An Important Clue that the Marcionite Dualistic Notion of God Pitted 'the Son' Against 'the Father'

[Secret Alias]

At the end of Book Two Against Marcion by Tertullian:

That the Father has become visible to no man is
the testimony of that gospel which you share with us, in which
Christ says, No one knoweth the Father save the Son.b It was he also
who in the Old Testament had already declared, No man shall see
God and live,c thus pronouncing that the Father cannot be seen,
while with the Father's authority and in his name he himself
was the God who was seen, the Son of God. So too among us God
is accepted in the person of Christ, because in this way also he
belongs to us. Therefore all the (attributes and activities) you
make requisition of as worthy of God are to be found in the
Father, inaccessible to sight and contact, peaceable also, and,
so to speak, a god philosophers can approve of: but all the things
you repudiate as unworthy, are to be accounted to the Son, who
was both seen and heard, and held converse, the Father's agent
and minister, who commingles in himself man and God, in the
miracles God, in the pettinesses man, so as to add as much to man
as he detracts from God. In fact the whole of that which in my
God is dishonourable in your sight, is a sign and token of man's
salvation. God entered into converse with man, so that man might
be taught how to act like God. God treated on equal terms with
man, so that man might be able to treat on equal terms with
God. God was found to be small, so that man might become very
great. As you despise a God of that sort I wonder if you do honestly
believe that God was crucified. How great then is your unreason-
ableness in the face of both one and the other of the Creator's
courses of action. You mark him down as a judge, yet the sternness
which is natural to a judge in accordance with the demands
of the cases before him you stigmatize as cruelty. You demand
a God supremely good, yet that gentleness which is the natural
outcome of his kindness, which has conversed at a lower level
in such proportion as human insignificance could comprehend,
you devalue as pettiness. He meets with your approval neither as
great nor as small, neither as judge nor as friend. But what if
these same characteristics are found to be in your god too? I
have already, in the book assigned to him,3 proved that he is
a judge, and as a judge necessarily stern, and as stern also cruel—
if cruelty is the proper word.

This is significant given the fact that we already now that the juxtaposition of 'the judge' and the 'God of mercy' dates to Philo. Philo clearly identifies Yahweh (= kurios) as the judge. This clearly implies Elohim is the Father - at least for some system.

[Secret Alias]

Actually the whole chapter is quite interesting. Addressing a Marcionite the author writes:

Now at length—that I may dispose of the rest of these questions in one single answer—for all those details which you class together as petty and weak and unworthy, with intent to drag the Creator down, I shall set before you a straightforward and definite reason: it is that God would not have been able to enter into converse with men except by taking to himself those human thoughts and feelings by which he might reduce the force of his majesty, which human mediocrity was utterly unable to bear, by virtue of a humility, unworthy indeed of himself but necessary for man, and consequently worthy even of God, since nothing is so worthy of God as the salvation of man. [2.27]

The topic - as Evans notes - is the anthropomorphic divinity in Exodus. I've discussed this figure several times - i.e. his name is ish or man. In the previous chapter the author notes the Marcionite 'antithesis':

Also, God swears with an oath. Is this oath perhaps by Marcion's god? 'No,' your answer is, 'much more pointlessly, he swears by himself. What else could he have thought of doing, when he was unaware of the existence of any other god, and in fact was then and there swearing that besides himself there is no other god at all?"

The Marcionite point here is quite clearly that the god who swears with Moses could not have been the ultimate god given that oath swearing needs a witness. The comment then is sarcastic and made against someone who claims that the god who Moses swears an oath with is God Almighty.

The point is that the textual layering here or layering of argumentation is more sophisticated that the reader might recognize. The Marcionite clearly has in mind someone who is an absolute monotheist - perhaps a rabbinic Jew - who holds Yahweh to be the only God. The Marcionite sarcastically states that oath swearing requires a witness outside of the two swearing an oath. Tertullian - or the original author - makes a second snide comment against the Marcionite saying that they claim that the Creator was ignorant of the Most High Father, so there could have been no implicit 'third party.' He writes:

Do you then charge Him with false or perhaps pointless swearing? But He cannot be supposed to have sworn falsely if, as you allege, he did not know there was another god: for his swearing of what he knew of was not in a true sense false swearing. Neither is his swearing that there is no other god a pointless swearing: only so would it have been pointless swearing if there had not been people who believed there were other gods—in that age worshippers of idols, in our days also heretics. So he swears by himself, so that you may believe God, at least on his own oath, that there is no other god at all. And it is you, Marcion, who have forced God to do this: for even so long ago God had foreknowledge of you.

