Marcion

Biography

Marcion , (Ca 85 - Ca 160 authors give [[95] - 161]), founder in Orient of a Église which was said Christian, initially recognized, then condemned by Rome because, paradoxically, it rejected the cross by saying that one could not venerate an instrument of torment. Of pagan origin, it would have been born towards 85 with Sinope, port of the Black Sea. When Marcion reached the adulthood, his/her father, a rich person ship-owner, became bishop of the Christian community of Sinope. Tertullien announces that Marcion, initially stoical, converted at 20 (or 25) years after “having discovered God”. Same author (C.M. 1,19) declares that the marcionites placed a 115 years interval and half between Christ and Marcion.

About the year 138, under the pontificate of saint Hygin, Marcion goes to Rome after having helped his/her father during many voyages. Perhaps it had been made there precede (like Saint Jerome says it) by Marcellina, one of its disciples. It passed then for Christian since it was allowed in the Christian community of Rome. It met there Cerdon arrived in this city a few years before him (towards 135).

In 140/142? , the gnostic Cerdon and Valentine are excluded, by this same Hygin pope, of the community of the faithful ones.

In 144, Marcion is excluded by Pie Ier from the community from faithful because he refuses to recognize the double nature (human and divine) of Christ: after Simon the Magician, he will be the excommunicated second. He did not leave Rome for as much since he was still established there as Master, teaching his own doctrines during the episcopate of Anicet (154 - 166). Jerome qualifies it “ardens ingenii and doctissimus” (of impassioned spirit and very educated). It is perhaps in Rome which he died because we do not have any proof that he left the city.

Adolph von Harnack estimates that Marcion, after having left the Bridge, taught in minor Asia. This assumption is confirmed indirectly by Polycarpe of Smyrna towards 155 (Ep. in Philip.) when it treats Marcion of “first-born of Satan”, reproaching him for rejecting in block “the cross, resurrection, the judgment”.

Perhaps he died between 161 and 168; one does not hear any more of him under the reign of Marc-Aurèle. It is claimed that some time before its death, it would have wished to be reconciled with the Church, but this project does not have to in no case succeeded, if as well is as it is veracious.

Doctrines

According to Marcion, the god of the Law, i.e. the god of the Old Testament, is the witness of a repealed and exceeded economy. There thus exist two gods, that of the Law and the Old Testament, and that of the Gospel and New Testament.

This dualism is thus founded on the opposition Gospel-Law. The creative god about which the Old Testament speaks creates a weak man. This god chooses people, Israel, gives him the Law and a Messiah promises to him. The Old Testament remains valid like revelation of a god right and creative.

The other god has pity of the men and decides to save them, i.e. to release them from the yoke of the Law so that they can make the good. This god sends his son, who takes a body similar to the men, but noncarnal, because the matter is bad. The creative god realizes that Jesus sermon a higher god, it persecutes it and delivers it to dead cross. Like the domination of the creator continues, safety is obtained only at the end of times

Marcion thus rejected the Old Testament like relative to an exceeded economy. However, the primitive Christian writings always did not justify its theories. Marcion considered that the author of the Gospel S had badly included/understood the message of Jesus and had included concepts judaïsantes there. He thus undertook to constitute a file of primitive testimonys which justified its doctrines, a New Testament.

He kept only a Gospel, that of Luc, and 10 epistles of Paul. And as he considered that these writings had been " contaminés" elements judaïsants, it purified them under the terms of its theses, and not of principles of historical criticism. For example, it removed the beginning of the Gospel according to Luc, until 4,32 (miraculous birth of Christ), like several passages of the epistle to the Romans. It improved also texts, in particular those where Jesus is identified with the god of the Old Testament.

Marcion seems to have been the first to have gathered a collection of writings of apostolic origin, which comprised three parts: Evangélion, Epistles, and Antitheses.

The antitheses were lost. Thanks to Tertullien, we know that they were to comprise two parts: a historical and dogmatic part, showing how, according to Marcion, the pure Gospel had deteriorated, and a exegetic part.

Running marcionite

After its exclusion of the Church of Rome, Marcion founded a dissenting community made up of faithful, a clergy and places of worship.

This sect rested:

on a strong organization;
on simplified ceremonies;
on the authority of Marcion: its disciples believed that it was with the left of God while Paul was (Orig on the right. Hom. 25 on Luc);
on an austere morals: prohibition of the marriage, fasts, preparation with martyrdom, fraternity,… ;
on a certain opening: in the sect, the women occupied certain offices because Marcion thought that there was “neither male nor female as a Christ”.

The worship marcionite had certain characteristics:

the psalms used were different from the psalms of David;
the marcionites of Syria turned to the setting one to request God (cf rag. Murator. 82-84, confirmed by Maruta);
they employed water instead of the wine for the eucharistie (Epiph. Side. XLII, 3), they accompanied it by an oil oiling and offered to new baptized a mixture of milk and honey;
they practiced, according to Jean Chrysostome, the baptism for deaths (I Horn. 15/29);
they fasted saturdays by pure hostility with the god Juif.

