called the first; nor do they hold the new moon, nor the feast of unleavened bread, nor the feast, nor the great day'.
"Then he gives the finishing stroke to the question : 'So that do ye also, learning holily and righteously what we deliver to you; keep them, worshipping God in a new way, by Christ. For we find in the scriptures, as the Lord says : 'Behold, I make with you a new covenant, not as I made with your fathers in Mount Horeb.' He made a new covenant with us; for what belonged to the Greeks and Jews is old. But we, who worship him in a new way, in a third race, are Christians'.
"For clearly, as I think, he showed that the one and only God was known by the Greeks in a gentile way, by the Jews judaically, and in a new and spiritual way by us. And further, that the same God that furnished both the covenants was the giver of Greek philosophy to the Greeks, by which the Almighty is glorified among the Greeks, he shows. And it is clear from this. Accordingly, then, from the Hellenic training, and also from that of the Law, are gathered into the one race of the saved people those who accept faith; not that the three peoples are separated by time, so that one might suppose three natures, but trained in different covenants of the one Lord, by the word of the one Lord. For that, as God wished to save the Jews by giving to them prophets, so also by raising up prophets of their own in their own tongue, as they were able to receive God's beneficence, he distinguished the most excellent of the Greeks from the common herd, in addition to the Preaching of Peter, the apostle Paul will show.." [Clement now quotes an agraphon of Paul, recommending consultation of the Sibyl and Hystaspes].
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Clement sometimes (e.g. Strom.1.9) has cause to argue with fellow-Christians who see no value in Greek culture. But it is remarkable that here he has to use authoritative evidence that the OT oracles are valid. The clear implication is that some fellow-Christians argued to the contrary. The name of Marcion is not mentioned by Clement or his source. And that 'suspicious' term in the Preaching of Peter - 'another god' - is applied in the context of the Greek pantheon, not in the context of the god of the Jews.
