Christian Texts and History • Re: The Marcionites Shared a Lot of Beliefs with Justin Martyr

Justin was the oldest Church Father. And Justin held a lot of similar beliefs with Marcion.

Yes. In his First Apology, his main criticism of Marcion was:

And there is Marcion, a man of Pontus, who is even at this day alive, and teaching his disciples to believe in some other god greater than the Creator. And he, by the aid of the devils, has caused many of every nation to speak blasphemies, and to deny that God is the maker of this universe, and to assert that some other being, greater than He, has done greater works. All who take their opinions from these men, are, as we before said, called Christians...

THAT'S the main blasphemy by Marcion that Justin wants to point out to the pagans. Not anything about the life of Christ, that he had a birth into a human body or a childhood. But that the Creator of this world (Plato's Demiurge) was not the true god.

Of course Irenaeus's copies of Justin's writings have Justin disown Marcion. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. But they shared a lot of similar beliefs including (a) the interest in Chrestos

Yes. And both Justin Martyr and Tertullian didn't care that pagans mixed up the names. Tertullian says it's all good (pun intended). But its clear that they both believed that their "Christ" was associated with "anointed". In Justin's First Apology, he quotes from Psalms 2:

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against His Anointed...

The argument here seems to be that there were "Chrestians" and "Christians" and that there was some divide between them. I don't see that. I think early Christians didn't care whether they were called "Chrestians' or "Christians". There was no divide. BOTH names were acceptable. That seems to be the implication of Justin Martyr and Tertullian, at any rate, in their Apologies to the pagans.

Justin spoke about the two advents of Jesus, that first he would appear as this meek, kind man and then after the crucifixion he was the "Man of War" who invaded Hades. The Marcionites had the exact same beliefs or at least very similar beliefs. To that end we get the confirmation, I think, of the "shape-shifting" characteristic of the Marcionite "Chrestos" mentioned in Tertullian.

And how does Justin justify his idea of the two advents of Jesus? He spends chapter after chapter quoting from the Old Testament. In Dialogue with Trypho:

And when I had ceased, Trypho said, "These and such like Scriptures, sir, compel us to wait for Him who, as Son of man, receives from the Ancient of days the everlasting kingdom. But this so-called Christ of yours was dishonourable and inglorious, so much so that the last curse contained in the law of God fell on him, for he was crucified."

Then I replied to him, "If, sirs, it were not said by the Scriptures which I have already quoted, that His form was inglorious, and His generation not declared, and that for His death the rich would suffer death, and with His stripes we should be healed, and that He would be led away like a sheep; and if I had not explained that there would be two advents of His,--one in which He was pierced by you; a second, when you shall know Him whom you have pierced, and your tribes shall mourn, each tribe by itself, the women apart, and the men apart, --then I must have been speaking dubious and obscure things. But now, by means of the contents of those Scriptures esteemed holy and prophetic amongst you, I attempt to prove all...

Marcion has similar beliefs to Justin Martyr. He used a Gospel that apparently had a Jesus walking around, interacting with Peter and the other disciples as an (apparently) ordinary human being. Take away the first sentence of a descent into Capernaum (which can be found in gLuke as well) and 'passing through crowds' and the orthodox Christians would have had no problems at all with Marcion's Gospel. I strongly suspect Marcion started with orthodox beliefs and revised his *Ev and Apostolikon from proto-orthodox beliefs. I find it less likely it went the other way around, though that seems to be the flavour of the day on this board.

I am not agreeing with GDon. He hasn't even bothered to read the breadth of Marcionite literature and consider what is being said in all of this. Few people have.

Are these the works of scholars about Marcion that you have continually blasted as being stupid, ignorant and unable to see past their own orthodox beliefs? Or just the ones that agree with you?

It's perfectly true I haven't read much scholarly literature around Marcion. I don't know anything about the ancient languages at all as well, so I am at the mercy of the English translations of ancient literature that are available. That's a large problem for the credibility of any of my analyses. But I do know those English translated ancient texts fairly well, and I try hard to argue from their perspective.

Statistics: Posted by Peter Kirby — Sun Mar 03, 2024 2:54 pm