Meanwhile, the bridge between Paganism and Christianity which Gnosticism afforded had been crossed by many. As the Ophites showed the inhabitants of Asia Minor how to combine the practice of their ancestral worships with the Christian revelation, so Valentinus and his successors allowed the rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven without the difficulties attendant on the passage of the camel through the needle’s eye. The authors of the Texts of the Saviour and the Bruce Papyrus went further and made it possible for the Egyptian fellah—then as now hating change, and most tenacious of his own beliefs—to accept the hope of salvation offered by the new faith while giving up none of his traditional lore upon the nature of the next world. In this way, doubtless, many thousands were converted to Christianity who would otherwise have kept aloof from it, and thus hastened its triumph over the State. But the law which seems to compel every religion to borrow the weapons of its adversaries leads sometimes to strange results, and this was never more plainly marked than in the case of Egypt. The history of Egyptian Christianity has yet to be written; but it seems from the first to have been distinguished in many important particulars from that which conquered the West, and it is impossible to attribute these differences to any other source than Gnosticism. The Pharaonic Egyptian had always been fanatical, submissive like all Africans to priestly influence, and easily absorbed in concern for his own spiritual welfare. Given the passion for defining the undefinable and the love of useless detail which marked everything in the old faith, and in systems like those of the Coptic texts which form the subject of this chapter he had the religion to his mind. Nor were other and less abstract considerations wanting. The life of a scribe or temple servant, as the race began to lose the vigour which at one time had made them the conquerors of Asia, had come to be looked upon by the mass of the people as that which was most desirable on earth[[680]]; and here was a faith which called upon the Egyptian to withdraw from the world and devote himself to the care of his own soul. Hence the appeal of Gnosticism to those who would escape hell to renounce all earthly cares fell upon good ground, and Egypt was soon full of ignorant ascetics withdrawn from the life of labour and spending their days in ecstasy or contemplation until roused to seditious or turbulent action at the bidding of their crafty and ambitious leaders. For these monks and hermits the Hellenistic civilization might as well not have existed; but they preserved their native superstitions without much modification, and the practices of magic, alchemy, and divination were rife among them[[681]]. So, too, was the constant desire to enquire into the nature and activities of the Deity which they had brought with them from their old faith, and which nearly rent Christianity in twain when it found expression in the Arian, the Monophysite, and the Monothelite controversies. In the meantime, the Catholic Church had profoundly modified her own methods in the directions which the experience of the Gnostics had shown to be profitable. The fear of hell came to occupy a larger and larger part in her exhortations, and apocalypse after apocalypse was put forth in which its terrors were set out with abundant detail. Ritual necessarily became of immense importance under the pressure of converts who believed in the magical efficacy of prayers and sacraments, in which every word and every gesture was of mysterious import, and the rites of the Church were regarded more and more as secrets on which only those fully instructed might look. The use in them of pictures, flowers, incense, music, and all the externals of the public worship of heathen times, which according to Gibbon would have shocked a Tertullian or a Lactantius could they have returned to earth[[682]], must be attributed in the first instance to the influence of Gnostic converts. Renan is doubtless right when he says that it was over the bridge between Paganism and Christianity formed by Gnosticism that many Pagan practices poured into the Church[[683]].
Apart from these external matters, on the other hand, the outbreak of Gnosticism possibly rendered a real service to Christianity. To the simple chiliastic faith of Apostolic times, the Gnostics added the elements which transformed it into a world-religion, fitted to triumph over all the older creeds and worships; and their stealthy and in part secret opposition forced the Church to adopt the organization which has enabled her to survive in unimpaired strength to the present day. Jewish Christianity, the religion of the few pious and humble souls who thought they had nothing to do but to wait in prayer and hope for their Risen Lord, had proved itself unable to conquer the world, and its adherents under the name of Ebionites were already looked upon by the Gentile converts as heretics. Gnosticism, so long as it was unchecked, was a real danger to the Church, but without it Christendom would probably have broken up into hundreds of small independent communities, and would thus have dissipated the strength which she eventually found in unity. Threatened on the one hand by this danger, and on the other with the loss of popular favour which the attractions of Gnosticism made probable, the Church was forced to organize herself, to define her doctrines, to establish a regular and watchful hierarchy[[684]], and to strictly regulate the tendency to mystic speculation and arbitrary exegesis which she could not wholly suppress. Yet these measures could not come into operation without producing a reaction, the end of which we have yet to see.
