On "Marcion" by Adolf von Harnack ***

This introduction to Marcion is one of the few book-length critical studies on the gnostic teacher of the second century--Marcion, the creator of a New Testament consisting only of seven of Paul's letters and an edited version of the Gospel Luke. That seems to be his main claim to fame, when one reads about him in other works. He posited that the god of the New Testament was a different one than the Old Testament and that all the rest of the Bible was twisted by Jewish thinkers and believers, who had fallen for the doctrines of the old fake god.

As one commentator said Harnack's work, Harnack makes Marcion almost into a Protestant hero. Here is a man who understands the difference between the god of the Old and New Testament, who had the guts to know that grace is by faith alone. Indeed, parts of Harnack's work definitely come across that way, especially in the introduction and conclusion. But Harnack does draw a line at claiming there were actually two gods; he sees that as Marcion's bridge to far for Christians.

In between, however, Harnack does a good job of showing some of the subtle aspects of Marcion's thought. One would get the sense that Marcion was an antinomialist, and yet in reality, he was an ascetic. If the Old Testament is the work of a evil creator god, then one must do what one can to prevent the continuation of the creation. That means no sex, no joy in physical things. They're all fake and keep people bound to that fake god, just as much as the law, so one is to avoid them. Interestingly, while Marcion saw much of the New Testament as corrupted (thus his throwing away of much of it), he saw the Old Testament as an unadulterated complete work. And it is in fact the means by which one comes to know the difference between the good god and the bad one, so even though he dismisses it as scripture, it has a purpose. As Harnack implies, Marcion wouldn't have even had a problem with much of the content of the law (no murder, adultery, etc.); rather, his problem was with the motivation for keeping that law. The good god is all love; he will not judge. Rather, one falls out of contact with that god and thus loses out on the goodness. The evil god, by contrast, punishes for not keeping his law. But the evil god and his law will one day pass away with all that is physical.

Of particular interest to those technically inclined is Harnack's inventory of items that Marcion deleted from or changed in Luke's Gospel and even from Paul's letters (I hadn't realized he'd made changes to Paul's letters before; makes one wonder what exactly Marcion thought he was looking at that he felt like he knew better than the texts handed to him; I mean, if these works are full of errors, why bother trying to rescue them?).

Marcion, according to Harnack (and many who have written about Marcion since), was also the impetus between the canonization of the New Testament and the organization of the larger Christian church. In this view, his New Testament predated that of the orthodox church; it was to refute him that the church came up with its own list of acceptable books. Likewise, his church was earlier organized, in this view, with a hierarchy of structure and government.