Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 9.djvu/700

 MABOIONins 64/ BCAR0IONITB8

by drastic measures. He had to account for the ex- Sent, suddenly Christ I" Maroion admitted no proph« istence of the Old Testament and he accounted for it ecy of the Coming of Christ whatever; the Jewish by postulating a secondary deity, a demiurgus, who prophets foretold a Jewish Messias only, and this Mes- was god in a sense, but not the supreme Goa; he was sias had not yet appeared. Marcion used the story of just, rigidly just, he had his good qualities, but he was the tliree angels, wno ate, walked and conversed with not the good God, who was Father of Our Lord Jesus Abraham and yet had no real human body, as an iilus- Christ. The metaphysical relation between these two tration of the life of Christ (Adv. Marc, III, ix). gods troubled Marcion little; of divine emanation. Tertullian says (ibid.) that when Apelles and seceders fieons, syzygies, eternally opposed principles of gooa from Marcion began to believe that Christ had a real and evil, he knows nothing. He may oe almost a body indeed, not by birth but rather collected from Manichee in practice, but in theory he has not reached the elements, Marcion would prefer to accept even a absolute consistency as Mani did a hundred years putative birth rather than a real body. Whether this later. Marcion had secondly to account for' those is Tertullian 's mockery or a real change in Marcion's passages in the New Testament which countenanced sentiments, w^e do not know. To Marcion matter and the Old. He resolutely cut out all texts that were flesh are not indeed essentially evil, but are contempti- contrary to his dogma; in fact, he created his own ble things, a mere production of the Demiurge, and it New Testament, aomitting but one Gospel, a mutila- was inconceivable that God should really have made tion of St. Luke, and an Apostolicon containing ten them His own. Christ's life on earth was a continual epistles of St. Paul. The mantle of St. Paul had fallen contrast to the conduct of the Demilune. Some of on the shoulders of Marcion in his struggle with the the contrasts are cleverlv staged: the Demiurge sent Judaisers. The Catholics of his day were nothing but bears to devour children for puerile merriment (Kings) the Judaisers of the previous century. The pure Paul- — Christ bade children come to Him and He fondfed ine Gospel had become corrupted and Marcion not ob- and blessed them; the Demiurge in his law declared scurely hinted that even the pillar apostles, Peter, lepers imclean and banished them — but Christ James and John, had betrayed their trust. He loves to touched and healed them. Christ's putative passion speak of "false apostles", and lets his hearers infer and death was the work of the Demiurge, who in re- who they were. Once the Old Testament has been venge for Christ's abolition of the Jewish law delivered completely got rid of, Marcion has no further desire for Him up to hell. But even in hell Christ overcame the change. He makes his purely New Testament Demiurge by preacliing to the spirits in Limbo, and by Church as like the Catholic Church as possible, consist- His Resurrection He founded the true Kingdom of the ent with his deep-seated Puritanism. The first de- good God. Epiphanius (Hser., xlii, 4) sayS that Mar- scription of Marcion's doctrine dates from St. Justin: cionites believed that in Limbo Christ brought salva- try contributed to blasphemy and the refusal to ac- Gentiles, but left in damnation all Old Testament knowledge the Creator of all the world as God. He saints. This may have been held by some Marcion- recognizes another god, who, because he is essentially ites in the fourth century, but it was not the teaching of greater (than the W' orld-maker or Demiurge) has done Marcion himself, who had no Antinomian tendencies, greater deeds than he (wf ttn-a fielj^ova t4 yxl^ova irapA Marcion denied the resurrection of the body, "for rovTov veroiriKivai). The Supreme God is diyaObi, good, flesh and blood shall not inherit the Kingdom of God ", kind; the inferior god is merely BiKaiOi, just and ri^ht- and he denied the second coming of Christ to judge the eous. The good God is all love, the inferior god gives living and the dead, for the good God, being all good- way to fierce anger. Though less than the good God, ness, does not punish those who reject JHim; He simply yet the just god, as world-creator, has his indepen- leaves them to the Demiurge, who will cast them into dent sphere of activity. They are not opposed as Or- everlasting fire.
 * ' With the help of the devil Marcion has in every coun- tion to Cain, Core, Dathan and Abiron. Esau and the

muzd and Ahriman, though the good Goa interferes in With regard to discipline, the main point of differ- favour of men, for He alone is all- wise and all-powerful ence consists in his rejection of marriage, i. e. he bap- and loves mercy more than punishment. All men are tized only those who were not living in matrimony: indeed created by the Demiurge, but by special choice virgins, widows, ceUbates ancl eunuchs (Tert., "Adv. he elected the Jewish people as his own and thus be- Marc.",I,xxix); all others remained catechumens. On came the god of the Jews. the other hand the absence of division between cate- His theological outlook is limited to the Bible, his chumens and baptized persons in Marcionite worship, struggle with the CathoHc Church seems a battle with shocked orthodox Christians, but it was emphatical^ texts and nothing more. The Old Testament is true defended by Marcion's appeal to Gal., vi, 6. According enough, Moses and the Prophets are messengers of the to Tertullian (Adv. Marc, I, xiv) ne used water in Demiurge, the Jewish Messias is sure to come and baptism, anointed his faithful with oil and gave milk found a millennial kingdom for the Jews on earth, but and honey to the catechumens and in so far retained the Jewish Messias has nothing whatever to do with the orthodox practices, although, says Tertullian, all the Christ of God. The Invisible, Indescribable, these things are " beggarly elements of the Creator. " Good God (d^parof, dKardwoftaaTos, dya&6s SeSs), for- Marcionites must have been excessive fastens to pro- merly utterly unknown to the creator as well as to his yoke the ridicule of Tertullian in his Montanist davs. creatures, has revealed Himself in Christ. How far Epiphanius says they fasted on Saturday out of a Marcion admitted a Trinity of persons in the Supreme spirit of opposition to the Jewish God, who made the Godhead is not known; Christ is indeed the Son of Sabbath a day of rejoicing. This however may have God, but He is also simply "God" without further been merely a western custom adopted by them, qualification ; in fact, Marcion's Gospel began with the III. HisTOKY.—It was the fate of Marcionism to words : " In the fifteenth year of the Emperor Tiberius drift away almost immediately from its founder's ideas God descended in Caphamaum and taught on the towards mere Gnosticism. Marcion's creator or Jew- Sabbaths". However daring and capricious this ma- ish god was too inconsistent and illogical a conception, nipulation of the Gospel text, it is at least a splendid he was inferior to the good God, yet he was inoepen- testimony that in Christian circles of the first half of dent; he was just and yet not good; his writings were the second century the Divinity of Christ was a central true and yet to be discarded ; he had created all men dogma. To Marcion however Christ was God Mani- and done them no evil, yet they had not to worship fest, not God Incarnate. His Christoloipr is that of and serve him. Marcion's followers sought to be more theDocetffi (q. v.) rejectine the inspired history of the logical^ they postulated three principles: good, just Infancy, in fact any childhood of Christ at all; Mar- and wicked, opposing the first two to the last; or one cion's Saviovu- is a "deus ex machina" of which Ter- principle only, the just god being a mere creation of tulUan mockingly says: "Suddenly a SoDi suddenty the ^(xxi God. The first opinion was maintAix\s^Vsi^