CHAPTER XI
MARCION
We have seen that Valentinus left Alexandria to settle in Rome before promulgating his new doctrine[[685]], and the Eternal City seems at that time to have drawn to itself as with a magnet all those Oriental teachers of Christianity who wished to make innovation in religion. Rome in the IInd century had become a veritable sink into which poured men of all nations and creeds whether old or new. Besides the great flood of Isiacists, Mithraists, and worshippers of the Great Goddess and of the Syrian Baals, that now began to appear there, Alexander of Abonoteichos came thither under Marcus Aurelius to celebrate his newly-invented mysteries[[686]], and succeeded in gaining a foothold at the Imperial Court. Moreover in A.D. 140, the terrible war of extermination which Hadrian had been compelled much against his will to wage against the Jewish nation was at length over, and the effect of this was to transfer a great number of Asiatic and African Christians to the world’s metropolis, while making it more than ever expedient for them to disclaim connection with the Jews. The slightly contemptuous toleration, too, which the statesmanlike Hadrian seems to have extended to the Christians[[687]], was not likely to be withdrawn without reason by his philosophic successor, Antoninus Pius; and it was doubtless the consciousness of this which led to the appearance of the various “apologies” for, or defences of, Christianity which Quadratus, Aristides, Justin Martyr, and other persons with some philosophic training now began to put forth. In such of these as have come down to us, the desire of their authors to dissociate themselves from the Jews, then at the nadir of their unpopularity, is plainly manifest, and no doubt gave the note to the innovators[[688]]. It is certainly very marked in the heresy of Marcion, which, unlike those of Valentinus and the other Gnostics, was to culminate in the setting-up of a schismatic Church in opposition to that founded on the Apostles.
Marcion was, according to the better account, a wealthy shipowner of Pontus and probably a convert to Christianity[[689]]. He seems to have been born at Sinope, at one time the most important of the Greek towns on the Southern shore of the Euxine or Black Sea. Mithridates the Great, who was also born there, had made Sinope his capital, and though it had no doubt declined in rank since his time, it must still have been, in the year 100 A.D. (the probable date of Marcion’s birth), a flourishing and prosperous place[[690]]. As in all the cities of Asia Minor, the Stoic philosophy had there obtained a firm hold, and there is some reason for thinking that Marcion received lessons in this before his conversion[[691]]. Of the circumstances which led to this event we have no knowledge, and it was even said in later times that he was born a Christian, and that his father had been a bishop of the Church. A better founded story is that, on his conversion, he brought into the common fund of the Church a considerable sum of money, which is said to have been paid out to him on his expulsion[[692]]. When at the mature age of forty he went to Rome, it seems reasonable to suppose that he accepted the orthodox teaching, as it is said that there was some talk of his being made bishop of what was even then the richest and highest in rank of all the Christian Churches. At Rome, however, he fell in with one Cerdo, a Syrian, who seems to have been already domiciled there and to have taught in secret a pronouncedly dualistic system in which God and Matter were set in sharp opposition to one another, and in which it was held that a good God could not have been the author of this wicked world[[693]]. This opinion Marcion adopted and elaborated, with the result that he was expelled from the Catholic Church, and thereupon set to work to found another, having bishops, priests, deacons, and other officers in close imitation of the community he had left[[694]]. It is said that before his death he wished to be reconciled to the Church, but was told that he could only be readmitted when he had restored to the fold the flock that he had led away from it. This, on the authority of Tertullian, he would have been willing to do; but his rival Church had by that time so enormously increased in numbers, that he died, probably in 165 A.D., before he was able to make the restitution required[[695]]. This story also can only be accepted with a great deal of reserve[[696]].
