Could Christians Have Used the Title 'Son of Man' in a Way Independent of Daniel's Expectation?

[Secret Alias]

The bottom line is that the constant resurfacing of Megethius throughout the dialogue has to be explained. The best explanation IMHO is that the earliest text was all Megethius v Admantius with no other heretics

[Secret Alias]

But back to the OP. If the Marcionite gospel had "Son of Man" it most likely is a reflection of Daniel 7:13.

[Giuseppe]

Evidently prof Vinzent is able to see the anti-Jewish use of the term "Son of Man" by Marcion, differently from Secret Alias:

the 'son of man' locution is one of the key markers of Marcion's text - you only need to read Tertullian, how he criticises Marcion for it. Yet, he also gives Marcion's answer: the 'son of man' is Daniel's typos which misleads everybody who immediately thinks of the messiah as the warrior prince of the Creator god, instead the Christ of the transcendent God of mercy does not fight, but takes off suffering through his suffering and forgiving. Marcion, if you like, takes the typoi, but undermines them by giving them the new revealed meaning.

http://markusvinzent.blogspot.com/2015/ ... 2258763683

[Secret Alias]

I have to admit - I don't understand what Vinzent is writing here. Daniel's 'typos''? Doesn't that mean that Marcion read Daniel. So even if I follow Vinzent's argument (and I have to admit I am not quite understanding it) - it does seem to imply that even Vinzent accepts that Marcion read Daniel, doesn't it? It certainly does not suggest that 'Son of Man' was used by Marcion INDEPENDENTLY of Daniel. To me it sounds like Vinzent is trying to have it both ways - like all these latter-day Marcionophiles. On the one hand he has to admit the 'Son of Man' is obviously borrowed from Daniel. Why else would a Greek speaking religion or tradition be appropriating a Semitic terminology like this. But on the other he's having to rescue all these statements that Marcion opposed the idea of God being a 'man of war.' So Vinzent says what he says.

Yes nevertheless there is difficulty. The 'Son of Man' is a kind of garbled Danielic terminology. Because Daniel doesn't say 'THE Son of Man' but 'like son of man' - i.e. he appears to be human - which sounds and feels very Marcionite. Marcion over and over again is cited as emphasizing that Jesus or Christ only appeared to be human and appearance is at the core of the heretical group the docetae. To be certain the Danielic vision is militaristic:

9 “As I looked,

“thrones were set in place,
and the Ancient of Days took his seat.
His clothing was as white as snow;
the hair of his head was white like wool.
His throne was flaming with fire,
and its wheels were all ablaze.
10 A river of fire was flowing,
coming out from before him.
Thousands upon thousands attended him;
ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him.
The court was seated,
and the books were opened.

11 “Then I continued to watch because of the boastful words the horn was speaking. I kept looking until the beast was slain and its body destroyed and thrown into the blazing fire. 12 (The other beasts had been stripped of their authority, but were allowed to live for a period of time.)

13 “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man,[a] coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

Jesus was not militaristic in appearance. This is of course difficult to reconcile. Nevertheless the terminology - the Son of Man and its apparent 'third person' characteristic - does have militaristic characteristics.

I am not claiming there are easy answers here. It is difficult to understand why 'like a son of man' because 'THE Son of Man' under the gospel writers influence. Nevertheless there are many difficulties in early Christianity. If it was all easy to piece together this would have been accomplished a long time ago. One of the paradoxes is clearly that:

1. the 'Son of Man' is a garbled Danielic terminology
2. that young warrior figure is contrasted with the 'Ancient of Days' figure in the same passage
3. this reference was taken by those of the 'two powers' sect to mean that there were two powers
4. the Church Fathers who report the information about the Marcionite interest in this material were monarchists or had overriding monarchian concerns about Marcionism

On some level the Church Fathers acknowledge that the Marcionites held that there were two principle powers - a just god and a merciful god - as did contemporary Jewry. This distinction may also have been at the heart of the two powers theology. At some point we have to suspect that we aren't getting the full picture from the Church Fathers given that the Church continued to have a difficulty reconciling itself as a monotheistic tradition with a 'Son' and 'Father' god who may have corresponded to poles of 'justice' and 'mercy,' 'young' and 'old,' 'man of war' and 'man of peace.'

