Modern Marcionites

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.  Romans 8:28  NASB

Good – Marcion of Sinope was born in 85 C.E. in Turkey.  Before he died in 160 in Rome, he changed the entire Christian world forever after.  How did this happen?  Marcion’s teaching was responsible for the Church’s determination of the canon.  Marcion recognized that the God portrayed as good and just in the biblical text was an impossible contradiction. If God is one, then His unity cannot be divided between what is good and what is just.  Justice demands recompense.  Goodness demands mercy.  Both cannot be true of the same ultimate Being.  Even the rabbis recognized this internal contradiction when they prayed, “Lord, may Your mercy outweigh Your Justice.”

For Marcion, this meant that Jesus saves us from this world and its biblical god (of the Jews) in order to make us children of another, hidden, real God—a God who is alien to the fallen world and who promises His followers another life in another world.  According to Marcion, “[God] does not gather his lost children from exile back into their home but freely adopts strangers to take them from their native land of oppression and misery into a new father’s house. . . . Marcion here invokes Gal. 3:13, ‘Christ has purchased us’ . . . and argues ‘evidently as strangers, for no-one ever purchases those who belong to him.’  The purchase price was Christ’s blood, which was not given for the remission of sins or the cleansing of mankind from guilt or as a vicarious atonement fulfilling the Law . . . but for the cancellation of the creator’s claim to his property.”[1]  In other words, Christ saves us from the God of the Law, the God revealed in Scripture, the God of this earth.

“Marcion agreed with the Jews that their promised Messiah, the earthly one, son of the world-god, was really still to come and would establish his earthly kingdom just as the prophets had declared.  Only this has nothing to do with the salvation brought by Christ, which is acosmic in its nature and does not change the course of worldly events, not even in the sense of amelioration: in fact it changes only the prospect for the future, its present spiritual condition, but leaves the world to itself—i.e., to its eventual self-destruction.”[2]

Accordingly, the just god is the god of the Law, the good god is the god of the Gospel.  Therefore, moral goodness under the Law is irrelevant.  It does not have any affect on Christ’s rescuing work, removing us from the entire realm of a god who excises justice on this earth.

Are you wondering why we’re spending any time reading about a man who was excommunicated from the Church for heretical teaching?  What you might find surprising is just how much of Marcion’s thinking is still present in contemporary, conservative Christianity.  As I was researching this topic, I came across a blog piece written by a conservative pastor, Bob Deffinbaugh, in Texas.  It will take you only a minute to read (and a lifetime to consider):

My dear friend from seminary days, Tony Emge, phoned last week to tell me his wife had died of cancer. I flew to California to attend the funeral and be with Tony and his children. I do not understand all God purposed to accomplish through Cathie’s tragic death, but the goodness of God gives me a perspective through which I can view it in faith, giving thanks for all He has done (see 1 Thessalonians 5:18).

In the midst of sorrow and unanswered questions, there are certain truths I know to be true. God is good. For the Christian, I know this good God causes all things to work together for good, for all whom He has chosen and who have placed their trust in Him (Romans 8:28). I know Cathie Emge’s death came from the hand of our good God and that He is using it for good. I even can reflect on some of the ways this tragedy is being used for good.

First, I already know Cathie’s death is for her good. The apostle Paul looked forward to the possibility of his death, knowing that to be with Christ is far better (Philippians 1:23) because to be absent from the body means the Christian is present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:6-8). Second, Cathie’s death has a good purpose for those who are unsaved. It is a reminder of the certainty of death, sometimes much sooner than we expect. It has provided the opportunity for Christians to demonstrate the reality of their faith in the darkest hours of human experience. It gave the opportunity for the gospel to be clearly communicated at her funeral. And it would seem that already at least one person has come to faith as a result of Cathie’s death.

As I thought of Cathie’s husband and my friend, Tony, it occurred to me that Cathie’s death is also for his good. I had never made this connection before, but I think it is a legitimate application of this text: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:19-21).

While thinking about her death before the funeral, it occurred to me we were laying up treasure at the funeral ceremony. Cathie was treasured by her friends and loved ones far more than money. To remain here on earth was to remain subject to corruption (see 2 Corinthians 4:16). To be present with the Lord is to be removed from all corruption (see 1 Corinthians 15:42-53). And to realize that Cathie is now in heaven makes those who love and miss her hunger all the more for heaven as well. How good God is, even in the death of our loved ones!

May God grant that His goodness becomes a truth we not only accept, but embrace, so that it becomes the perspective from which we view all of the events of our lives.

“There is such an absolute perfection in God’s nature and being that nothing is wanting to it or defective in it, and nothing can be added to it to make it better. ‘He is originally good, good of Himself, which nothing else is; for all creatures are good only by participation and communication from God. He is essentially good; not only good, but goodness itself: the creature’s good is a super-added quality, in God it is His essence. He is infinitely good; the creature’s good is but a drop, but in God there is an infinite ocean or gathering together of good. He is eternally and immutably good, for He cannot be less good than He is; as there can be no addition made to Him, so no subtraction from Him’ (Thos. Manton). God is summum bonum, the highest good.”

God is summum bonum, the chiefest good . . . “All that emanates from God—His decrees, His creation, His laws, His providences—cannot be otherwise than good: as it is written, ‘And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good’” (Gen. 1:31).[3]

 Is he right?  Are we supposed to simply accept life’s great tragedies because “God is good”?  Does that explain, or even comfort us when death invades our circumstances?   Marcion saw the incongruity of it all, and opted for an “other world” explanation.  Doesn’t this pastor do the same?  He probably advocates the typical salvation message of Christ on the cross, but when it comes to comprehending life’s inequities, he’s right there with Marcion.  I am also guessing that he’s in the same boat with Marcion on the Law, that is, the Law is essentially irrelevant to those who are “saved.”  The Law is Jewish.  He’s Christian.  His Messiah promises mansions in the sky, eternal life, and the removal of the pain of death.  That doesn’t happen here!  He stops short of Marcion’s conclusion perhaps because Marcion is a heretic, but the trajectory is the same.  The God of the true believer in Christ can’t be the god of the Law, of this tragic self-destructive place called Earth.  The god of this world seems to have lost control, or else he’s a judge without compassion.  Our God, the God of the Christians, has to be a hidden God, a different God.  Otherwise, how could we possibly call Him “good”?

Jews embrace this contradiction without explanation.  Westerners don’t.  We don’t like contradictions, especially in our philosophical constructs of the divine.  Marcion is the inevitable product of this Western aversion—and so, perhaps, are we.

Topical Index: justice, mercy, Law, Gospel, Marcion, death, Romans 8:28

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[1] Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, p 139.

[2] Ibid., p. 140.

[3] https://bible.org/seriespage/3-goodness-god