That Jesus on His coming was seized and slain by the Jews, with at least the connivance of the Demiurge, Marcion admitted. But as this might seem like a defeat of the Supreme Being by His inferior, he was forced to accept the theory called Docetism which was in favour with many other Gnostics. According to this, the body of Jesus was not real flesh and blood, and had indeed no actual existence, but was a phantasm which only appeared to mankind in the likeness of a man[[718]]. Hence it mattered nothing that this body, which did not really exist, appeared to suffer, to be slain, and even to rise again. The Supreme God was not mocked, and the resurrection of the body was to Marcion a thing unthinkable.
In lesser matters, Marcion’s dislike of the God of the Jews is, perhaps, more marked. Man’s body, according to him, was made by the Demiurge out of matter[[719]], but without any spark from a higher world infused into it, as the Ophites and Valentinus had taught. Hence man was naturally inclined to evil, and the Law which the Demiurge delivered to him was more or less of a snare. Man was sure to give way to the evil desires inherent in matter, and on doing so became with all his race subject to the power of matter and the evil spirits inhabiting it. It is true that the Demiurge had devised a plan of salvation in the shape of the Law of the Jews delivered to them on Sinai. But this concerned one small people only, and it was but a fraction of that community which could hope to observe it in all its forms and ceremonies. Did they do so, the Demiurge would provide for them a modified felicity in that region of Hades called the Bosom of Abraham[[720]]. For those Gentiles, and even for those Jews who from weakness or obstinacy did not obey the Law, he had prepared punishment and, apparently, eternal tortures. It is true that he promised the Jews a Messiah who should lead them to the conquest of the earth, but this leader certainly was not Jesus[[721]]; and it is probable that Marcion thought that His Mission had put it out of the power of the Demiurge to fulfil any of these promises.
Possibly it was the same dislike of the Jews that led Marcion to consider St Paul as the only real apostle of Jesus. The others, he said, had overlaid the faith that they had received with Jewish traditions; but Paul, chosen by Jesus after His Ascension[[722]], had resisted their attempt to reintroduce the Law of the Jews, and was, in his own words, an apostle sent not from men, nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead.[[723]] Marcion also seems to have laid stress upon St Paul’s wonder that the Galatians were “so soon removed from Him who hath called you to His grace to another Gospel[[724]],” with the suggestion that this second gospel was the contrivance of the Demiurge; and generally to have accentuated the controversy between St Peter and St Paul mentioned in the Epistle bearing their name[[725]]. From the same Epistle to the Galatians, Marcion appears to have erased the name of Abraham where his blessing is said to have “come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ[[726]]”; and in like manner, to have read into the passage in the First Epistle to the Corinthians[[727]], where it is said that “the world by wisdom knew not God,” expressions implying that it was the “Lord of this World,” i.e. the Demiurge, who was ignorant of the Supreme Being[[728]]. As this ignorance of the Demiurge was a favourite theme of the Ophites and other Gnostics, it is possible that Marcion was more indebted to these predecessors of his than modern commentators on his teaching are inclined to allow; but he perhaps justified his reading by tacking it on to the passage in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians which says that “the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine upon them[[729]].” From the Epistle to the Romans, in which he seems to have made very large erasures[[730]], Marcion draws further arguments in favour of his contention that the Jews were kept in ignorance of the Supreme God, relying upon texts like:
“For they [i.e. Israel] being ignorant of God’s righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God[[731]].”
So, too, in the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, Marcion rejects the passage which declares that Jesus shall come “in flaming fire taking vengeance[[732]],” which he considered inconsistent with the benevolence of Himself and His Father. We do not know whom he considered to be the Antichrist there predicted, as Epiphanius leaves us in doubt whether Marcion accepted the verses which go by the name of the Little Apocalypse, but Tertullian seems to imply that Marcion may have assigned this part to the Messiah of the Demiurge[[733]]. In like manner, he is said to have altered the passage in the Epistle to the Ephesians which speaks of “the mystery which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God[[734]],” so as to make it appear that the mystery was hid not in God, but from the god who created all things, meaning thereby the Demiurge[[735]].
Until some lucky discovery gives us the text of Marcion’s Antitheses it is difficult to say whether he has been correctly reported by his adversaries, or whether, which is probable enough, they have suppressed evidence brought forward by him in support of these erasures and interpolations. That in putting them forward, he did so in such a way as to leave many an opening to a skilled controversialist is easy to believe, and there are many passages in Tertullian’s refutation which show that his forensically-trained adversary took advantage of these with more eagerness than generosity. But the noteworthy thing about the long drawn out dialectic of Tertullian’s treatise Against Marcion, is the way in which Marcion throughout resolutely abstains from any of the allegorical or figurative interpolations of Scripture which we have seen so prevalent among all the Gnostic writers from Simon Magus down to the authors of the Pistis Sophia and its connected texts. Everywhere, it would seem, he took the Biblical texts that he quotes at their literal meaning and never seems to have attempted to translate any of them by trope or figure. In like manner, we find him, so far as his adversaries’ account goes, entirely free from that preoccupation concerning the divisions and order of the spiritual world which plays so large a part in the speculations of the systems hitherto described. Nor does he show any tendency to the deification of abstract ideas which is really at the root of all Gnostic systems whether before or after Christ. Nowhere does Marcion let fall an expression which could make us think of the Sophia or Wisdom of God as a separate entity or personified being, nor is the Logos of Plato and his Alexandrian admirers ever alluded to by him. Hence, he in no way contributes to the growth, so luxuriant in his time, of mythology and allegory[[736]]. In everything he exhibits the hard and unimaginative quality of the practical man.
