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Handout #48 |
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The unity of the church threatened by the teaching of Marcion |
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diversification of doctrines, groups and sects was a threat to the
Christian message and to the universal church. So Irenaeus wanted to
unmask these pseudo-revelations put forward by charismatic leaders.
Marcion is perhaps the best known of these. His teaching had the advantage
of simplicity and strict logic, which made it dangerous. By distinguishing
the God of the Old Testament, an evil creator God, from the God of love,
revealed by Jesus, and denying that Jesus had a real human nature, Marcion
opposed the view that human beings were saved wholly, body and
spirit.
After him came Marcion of Pontus, who developed his teaching, shamelessly blaspheming the God whom the Law and the Prophets proclaimed, describing him as the author of evils, desirous of Wars, changing his opinions and contradicting himself. But Jesus was from the Father who is above the God that formed the world, and came into Judaea in the time of Pontius Pilate, who was procurator of Tiberius Caesar; manifest in human form to those who were in Judea, he abolished the Prophets and the Law and all the works of that God who made the world, whom he calls the World Ruler. In addition to this he mutilated the Gospel according to Luke, removing everything about the birth of the Lord, and much of the teaching of the words of the Lord, in which the Lord is recorded as clearly confessing the creator of this universe as his Father. He persuaded his disciples that he was more veracious than the apostles who handed down the gospel, giving them not a gospel but a mere fragment of a gospel. He also similarly cut up the Epistles of Paul removing whatever the apostle said clearly about the God who made the world, that he is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and whatever the apostle teaches by referring to the prophetic writings that predict the coming of the Lord. According to Marcion, only the souls of those who have learned his teaching will come to salvation; the body, since it is taken from the earth, cannot be saved. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against the Heresies, I, 27, 2f. |
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