My Lifelong Obsession with Against Marcion

[lsayre]

It's been a thought.

I had a hunch that you've thought of it!

[Stuart]

A lifelong obsession, but never looked at the vocabulary.

[Secret Alias]

There are a lot of words. Like saying, you claimed you are an astronomer - why didn't you notice that star before?

[Secret Alias]

Let's compare (1) and (3) for a moment. There is a pronounced echo of Papias's understanding of Mark 'having the wrong order' in Against Marcion's discussion of the Marcionite gospel. Starting at the end of Book Two 'the order/arrangement of the Creator' with respect to prophesy becomes the main objection to the Marcionite gospel. In fact, Book 4 attacks the Marcionite gospel PRINCIPALLY in terms of the Marcionite gospel not being reflective of 'the Creator's order/arrangement' with respect to prophesy. Let's start at the end of Book Two where 'the Creator's order' is to make one God appear as two:

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 unreasonableness in the face of both one and the other of the Creator's order [Quanta itaque perversitas vestra erga utrumque ordinem creatoris]. 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, (Book One) proved that he is a judge, and as a judge necessarily stern, and as stern also cruel— if cruelty is the proper word. [2.26]

This is fittingly the end of a long discussion on Marcion's two gods being in reality one (a position which Justin strangely also had to retract in order to make the accusation). Marcion's (and formerly Justin's) understanding of 'two powers in heaven' is an incorrect understanding of what Against Marcion calls an incorrect understanding of the 'Creator's order.' Book Two ends with the following words:

Now if my plea that the Creator combines goodness with judgement had called for a more elaborate demolition of Marcion's Antitheses, I should have gone on to overthrow them one by one, on the principle that the instances cited of both aspects are, as I have already proved, jointly in keeping with (a sound idea of) God. Both aspects, the goodness and the judgement, combine to produce a complete and worthy conception of a divinity to which nothing is impossible: and so I am for the time being content to have rebutted in summary fashion those antitheses which, by criticism of the moral value of the Creator's works, his laws, and his miracles, indicate anxiety to establish a division, making Christ a stranger to the Creator—as it were the supremely good a stranger to the judge, the kind to the cruel, the bringer of salvation a stranger to the author of destruction. Instead of dividing, those antitheses do rather combine into unity the two whom they place in such oppositions as, when combined together, give a complete conception of God. Take away Marcion's title, take away the intention and purpose of his work, and this book will provide neither more nor less than a description of one and the same God, in his supreme goodness and in his judgement— for these two conceptions are conjoined in God and in him alone. In fact Marcion's very anxiety, by means of the instances cited, to set Christ in opposition to the Creator, does rather envisage their unity. For the one and only real and objective divinity showed itself, in these very instances and these very deductions from them, to be both kind and stern: for his purpose was to give evidence of his kindness, particularly in those against whom he had previously shown severity. The change which time brought about is nothing to be wondered at: God subsequently became more gentle, in proportion as things had become subdued, having been at first more strict when they were unsubdued. So Marcion's antitheses make it easier to explain how the Creator's order was by Christ (Ita per antitheses facilius ostendi potest ordo creatoris a Christo) rather refashioned than repudiated, restored rather than rejected: especially so when you make your good god exempt from every bitterness of feeling, and, in that case, from hostility to the Creator. If that is the case how can the antitheses prove he has been in opposition to one or another aspect of the Creator's character? To sum up: I shall by means of these antitheses recognize in Christ my own jealous God. He did in the beginning by his own right, by a hostility which was rational and therefore good, provide beforehand for the maturity and fuller ripeness of the things which were his. His antitheses are in conformity with his own world: for it is composed and regulated by elements contrary to each other, yet in perfect proportion. Therefore, most thoughtless Marcion, you ought rather to have shown that there is one god of light and another of darkness: after that you would have found it easier to persuade us that there is one god of kindness and another of severity. In any case, the antithesis, or opposition, will belong to that God in whose world it is to be found.

In other words, when we segue to the discussion of 'the Creator's order' in Book Three it is part of a continuous discussion of the theological purpose of divine will in the Old Testament which is picked up by the gospel.

