Implications of Marcion for early Christianity?

[billd89]

Philo's understanding of the logos lends itself to a proposal that he was (likely unwittingly) the founder of Christianity. Quoting Wikipedia:

Philo (c. 20 BC – c. 50 AD), a Hellenized Jew, used the term logos to mean an intermediary divine being or demiurge.[10] Philo followed the Platonic distinction between imperfect matter and perfect Form, and therefore intermediary beings were necessary to bridge the enormous gap between God and the material world.[32] The logos was the highest of these intermediary beings, and was called by Philo "the first-born of God".[32] Philo also wrote that "the Logos of the living God is the bond of everything, holding all things together and binding all the parts, and prevents them from being dissolved and separated".[33]

Coincidentally, I just mentioned that.

De Somniis 2.45. δίδωσι γὰρ οὗτος τῇ ψυχῇ σφραγῖδα (Gen. 38, 18), πάγκαλον δῶρον, διδάσκων ὅτι ὁ θεὸς ἀσχημάτιστον οὖσαν τὴν τῶν πάντων οὐσίαν ἐσχημάτισε καὶ ἀτύπωτον ἐτύπωσε καὶ ἄποιον ἐμόρφωσε καὶ τελειώσας τὸν ὅλον ἐσφράγισε κόσμον εἰκόνι καὶ ἰδέᾳ, τῷ ἑαυτοῦ λόγῳ.

De Somniis 2.45: "For upon the Psyche [Judah] bestows a Seal (Genesis 38:18), a most exquisite gift, teaching that God has formed the formless essence of All, and has imprinted the unmarked, and has qualified the qualityless and, having perfected the whole, has emblazoned the Cosmos with the icon and ideal of his own Logos."

Is this correct? The Hermetic version includes The Bitch; Gnostic versions likewise. The 'idea of binding' should be #3 and the '(revelation of the) binding process' should be #4, whereby our 'bound, Material Reality' is #5, the Exemplar/Product (if I am understanding this correctly.)

1. Highest God
2. Logos ................................... (+ Feminine Principle)
3. Ideal .................................... (= Erotic Impulse)
4. Icon ..................................... (Pregnancy/Gestation)
5. Cosmos = Formed Essence = All ..... (Creation-as-World; Abortion)

[lsayre]

Coincidentally, I just mentioned that.

Indeed you did! I was so far behind that I thought I was in the lead. (think oval track racing...)

[Joseph D. L.]

That, I think, is Marcionism. I am Marcion, the Man of Pontus, because we are all Marcion, Man of Pontus. Each of us attempts to recreate the world to fit how we can best economize it to suite our understanding of it so we can cope and survive. Marcion is human psychology. Marcion is human philosophy...

You can see it here firsthand. Marcion is essentially this forum.

Yes indeed. In fact, I see the interactions on this forum as providing a hint to how the Church Fathers interacted with themselves and the heretical groups, except those interactions occurred over decades rather than weeks. Everyone with their own ideas about earliest Christianity, trying to recreate the 'original' documents based on those ideas, no-one really knowing since there are too many gaps in the evidence. By the start of the Second Century, Jerusalem was gone and the first Christians dead or scattered. Even if some traditions went back to the earliest apostles, schisms had been around from the time of Paul.

It seems perfectly obvious to me that Marcion did what everyone else did then and now: he took the texts that he found and created what he thought were the originals. I believe he didn't know better than anyone else. Like a Christian believer who becomes a mythicist (or even vice versa), he took the texts and decided he was able to deduce what was there originally. While I take what Tertullian writes about Marcion with a large grain of salt, I believe Tertullian when he wrote that he had a letter written by Marcion stating that Marcion had started out as proto-orthodox:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... an121.html

Verily, O Euxine, thou hast produced a monster more credible to philosophers than to Christians. For the cynic Diogenes used to go about, lantern in hand, at mid-day to find a man; whereas Marcion has quenched the light of his faith, and so lost the God whom he had found. His disciples will not deny that his first faith he held along with ourselves; a letter of his own proves this; so that for the future a heretic may from his case be designated as one who, forsaking that which was prior, afterwards chose out for himself that which was not in times past.

Everyone was updating the earliest texts. The only difference between Marcion and the leaders of the proto-orthodox was that the latter had the ability to make the updates official.

So yes, this forum is Marcion. It is also the Church Fathers and the other heretics.

I am thankful that you nailed the meaning I was driving at. The church fathers and heretics were men, as human as they come, and their tools were scripture, and like any tool the scripture took on a life all its own until these men became dominated by it. And here and now, almost two thousand years later, that tool is still dominating us whether we know it or not. We live in its reality. Even if we somehow discover the truth, figure it out, and can put it to rest, we would still be living in this simulacrum virtual reality that it has terraformed. There is no way out.

[Joseph D. L.]

In all seriousness I guess I will participate in the discussion in earnest.

Firstly, my thinking about Marcion and his relation with the early Christian movement tries to take into account various systems theories (information, cybernetics, world system, psychoanalysis, and so on) in order to get a better grasp on how things may have developed. Of course, because the information we have comes much later than Marcion, it has to be worked in reverse, so it becomes a paleontological excavation to work my way through the accumulative sediment.

Secondly, I don't think "Marcion" is the name of any person. The name just became associated with the theology for convenience's sake or mistake. Even if I think that Aquila was the foundational source, he would not be Marcion himself. Aquila would just be where the tradition of Marcion being from Sinope came from.