[Secret Alias]

One of the responses would clearly be - the Son of Man is militaristic in Daniel but Jesus is not militaristic - nevertheless Jesus does reference the Son of Man consistently in the third person. For the Church Fathers, since there is only one god, Jesus only calls himself 'the Son of Man' because he is human. But surely Daniel would have simply said 'a son of man' rather than 'like a son of man' if he merely wanted him to be human. I don't recall Tertullian specifically making reference to the Danielic 'typos' in relation to the Son of Man being expected to be a militaristic figure. I think Vinzent created a problem which doesn't actually exist. Here are all the references to 'Son of Man' in Book 4:

On the expression Son of man my postulates are two: first that Christ was incapable of lying, so as to declare himself the Son of man if he was not really so: and that no one can be accepted as Son of man who is not of human birth, either on the father's side or the mother's: and this will call for discussion, on what side his human birth must be taken to be, the father's or the mother's. Now if he is from God as father, certainly his father is not a man: if his father is not a man, the only thing left is for him to be of a human mother: and if of a human <mother> it is already evident that she is a virgin. For as there is ascribed to him no human father, neither can his mother be reckoned to have a husband: and <this mother> to whom no husband is reckoned, is a virgin. Otherwise there will be two fathers involved, God and a man, if his mother is not a virgin. For she has to have a husband, if she is not to be a virgin, and by having a husband she will cause him who was to be the Son of God and of man to have two fathers, God and a man. That perhaps is the sort of nativity the old tales ascribe to Castor and Hercules. But if the distinctions are made in this form, that is, if on his mother's side he is the Son of man because he is not the Son of man on his father's side, and if his mother is a virgin because he has no man for his father, this must be Isaiah's Christ whom he prophesies that a virgin will conceive. By what reasoning then, Marcion, you accept Son of man <into the text of your gospel> I am unable to understand. If <you mean> son of a human father, you deny that he is the Son of God: if <you mean> son of God as well, you are making Christ into Hercules out of the old story: if only his mother was human, you admit that he is mine: if neither father nor mother was human, then he is not the son of man at all, and we must conclude that he told a lie when he called himself something that he was not. One thing alone can get you out of these straits—if you are bold enough either to give your god, the father of Christ, the name of Man, which is what Valentinus did with the aeon, or else to deny that the virgin is human, which is a thing not even Valentinus has done. Next, what if in Daniel Christ is dignified with this actual title, Son of man ? i Is not this good enough proof that Christ is the subject of prophecy? For when he calls himself by that title which was in prophecy applied to the Christ of the Creator, without question he offers himself for recognition as that one to whom the prophecy applied. Joint possession of names, perhaps, can be regarded as having no special significance—though even so I maintain that persons possessed of opposite characteristics had no right to be called either Christ or Jesus. But a title, such as 'Son of man', arises from attendant circumstances, and to that extent it is not easy for it to have any pertinence beyond the possession of the same name. Arising from attendant circumstances, it is applicable to one person alone, especially when there is no recurrence of the same cause for which it could become a joint possession. So then if Marcion's Christ too were reported to be of human birth, in that case he also would be eligible for joint possession of the title, and there would be two sons of man, as there would be two named Christ and Jesus. Therefore since this title belongs to that one alone to whom it has reason to apply, if it is also claimed for another, one in whom there is joint possession of the name though not of the title, the joint possession of the name too falls under suspicion in the case of the one for whom without good reason is claimed joint possession of the title. So it follows that we must take it to be one and the same Person whom we believe more capable of possessing both the name and the title, to the exclusion of the other who, having no good reason for it, is not in joint possession of the title. Nor can anyone be found more capable of possessing both <name and title> than he who first came into possession of the name of Christ and the title Son of man, namely the Creator's Jesus. He it was whom the Babylonian king saw in the furnace, a fourth along with his martyrs, in form like a son of man.2, j He was also revealed expressly to Daniel himself as the Son of mank coming as judge with the clouds of heaven, as scripture also shows him to be. I have affirmed that this could be enough about the names the prophets give in reference to the Son of man. But scripture provides me with still more, by our Lord's own interpretation. When the Jews were taking account only of his manhood, not yet aware that he was also God, as being also God's Son, and were (as might be expected) arguing that a man cannot forgive sins, but only God can, how is it that the answer he gave them concerning man, that he has power to forgive sins—when by using the expression 'Son of man' he implied 'man' as well—was not in terms of their objection? Was it not that it was his wish by this title Son of man from the book of Daniel to turn their complaint back upon them in such form as to prove that he who was forgiving sins was both God and Man— that one and only Son of man in terms of Daniel's prophecy, who had obtained power to judge, and by it of course the power to forgive sins (for he who judges also acquits)—and so after that cause of offence had been dispersed by his citation of scripture, they might the more readily recognize from that very act of for- giving sins that he and no other was the Son of man? Actually, he had never before professed himself the Son of man, but on this occasion first on which he first forgave sins—that is, on which he first exercised judgement, by acquittal. On this subject take note of what all the arguments amount to which our adversaries allege. They cannot avoid arriving at such a pitch of madness as to insist <that Christ is> the Son of man, so as not to make him a liar, yet to deny that he is of human birth, to escape admitting that he is the Virgin's son. But if both divine authority, and the facts of nature, and common logic, do not admit of this heretical idiocy, we have even here occasion to insist, in the sharpest possible terms, on the reality of <Christ's> body, in opposition to Marcion's phantasms. If, being the Son of man, he is of human birth, there is body derived from body. Evidently you could more easily discover a man born without heart or brains, like Marcion, than without a body, like Marcion's Christ. Go and search then for the heart, or the brains, of that man of Pontus. [4.10]

