Unspoken Dogmatic Problems in the Orthodox Reporting About Marcionism

[Secret Alias]

I don't think that Tertullian or any of the other Church Fathers who pilfered Irenaeus's writings to frame the Marcionite debate allow us to get the right context for what was being fought. Irenaeus was a radical monarchist/"Monarchian" who denied not only the Marcionite but the plain meaning of the Pentateuch. For instance, when Moses beheld the burning bush, the Pentateuch makes clear he saw a god who was NOT the Father. In other words, there are two powers. From Proof of the Apostolic Preaching (which of course is the Preach of Irenaeus's mind rather than the apostles) we see how Irenaeus invents an impossible Monarchian understanding of chapter 3 of Exodus where Moses is standing in the presence of the Father rather thana lower being.

for those are ungodly who worship not the God that truly is. And therefore the Word says to Moses: I am He that is;63 but they that worship not the God that is, these are the ungodly.

63 “I am the Existing One,” as in LXX Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὥν. In III, vi. 2 the words are quoted as spoken by the Father

Once you spend time thinking about this interpretation all anti-Marcionite statements in Tertullian have a new context. Marcion was reading and thinking about the Pentateuch. That the god (= "Man") beheld by the Patriarchs was NOT the Father god, Marcion's "heresy" amounts to proper exegesis, traditional Jewish exegesis of the Pentateuch (= Philo and his unknown contemporaries in Judea). Irenaeus represents a concerted effort in the second century to read the Pentateuch badly.