Needless to say this is a terrible argument. Irenaeus makes these sorts of arguments from Exodus in Book Four - allegedly drawing inspiration from Polycarp - when he says that the Exodus itself was accomplished as a prelude to the emergence of Christians in the court of the Emperor Commodus or in Book Two where Isaiah speaks of the 'year of favor' with the foreknowledge of the entire period from the crucifixion to Commodus.

But the discussion here brings up some interesting points. What exactly was Marcion saying? Was he saying that the Creator was ignorant of the Father? Yes Marcionites believed this - at least up until after the resurrection. So clearly we are left understanding the Marcionite critique of Exodus chapter 32. The 'oath' referred to here is not between Moses and god but Abraham and god - i.e. Exodus 32:13:

Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: 'I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.'"

So the question comes down to Genesis 15 where we read:

Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” 5 He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

That we are dealing with two different scenes - Genesis 15 and Exodus 32:

Consequently if in his promises, and in his threatenings besides, God uses an oath in dragging forth that faith which in its beginnings is hard to attain to, there is nothing unworthy of God in that which causes men to believe in God. On that other occasion also God made himself little even in the midst of his fierce anger, when in his wrath against the people because of the consecration of the (golden) calf he demanded of his servant Moses, Let me alone, and I will wax hot in wrath and destroy them, and I will make thee into a great nation.b On this you are in the habit of insisting that Moses was a better person than his own God—deprecating, yes and even forbidding, his wrath: for he says, Thou shalt not do this: or else destroy me along with them.c Greatly to be pitied are you, as well as the Israelites, for not realizing that in the person of Moses there is a prefiguring of Christ, who intercedes with the Father, and offers his own soul for the saving of the people. But for the present it is enough that the people were granted even to Moses in his own person. Also, so that the servant might be in a position to make this request of his Lord, the Lord made that request of himself. That is why he said to his servant, Let me alone and I will destroy them, so that the servant might forestall this by his prayer and his offering of himself, and so that you by this might learn how much is permitted to one who has faith, and is a prophet, in the presence of God.

This is confirmed if we look at the material without the chapter breaks:

Also when he comes down to Sodom and Gomorra the Lord says, I will see if they are altogether doing according to the cry that reaches up to me, and if not I will know.d Here again, do you suppose it is from ignorance that he is in doubt and desirous of knowing? Or is there not here, when reading it aloud, the need for such an intonation as will give expression to a comminatory, not a deliberative, meaning under the pretence of seeking for information? But if you scorn the idea of God coming down, as though he were unable to carry out his act of judgement unless he were to come
down,—take care, or you will be attacking your own god, no less: for he too came down, to accomplish what it was his will to do. Also, God swears with an oath. Is this oath perhaps by Marcion's god? 'No,' your answer is, 'much more pointlessly, he swears by himself.'

[Secret Alias]

So Marcion's point is that the god who displays himself as a destroyer of humanity in both Genesis chapter 14 and at least with respect to intention in Exodus chapter 32 also displays himself to be human in what follows. In Genesis 15 that he can swear an oath with Abraham and Exodus 32 with respect to changing his mind on the insistence of Moses. But while Tertullian's point is that the being speaking with both Abraham and Moses is 'the Son' the Marcionites themselves seem to be interacting with a group - Jews? Christians? - who argue that the Almighty God himself was speaking to Abraham and Moses. So in order of origin:

1. there existed those who argued that there was one god - presumably Yahweh - who interacted with Abraham and Moses
2. the Marcionites criticized this group and their beliefs saying that this divinity can't have been the ultimate God
3. Against Marcion seems to have been composed against what the Marcionites said against those radical monists arguing a position which was thoroughly illogical - namely that Abraham and Moses were interacting with 'the Son' and that 'the Son' and 'the Father' were one and the same god

[Secret Alias]

What I wonder about is whether three was a proto-orthodox tradition which caused the Marcionite faith to appear more 'heretical' than it really was. For instance Justin Martyr combats representatives of 'normative Judaism' in the second century arguing that 'Jesus' was present with the Patriarchs and from that understanding that there was another god beside 'God.' There is no other way to read the Dialogue. While Irenaeus embraced Justin he does tweak his dualistic understanding so that - for instance - when Moses speaks with 'Ish' in the burning bush 'God' is there in the burning bush as well. Surely this was the understanding of Justin's opponents. They did not believe that God Almighty was speaking with Moses. Rather an emissary who spoke on behalf of 'God' was there conversing with him. And when things move on to the Theophany on Sinai the problem only gets bigger.

I wonder where the 'Son' and 'Father' doctrine originated too. Was it within Judaism? I strongly doubt it. But where then?