If this is the ministry Christ fulfilled immediately on entering his course, either he is the same who foretold that he would come for this purpose, or else, if he who foretold it has not yet come, foolishly perhaps, yet of necessity, I shall have to say, he must have given his commission to Marcion's Christ. Blessed shall ye be when men shall hate you and reproach you and shall cast out your name as evil for the Son of man's sake. By this pronouncement he no doubt exhorts them to endurance. What less did the Creator say by Isaiah? Fear ye not reproach from men, neither be ye brought low by their reviling. What reproach, what reviling? That which was to come for the Son of man's sake. And who is this? The one who follows the Creator's pattern. How shall I prove it? Because of the hatred prophesied against him: as by Isaiah, addressing the Jews, the instigators of hatred: For your sakes my name is blasphemed among the gentiles:r and in another place: Sanctify him who doth cut off his own soul, who is held in scorn by the gentiles, the servants and the rulers. For if hatred was foretold against that Son of man who follows the Creator's pattern, while the gospel testifies that the name of Christians, which evidently is derived from Christ, will be hated for the Son of man's sake, and this is Christ, it indicates as the reason for that hatred the Son of man who was after the Creator's pattern, him against whom hatred was foretold. And in fact, if he were not yet come, the hatred of the name, which is today a present fact, could not have come into evidence before the Person to whom the name belongs. For he is even now sanctified among us, and does cut off his own soul by laying it down for our sake, and is held in scorn by the gentiles. Also one who has experienced human birth, he and no other must be that Son of man for whose sake even our name is cast out as evil. [4.14]

Yet who could have any doubt of the birth of one who he saw Was a man, whom he had heard declare himself the Son of man, who in consideration of all his human attributes they hesitated to believe was God, or the Son of God? They found it easier to esteem him a prophet, some great one no doubt, but one in any case who had been born. [4.19]

For if Peter was not in a position to affirm that he was any other than the Creator's, and Christ himself gave orders that they were to tell no man of this, evidently he was unwilling for Peter's supposition to be published abroad. Quite so, you say: because that supposition was incorrect, and he did not wish a lie to be spread abroad. But it was another reason he gave for silence: that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and scribes and priests, and be slain, and after three days rise again. And since these things too were prophesied of the Creator's Christ, as I shall fully explain in their proper places, in this way too he proves himself to be that one of whom they were prophesied. Certainly even if they had not been prophesied, the reason he gave for commanding silence was not one which proved Peter mistaken: it was the call to under- go sufferings. Whosoever, he says, will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever shall lose it for my sake, will save it. Assuredly it was the Son of man who pronounced this judgement. Do you too then, in company with the king of Babylon look into his burning fiery furnace, and you will find there one like unto a son of man— he was not yet actually that, not yet having experienced human birth—as early as that setting forth this course of action. [4.21]

I think that we do get a hint of 'two powers' theology in what Tertullian reports in what follows. Clearly not only is 'the Son of Man' mentioned in the third person but he is clearly not Jesus:

But he means that the thief, in our case, is the devil, and that if at the beginning the man had known the hour of his coming he would never have been broken in on by him: and therefore he tells us to be prepared, because at an hour we think not the Son of man will come—not that he is himself the thief, but the judge, certainly, of those who will not have prepared themselves nor have taken precautions against the thief. So then if he himself is the Son of man, I take him to be a judge, and in the judge I lay claim to the Creator. If however it is the Creator's Christ he refers to here under the name of Son of man, so as to suggest that he is that thief the time of whose coming we know not, you have the rule I recently laid down, that no one becomes a thief of his own property—saving always this, that in so far as he represents the Creator as one to be
feared, to that extent he acts as his representative and belongs to the Creator. [4.28]