These considerations have great bearing on the question of the source of his heresy. Had he busied himself, like the Gnostics, with elaborate descriptions of the invisible universe, one would have thought that he owed something to the ancient Egyptian theology, in which such speculations occupied nearly the whole care of its professors. Had he, on the other hand, studied to personify the attributes and qualities of the Supreme Being, one would have been able to connect his teaching with that of the Persian religion, in which, as will be seen in the next chapter, the idea of such personification took the principal place. This connection would have been natural enough, because the province of Pontus, whence Marcion came, had long been subject to the Persian power, and did not become Roman in name until the reign of Nero. Yet no trace of such a connection is even hinted at by adversaries perfectly well informed of the main tenets of the Persian religion[[737]]. The inference is therefore unavoidable that Marcion’s views were original, and that they were formed, as was said by a critic of the last century, by a sort of centrifugal process, and after rejecting in turn all heathen and Jewish elements, as well as most of the traditions which had already grown up in the Catholic Church[[738]]. That Marcion was aware of this seems probable from the many efforts made by him to be reconciled to the Church, or rather to convert the whole Church to his way of thinking. In this, as in the emphasis which he laid on faith rather than knowledge as the source of man’s happiness in this world and the next, he again anticipated in a most striking manner the views of the German Reformers some fourteen centuries later[[739]].
A like analogy is to be seen in the practices of the Marcionite churches, so far at any rate as we may trust to the reports of their orthodox opponents. True, as it would seem, to his conviction of the complete failure of the scheme of the Demiurge, Marcion set his face even more sternly than our own Puritans of Cromwell’s time against anything that should look like enjoyment of the things of this world[[740]]. His followers were enjoined to eat no meat, to abstain from wine even in the Eucharist, which in the Marcionite churches was celebrated with water, and to observe perpetually the strictest continence[[741]]. The Sabbath was kept by them as a fast and, although this may look like an obedience to Jewish custom, Epiphanius, who is our sole authority for the observance, tells us that Marcion expressly rejected this attribution[[742]]. Virginity was, according to him, the only state of life for the true Christian; and although he freely baptized unmarried men and eunuchs, he refused baptism to married persons, as has been said, until they were divorced or on the point of death[[743]]. To the enticements of the circus, the gladiatorial shows, and the theatre, the Marcionites used, according to Tertullian, to return the answer “God forbid!”; and they made the same reply, he tells us, when invited to save their lives in time of persecution by sacrificing a few grains of incense to the genius of the Emperor[[744]]. The reason of all this austerity was apparently their contempt for the kingdom of the Demiurge and their resolve to do nothing to prolong his rule.
Of the spread of the Marcionite heresy we have very little more information than that given above. Prof. Harnack thinks 150-190 A.D. was the “golden age of the Marcionites[[745]],” but Tertullian evidently considered that some thirty years after the last of these dates they were nearly as numerous as the Valentinians, whom he speaks of as the largest sect of heretics[[746]]. An inscription found in a Syrian village refers to a “synagogue” of Marcionites occupying a site there in 318 A.D.[[747]], which is, as has been remarked, older than the earliest dated inscription of the Catholic Church. Theodoret, too, about 440 A.D., boasts of having converted more than a thousand of them, a statement which afterwards swells into eight villages and supposes that they were pretty thickly clustered together[[748]]. Yet they must have led a miserable existence, being persecuted by the Imperial authorities and their Christian brethren at once, and it is not to be wondered at that Marcion himself addresses some followers in a letter quoted by Tertullian as “my partners in hate and wretchedness[[749]].” It speaks volumes for their faith that they continued to hold it in spite of everything.
This was the more to their credit that they were by no means at one in matters of belief. In a passage quoted in a former chapter, Tertullian says that the Marcionites thought it fair to do what Marcion had done, that is, to innovate on the faith according to their own pleasure. This is a rhetorical way of putting it; for the successors of Marcion seem to have differed among themselves mainly upon one point, which was, in fact, the number of “principles” which lay at the beginning of things[[750]]. Thanks to his Stoical training, Marcion was forced to assign a large part in the formation of the cosmos to Matter, which he nevertheless thought to be essentially evil. But in that case, how did it come into existence? It surely could not be the creation of the Supreme and benevolent Being whose name was Love; and if not, how did it come to exist independently of Him? To these questions it is possible that the essentially practical genius of Marcion saw no need to return any answer, and was content to regard them, like Epicurus before him, as insoluble problems. But his followers apparently refused to do so; and hence there arose considerable diversity of opinion. According to an Armenian author of late date, Marcion himself taught that there were three principles, that is, the Supreme God, the Demiurge or Creator, and Matter, which he regarded as a sort of spouse to the Demiurge[[751]]. This, however, is extremely unlikely in view of the unanimous assertion of the Fathers nearer to him in point of time that he taught the existence of two principles only; and it is probable that the theory of three principles, if seriously advanced, must have been the work of one of his followers. Tertullian, whose sophistry in combating Marcion’s teaching in this respect is here particularly apparent, points out, indeed, that if the Creator be held to be self-originated and not himself the creature of the Supreme God, there must be nine gods instead of two[[752]]; but there is no reason to suppose that Marcion ever troubled himself about such dialectical subtleties.