I definitely prefer theologies that present universal salvation and universal unity with the Higher Essence/God.

Marcion operated in the Greek population market and his "supposed new God" was simply an emphasis on the universal commandment of love that was the basis of the new universal religion.

Stephen said:

If no one responds to his vile spew eventually he’ll tire and go somewhere else.

Stephen, let me commend you on your word choice - vile spew.

Are there any two words that better describe what we have unfortunately been seeing ever since he appeared? I think not.

Once we all ignore him, and he realizes that his publicity campaign has, well, not been the success he imagined (How could one even anticipate that? Why would people not be drawn to the blog of someone seething with such hatred?), he'll scurry off.

Stephen said
Look folks ignore dandanta.
If no one responds to his vile spew eventually he'll tire and go somewhere else.
   

Santa's lists are too long and complex for anyone to deal with.

If no one responds to his vile spew eventually he'll tire and go somewhere else.

Stephen said
The question was never about whether Christians needed to follow the Law.

Well there was clearly some controversy amongst early Christians.  And it seems pretty obvious that the Apostle Paul and the writer of the Gospel of Matthew did not agree on this issue.  As the church became increasingly dominated by Gentile converts, Paul's view won the day. Subsequently Matthew has been reinterpreted to mean the opposite of what it actually says, that Christians must follow the Torah even more stringently than the Pharisees.  Strangely, "fulfill" has come to mean " do away with"!
  

There are two issues here:

One is about how much Jewish Christians should continue to follow all of the Jewish Laws as opposed to Gentile Christians. Should, or is it okay for Jewish Christians to continue eating kosher and things like that? Perhaps one of the questions might be if Jewish and Gentile Christians are going to eat together, who is going to do the cooking? Wouldn't it be okay for Gentile Christians to eat kosher once in a while when they are having a meal with Jewish Christians?

The other issue is about following the Law more stringently than the Pharisees. Bart has mentioned this in some of his talks. He states that Jesus said that people should take the Law to an even higher level. The Law says, "Do not murder"; Jesus says, "Don't even get angry". The Law says, "Don't commit adultery"; Jesus says, "Don't even look at a person that way". The Law says, "an eye for an eye"; Jesus says, "turn the other cheek". There are some other things like this that take the Law to a higher level, and perhaps one could say make it more "stringent" or complete.

Well there was clearly some controversy amongst early Christians.  And it seems pretty obvious that the Apostle Paul and the writer of the Gospel of Matthew did not agree on this issue.  As the church became increasingly dominated by Gentile converts, Paul's view won the day. Subsequently Matthew has been reinterpreted to mean the opposite of what it actually says, that Christians must follow the Torah even more stringently than the Pharisees.  Strangely, "fulfill" has come to mean " do away with"!

It was about how much of the Jewish Law did Christians need to follow.

Things like circumcision, eating kosher, and things like that.

People still needed to love God, love their neighbor, not murder, not commit adultery, not kidnap, not steal...

There is a good deal of the Jewish Law that was carried over and practiced in Christianity.

Porphyry said
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.
  

When you look at statements like "Your father is the devil" [John 8:44] or "No one can serve two masters" [Matthew 6:24], it becomes incredibly clear why Marcion arrived at his "Two Gods" theory.

We are on the same page here. Help me out to develop this thread.

• • Their Father (The Demiurge): A lower, tribal god who governs by law, accommodates human hardness, and compromises on morals by allowing divorce. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]
  • Our Father (Jesus’s Father): The supreme God of absolute love and perfection, who demands total heart-transformation ("from the beginning") and does not compromise with sin. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]

about Marcion from his critics and enemies

Our only window into Marcion’s mind came from the furious rants of his bitter orthodox enemies: Tertullian of Carthage (writing around 207 CE in Adversus Marcionem) and Epiphanius of Salamis

• 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.

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.
  

• • 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 **]

• • 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 **]

• • 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 **]

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 **]

sberry said

But, Marcion thinking there are two gods - that sounds bizarre and made-up. 
  

Porphyry said
>> I offered let’s say alternative meaning.
>> So, why am I the problem here? Just because I think this one is primary, mine?
You did not just offer an alternative meaning. You presumed a meaning other than what everyone else had been using to define the scope of the topic, then told us all we were wrong and didn't understand what we were talking about. 

Why did you backpedal saying:

I’m not claiming that is the only or even primary meaning.

I was trying to explain the origin of the word ortho-dox, primary meaning, by me and Church's continual life through centuries, no matter if majority thinks otherwise. I realized you are talking about opinion, but it was too late...

You told us to "leave the Trinity doctrine aside, it is a separate subject – topic, and has nothing to do with this matter"

I meant in the context of orthodoxy, because the Trinity was built-in in the Gospel. That is why it has nothing to do with orthodoxy, which is later invention - blame heterodox, or heresies, whatever.

even though the Trinity was explicitly one of the doctrines listed as the topic of the thread. 