Similarly in what follows:

The kingdom of God, he says, is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his own garden. Whom must we understand in the
person of the man? Evidently Christ, because, even though he be Marcion's Christ, he is described as the Son of man, who has received from the Father the seed of the kingdom, which is the word of the gospel, and has sown it in his garden, meaning the world, and, if you like, on this occasion in a human being. But since he has said in his own garden, while neither the world nor that human being belongs to Marcion's god, but to the Creator, it follows that he who has sown the seed on his own property is proved to be the Creator. [4.30]

As I am a Canadian and perhaps prone to compromise and conciliation I can't help feel that maybe the truth lies somewhere between Tertullian's own position (or perhaps the person who first wrote Against Marcion) and the caricature manufactured for Marcion. Perhaps it's as simple as Jesus is the merciful god who came to save those before the coming of the Son of Man - viz. the just Creator. In that way both are right. It becomes just a matter of emphasis and more importantly getting out from under the monarchian editor who 'fixed' the original text of Against Marcion.

Indeed the idea that there are two powers in the Marcionite system is clearly referenced in the explanation of Jesus's explicit identification of the coming of the Son of Man at the end of the gospel:

Our Lord's pronouncements and the prophets' are, I think, in agreement regarding the shaking of the heavens and the earth, the planets and the nations. And what does the Lord say next? And then shall they see the Son of man coming from heaven, with great power. But when these things come to pass, ye will look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption has drawn nigh—at the time of the kingdom, to be sure, to which will apply the parable that follows. So ye also when ye see all these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand. This will be that great and notable day of the Lord, when he comes as the Son of man from heaven, as Daniel says: Behold one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven, and what follows: and there was given to him kingly authority,l that which in the parable he had gone forth to claim, when he left money with his servants for them to do business with: and all the nationsl—those which the Father had promised him in the psalm, Desire of me and I will give thee the gentiles for thine inheritance—and all glory serving him, and his dominion is everlasting, that shall not be taken away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed, because in it they will not die, nor marry, but will be like the angels. Again of that advent of the Son of man, and the benefit of it, in Habakkuk: Thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people, even for the salvation of thine anointed ones,n those who are to look up and lift up their heads, when redeemed at the time of the kingdom. So then since there is agreement in these statements involving promises, as there was in those which involved shattering down, because of this harmony between the prophets' pronouncements and our Lord's, you will be unable at this point to interpose any distinction, so as to refer the shatterings to the Creator—a god of savagery, shatterings such as a god supremely good could not permit, far less look forward to—but assign to your supremely good god those promises which the Creator in ignorance of him had not prophesied about. Otherwise, if they were his own promises that <the Creator> prophesied, and these were not different from the promises of Christ, <the Creator> will be equal in liberty with your supremely good god, and it will appear that nothing better is promised by your Christ than by my Son of man. You will find that the whole sequence of the gospel narrative, from the disciples' question as far as the parable of the fig-tree, is in its close-knit reasoning so attached on one side and on the other to the Son of man as to combine together in him both the sorrows and the joys, both the shatterings and the promises: nor can you detach from him either part of them. So then as it is but one Son of man whose advent is appointed between those two terms of shatterings and of promises, with that same one Son of man are necessarily associated both the distresses of the nations and the aspirations of the saints: for his position between them is such that he belongs equally to both terms, bringing by his advent an end to the one, the distresses of the nations, and a beginning to the other, the aspirations of the saints. So that if you
admit that the coming of the Son of man is my Christ's advent, the more you impute to him those imminent sorrows which precede his advent, the more you are forced also to ascribe to him those good things which take their rise from his advent: or alternatively, if you prefer <thecoming of the Son of man> to be the advent of your Christ, the more you ascribe to him those good things which arise from his advent, the more you are forced also to impute to him those sorrows which precede his advent. For the sorrows are no less closely attached to the corning of the Son of man by going before, than are the good things by coming after. Ask yourself then to which of the two Christs you assign the role of the one Son of man, so that to it may be referred both the one series of events and the other. You have admitted either that the Creator is supremely good, or that your god is stern in nature. [4.39]

Again I think the real situation is that:

1. there are two powers
2. one god is just the other merciful
3. Jesus clearly speaks in the third person about the Son of Man who is just
4. there are hints in Tertullian that the Creator's Christ is both just and the Son of Man

Therefore it would seem that the Marcionites understood Jesus to be the Ancient of Days (apparently explaining Irenaeus's nonsensical discussion about Jesus being not 30 but almost 50) - i.e. the Father - and possibly equate them with the Patripassians. It's just a suggestion. But I think the correct one. The last editor of the text - let's call him Irenaeus - was a monarchist. He wanted there to be only one power so at certain instances he interprets even Justin's understanding of the burning bush as witnessing two powers in an obtuse manner.

