Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Where does that say that the Father god in heaven wasn't the good god? I swear sometimes Giuseppe I look at what you see in texts and it is like we are seeing two different things.

Again, I would argue that when you take the writings of the Church Fathers as such - that is ALL the things written in the reports about the heresies - the sense seems to be that the Father not the Son was the good god. The fact that the Church Fathers like Tertullian seem to argue against a Marcionite position that Jesus was the stranger/good god doesn't mean as much as we might pretend. As I have said many times here even the orthodox weren't sure what 'orthodoxy' was when the Against Marcion series was written (i.e. the dozen or so books against Marcion in the late second century). I don't know why everyone and their uncle was writing against Marcion c. 165 - 200 CE. I don't think anyone has an answer for that. I only know that 'orthodoxy' didn't exist yet. There were many 'orthodoxies' and the underlying sense at that time was 'there can be only one god.' This was the primary argument against Marcion. The idea that there was a 'good god' implies by its nature that there was another god. That was the reason the Fathers attacked Marcion. To read the material any other way is a misreading IMHO.