Thirdly, Marcion's theology: it is plain that from Justin to Irenaeus and Tertullian that this heresy has expanded in reaction to the criticism it received from other Christians and Jews. Whereas Justin only reports of Marcion's heresy of two gods, Irenaeus declares that the lesser god, that of the Jews, is analogous to demiurge, and Tertullian that he is evil. This says nothing of the numerous heresiologists who wrote against Marcion. Marcionism is so widespread that it is enemy number one for the orthodox church.

But Marcion's theology of there being two gods, one lesser--the god of Abraham--and one superior--the hidden Father--is probably not what the heresy claim was originally about, but supposedly it was the implication of Torah being subverted by this kind of logic that put Marcion in the crosshair of heresy hunters like Justin, Hegesippus, and to a lesser extant Papias and Polycarp.

This doesn't explain how Marcionism grew to such proportions that centuries latter Ephrem and Eznik are still having to answer for them.

This feeds back into the claim first put forward by Irenaeus* that Marcion doctored Luke**. There are many issues with this, not the least of which are the witnesses of the Marcionites that came before Irenaeus who do not accuse the Marcionites or Marcion himself of such a crime, but even what we can know of his theology begs the question of why Luke and not Mark or John? or even a text that prefigured his main inspiration, Paul.

After Marcia's execution for assassinating Commodus, there would be every reason for the church to distance itself away from her, which would be all the more pernicious as she was close to Victor I and Callixtus I. As a Christian in the royal hall, and mistress to Commodus, she would no doubt have the political pull to acquire and commission Christian literature. Such commissions would not be unheard of, as Julia Domna would commission Philostratus to gather material for a Vita Apollonii, a book I believe used similar sources Marcia or her paid author had at their disposal.

This is where the Marcion of legend meets the Marcion of history, right at this vector. It is unknown if Marcia subscribed to the theology of two gods, two testaments; but what can be deduced is that what Irenaeus and Tertullain claim about Marcion happened much latter (Tertullian even speaks of Marcion as if he were still alive).

So we have:

• Aquila of Sinope, the establisher of gentile sects of Judaism

• An unidentified Marcan figure claiming two gods and two testaments

• And Marcia and her conspirators.

• The Marcion, Man of Pontus, a proverbial Baba Yiga of Christendom.

This is my opinion regarding Marcion and his relation to Christianity.


*It is still a mystery whom originally stole Tertullian's original edition of his Against Marcion and published it in a garbled form. That Tertullian would then say something similar happened to Marcion's gospel cannot be a coincidence. Given Irenaeus's testament Marcion's gospel cannot have been that old when Irenaeus was writing of it.
**That Luke is himself a physician may be a little more than tongue and cheek.

[John2]

Galilee is roughly the area supposedly occupied by Zebulun and Naphtali in the OT.

Andrew Criddle

I stand for corrected!! Thanks for the clarification.

What makes the connection even closer to me is that Josephus' magician Simon and early Christians knew Felix and the Herodian princesses Drusilla and Berenice, all of whom are mentioned in Acts.

And look at the big picture. Do we agree that the author of Acts knew Josephus? I think so, at least, and Josephus mentions Simon the magician in the same book as Theudas and Judas the Galilean, who are both mentioned in Acts. Do you think it is only a coincidence that Acts mentions a magician named Simon too?

[John2]

Acts 24:24-26:

24After several days, Felix returned with his wife Drusilla, who was a Jewess. He sent for Paul and listened to him speak about faith in Christ Jesus. 25As Paul expounded on righteousness, self-control, and the coming judgment, Felix became frightened and said, “You may go for now. When I find the time, I will call for you.” 26At the same time, he was hoping that Paul would offer him a bribe. So he sent for Paul frequently and talked with him.

Josephus Ant. 20.7.2:

While Felix was procurator of Judea, he saw this Drusilla, and fell in love with her; for she did indeed exceed all other women in beauty; and he sent to her a person whose name was Simon one of his friends; a Jew he was, and by birth a Cypriot, and one who pretended to be a magician ...

[John2]

If Marcion's "originality" depends on his connection with Simon (via Philip), from my point of view it looks like a bad connection, since both Peter and Josephus condemn him. The way the idea looks to me is that this Simon was a bad influence on some high level people (Felix and Drusilla), but he was a good influence on Marcionism? I just don't see it.

From my point of view, we've got Peter saying he wants nothing to do with Simon and hopes he perishes, and Josephus saying that Simon was a bad influence and a fake. Yet the kind of Christianity he is said to have passed on is somehow the original one?

[RandyHelzerman]

If Marcion's "originality" depends on his connection with Simon (via Philip), from my point of view it looks like a bad connection, since both Peter and Josephus condemn him.

If. If you assume that Simon's plea for forgiveness was just ignored by Peter, or by God. If. If you assume that Simon Magus in acts is the same guy in Josephus. If. If. If.

Too many hypotheticals for me, man.

[John2]

If Marcion's "originality" depends on his connection with Simon (via Philip), from my point of view it looks like a bad connection, since both Peter and Josephus condemn him.

If. If you assume that Simon's plea for forgiveness was just ignored by Peter, or by God. If. If you assume that Simon Magus in acts is the same guy in Josephus. If. If. If.

Too many hypotheticals for me, man.

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.

.

[RandyHelzerman]

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