It comes down to this. Against Marcion was written against Marcion's antitheses - i.e. the section now in Matthew chapter 5 where a series of antitheses are set up between the promises of Christ and the Law of the Jewish god. The author of ur-Against Marcion clearly doesn't like the idea of two powers but the Pentateuch has two names for god and thus two powers with two distinct characteristics - i.e. mercy and judgement (according to Philo through the early rabbinic tradition). The rabbinic authorities don't report this belief as heretical as much as the use of Daniel 7:13 - 14 and various other passages which highlight actual physical and personality characteristics which distinguish the powers. If Justin was the original author of Against Marcion his attack against Marcion wasn't with respect to the existence of two powers. Both agreed on that point. Their debate was more substantial. If Jesus the Son of Man or Man, is Jesus the just god or the merciful god etc. That text is now preserved in garbled form owing to the editorial work of Irenaeus who 'corrected' the text to remove (among other things) the explicit acknowledgement of the two powers heresy.

[Giuseppe]

One of the responses would clearly be - the Son of Man is militaristic in Daniel but Jesus is not militaristic - nevertheless Jesus does reference the Son of Man consistently in the third person.]

nowhere Jesus is described as militaristic in the Gospels if not in Matthew (often) and in Mark only a time, where Jesus talks about the Parable of the Wicked Tenants, probably not a original parable of proto-Mark since there Jesus breaks the Messianic Secret (since the scribes “realized that he was talking about them” and therefore they realized that Jesus was the son of the creator, a god who punishes rightly the killers of the his Son).

Apart the fact that Jesus for the modern hoi polloi is not militaristic (an idea challenged by Hector Avalos in the his book The bad Jesus)...

...what is fatal to your ditheism (the idea that the warrior Jesus and the pacifist Christ are allied) is the separationism in the Earliest Gospel, where it seems that the divine Christ wants the death of the man Jesus, hence there is a dualism, not a ditheism.

[Giuseppe]

And Stuart and I proved somewhere in this forum that the famous militaristic saying of Jesus (“I bear a sword, not the peace”) is a proto-catholic anti-marcionite interpolation in Luke.

[Secret Alias]

But you're not considering all the possibilities. You're like a religious apologist who can only see the categories inherited from his forefathers. The situation again is:

1. 'Son of Man' is term Marcionite term (Christian term) borrowed from Daniel
2. Daniel was used by 'sectarian groups' Jewish and Christian (or at least reported in Jewish and Christian sources) to advance the cause of 'two powers in heaven'
3. Marcion bears a striking similarity to the two powers sectarians so Segal
4. Justin bears a striking similarity to the two powers sectarians so Segal
5. Irenaeus and Tertullian bear striking similarities to the rabbinic authors who attack the two powers theology so Segal (who cites at length Tertullian's arguments against Marcion and compares them to the rabbinic source material who argue against the two powers sectarians and notices they tend to cite the same scriptures against the 'heresies' and make the same arguments)
6. Marcion incorporated a Danielic terminology which is used by Jesus in the third person for the most part. As Daniel's 'Son of Man' is used by Jesus in the third person it is not clear that Jesus is in fact the Son of Man. As such Tertullian's arguments that the Son of Man is just and appears like the Creator may have been acknowledged by Marcion. He may even have borrowed them from Marcion.
7. Jesus even goes so far as to refer to the 'Son of Man' in negative terms - i.e. a thief. To this end, Tertullian's citation of this passage might have been lifted from a Marcionite polemic.
8. the Son of Man is a just figure in Daniel but the heretics used Daniel to argue for two powers. It's only when you 'reprocess' their arguments within a monarchian (i.e. one god) framework that we are forced into a corner about Jesus being merciful and the Son of Man being just. The Marcionites accepted the two powers as distinct elements. There would have been no difficulty accepting that (a) Jesus refers to the Son of Man - a just power - in the third person while (b) Jesus was a merciful power
9. to that end Marcion, as a two powers theologian, could well have accepted that the Son of Man (or the god who appears human) was a figure who came after Jesus's crucifixion, judged the world and punished humanity while Jesus was wholly merciful. The difficulty only emerges when you try and 'smooth over' the two powers theology with monarchianism which is what Irenaeus perpetrated.
10. We have to go back to the fact that the opening of Against Marcion tells us the text was reworked at least three times - i.e. from perhaps what we might call 'a discussion paper' by Justin where only the Marcionite 'antitheses' (i.e. Matthew chapter 5) was disputed to a full blown attack on dualism in the current Irenaean rewrite. To this end, both the original author (Justin) and Marcion may have agreed that there were two powers, that the Son of Man was just and the like. The original argument may have been more specific and less absolute than the current 'Marcion is an evil heretic.' Already Lampe argues that Justin tolerated Valentinus. Maybe his dislike to Marcion wasn't as overblown as Irenaeus would have us believe.