It is abundantly plain, however, that Marcion was regarded not only by the professed heresiologists of the succeeding age, but also by teachers like Justin Martyr and the learned Clement of Alexandria, as one of the most formidable enemies of the Church, whose evil influence persisted even after his death[[697]]. By the reign of Gratian, his rival Church had spread over Italy, Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, Syria, and Persia[[698]]; and, although the main authority for the increase is the always doubtful one of Epiphanius, this last was not likely to have unduly magnified the success of the Church’s rival, and his story has the confirmation of Tertullian that in his time the Marcionites made churches “as wasps make nests[[699]].” Every Father of note seems to have written against the heresiarch who had thus dared, as was said, to turn away souls from Christ, and Polycarp, the saint and martyr, when Marcion claimed acquaintance with him in Rome on the strength of a former meeting in Smyrna, replied with much heat, “Yes, I know thee! the first-born of Satan[[700]].” So late as the Council in Trullo in the VIIth century, special arrangements had to be made for the reception of Marcionites who wished to be reconciled to the Church, and forms of abjuration of the sect are said to have lingered until the Xth[[701]].
That this longevity was purchased by no willingness to make the best of both worlds or to enjoy peace by compromising with heathenism in the way we have seen prevalent among the Alexandrian Gnostics, is at once evident. Alone among the heretics of the sub-Apostolic Age, the Fathers declare, the Marcionites held fast their faith in time of persecution, while they refused to frequent the circus and the theatre and practised an austerity of life putting to shame even the ascetics among the orthodox.[[702]] Marcion himself underwent none of the slanders on his personal morals which theologians generally heap upon their opponents[[703]], and none of his tenets are said by either Tertullian or Epiphanius, who took his refutation most seriously in hand, to have been borrowed from those Pagan rites or mysteries which they looked upon as forming the most shameful source from which to contaminate the pure doctrine of the Church. Irenaeus, who was his junior by some twenty or thirty years, and may have known him personally, says indeed that he was a disciple of Simon Magus[[704]], but in this he may have alluded merely to his position as the founder of a rival Church. Hippolytus is silent about this; but, true to his system of attacking philosophy on account of its supposed connection with heresy, says that Marcion is a disciple, not of Christ, but of Empedocles[[705]]. There is much to be said for the view that Marcion’s heresy was so well and firmly established before the end of the IInd century, that those who then denounced it really knew little of its beginnings[[706]]. They are, however, unanimous as to the more than Puritanical attitude adopted by its founders. The Marcionites were allowed neither to drink wine nor to eat flesh, and those believers in their tenets who were married had either to separate from their wives or to remain among the catechumens until about to die, it being unlawful for them to receive baptism save on their deathbeds[[707]].
Marcion’s, indeed, seems to have been one of those ruggedly logical and uncompromising natures, not to be led away by reverence for authority or tradition, which appear once or twice in the history of most religions; and it is doubtless this quality which has led Prof. Harnack, as did Neander in the last century, to claim him as the first reformer of the Catholic Church[[708]]. Like another Luther, Marcion declared that the Church had become corrupted by the additions made by men to the pure teaching she had received from her Founder, and that only in return to her primitive faith was safety to be found. For this primitive faith, he appealed, like the makers of the German Reformation, to the words of Scripture, but he differed from them most widely in the limitations that he placed upon them. It was, he declared, impossible to find any attributes in common between the God of the Old Testament and the Supreme (and benevolent) Being of whom Jesus announced Himself the Son, and he therefore rejected the Old Testament entirely. In the same way, he said that the Canonical Gospels then received among Christians had become overlaid with Jewish elements introduced by the Asiatic converts among whom they were first circulated; and that the narrative in the Gospel according to Luke was alone trustworthy[[709]]. From this also, he removed the whole series of traditions concerning the Birth and Infancy of Jesus; and made it begin in effect with the words of the fourth chapter in which is described the coming-down of Jesus to “Capernaum, a city of Galilee.” These he combined with the opening words of Luke iii., so that the event was described as taking place in the “fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar[[710]].” He also excised from the Gospel everything which could indicate any respect shown by the Founder of Christianity to the Torah or Law of the Jews, the allusions to the Jewish traditions concerning Jonah and the Queen of Sheba, the supposed fulfilment of the Jewish prophecies in the person and acts of Jesus, and the statement that He took part in the Paschal Feast. He further removed from it every passage which represents Jesus as drinking wine or taking part in any festivity, and in the Lord’s Prayer he struck out the petition for delivery from evil, while modifying the “Hallowed be thy name!” It has been suggested that in this last case he may have given us an older version than that of the Canon[[711]].