“Its disciples abstained from meat and wine” (Romanian. 14/21) that they replaced by fish and water (Luc 24/42). The fish constituted for them a crowned food (Tertullien 1/14).

According to Marcion, the procreation of the children was an act of insubordination to the Law of the Creator, therefore an act unworthy of a Christian. No candidate was allowed with the baptism marcionite if it were not laid out to carry out starting from there a life of absolute continence. For Marcionites, the marriage took place with Christ, and the joint life of the husbands was regarded as a divorce with regard to Christ. No doubt those which yielded with this regulation did not form the majority.

The martyrs were numerous at Marcionites; one counts among them the presbytre Métrodore of Smyrna which undergoes the torment of fire like Polycarpe and, during same persecution, a woman which was killed at the time of Valérien in Césarée of Palestine, a Asclépios bishop who, under Dioclétien, was burned alive also with Césarée on the same one to rough-hew as orthodoxe Apselamus.

Marcion would have had as disciples Ambrosius, Apelle, Blastus, Basilicus and Potitus, Marcellina, Pithon, Prépon, Synaros, Théodotion.

Justin of Nablus says to us, towards 155 (Apol. I 26) that the influence of Marcion extended on all the empire; on this same date, Marcionites were numerous with Rome. Around 208, Tertullien confirmed that “the tradition heretic of Marcion filled up the universe” (C.M. 5/19), which was not the case of the Large Church. At the 4th century Épiphane quoted, among the places “infected” by the marcionism, the Italy, the Egypt, the Palestine, the Arabia, the Syria, Cyprus, the Perse (Ilaer. 42.1). The marcionism started to decline in the west at the 3rd century while there remained active in the east. In 318 - 319, a church marcionite was built in Lebaba close to Damas; its inscription mentioned Chrestos.

At the 5th century, Théodoret, bishop of Cyprus, writing with the Pope Leon Ier, declared: “I converted during my career more than thousand marcionites alive in eight villages” .

When the “Marcionisme” disappeared, its followers generally joined the groups Manicheans; one locates descents at the Paulicien S, the Bogomile S, the Cathare S.

Marcion constituted a serious danger to the Roman Église and that explains why, starting from the third quarter of the 2nd century, majority of the catholic writers of Justin to Tertullien (Denys de Corinthe, Philippe of Crete, Theophilus d' Antioche, Philippe de Gortyne, Modeste, Irenee of Lyon, Hippolyte, Méliton de Sardes, Miltiade, Proclus, Clément of Alexandria, Rhodon…) texts against him and its doctrines wrote. Towards the end of the 2nd century, Bardesane d' Edesse wrote against Marcion of the Dialogs in Syriaque which were added to criticisms launched in Greek and which, soon, went the Latin being. At the 4th century, Éphrem the Syrian also criticized these doctrines.

The doctrines of Marcion were to be old when it was fought It is difficult to know the origins of them. In addition to could a personal reading of the epistles pauliniennes, it have there influences of the Gnosis, or others? One finds in Marcion all these elements, one speaks about a “exacerbated paulinism”… It is difficult to know if it wanted to join together the Gnosis and the Christians?

Was Marcion Gnostique? In fact, the Pères of the Church compared it to gnostic and saw in him - after Simon the magician - second the large hérésiarque one of the incipient Christianisme.

Marcion will keep its mystery because the only texts available, on him, are those of its detractors. Perhaps will other sources be found?

The weakening of the marcionism is due to combined causes:

the rule of strict continence of its community: regulate not very gravitational for the people and giving him only very few children;
criticisms of its detractors;
progress of the Church of Rome and the school of Alexandria which discredited its doctrines and presented a new Christian philosophy, not leaving more place with Marcion and the gnosticism;
the political support of the Roman government to the Catholic church of supposed Rome to maintain civil peace.

The whole contributed largely to the victory of this one. Some make of him the ancestor of the catharism, others of Islam… By its concern of eliminating the elements judaïsants from the apostolic writings, Marcion can be regarded as one of the precursors of the Antijudaïsme.

Influence until our days

The doctrines Antijudaïque of Marcion impregnated and can still influence current anti-semites and Raciste S. It was the case of the French Action, founded at the end of the 19th century by Charles Maurras, which influenced many intellectuals in France in first half of the 20th century. Jacques Prévotat note, in conclusion of its work on the catholics and the French Action, the absence of a doctrinal document clearly of the Church before the Second world war:

“For the Church, the benefit would have been large of a Encyclique, explaining to the Fidèle S of the whole world that a Catholicisme which breaks with the Old Testament, which wants to purify the Évangile its roots Jewish, turns to the Hérésie, which this Hérésie has a name, that of Marcion, condemned to the 2nd century. An Encyclical which would have begun again the whole of the problem, in addition, would have given to the Théologien S and faithful the means of facing, with a reflection more worked out, the drama of the Judaïsme during the war. ”

Reference

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