Working my way through Paula Frederickson’s Ancient Christianities but I have a fundamental question that she does not address. How did the Marcionites justify the idea of a second god being over the overly-just god who created the world, as neither Paul nor the Gospels (nor Jesus to the extent we have evidence) ever said anything of the sort? With all available sources there was always just one God so what source did Marcion cite to get two? Or did he just make it all up through his own logic without sources?
LXX
Genesis 1:24
και ειπεν ο Θεός ποιησωμεν
ειπεν is a singular verb, 3rd person, imperfect or aorist thingy tense.
ο θεός is a singular noun, nominative case, masculine gender, 2-1-2 declension
But, ποιησωμεν is a plural verb, 1st person, future tense.
And said the God, let us make
~~~~~they should’ve removed the μεν so it was ποιησω, I make
The singular noun with plural verb don’t quite add up to 1. Most days that is. I live in Iowa and don’t pay much attention to it. 🫢
It sort of makes sense. The God of the OT commands some pretty troubling stuff, so if you start with the premise that God is good, it isn’t too hard to see how someone could conclude the the God portrayed in the the OT is not the real God. I guess I mean that, it depends on what commitments you take as the foundation of your theology.
Yes it “sort of makes sense” but is there ANY source for the notion? Jesus never mentions a second god. He prays to THE god. The Jewish god. Paul never mentions TWO gods. Mark, Matthew, Luke, John- none of them mention a second god. Josephus- nope. John Of Freaking Patmos makes up all kinds of stuff – no second god. They all worship “God.”
So Marcion just thinks it “sort of makes sense” and unilaterally proclaims a fundamental change to the whole Theology?
Well, Paul and Jesus sorta.
Looking at 1 Philippians 2:11,
η δοχα as defined in the Little Liddell is not necessarily only defined as “glory”. It’s also an opinion, belief, a notion, a fancy, vision, reputation, good report, credit, honor, glory, splendour.
ISBN 1-84356-026-7
και πασα γλωσσα: dative case, feminine, singular, 2-1-2
εξομολογησηται οτι: verb, passive voice, 3rd person
κυριος Ιησους Χριστος : nominative, singular, masculine, 2-1-2
εις δοξαν : accusative
Θεου πατρος : genitive
δοχαν (noun, accusative case, feminine, singular, 3-1-3) it’s a noun because if it was an adjective; it should match genders, but it don’t so it’s a separate noun.
I will claim there that Father (genitive case, singular, 3-1-3) is an adjective and not a noun.
Passive voice verb: Everything switches direction from the Active Voice direction.
The dative case gives to the accusative case to the nominative case. The accusative feminine noun δοξαν goes to nominative.
🤨Translation: η δοχα of the father-like God goes to Lord Jesus Christ by means of all languages confessing.
And I’ve about had enough of this Ancient Greek koine. It might be more worthwhile in the long run to only focus on modern Greek.
Right we here get all the academic-gnosticism reasonings, but how do you explain Marcion to normal folks who have not read books by Bart, etc.?
In contrast, Ebionites are easy to explain. Jesus/Christ was Jewish so to be Christian you must be Jewish first. Most will disagree with the notion, but also most will understand it. “What part of the Bible supports that” is the response. It’s like when Bart distinguishes John from the Synoptics – if Jesus really said he was God, why did the synoptics omit that? Likewise, if Jesus ever thought there were two gods, he would have said so, right?
Similarly, Docetism makes sense – he just appeared. No big stretch. Folks disagree but understand the basis of it.
But, Marcion thinking there are two gods – that sounds bizarre and made-up. Bart says Marcion says “Jesus had nothing to do with the Law, since he represented a different God from the one who gave the Law” – well that is not only the opposite of what the gospels say, but also is totally unsupported by anything that we have now. “The proto-orthodox guys censored it” is all we have to go on?
No it is not a far-fetched idea. It is a perfectly logical idea to you and me. But how to explain it to modern people?
Me: Some thought Jesus came from a second higher god and had nothing to do with the law.
