Implications of Marcion for early Christianity?

[John2]

Well, there is certainly precedence for a holy man and God ignoring someone's plea for forgiveness (Jer. 37:3: "Please pray to the Lord our God for us!"), and for the reasons I've given, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch to suppose that Josephus' Simon and Acts' Simon are the same person.

That's the *other* God The big meanie from the OT. The new God which Jesus taught us about loves and accepts everyone

They seem like the same God to me (and I do think early Christians thought Jesus was divine, in accordance with Daniel's "son of man" figure, which is something I came around to only in recent years, after reading Boyarin). And when Jesus comes to earth on the clouds of heaven (in the form of the "son of man"), he's going to render some serious God-level judgement on people, according to my understanding of the NT.

[RandyHelzerman]

And when Jesus comes to earth on the clouds of heaven (in the form of the "son of man"), he's going to render some serious God-level judgement on people, according to my understanding of the NT.

That’s because the real NT is the Evangelion and 10 letters of Paul. The rest is anti-marcionite propaganda.

PS do you really believe Jesus is coming back?

[John2]

PS do you really believe Jesus is coming back?

No.

[John2]

And when Jesus comes to earth on the clouds of heaven (in the form of the "son of man"), he's going to render some serious God-level judgement on people, according to my understanding of the NT.

That’s because the real NT is the Evangelion and 10 letters of Paul. The rest is anti-marcionite propaganda.

What about 1 Thes. 4:15-17?

15 ... we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who have fallen asleep. 16For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will be the first to rise. 17After that, we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord.

Cf. Mt. 24:30-31:

At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.d 31And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.

This is what the idea of being "saved" is about in Paul too, i.e., unlike everyone else on Earth, Christians will avoid eternal God-level damnation when Jesus comes back in the form of Daniel's "son of man" on the "clouds of heaven" at the End Time. The grandsons of Jesus' brother Jude put it perfectly in Hegesippus in EH. 3.20.6:

6. And when they were asked concerning Christ and his kingdom, of what sort it was and where and when it was to appear, they answered that it was not a temporal nor an earthly kingdom, but a heavenly and angelic one, which would appear at the end of the world, when he should come in glory to judge the quick and the dead, and to give unto every one according to his works.

[RandyHelzerman]

PS do you really believe Jesus is coming back?

No.

Then why do you say things like “when Jesus comes back he’s going to ….”

It’s really confusing.

[Peter Kirby]

PS do you really believe Jesus is coming back?

No.

Then why do you say things like “when Jesus comes back he’s going to ….”

It’s really confusing.

Maybe because you said "The new God which Jesus taught us about loves and accepts everyone"[*]?

John2 basically just gave you Tertullian's refutation of that, i.e., "he's going to render some serious God-level judgement on people, according to my understanding of the NT."

[*] which didn't confuse anyone either (for similar reasons)

[John2]

PS do you really believe Jesus is coming back?

No.

Then why do you say things like “when Jesus comes back he’s going to ….”

It’s really confusing.

I mean it as "according to the idea I discern in the NT and related writings." I don't believe in God or resurrection of the dead or the concept of an End Time Messiah figure and have been clear about that on this forum over the years.

[John2]

Here's a question for Randy. If Acts is anti-Marcion, why would it suggest (according to your reading) that Simon Magus (the guy that anti-Marcionites say was the root of Marcionism) was a good guy?

[RandyHelzerman]

Here's a question for Randy. If Acts is anti-Marcion, why would it suggest (according to your reading) that Simon Magus (the guy that anti-Marcionites say was the root of Marcionism) was a good guy?

Brilliant!!!!! That's a great question. It puts real pressure on my position. Time to start waving my hands

Recall, whoever compiled the final recension of the NT was trying to bring as many of the variant christianitys into the same communion. And the author of Luke-Acts clearly was trying to reconcile Petrine and Pauline Christianity.

So, there is a tight balancing act---you want to critique the Marcionite position in order to convince them to embrace proto-orthodoxy. But, you can't criticize them too much, or they will be put off.

There is just as hard of a balancing act for the Petrine/proto-orthodox: If you make it toooooo appealing to the Marcionites, then the porto-orthodox are put off, because they don't want their doctrine watered down just to appeal to heretics.

See what I mean? So, how do you pull off BOTH balancing acts at once? Here's where the total genius of the Author of Acts comes in. You write the scene so that its kind of like a Rorschach test: When people read it, they will find what they are looking for, no matter who they are.

This particular case illustrates this perfectly. A Marcionite reading Acts's Simon Magus story will do what I did--immediatlly jump to the conclusion that Peter prayed for Simon Magus and he was redeemed. So I'm not put off by the story. It does kinda put Simon in a bad light--trying to buy spiritual power and all, so perhaps I'm not as big of a fan after I read that. I've been moved a bit towards porto-orthodoxy, and the seed of doubt has been planted. But still, it doesn't offend me.

When a Petrine christian read that story, he immediately jumps to the conclusion that Peter had just cursed Simon Magus, and that's why the Marcionites are so misguided. He likes this NT---because he feels like it has just scored some real points against those Marcionites.

See what I mean? The story is deliberately written to be ambiguous. Since both parties can read the book of Acts, without being offended or thinking it had been watered down to make it more appealing to those heretics--it can serve perfectly as a vehicle to bring those two branches of christianity into a single fold.

One English prof I had once said "Human languages are ambiguous for a reason. Use it to your advantage every time you can

Once again man, that was a great question, it really made me think. Thanks for that.

P.S. This worked by living the ending off of the Siimun Magus story......I wonder if the author of Acts did the same thing by leaving off the ending of the Paul story. According to tradition, he was martyred, but some scholars have made cases that he wasn't. By strategically just not telling us the rest of Paul's story, we tend to jump to the conclusions we already believe there too.

Here's a blog post which examines the question:
https://www.davidknoppblog.com/paul-did ... martyrdom/

[John2]

Recall, whoever compiled the final recension of the NT was trying to bring as many of the variant christianitys into the same communion. And the author of Luke-Acts clearly was trying to reconcile Petrine and Pauline Christianity.

There was already a "balance" in Christianity before Acts was written. Paul says the pillars (James, Peter and John) approved of his Gentile mission in Gal. 2:7-9:

7... they saw that I had been entrusted to preach the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised. 8For the One who was at work in Peter’s apostleship to the circumcised was also at work in my apostleship to the Gentiles.

9And recognizing the grace that I had been given, James, Cephas, and John—those reputed to be pillars—gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship ...

Paul also says in 1 Cor. 15:11, "Whether, then, it was I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed."

Yes, they had differences about Jewish Torah observance (which Acts acknowledges frankly), but at the end of the day, despite Paul's Torah-free dream for everyone, he was wiling to be Torah observant around Jews in 1 Cor. 9:20 ("To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law -though I myself am not under the law- to win those under the law). And that's what we see Paul doing in Acts.

Paul and other Christians are also called Nazarenes in Acts, so for me, Acts is a Nazarene writing, since it calls Christians Nazarenes and espouses Nazarene doctrines (pro-Torah observance for Jews and Paul-friendliness).

As for Marcion, I don't see any "balancing" in Acts, since Peter says outright, "You have no part or share in our ministry" and Simon looks like a bad guy to me there (and in Josephus) And I think Acts pre-dates Marcion (just my guess, Marcion or no Marcion), so I don't see Marcionism as being an issue, and your Simon Magus argument isn't swaying me from that.