Marcion, or Christianity Without History: The Gospel History and Its Transmission 9781463217228

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Marcion, or Christianity Without History

Analecta Gorgiana

152

Series Editor George Kiraz

Analecta Gorgiana is a collection of long essays and short monographs which are consistently cited by modern scholars but previously difficult to find because of their original appearance in obscure publications. Carefully selected by a team of scholars based on their relevance to modern scholarship, these essays can now be fully utilized by scholars and proudly owned by libraries.

Marcion, or Christianity Without History

The Gospel History and Its Transmission

F. C. Burkitt

l gorgias press 2009

Gorgias Press LLC, 180 Centennial Ave., Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2009 by Gorgias Press LLC Originally published in 1911 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC.

ISBN 978-1-60724-121-8 ISSN 1935-6854 This volume is an extract of the Gorgias Press edition of The Gospel History and Its Transmission, third edition, originally published by T. & T. Clark, 1911.

Printed in the United States of America

IX. MARCION, OR CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT HISTORY. T N the first prospectus of the Hibbert Journal the editors announced that they intended to open their pages to all varieties of religious thought, but that it was not part of their design to occupy their readers with the discussion of ' dead religions.' T h e heretic Marcion has been dead for more than seventeen centuries, and the Church which he established has utterly perished. T h e religion of Marcion is on the face of it a dead religion, and having decided to speak to you about it in this Lecture, I feel it will be part of my duty to attempt to explain why Marcion still may have some living interest for us. T h e main object that I have in view is to shew you what form Christianity took in the mind of an earnest Christian of the second century, to whom the historical element in the Gospel meant little or nothing, a thinker who desired to give up everything in order to have his Christianity purged 289

[1]

THE GOSPEL HISTORY from all defilements of nationalistic and materialistic elements. Let me begin by putting before you the outline of Marcion's career. I cannot claim to have any new light on the subject, which you will find admirably treated in the article on Marcion, in the Dictionary of Christian Biography, by the late Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. There is, indeed, little dispute as to the essential facts. Marcion was born about 100 AD in Pontus, apparently at the well-known Black Sea port of Sinope, and his life occupies the first sixty years or so of the second century. His father was a Christian; our authorities tell us that he was 'Bishop' of the Church there, and according to some accounts Marcion himself had been made his suffragan. Here we have the first point of interest. We cannot tell, of course, what was the exact state of the development of the Christian Ministry in Pontus during the first quarter of the second century. At a later period, when Marcion had become an excommunicated heretic and had founded his own heretical Society, he was regarded as their bishop, and he transmitted his ' Orders' to a succession of Marcionite bishops who came after him. The Marcionite 'orders' were not recognised at Rome any more than Anglican orders are at the present day, but that naturally 290

[2]

MARCION did not affect their legitimacy in the eyes of the Marcionites.

T h i s matter, however, hardly con-

cerns us now.

T h e real point of interest is that

Marcion came of orthodox Christian stock, and that the Marcionites, however much they were mistaken, and however much they were to be condemned,

were definitely a

sect of

Christians.

T h i s is not true of most of the early heretics, or not true to anything like the same extent.

For

the most part, the Gnostic heretics—Valentinus, Marcus, Hermogenes,

and the rest—were pro-

ducts of the mixture of Greek speculation with Christianity. Christian.

Their

systems

were

only

half-

But Marcion's ideas were Christian

through and through.

T w o centuries later, S .

Ephraim in his Hymns against Heretics avers that Bardaisan the Gnostic (who was, in fact, a distinguished Astronomer and Astrologer as well as a Theologian) heathen

wasted

his time in

books about the signs of the

instead of studying

the

Bible.

reading Zodiac

Ephraim

has

many hard things to say about Marcion, but he does not make that kind of accusation against him.

Whatever

we may think of

Marcion's

theories, we must acknowledge that they proceeded from the study of the Gospel. T h e story of Marcion's life is for the most part unknown.

According to the Edessene Chronicle 291

[3]

T H E GOSPEL HISTORY

he left the Church in AD 138. He then appears to have proceeded to Rome, where he hoped that his doctrine would be accepted, or that it would at least receive toleration; but in this he was disappointed. He seems to have led a wandering life, but he was established in Rome as a teacher of his peculiar doctrines during the episcopate of Anicetus (154-166), and for aught we know to the contrary he may have died there. The importance of Marcion does not lie in the outward events of his life, but in the doctrines which he taught. They can be expressed in very few words. His teaching was the exact converse of those discourses in the Acts with which we are all so familiar, in which the speaker, S. Peter or S. Paul, seeks to prove to those who believe Moses and the Prophets that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ of God. Marcion's teaching was very different. Believing fervently that Jesus was the Son of God, come down from the highest Heaven to reveal the Divine will to man, he took the Gospel message and asked how it was possible to believe that the Author of the Gospel could have been the God of the Old Testament. Marcion started, in fact, from the Gospel. The God, he said, whom Jesus preached was a