What I am trying to get it is the following. Let us ask, what are the 'antitheses?' Clearly Book Four tells us that 'they' are the gospel? Why is the plural used? It is difficult to understand. One would expect that if the gospel (neuter singular) was meant the if the gospel of Marcion was 'antithetical' to the Law it would be called 'the antithesis.' In what sense is the plural form a necessary part of the author's critique? It has to be rooted in the notion that Marcion's gospel emphasized the Father AND THE Son as separate gods with distinct personalities. And this takes us back to Papias's critique of Mark. For Mark has the important discussion in chapter 10 where Jesus clearly speaks of the Father as 'the good God' and making clear that he is not the Good god. This must have been problematic for monarchian Christians. The Son is not the Good God. As we see here, for the author of Against Marcion this contradicts 'the order of the Creator' and I believe we have the proper contextualization of Papias's statement that Mark may have been the first gospel and contained the right stories but was put according to the wrong order. It is similarly reflected in Irenaeus's statement about the gospel being a mosaic being made up of individual stones/stories. The heretics put the order to make God a fox, the orthodox an all powerful monarch. The right order = one which reinforces a singular ruler to the universe and is reflected in arrangement of the stories in the gospel.

[Secret Alias]

The key point we should carry over from Book 2 is that the Creator's order - according to the author - becomes 'refashioned by Christ.' Book Three begins right where Book 2 leaves off:

Continuing with my reconstruction of the work which was lost, and following its original lines, I have now to treat of the [order of] Christ [ordo de Christo], even though, by having completed my proof that divinity necessarily implies unity, I have rendered this superfluous. That the Christ cannot be thought of as belonging to any god except the Creator is involved in the decision already arrived at, that there cannot be any god besides the Creator. This is the Creator whom Christ preached: and the apostles after him proclaimed Christ as belonging to no other god than that God, the Creator, whom Christ had preached: so much so, that no mention was ever made of a second god or a second Christ until Marcion's offence came in.

I want to draw the readers attention to something worth noting. The author's 'recomposition' of an original treatise is paralleled by what the author claims 'the order of Christ' was in relation to the 'order of the Creator' i.e. the Old Testament. Christ modifies what came before him. The author acknowledges that. He says the Creator became kinder as time progressed. But it is also worth noting that the Marcionite myth known to Eznik has 'the repentance of the Creator' too.

The second chapter of Book Three begins:

Now for my first line of attack. I suggest that he had no right to come so unexpectedly. For two reasons. First because he too was the son of his own god.1 For this order is [Hoc enim ordinis fuerat] that father should tell of son's existence before son told of father's, and father bear witness to son before son bore witness to father. Secondly, besides this matter of sonship, he was an emissary.

I can't help but think that this is a rhetorical misrepresentation of the Marcionite position. The Father and the Son are gods. Christ is something else. We might even expect that each god was announced by different emissaries. This echoes throughout the Marcionite understanding of Judaism where 'the Christ of the Jews' is a warlike general but the Christ of the Father is kind. If Mark's gospel understood that there were two gods - the Father and the Son - and two 'Christs' associated with each (i.e. the protagonist and another figure at the heart of the expectation of chapter 13)

And so it required preparatory work in order to be credible—preparatory work built upon foundations of previous intention and prior announcement. Only by being built up in this order could faith with good cause be imposed upon man by God, and shown towards God by man [quo ordine fides informata merito et homini indiceretur a deo et deo exhiberetur ab homine] —a faith which, since there was knowledge, might be required to believe because belief was a possibility, and in fact had learned to believe by virtue of that previous announcement.

There was no need, you say, for such an ordering of events [Non fuit, inquis, ordo eiusmodi necessarius] seeing that he would immediately by the evidence of miracles prove himself in actual fact both son and emissary, and the Christ of God. My answer will be that this form of proof by itself could never have provided satisfactory testimony to him, and in fact he himself subsequently discounted it. When he affirmed that many would come, and would work signs and perform great miracles, to the leading astray even of the elect,a but must not on that account be made welcome, he made it clear that the credit of signs and miracles is precarious, as these are quite easy even for false Christs to perform.

The purpose of Book 3 is to turn the argument that Justin used against the Jews - i.e. that the predictions of a messiah in the Jewish scriptures applied to Jesus - to use against the Marcionites who obviously did not believe them. Their gospel as we shall see in Book Four did not link Jesus to the prediction of a messiah. But I want the reader to see that this understanding of 'order' - i.e. that the Old Testament set about an 'order' for the unfolding of the one who is to come - was likely also lacking in the original copies of Mark. In other words, it is highly likely as the Philosophumena's account of the Marcionites suggest, that the gospel of Mark was originally the gospel of the Marcionites.

