Why Marcion Was Cancelled

Sep 01, 2024

I became interested in Marcion of Pontus because of his theology—the startlingly different idea of Christianity he conceived early in the second century: That the existence of a supreme god of pure love and forgiveness had been revealed for the first time to our world by Jesus Christ, unrelated to the gods and religions that had come before him. (This was the subject of my first post, “My Man Marcion”). I knew nothing about him, and as I discussed my plans for this newsletter with friends and family members—all literate, educated people—I found that they knew nothing about him either.

As I read more about Marcion, I discovered why this was the case: The leaders of the emerging proto-orthodox Christian church, centered in Rome, saw him as a serious threat to their own conception of Christianity, which they viewed as the successor to—and fulfillment of—Judaism. He was also a threat to their authority over other Christians, which they cultivated and were keen to strengthen. They reacted by cancelling Marcion, as we might say today, and did such an effective job that nothing he wrote has survived. The story they told about him—about an “arch-heretic” whose teachings were dangerous to Christians’ souls—went largely unexamined until the recent past. This week’s post will look at the difference between the traditional accounts of Marcion as a heretic and the consensus about his life that’s emerging among scholars today.

The official Roman Catholic version of Marcion’s life and times goes something like this: He was a disreputable but wealthy ship-owner who came to Rome in the mid-first century CE and joined the local proto-orthodox Christian church (later to become the Roman Catholic Church), donating a large amount of money. But then he either developed, or revealed, his own ideas about Christianity, which the leaders of the Roman church found unacceptable. Moreover, the story continues, he had “mutilated” the gospels and the Pauline letters, editing out the passages that disagreed with his deviant views. The Roman church leaders declared him a heretic, returned his money, and excommunicated him (some scholars date Marcion’s expulsion to 144 CE). He then went on to found Marcionite churches that the Roman church condemned, opposed, and eventually overcame.

This story was amplified and embroidered by a series of church “heresiologists” over the next few centuries, and remained the official story for nearly two thousand years. It is still the story most commonly told today. Type “Marcion,” or “Marcionite” into a search engine, and most of the results will repeat the two thousand year old sources and story.

It’s worth pausing to consider the word “heresy.” It derives from the ancient Greek αἵρεσις (hairesis), which simply meant “choice” or “the thing chosen.” In early Christianity, it quickly came to mean “an unorthodox sect or belief.” As orthodoxy developed, church leaders deemed it an increasingly serious ecclesiastical crime. By the late fourth century, the church had begun to execute heretics. (The first was Priscillian, a Spanish ascetic and spiritual leader who promoted celibacy (or continence for married people), and encouraged his followers to meditate at home or in the mountains instead of attending church during Lent. Along with five of his followers, Priscillian was “put to the sword” in in 385.)

The problem with the official account of Marcion is that almost everything about it is very thinly attested, and much of it seems dubious, anachronistic, or clearly incorrect, as has been revealed by modern scholars, who have painstakingly researched the evidence from the early Christian era. In some instances, the “facts” of the official story seem to arise simply from, hearsay, slander, or out-and out fiction. The heresiologists laid it on thick: The style of argument of the times tended towards ridicule and sarcasm, sometimes pushed to almost comical levels. To the 21st century ear, the heresiologists sound like the “shock jock” political polemicists of late-night talk radio who traffic in conspiracy theories, mockery, hyperbole, and falsehoods.

Among the most prolific heresiologists was Tertullian, a Christian author born around 160 CE who lived well into the third century, in Carthage—then a major Roman administrative and trading center, today a city in Tunisia. The Roman Catholic church considers Tertullian to be one of the “Church Fathers” and one of its earliest and most influential theologians. Tertulian wrote a five-volume work, Adversus Marcionem (Against Marcion) in Latin, likely around 208 CE. (It was part of a series of similar books “against” other early Christian thinkers, the Jewish people, and women in general.) For Tertullian, there was nothing good about Marcion, including the land he came from—Pontus, on the Black Seas coast of northeastern Anatolia (modern Turkey). He writes:

There is a sternness also in the climate—never broad daylight, the sun always niggardly, the only air they have is fog, the whole year is winter, every wind that blows is the north wind. Water becomes water only by heating: rivers are no rivers, only ice: mountains are piled high up with snow: all is torpid, everything stark. Savagery is there the only thing warm...

Here is a contemporary photo of Sinope (modern spelling, Sinop), a town in the region and likely Marcion’s birthplace (photo by Bjørn Christian Tørrissen via Wikimedia Commons):

Pontus in fact has a climate more like Ireland or the U.S. Pacific Northwest than Arctic Siberia. It rains a lot, but the average high and low temperatures are 79⁰F - 69⁰ in August, and 48⁰ - 40⁰ in February. There’s no reason to think there was a sudden ice age in northern Turkey in the early Christian era—or that Tertullian had ever set foot there.

What can we know about Marcion?

Uncovering the truth about Marcion is more difficult than inquiring about the weather in Pontus. Most of the material we have about him comes from the writings of his theological opponents; everything he wrote himself was suppressed, banned, and destroyed. Over the last century or so, especially in the last few decades, scholars of early Christianity have been able to reconstruct a more believable and interesting view of his life and activities. It’s still fairly indistinct, and different scholars have different opinions about specific aspects of Marcion’s life and teaching. But at least the picture that emerges from their research is driven by the search for facts rather than by the desire to undermine and refute specific beliefs. Unfortunately, almost nothing reliable is known about the personal details of Marcion’s life. As Joseph B. Tyson, a scholar of early Christianity has written: “Reconstruction of the historical Marcion may prove to be even more elusive than reconstruction of the historical Jesus.”