With the remainder of the New Testament, Marcion took similar liberties. He rejected entirely the Acts of the Apostles, The Apocalypse of St John, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Epistles generally called “Pastoral,” as well as all those passing under the names of St John, St James, St Peter and St Jude. For the Apostle Paul, however, Marcion had a profound admiration, pronouncing him to be the only true follower of Jesus, and he accepted with some alterations the ten epistles which he thought could with confidence be attributed to him. These were the Epistles to the Galatians, the two to the Corinthians, the one to the Romans, both those to the Thessalonians, that to the Ephesians or, as he preferred to call it, to the Laodiceans, and those to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Philippians. From these ten epistles, he removed everything which described the fulfilment of the prophecies of the Jewish prophets, all allusions to the Parusia or Second Coming, and some expressions which seemed to him to militate against the asceticism that he himself favoured[[712]]. All these alterations seem to have been set down by Marcion in a book to which he gave the name of the Antitheses, and which contained his statement of the incongruities apparent between the Old and New Testaments. This book is now lost, and the details of Marcion’s emendations have in consequence to be picked out from the treatise of Tertullian against him, the statements of Epiphanius, and the anonymous discourse de Recta Fide which is sometimes included in the works of Origen[[713]].
If these alterations of the Scriptures generally received depended on any independent tradition, or even upon a rational criticism, they would be of the greatest use to modern textual critics, who have in consequence hoped eagerly that some lucky chance might yet give us a copy of Marcion’s Gospel.[[714]] But the Fathers make no allusion to any claim of the kind; and in the absence of Marcion’s own words, it seems likely that his alterations were merely dictated by the preoccupation regarding the Divine nature which seems with him to have amounted to a passion. Never, he said, could the jealous and irascible God of the Jews be identified with the loving and benevolent Spirit whom Jesus called His Father. Hence there was not one God; but two Gods. One of these was the Supreme Being, perfect in power as in goodness, whose name, as perhaps the Orphics and the Ophites taught, was Love[[715]]. Too great to concern Himself with sublunary things, and too pure, as Plato and Philo had both said, to have any dealings with an impure and sinful world, He remained seated apart in the third or highest heaven, inaccessible to and unapproachable by man, like the unknown Father of Valentinus and the other Gnostic sects[[716]]. Below Him was the Creator, or rather the Demiurge or Fashioner of the World, in constant conflict with matter, which he is always trying unsuccessfully to conquer and subdue in accordance with his own limited and imperfect ideas. Just, according to Marcion, was the Demiurge, whom he identified with the God of the Jews; and it was this attribute of justice which prevented him from being considered wholly evil in his nature, as was Satan, the active agent of the matter with which the Demiurge was always striving. Yet the Demiurge was the creator of evil on his own showing[[717]], and as such is entitled to no adoration from man, whom he has brought into a world full of evil. Man’s rescue from this is due to the Supreme God, who sent His Son Jesus Christ on earth that He might reveal to mankind His Heavenly Father, and thus put an end to the sway of the Demiurge.