In chapter four of Book Three again:

Your god was too proud, I suppose, to copy our [God's] ordering of events [est imitari ordinem dei nostri], since he disapproved of him and thought he would soon be shown wrong. Himself a newcomer, he decided to come in novel fashion, the son before the father's acknowledgement, the emissary before his principal's warrant. In this way he would become the inventor of a faith most unnatural, in which belief in Christ's coming would precede any knowledge of his existence. It occurs to me here to discuss this further question, why he did not let (the Creator's) Christ come first. For when I perceive that through long ages his god with supreme patience suffered a cruel Creator to announce from time to time among men his Christ, and, whatever his reason, delayed either to reveal himself or to intervene, for the same reason I suggest he owed the Creator the further patience of letting him complete his arrangements in respect of his, the Creator's, Christ: in that way, when the whole activity of the hostile God and the hostile Christ was perfect and complete, he would have been able to superpose upon it ordinances of his own. But he became tired of all that patience, for we see that he has not waited until the end of the Creator's activities ... It is another matter if he too is to come again after that other, so that at his first coming he should have taken proceedings against the Creator by destroying his law and prophets, while at the second he will proceed against the Creator's Christ, disproving his kingship. As he will at that event complete his course [unc ergo conclusurus ordinem suum], at that event, if ever, he will deserve our credence: or else, if his business is now already completed, his <second> coming will be devoid of purpose, seeing he will have nothing to do.

How can it be that Papias criticizes Mark for the very thing that Against Marcion criticizes Marcion's gospel? There must be an underlying relationship.

[Secret Alias]

It is also curious that the author criticizes Marcion for having two gods but he himself accepts a modified version of the Marcionite notion of two Christs.

So also in Zechariah, in the person of Jeshua, yes truly, in a name which is itself a sacrament, the veritable high priest of the Father, Christ Jesus, is by two styles of raiment marked out for two advents: he is at first clothed in filthy garments, which means the indignity of passible and mortal flesh, when also the devil stands as his adversary, the devil who put it into the heart of Judas the traitor, not to mention himself being the tempter after <Christ's> baptism: afterwards he is divested of his previous foulness, and arrayed in robe and mitre and shining crown, which means the glory and dignity of his second coming. If also I am to submit an interpretation of the two goats which were offered at the Fast, are not these also figures of Christ's two orders [Si enim et duorum hircomm qui ieiunio offerebantur faciam interpretationem, nonne et illi utrumque ordinem Christi figurant?]

It is difficult to know to what extent the use of 'order' is consistent throughout the author's understanding. Barnabas doesn't mention the two goats as two 'orders' as far as I can see, nor is it found in Justin although Justin uses both the two goats and Zechariah 12 for the two advents theory. That the Savior's name is 'Jesus' similarly results from the 'order' of the Creator:

Therefore in as much as both these names are appropriate to the Creator's Christ, to that extent neither of them is appropriate to the Christ of a non-creator—nor again is the rest of what he did [ reliquus ordo]. So from this point onwards there must be marked out between you and me that firm and definite ruling, necessary to both parties, by which it is laid down that there can be nothing at all in common between the Christ of another god and the Christ of the Creator.

So it is part of the author's overall effort to:

bring the rest of his [Christ's] activities into comparison with the scriptures [Reliquum ordinem eius cum scripturis conferamus]. Whatever that poor body may be, in whatever condition it was, and however regarded, so long as he is without glory, without nobility, and without honour, he will be the Christ I know, because it was foretold that in condition and in aspect such he would be. Once more Isaiah helps us: We have announced, he says, before him: as a young boy, as a root in thirsty land: and he has no form nor glory, and we saw him, and he was without form or comeliness, but his form was dishonoured, defective beyond all men:a as also just before, <there was> the voice of the Father <speaking> to the Son, Even as many will be astounded at thee, so thy appearance will be without glory from men.b For though, as David has it, he is timely in beauty even above the sons of men,c yet this is in that allegorical state of spiritual grace, when he girds himself with the sword of the Word, which is in truth his very own form and comeliness and glory. But in his incorporate condition he is, according to the same prophet, even a worm, and no man, the scorn of men, and the contempt of the people.d It is no interior quality of his that he proclaims is of that nature. For if the fullness of the Spirit has come to rest upon him, I recognize a rod out of the root of Jesse:e and its flower will be my Christ, upon whom, according to Isaiah, has rested the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and godliness, the Spirit of the fear of God.

This will be deeply significant when we start to consider the implication of following Jewish scriptures in the structure of the gospel. The author's argument is that the gospel can't follow 'the order of the Creator' if Marcion wants to argue that the Christ of the gospel is something other than the Christ of the Creator. We are so used to apologetic arguments and the apologetic use of scripture that I think we get a little distracted by modern constructs.

The contemporary Jews must have argued that the Christ was a military general who would conquer the Gentiles and liberate Judea. This is the so-called Davidic Messiah. I think Marcion must have been arguing for a Christ of his 'other' God who was merciful like his father. The question might not have been whether Christ or his predictions were 'Jewish' or found in Jewish scripture but rather whether or not the dominant understanding of the Jewish god and the Jewish messiah applied to Jesus.

