Marcion of Sinope (also called Marcion of Pontus, which is basically northern Turkey) was a famous Christian heretic in the 2nd Century AD.
All that we know about him comes from the writings of men who disagreed with him. So, some of the information is probably biased, but we do have a pretty good idea of what Marcion believed.
He was probably born in the late 1st Century. His father was reportedly some sort of leader in the churches of Pontus. As Marcion grew up in this early period of Christianity, he seemingly had conflicts with the Church pretty early on.
But, it wasn’t until around the 140s AD when he really went off the deep end.
You see, Marcion didn’t really like the Jews. So, around this time he started preaching that the God of the Old Testament was a weak, wrathful tribal god of the Jewish people. He contrasted this with the God of the New Testament, the loving, all-powerful, Father of Jesus Christ.
Now, Marcion ran into an issue pretty quickly. The New Testament is FULL of references back to the God of the Old Testament. All the Gospels and letters of the New Testament make it very clear that there is one God who was the Creator of the universe and the Father of Jesus Christ.
So, how did Marcion deal with the issue of the Bible disagreeing with his views? Did he change his views and repent? NO! Not good ole’ Marcion!
Instead, he published his own copy of what he believed were the “canonical scriptures” of the New Testament. First, he included the Gosepl of Luke. Out of all the Gospels, Luke is the least focused on Judaism, so Marcion liked it the best. But, Luke does still make very clear that the God of the Old Testament is also the Father of Jesus Christ.
To solve this little issue, Marcion heavily edited and deleted sections of Luke. In fact, he changed it so much that we refer to this edited Gospel as “the Gospel of Marcion”.
Marcion’s Canon
Modern scholars typically call Marcion’s Gospel the “Evangelion”. This is just the Greek term for “Gospel” or “Good News”. It’s also where we get the English word “to evangelize”, which just means “to spread the Good News”.
In addition to his heavily edited version of Luke, Marcion included ten more Books of the New Testament in his canon.
Scholars call these ten other books the “Apostolikon”. As you can probably guess, this is a Greek word which refers to the writings of the “apostle”.
Notice though, that I said “apostle” and not “apostles”. Marcion believed that Paul was the only true apostle. Again, this is because Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles, so his letters had less of an emphasis on Judaism.
But, again Marcion ran into the same problem as with Luke: Paul’s letters still mentioned Judaism and the Old Testament quite a lot. So, Marcion’s solution was to just edit out all the parts he didn’t like.
In the end, Marcion’s canon looked like the following:
- The Evangelion (a version of Luke edited by Marcion)
- The Apostolikon (this is the name given to the following ten letters of Paul)
- Romans
- 1 Corinthians
- 2 Corinthians
- Galatians
- Colossians
- Philippians
- 1 Thessalonians
- 2 Thessalonians
- Philemon
- Laodiceans
There are a couple things to note about that list. First, Marcion did not include 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, nor Titus.
Second of all, he included a letter of Paul to the Laodiceans. This is a whole ‘nother can of worms in modern scholarship. To put it simply, there are two main theories. One, the letter to the Laodiceans is just a different name for the letter to the Ephesians. Or two, Marcion made this letter all on his own to support his views.
God’s Work
We’ve covered how Marcion was a heretic and argued against all of the Old Testament. He was even officially excommunicated in around the year 144. The movement that he created spread some really bad beliefs. In fact, in the 1930s, some of his theories were resurfaced in Nazi Germany because he accepted God while rejecting the Jews, which is what many Nazis wanted to do.
But, even though Marcion worked to spread great evil, God was able to use his work for some good.
You see, when Marcion made his own canon of scriptures in around the 140s or so, there wasn’t a single recognized New Testament. Most Christians agreed on the authority of the Gospels and most of the letters of the apostles, but no one had really organized them into a single list. Until Marcion.
When Marcion started spreading all his heresies, Christians needed a way to argue against him using scripture. So, in response to Marcion’s canon, the Church began to properly organize the New Testament. Because of this, fewer people would be led astray by theories like Marcion’s, since they would have a single set of organized New Testament Scriptures to refer back to.
And we can be thankful for that to this very day.