Internal criticisms within the philosophical circles of Christianity, no doubt. Externally to the pagans, the one given is about the Creator god not being the true god. I suspect this would have been a problem to Romans who believed that the Creator god/gods had set up a world where the Romans currently ruled that world.Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Sun Mar 03, 2024 5:34 pmBased on what you've said, it implies that there was one 'criticism' mentioned. It would be daring to conclude that there were no other criticisms that could be deployed from reserve.
Justin writes in the First Apology that pagans persecuted Christians for, amongst other things, performing impious rites:
All who take their opinions from these men [Simon, Meander, Marcion], are, as we before said, called Christians; just as also those who do not agree with the philosophers in their doctrines, have yet in common with them the name of philosophers given to them. And whether they perpetrate those fabulous and shameful deeds--the upsetting of the lamp, and promiscuous intercourse, and eating human flesh--we know not; but we do know that they are neither persecuted nor put to death by you, at least on account of their opinions.
As for internal divisions, I agree with Secret Alias: the proto-orthodox held a lot of similar beliefs with Marcion. What would there have been in *Ev (removing the first sentence) and Marcion's collection of Paul's letters that the average paganised Christian would have had a problem with? From what I can see, very little indeed. They could have read through them all quite comfortably. It may be why Tertullian has such a hard time quoting from Marcion's *Ev and Paul. Most of the differences come down to Marcion's analysis that are external to those collections, such as the Creator god not being the true God. I don't think the proto-orthodox cared whether Jesus was called "Christos" or "Chrestos".