The Heretic's Bible
One of the first great heretics was Marcion (c. AD 85-160). He started off an orthodox Christian (his father appears to have been a bishop!) but eventually propounded his own version of “Christianity” with some very unusual beliefs.
The church father Tertullian reports that Marcion focused on Jesus’ saying in Luke 6:43: “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit.” Since “bad fruit” (evil) exists in the world made by the God of the Old Testament, Marcion reasoned, that God cannot be perfect and good. If the God of the Old Testament wasn’t perfect and good, he could not be the God and Father of Jesus Christ. Marcion proposed that a more perfect loving God, superior to Yahweh, must exist. That greater God, he said, was the father of Jesus Christ.
But the church’s Scriptures tied Jesus to the God of the Old Testament and made Jesus the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies, inspired by the God of the Old Testament. Marcion’s theology couldn’t abide those connections, so he decided to sever them.
First, the heretic discarded the entire Old Testament. Then he set out to make the New Testament more amenable to his own theology. Marcion believed that all the apostles except Paul had been led astray by Jewish teaching. Only Paul, Marcion said, truly understood Jesus. So, Marcion discarded the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John and retained only the gospel of Luke, Paul’s companion. Unfortunately, even Luke’s gospel contained references to the Old Testament—so Marcion just edited out anything that connected Jesus to the Old Testament. That edited version of Luke became Marcion’s gospel.
Next Marcion retained ten of Paul’s letters (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians [Marcion called it “Laodiceans”], Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and Philemon) and trimmed them by his theological rules. He rejected the rest of the New Testament.
I’m not as interested in Marcion’s theology as I am in what his approach to the Bible tells us about how the earliest Christians saw the Bible. If Marcion felt the need to discard all the books that he did to support his theological stance that differed with traditional Christianity, it tells you that traditional Christians were already treating those books as reliable and using them as authoritative for faith and practice.
Marcion’s heresy began to flourish around AD 140-145, so by that time, the churches were using four gospels and all of Paul’s epistles. Other early writers show that Acts, 1 Peter, 1 John, and Revelation were also in use. The eastern church was using Hebrews though it was disputed in the western churches.
Other “disputed” books—James, Jude, 2 Peter, and 2 & 3 John—were known to most and were universally recognized later.
Marcion was probably the first to create a formal canon. But there was already a functioning canon that was recognized informally.
Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code has popularized the myth that the canon didn’t exist until the Council of Nicea (AD 325), almost 200 years after Marcion’s time. Those who buy into the myth find our present-day canon suspicious, claiming it was molded by Emperor Constantine, who through political arm-twisting and intrigue forced the churches to accept his canon and reject the books that the church had supposedly used all along, which we now call “heretical books”.
This conspiracy theory is wrong on at least two counts. First, the Council of Nicea left no record of discussion of canon and second, Marcion’s derived canon strongly implies the churches’ recognition of most of the apostolic books we now use nearly two centuries before Nicea.
The church father Tertullian reports that Marcion focused on Jesus’ saying in Luke 6:43: “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit.” Since “bad fruit” (evil) exists in the world made by the God of the Old Testament, Marcion reasoned, that God cannot be perfect and good. If the God of the Old Testament wasn’t perfect and good, he could not be the God and Father of Jesus Christ. Marcion proposed that a more perfect loving God, superior to Yahweh, must exist. That greater God, he said, was the father of Jesus Christ.
But the church’s Scriptures tied Jesus to the God of the Old Testament and made Jesus the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies, inspired by the God of the Old Testament. Marcion’s theology couldn’t abide those connections, so he decided to sever them.
First, the heretic discarded the entire Old Testament. Then he set out to make the New Testament more amenable to his own theology. Marcion believed that all the apostles except Paul had been led astray by Jewish teaching. Only Paul, Marcion said, truly understood Jesus. So, Marcion discarded the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John and retained only the gospel of Luke, Paul’s companion. Unfortunately, even Luke’s gospel contained references to the Old Testament—so Marcion just edited out anything that connected Jesus to the Old Testament. That edited version of Luke became Marcion’s gospel.
Next Marcion retained ten of Paul’s letters (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians [Marcion called it “Laodiceans”], Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and Philemon) and trimmed them by his theological rules. He rejected the rest of the New Testament.
I’m not as interested in Marcion’s theology as I am in what his approach to the Bible tells us about how the earliest Christians saw the Bible. If Marcion felt the need to discard all the books that he did to support his theological stance that differed with traditional Christianity, it tells you that traditional Christians were already treating those books as reliable and using them as authoritative for faith and practice.
Marcion’s heresy began to flourish around AD 140-145, so by that time, the churches were using four gospels and all of Paul’s epistles. Other early writers show that Acts, 1 Peter, 1 John, and Revelation were also in use. The eastern church was using Hebrews though it was disputed in the western churches.
Other “disputed” books—James, Jude, 2 Peter, and 2 & 3 John—were known to most and were universally recognized later.
Marcion was probably the first to create a formal canon. But there was already a functioning canon that was recognized informally.
Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code has popularized the myth that the canon didn’t exist until the Council of Nicea (AD 325), almost 200 years after Marcion’s time. Those who buy into the myth find our present-day canon suspicious, claiming it was molded by Emperor Constantine, who through political arm-twisting and intrigue forced the churches to accept his canon and reject the books that the church had supposedly used all along, which we now call “heretical books”.
This conspiracy theory is wrong on at least two counts. First, the Council of Nicea left no record of discussion of canon and second, Marcion’s derived canon strongly implies the churches’ recognition of most of the apostolic books we now use nearly two centuries before Nicea.