The gospel of the alien god

This is an English translation of a classical book on Church history, liberal theologian Adolf von Harnack's study of Marcion, first published in the 1920's. (The voluminous appendices of the original German edition have not been included.) Marcion was a 2nd century Christian “heretic”, who was expelled from the congregation in Rome and formed his own Church, which survived until the 4th century. While Marcion is often lumped together with the Gnostics, he was strictly speaking sui generis, and is best understood as a kind of extremist “Pauline” or “de-Judaizer”, but without the “Hellenizing” tendencies of the Gnostics proper. Which doesn't mean there aren't similarities – there are, and it seems that the Marcionites post-Marcion gradually became more influenced by Gnosticism, especially in the Manichean version.

Marcion argued that there were two gods, rather than one. The Creator-God is the lower god and the god we meet in the Old Testament. He isn't evil, but rather incompetent, having created a world full of suffering and chaos. On some interpretations, Marcion regarded matter as evil. Since the Creator had used matter to fashion the universe, it inevitably became inferior. The Creator-God also fashioned humans and angels, but in such an imperfect state that they fell into sin. The Creator is “just”, attempting to punish sin and transgression, but his “justice” is inevitably imperfect and frequently messy. The other, higher god is the Alien God or The Alien, a wholly loving and good god with *no* connection to the world created by the lower deity. Marcion believed that humans belonged, body and soul, to the Creator – not even man's spiritual aspect comes from the Alien God. The Alien God offers humanity salvation despite having no connection to it, and hence no obligation to do anything. This shows his boundless love. Jesus was a manifestation of the Alien God in the fallen world of the Creator. By dying on the cross, Jesus “bought” humanity from the Creator. He also descended into Hades, liberating the sinners from Cain's line, Sodom and Gomorrah, etc. Curiously, he didn't save the Jews, nor will he save anyone else than Marcionites at the last judgment, when the Alien God finally puts an end to the Creator's inferior world. All sinners, Jews and even the Creator itself will be excluded from the New Heaven and New Earth, and presumably destroyed. Thus, while both gods are uncreated, the lower god has an end!

This message, weirdly familiar and exotic at the same time, was “proven” by Marcion in a somewhat crude fashion, by simply editing the existing New Testament text to fit the new perspective. Not only did Marcion expunge all “Jewish” traits from the NT texts, he also freely added verses of his own, or sometimes changed the meaning of existing verses by ingenious grammatical tricks. Marcion was strongly literalist, rejecting all allegorical or typological interpretation, and this forced him to create a plain “Scripture” all his own. To Marcion, Paul was the only real apostle, but even his letters had been interpolated by Judaizing scribes, and hence needed thorough revision. As for the gospels, Marcion only accepted the Gospel of Luke (Paul's companion), but of course censored it, too.

His view of the Old Testament was somewhat paradoxical. On the one hand, it's not binding on Christians and hence not part of the canon, Jahve being the inferior Creator-God. On the other hand, he read the OT literally (like the Rabbinical Jews), arguing that it didn't contain prophecies of Jesus, and that the Jewish Messiah would actually appear in the end times (although later superseded by the Second Coming of Jesus). Ironically, Marcion's own books were revised by his disciples after his death to suit the changing needs of different theological factions!

Marcion created a church organization of his own, which had many similarities with the “official” Church, including its uses of baptism, the Holy Supper, and its clerical offices. The Church preached strict non-violence and vegetarianism, and members were expected to be entirely celibate. Persecutions were to be met by martyrdom. In many ways, the Marcionite Church was therefore outwardly similar to the “Catholic” Church, and one Church Father even warned his flock not to visit Marcionite church buildings by mistake. Other mistakes were made, too. The prologues to the Pauline letters in the Latin Vulgate, for centuries the Catholic Bible, were actually written by Marcionites. So was the forged Pauline epistle to the Laodiceans, long accepted as canon by some main-line Christians.

The differences with Gnosticism should now be obvious: the formal organization, the opposition to allegory, the radical rejection of pagan society and philosophy, the lack of speculations about “aeons” and other peculiar quasi-deities. However, the lower Creator-God is obviously the Gnostic Demiurge, and like in Gnosticism, only the spiritual aspect of the human personality is saved, matter being evil. The strict asceticism is also similar to many Gnostic groups. As already mentioned, post-Marcion Marcionites were open to Gnostic influences, and in many places the movement merged with the Manicheans. The influence of Marcionitism on medieval Paulicianism is wholly possible, but sources are too scant to draw definite conclusions. The Marcionites were strong in northern Syria, while Paulicianism was an Armenian heresy.

All in all, Adolf von Harnack did a good job summarizing our knowledge of Marcion and the Marcionites. Most chapters are easily accessible, at least to students of the relevant subjects, but a few are more scholarly and frankly boring, Harnack showing off his considerable erudition by discussing, point by point, every Marcionite change to the NT texts!

Still, I give it five stars.