Marcion was born around 85 CE according to many modern scholars, although some, notably R. Joseph Hoffman, think he might have been born as early as 70 CE—less than 40 years after Jesus’ crucifixion and just a few years after the death of the Apostle Paul. Sinope, Marion’s likely hometown, was a port city strategically situated on the trade routes between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. It had been settled as a Greek colony in the seventh or eighth century BCE, and was perhaps known best in antiquity as the birthplace of Diogenes the Cynic (the guy who searched the streets with a lamp looking for an honest man). Sinope had a turbulent politico-military history, and was conquered by the Romans in the first century BCE.

A variety of religions were practiced in Pontus in the late first century CE, including Mithraism, a mystery religion related to Zoroastianism (with roots in Persia), and Judaism, which came to Pontus with Jewish immigrants from Babylonia (Modern Iraq). We know Christian churches were established in Pontus by the late first century CE not only from references in the New Testament and in other early Christian writings, but also from a key Roman reference. Pliny the Younger, a Roman official who was in charge of the region around 111 CE, corresponded with Roman officials, and some of his letters have survived.

Pliny reported that he had looked into the local Christians (including interrogating a few of them), to assess whether they were a threat to the empire. “On an appointed day,” Pliny wrote, “they meet before daybreak to recite a hymn antiphonally to Christ as a god, and to bind themselves by an oath, not for the commission of any crime, but to abstain from theft, robbery, adultery and breach of faith...” He also reported that women held key positions in the churches and officiated at services, and that Christians he interrogated said they had been practicing their religion for as long as twenty years.

Jason D. BeDuhn notes that: “Several modern researchers have pointed to features in common between Pliny’s Christians and Marcion’s brand of Christianity. These include the absence of Jewish characteristics in the service, the direct worship of Christ as something like a deity, and the relatively high position accorded women.”

There’s little in the historical record about Marcion’s activities between the time of Pliny and the circa144 CE date of the heresiologists’ account of Marcion’s visit to Rome. But with this information in mind, we can speculate. At the time Pliny wrote his letter, if we accept the early date for Marcion’s birth, he would have been forty-one years old. Even with the later birth date of 85 CE he would have been twenty-six. We also know that Christianity was being practiced in Pontus by 90 CE at the latest, when Marcion might have been anywhere from five to twenty years old. It would be reasonable to assume he might have been raised in a Christian environment, and that he might have been involved, or certainly aware of, the churches that Pliny investigated. Might he have founded, or been involved in the founding of, one or more churches in Pontus? We have no evidence one way or the other, but it seems conceivable. Modern scholars believe Marcion had been actively teaching for many years before the 140s.

The orthodox account of Marcion’s arrival and rejection in Rome seems suspect for a number of reasons. One is that it is anachronistic. “Excommunication” wasn’t a thing in mid-100s CE. There was no bishop of Rome in the 140s, nor was there any transregional church organization. And the Roman church at that time does not appear to have had any greater authority than other churches in other cities of the Roman Empire, such as Alexandria or, Antioch, or, for that matter, in regions like Pontus—although that would change over the next two hundred years as Rome consolidated its power and influence.

Building the Base for Orthodoxy

In addition, the heresiological accounts of Marcion’s visit to Rome, and his supposed excommunication, all written generations—in some cases, centuries—later, are contradictory in many of their key details. R. Joseh Hoffman concludes that “there is good reason to doubt that Marcion ever traveled to Rome.” The entire story, in his view, was likely invented after the fact by the expanding Roman church to promulgate the idea that the orthodox conception of Christianity was well established and commonly understood before Marcion arrived on the scene.

As for the charge in the official story that Marcion had redacted his scriptures—the Evangelion (a single gospel account of the life of Jesus) and the Apostolikon (his collection of the letters of the apostle Paul)—from an existing version of the New Testament that we know today, modern scholars have amassed convincing evidence that Marcion predated the creation of the earliest versions of New Testament by decades. In fact, many believe the publication and circulation of Marcion’s scriptures was a precipitating factor in the creation of the New Testament. Again, the motive for the proto-orthodox account was to assert that the orthodox conception of Christianity was well established early in the second century and that Marcion was an aberrant latecomer whose heretical views were scornfully rebuffed.

In light of modern scholarship, the official story of a smooth orthodox arc from the apostles of Jesus to the established churches that exist today seems to be a carefully curated myth. The proto-orthodox church would not allow theological dissent, and as the Roman church gained power and authority—culminating in its adoption as the official church of the Roman empire—theological dissent was forbidden. The means of suppression evolved from disagreement and argument, then to ridicule and scorn, and ultimately to capital punishment.

Coming attractions

I’ll have more to say about Marcion in future posts—including a look at his theology, his early version of the New Testament, and the charge (which I believe is unfounded) that he was “anti-Jewish). In my next post, however, I plan to write about the orthodox idea of eternal damnation—which has always struck me as a fantastical and evil idea—and the alternative belief of universal salvation, which was, in fact, held by many early Christians, including some of the theologians most revered in orthodox circles today: that all souls will be redeemed in time by a loving and forgiving god.

Discovering Early Christianity

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