To that end, we may imagine a system where there are two powers - one of mercy and another of judgement. Each has a 'Christ' or representative which was to come to earth. To this end to imagine the Marcionite system all we have to is take Justin's original 'two advent' system and then apply it to two separate powers. This helps explain the planning of the book Against Marcion. It is 'faux Justin' who is alleged to have taken great pains to correct HIS OWN belief regarding two powers (in Books 1 and 2) before proceeding to rehash many of his pre-existing statements in the Dialogue in Book Three. The reality was that Justin must have stood very close to Marcion in terms of (a) the understanding of two powers and their association with (b) two advents of Christ.

So the author of Against Marcion concludes Book Three by writing about his own 'corrected' course:

Since I have thought it well that Marcion's own gospel should be brought under discussion, I shall defer until then my treatment of various aspects of his teaching and miracles, as for the matter then in hand. Here however in general terms I shall complete the course I have entered upon [hic autem generaliter expungamus ordinem coeptum], explaining meanwhile that Christ is announced by Isaiah as one who preaches: for he says, Who is there among you who feareth God, and will hear the voice of his Son?g and as a healer, for he says, He himself hath taken away our weak-
nesses and borne <our> wearinesses.h

before in chapter 20 concluding with a statement of Christ's correcting of the Creator's course:

It is enough so far to have traced out Christ's course in these matters [Sufficit hucusque de his interim ordinem Christi decucurrisse], far enough for it to be proved that he is such a one as was foretold, and consequently ought not to be taken as any other than he who it was foretold would be such as this. And so now, because what happened to him is in harmony with the Creator's scriptures, the prior authority of the majority of instances must restore credibility to those others which in the interest of opposing opinions are either brought into doubt or completely denied.

and again:

He was not likely to be prophesying the order of that other god [Nam neque praedicaret alterius dei ordinem], whose existence, you say, he was

Clearly then Marcion understood two separate 'orders' associated with two Christs - one described in the gospel, the other to come at the end of time (Mark chapter 13) - and each associated with two powers in heaven.

[Secret Alias]

As we continue in Book 4 (there is only so much I can squeeze between parental duties) the interests of the author are clear. He is obsessive about the monarchia in heaven. As there are not two gods or two powers but one, there is only one 'order' - obviously as a corollary that there is 'one rule' = monarchia in heaven. This 'one order' means that the fact that the Old Testament is 'witnessed' in the gospel it can mean only one thing = that Jesus as Christ is a representative of the one God of the universe. So we read in chapter 21:

So also at a time of famine in Elijah's day the last small provisions of the widow of Zarephath by the prophet's blessing continued abundant through all the time of famine: you have it in the third (book) of Kingdoms (Kings). If you also turn to the fourth, you will find the whole of this order of Christ [ordinem Christi] in the case of that man of God to whom were brought ten loaves of barley: and when he had ordered them to be distributed to the people, and his servitor, comparing the number of the people and the smallness of the provision, had answered, What, should I set this before an hundred men ?, he replied, Give, and they shall eat, for thus saith the Lord, They shall eat, and shall leave remainders ... according to the word of the Lord.

Again this is the very sense that Papias must have had when criticizing the Gospel of Mark viz. that it doesn't recognize the 'order of Christ' resonating in the stories of Jesus (= that it doesn't emphasize them or enumerate them). This is similarly reflected in chapter 24:

Lastly, you could find, if you were to read what goes before, that the times of the promise are in agreement: Be strong, ye weak hands and ye feeble knees: . . . then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall hearken: then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall be clear.j So when he had told of benefits of healing, then it was that he put scorpions and serpents under subjection to his saints: and this was he who had first received from his Father this authority so as to grant it also to others, and now made it manifest in the order the prophecy had foretold [ et secundum ordinem praedicationis exhibuit.]

In each example the 'true' gospel (= that of the author) reflects the 'order of Christ' whereas the Marcionite gospel lacks the 'right order' (exactly as Papias compares Mark to Matthew).

In chapter 26 just as John the Baptist "had introduced a kind of new order of prayer [novum aliquem ordinem orationis induxerat]" so too Christ. This is a reference to the statement made in Luke that the disciples requested Jesus does this "after the example of John." Yet there are good reasons for doubting that any of this was in the Marcionite gospel. Contextualizing Jesus's introduction of prayer in whatever 'John the Baptist' did was deliberate because we see Celsus say that 'John the Baptist was a Jew' and worshipped the Jewish god - something he appears to have known Marcionites said. In other words, the Marcionites were 'cornered' by the addition to Luke:

for this reason Christ's disciple had good reason to assume that he must make this request of him, so that they too might in their own Master's own appointed way make their prayer to God—not a different god, but in a different manner.

