160 - Marcionite
Marcion and his School played, in the second century, the same part in the history of the Church as the Manichaeans in the period from the third to the sixth century. The two sects are, indeed, agreed in many points. Both of them are dualistic, docetic, ascetic, and critically reserved with respect to the canon of the New Testament. And the difference between them is one of form and construction, rather than one of contents and character. While Manicheism at every point dissolves the ethical processes of history and life into metaphysical speculations, the metaphysical principles on which Marcionism rests are twisted around so as to obtain a moral bearing on practical life; but in both cases the speculative foundation is nearly the same.
Marcion was born at Sinope in Pontus, in the first half of the second century, and came to Rome about 138 or 139 and became a member of the Roman church. His severe asceticism made a deep impression there, and at first his relation to the congregation was very friendly. But it changed after he made the acquaintance of Cerdo, a Syrian Gnostic, whose doctrines he adopted and further developed. In Cerdo's system he found the speculative foundation for his own dualistic conceptions, and the speculative arguments for his personal hatred of Judaism.
Failing in an attempt to bring the church to his way of thinking, he felt constrained to organize his adherents into a separate church and to inaugurate an active propaganda. Within a few years he had built up a strong community in Rome and organizations of his followers had been formed in most of the provinces. He seems to have entertained the hope of gaining universal acceptance for his views. He was unquestionably a man of profound earnestness and of marked ability, and he labored in the spirit of a reformer. About ten years after the time of Valentine, he began to expound his system in Rome.
He was almost wholly free from the speculative spirit that permeated the Egyptian and the Syrian Gnosticism. He did not exalt Knowledge above faith, he did not embody his views in fantastic imagery drawn from pagan cults, he did not distinguish, as did most Gnostics, between the esoteric doctrines understood by the select few and the exoteric teachings to be imparted to the masses. In fact it is doubtful whether he should be called a Gnostic at all.
His idea was not simply to gather around himself, as other Gnostic teachers had done, a circle of such as were perfect - perfect in knowledge, and perfect in asceticism. On the contrary, he proposed to reform the whole Church by eliminating from her doctrines all those elements which were due to Judaism, and had crept stealthily into Christianity by way of tradition.
He had become convinced that Judaism is evil and only evil, and his mission was to eliminate every vestige of it from the religion of Christ. Accepting the Old Testament as the genuine revelation of the God of the Jews, he declared that Jehovah could not be the same as the God of the New Testament. He based his conceptions of Christianity on the writings of Paul, and formed a New Testament canon embracing, besides these, a modified edition of Luke's Gospel.
His success may be estimated from the number and violence of his adversaries. Justin wrote against him, also Rhodon, Theophilus of Antioch, Philippus, and others; and Irenseus intended to devote a separate work to the refutation of his doctrines. Marcionite bishops and presbyters are often mentioned. Epiphanius says that Marcion had adherents in Rome and Italy, in Egypt and Pontus, in Arabia and Syria, in Cyprus and in the Thebaid; and Theodoret tells us, that, in Syria alone, he had converted more than one thousand Marcionists. Vaddington found in Syria the ruins of a Marcionite temple.
It was, however, not so much the speculative part of the system which fascinated people: on the contrary, the histoiy of the sect shows that to have become its ruin. But the practical part of the system, its ethics, impressed even men like Tertullian. The complete separation from the world, and the complete absorption in the love of God, was the principle of that ethics. Not only the theater and the circus were abhorred; but every thing ornamental, even the elegance of refined social forms, was despised. Flesh and wine were forbidden. Marriage was rejected, and martyrdom was looked upon as the crown of human life.
Under Constantiue the Great the persecutions against the sect began, and they were continued under his successors. But the final disappearance of the sect was not due to those persecutions, but to internal dissensions on speculative reasons. As the common gnostical, allegorical interpretation did not suffice to bring the Marcionite system in harmony with the New Testament, Marcion formed a canon of his own, consisting of the Pauline Letters (though in an altered form), and of one Gospel, most closely resembling that of Luke. The relation between this Gospel of Marcion and the four canonical Gospels was in the 19th century been the subject of very minute investigations. Down to the time of Semler, biblical critics generally contented themselves with the statements of the Fathers; but he, the true precursor of the Tubingen school, always anxious to find the traces of Judaism in the ancient church, thought, that, in the Gospel of Marcion, he had found a remnant of that original Christianity which Judaism had tried to destroy. Eichhorn and others further developed the hypothesis; but its true scientific basis it did not obtain until Hahn undertook to restore the text of Mansion's Gospel from the notices of Tertullian and Epiphanius. Hahn, however, came to the conclusion, that, in their relation to the primitive Gospel from which both the Gospel of Luke and that of Marcion must be considered as derivations, it is Marcion, and not Luke, who has made arbitrary changes from dogmatical reasons.
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