And I was discussing the doctrine from the perspective of the Gospel and what Jesus said, without involving ortho vs hetero-doxy in that subject.

You have told us that doctrine is accidental to orthodoxy--worship is what matters--even though the topic of the thread is explicitly about orthodox doctrines. 

No way I said TRINITY is accidental, I just distinguished that Gospel doctrine from later Church's authorities and their interpolations, incl. orthodox, heterodox, you name it. Further, when the Western imperium of Roman Catholics figured out they missed one verse of John's Gospel, they introduced the Filioque [using that exact forgoten verse], which was their legitimate right. But then I had to ask: how come the Nicene 'fathers' forgot about that particular verse? Also, I think we have Protestants who are Trinitarians, so my point was that Orthodoxy never had a copyright on that doctrine.

And you used your alternative meaning, repeatedly, to claim authority. Even there though you are inconsistent: to claim authority, you identify yourself with the institutional Orthodox communion, while at the same time saying that Orthodoxy is not about institutions and patriarchs. In other words, you claim institutional affiliation for authority, while arguing that the institution and its commitments are irrelevant. 

Interesting point. but you have to know this also: The Roman Catholics had the dogma of papal infallibility, and that he is God's representative on earth, while the Orthodox do NOT.

>> Are you going to acknowledge that the “orthodox” kept the correct opinion?
No, I'm using the term as a conventional description, not as a judgement. I am not endorsing orthodox theology as true. I am recognizing that 'orthodox' (in the context of historical Christianity) is generally used--as it is here--to mean the mainstream theological consensus that emerges from the first few centuries of Christianity.

Fair enough. I am just not the part of that consensus

I can refer to the pope as "His Holiness" without thinking he is in fact holy. I can talk about the Latter Day Saints without believing they are actually saints. I can call the Russian Orthodox Church "Orthodox" without thinking its beliefs (or its worship) is actually correct. So too, I can call the theology that emerges from the first few ecumenical councils "orthodox" without thinking it is actually right. 

Crystal clear, but then you would just ad that these are just their claims, and I have the right to disagree with them.

I say this charitably, but it occurs to me that we may be hitting a linguistic problem here; you may not be aware how broadly the word 'orthodox' is used in English. 
>> So you are talking about the teaching, and not about the undivided Church?
I'm talking about teachings because the thread is concerned explicitly with teachings--"doctrines." 

...of whom? The thread is clear, blame me, my english, but it says -of-the-undivided-orthodox-church

>> The Eastern Orthodox claim they are katholikos (universal) too, but why did the Western world never claim the title of “Orthodox” for itself? Why did Rome double down on Catholic while the East claimed Orthodox? If this doesn’t tell you my point, nothing will.
I have no idea what point you mean to make here.

They didn't care for how we read the word of orthodoxy today - the point is - we have to understand how they read it.

 
All that said, I note you have not addressed a few of my earlier questions:
>> Does the liturgical heart of orthodoxy include the Synodikon of Orthodoxy on Orthodoxy Sunday? Does it include the Nicaean Creed? Does it include the Liturgy of St. Basil? Does it include celebration of Athanasius’s feast day?

• The Liturgical Anchor: You think listing St. Basil's liturgy traps me, but it does the exact opposite. St. Basil's liturgy famously relies on a strictly pre-Nicene, high-anaphora focus on the Father as the unique Source, reflecting a structure very different from later flat, interchangeable Western dualisms.

In case it eluded you, my point here was that Orthodox liturgy is steeped in doctrine. You can't practice recognizably Orthodox liturgy without voicing doctrine or showing honor to some of the very fathers you disavow. 

Why not? Athanasius tried to force the Apocalypse into the liturgy, aside from the canon, or accept the Council of Trullo, which explicitly claims it both, with and without. How do I read TRULLO? I, or we have the right to reject that book, the same right provided to those who are accepting it.

>> Which fathers, specifically, are you appealing to? 
Again, if the significance wasn't obvious, you appeal to the fathers, but disown many of them. So which ones are you claiming?
  

The Antiochian. I only recently figured out Jesus' words, that is the city on the hill. Bellow is googled out:

• The Literal/Historical Baseline: The ** you do not have permission to see this link **]
• The Original Geographic Anchor: Antioch is literally where the disciples were first named Christians (** you do not have permission to see this link **]
• The Textual Rejection: By claiming Antioch, I don't bow to imperial Roman or Alexandrian council structures. I anchor my position in the school that prioritized the actual human, historical Messiah over cosmic, state-enforced dualisms. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]

Keep the faith, question authority—that is my credo, or creed. Remind yourself of what Jesus said: don't call anybody on earth father (Matthew 23:9). Exactly how they called themselves. Anybody wonder why? Jesus surely meant it in a spiritual sense, because God is Spirit (John 4:24).