And a little later:

Who is it will not let us be led into temptation? He whom the tempter has no call to be afraid of, or he who since the beginning of the world has held under condemnation the angel who became a tempter? Any man who in such terms as these makes request to another god [Hoc ordine qui alii deo supplicat et non creatori], and not the Creator, is not praying to him, but insulting him.

But clearly it makes a little bit of sense at least to imagine that the Marcionites held that 'the world' leads people into temptation and 'the world' is according to the 'order of the Creator.' In other words, the order of prayers that Jesus introduces are to a different god.

More on the 'order' of the Creator in chapter 31:

I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation" ----even with us, whose hope the Jews still entertain. But this hope the Lord says they should not realize; "Sion being left as a cottages in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers," since the nation rejected the latest invitation to Christ. [7] (Now, I ask, ) after going through all this course [ ordine] of the Creator's dispensation and prophecies, what there is in it which can possibly be assigned to him who has done all his work at one hasty stroke, and possesses neither the Creator's course [ordinem] nor His dispensation in harmony with the parable?

and chapter 35 on the failure of the lepers to recognize Jesus healed them:

Seeing, therefore, that they recognised1414 the truth that at Jerusalem the law was to be fulfilled, He healed them. whose salvation was to come of faith without the order of the law [sine legis ordine remediavit]. Whence also, astonished that one only out of the ten was thankful for his release to the divine grace, He does not command him to offer a gift according to the law, because he had already paid his tribute of gratitude when "he glorified God;1417 for thus did the Lord will that the law's requirement should be interpreted.

[lsayre]

Would not an event as catastrophic as the destruction of the Temple require the advent of a new order, or new means of worshiping, if not worship itself?

[Secret Alias]

I've always been puzzled by it. Here is something else, I have difficulty making sense of:

Anno xv Tiberii Christus Iesus de caelo manare dignatus est ('In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar Christ
Jesus vouchsafed to glide down from heaven)
spiritus salutaris (a salutary spirit).
Marcionis salutis (Marcion's salvation)
qui ita voluit (he who so willed it),
quoto quidem anno Antonini maioris de Ponto suo exhalaverit aura canicularis non curavi investigare (In what year of the elder Antoninus the pestilential breeze breathed out from his own Pontus, I have forborne to inquire
De quo tamen constat (of which I am sure),
Antoninianus haereticus est (he is an Antoninian heretic),
sub Pio impius (impious under Pius).
A Tiberio autem usque ad Antoninum anni fere cxv et dimidium anni cum dimidio mensis (Now from Tiberius to Antoninus there are a matter of a hundred and fifteen and a half years and half a month).
Tantundem temporis ponunt inter Christum et Marcionem (The same amount of time lay between Christ and Marcion).
Cum igitur sub Antonino primus Marcion hunc deum induxerit (therefore under Antoninus Marcion first brought forward this god),
sicut probavimus (as we have seen),
statim, qui sapis, plana res est (at once, if you are in your senses, the fact is clear)

I have always been curious about the exact year cited here.

15th year of Tiberius = 17-18 September 28 CE to 17 September 29 CE

If at first he says he doesn't know when Marcion appeared where and why does this precise number come about? 115 1/2 years 1/2 month?

If the author thinks Jesus came down on Epiphany that would explain the 'half month' = 5 + 12 days. It rounds it to something like 139 CE.

What's so special about 139 CE? Where is he getting the reference that Marcion came in 139 CE?

My solution is that he isn't actually marking the date of Marcion. He clearly says he doesn't know when Marcion came to Rome but instead has Justin Martyr saying that he saw Marcion in Rome (presumably) and knows that Justin wrote to Antoninus and so merely does a vague approximation TO THE START OF THE REIGN OF ANTONINUS which began in July 138 CE. He use of 'half' in this formulation demonstrates how general or sloppy his dating is. But the point here is that he doesn't have any proof that Marcion came to Rome in 139 CE rather he only has the reference in Justin's Apology which - like the present reference - is probably forged. Indeed the math is pathetic. 'from Tiberius to Antoninus = the time between Christ and Marcion. These are absolutely fuzzy numbers. He's not even trying to be accurate. As such the author of this paper does not know what time Marcion came to Rome or appeared only that Justin, who wrote under Antoninus, mentions Marcion as a contemporary, a reference which is certainly forged.