[Giuseppe]

6. Marcion incorporated a Danielic terminology which is used by Jesus in the third person for the most part
7. Jesus even goes so far as to refer to the 'Son of Man' in negative terms - i.e. a thief
8. the Son of Man is a just figure in Daniel but the heretics used Daniel to argue for two powers
9. to that end Marcion, as a two powers theologian, could well have accepted that the Son of Man (or the god who appears human) was a figure who came after Jesus's crucifixion, judged the world and punished humanity.

I like these latter points, and precisely in virtue of these points (6-8) it seems that you don't realize that the marcionite Christ is enemy of the Son of Man/“the thief”.

And here I see a beautiful marcionite theology in action:

But he means that the thief, in our case, is the devil, and that if at the beginning the man had known the hour of his coming he would never have been broken in on by him: and therefore he tells us to be prepared, because at an hour we think not the Son of man will come—not that he is himself the thief, but the judge, certainly, of those who will not have prepared themselves nor have taken precautions against the thief. So then if he himself is the Son of man, I take him to be a judge, and in the judge I lay claim to the Creator. If however it is the Creator's Christ he refers to here under the name of Son of man, so as to suggest that he is that thief the time of whose coming we know not, you have the rule I recently laid down, that no one becomes a thief of his own property—saving always this, that in so far as he represents the Creator as one to be feared, to that extent he acts as his representative and belongs to the Creator. [4.28]

Who will destroy the world is the demiurge. Not coincidentially, if Marcion called him a cruel “thief”, the judaizing interpolator returned the insult by calling the Marcionite Christ as “Barabbas”: a famous robber (remember the Couchoud's explanation).

Again here Marcion is not an apocalypticist. If the end of the world has to be in the immediate future, it is the demiurge who will punish his world, he is the cruel “thief” and judge who will come entirely unexpected (remember also the marcionite parable of the Rich Fool).

[Secret Alias]

you don't realize that the marcionite Christ is enemy of the Son of Man/“the thief”.

But that's my point exactly. Was Justin Marcion's 'enemy'? Both agreed there were two powers - a merciful and a just power. In this they were still very Jewish. It was only when Irenaeus came along that Justin's work - Against Marcion - was rewritten as if Marcion was wholly outside acceptable belief. But how do we know that to be true? When the Marcionites are reported as acknowledging two powers one just and one merciful we also find a tendency to see reporting of a conversion and a metanoia for the Creator. This is also in Origen in a garbled form. I think the idea that Marcion hated the Son of Man is silly. You buy into this nonsense but then again you are nonsensical.

I can only cite a personal example. I recently watched Serena Williams fight with an umpire at the US Open and posted many criticisms about her conduct on my Facebook page. I had 'friends' on both ends of the political spectrum want to extend or adapt my arguments for their respective POV. The liberal black feminist apologists couldn't believe that I didn't think that Serena deserved special treatment as a black woman. Also all sorts of Trump supporters wanted to take the Serena example as proof that blacks are bad, fake news abounds etc. But all I was trying to do was comment on an individual tennis player who found to be badly behaved irrespective of whether she was a woman or black.

My point is that what was said at one time (i.e. the age of Justin) could have and likely was reshaped in another age under another agenda - i.e. monarchianism. Justin criticized one aspect of Marcion's gospel - the antitheses - but this was expanded by Irenaeus to make Marcion nothing short of the devil by Irenaeus simply because he was an unapologetic proponent of two powers and Irenaeus wanted to reduce Christianity to one power.