Them: but that’s not what the Bible says. What was his evidence for that notion?
Me: “it was not a far-fetched idea in a polytheistic pagan world”
Them: “BS”
Me: Some thought Jesus came from a second higher god and had nothing to do with the law. . . . Them: “BS”
I’m not entirely clear what you are trying to convince them of. Are you trying to illustrate the fluidity of early-second century Christian belief and show that there was a period before orthodoxy had achieved hegemony?
Robert said
And we also must keep in mind that most everything we know about Marcion comes from polemical writings by his opponents.
- The Blueprint: The church authorities wrote the history books. By claiming Marcion “hated and physically slashed” almost the entire New Testament, they created a narrative that made him look like a madman. If he actually accepted many of those books but simply interpreted them outside the institutional framework, the church had to invent a story where he completely butchered the text to destroy his credibility. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]
- The Replicating Pattern: They did the exact same thing to Arius later. They didn’t just engage Arius on his logic; they branded him a heretic, burned his books by imperial decree, and painted him as a cartoon villain to ensure nobody would look at his actual textual arguments.
- If the early church had a definitive, written weapon against Marcion in 170 AD, why did nobody quote it? [** you do not have permission to see this link **]
- Great 3rd-century researchers like Eusebius traveled the empire cataloging every canon list they could find. Yet, Eusebius never mentions the Muratorian list.
- Athanasius scrambled for decades to enforce his 367 AD canon list. If Rome had already written down the exact same core canon 200 years earlier, Athanasius would have blasted it across the world to back himself up. Instead—silence. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]
- The Anachronisms: The Latin text contains vocabulary, grammatical structures, and references that didn’t even exist in the 2nd century.
- The 4th-Century Propaganda: These scholars argue the fragment is a 4th-century or 5th-century text. It was intentionally back-dated to the 2nd century to manufacture a fake “ancient tradition”. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]
Jarek said
The entire criticism of Marcion is post factum. It begins with Justin Martyr who writes about Marcion as a being who still exists somewhere. This demiurge, the second God, the rejection of the LXX tradition is a propaganda product. Nothing more.
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- The Anomaly: Justin treats Marcion as an existential, almost supernatural threat who is actively spreading teachings across the empire by the power of demons.
- The Propaganda Purpose: By transforming Marcion from a textual critic into a demonic agent preaching a “second God,” Justin creates the perfect scapegoat. It allows the emerging orthodox faction to draw a hard line: If you question the institutional usage of the Septuagint (LXX), you are following a demonic demiurge. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]
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- Radical scholars like John Knox and more recently Dr. Markus Vinzent have argued the exact opposite: Marcion was the one who compiled the very first organized Gospel and Pauline collection. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]
- The proto-orthodox church didn’t have a New Testament canon; they were still relying primarily on the LXX and oral traditions. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]
- When Marcion published his text, the institutional church panicked. They couldn’t just confiscate it, so they stole his concept, expanded it with their own heavily edited versions (adding the infancy narratives to Luke, adding pastoral epistles to Paul – with this only I disagree), and then launched a post-factum smear campaign claiming he was the one who butchered their text. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]
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- If you read between the lines of what his opponents quote, Marcion wasn’t a Gnostic speculator dreaming up cosmic realms. He was a literalist and a textual critic. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]
- He looked at the violence, the commands for genocide, and the bizarre rituals (like the two goats for Yahweh and Azazel) in the LXX tradition and simply said: “This cannot be the same God of love and mercy that Jesus talks about.”
- The church couldn’t defeat that raw, logical observation. So, they wrapped it in propaganda, claiming he taught a “demiurge” and “two cosmic gods” to make his common-sense criticism sound like dangerous, heretical insanity. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]
- The Claim: These prologues claim that John’s Gospel was written specifically to oppose Marcion, and that Marcion was personally expelled by John’s disciple, Papias.
- The Fraud: Historians have proven these prologues are absolute fakes written centuries later. Marcion wasn’t even active until around 140 AD—decades after the Apostle John was dead.
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