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Marcion Of SinopeMarcion of Sinope (ca. 110-160), was an early Christian heretic, advocating an ascetic form of gnosticism. He founded his own church which persisted down to the start of the middle ages. History Marcion was a native of Sinope (modern Sinop, Turkey), in Pontus, Asia Minor. He was a wealthy shipowner. According to St Hippolytus, he was the son of a bishop who excommunicated him on grounds of immorality. He eventually found his way to Rome (ca. 140) and became a major financial supporter of the Church there. In the next few years after his arrival in Rome, he worked out his theological system and began to organize his followers into a separate community. He was excommunicated by the Church at Rome in 144, who returned his money. From then on, he apparently used Rome as a base of operations, devoting his gift for organization and considerable wealth to the propagation of his teachings and the establishment of compact communities throughout the Roman Empire, making converts of every age, rank and background. Tertullian and St Irenæus of Lyons tell us that Marcion attempted to use his money to influence the Church to endorse his teaching; they refused. He also came face to face at Rome with Polycarp, who had known the apostle John personally -- Polycarp called him 'the first born of Satan.' His numerous critics throughout the Church include the aforementioned, along with St Justin Martyr, St Ephraim of Syria, Dionysius of Corinth, Theophilus of Antioch, Philip of Gortyna, St Hippolytus and Rhodo in Rome, Bardesanes at Edessa, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen. Teachings Marcion's teaching, known as Marcionism, was that Jesus revealed to the world a hitherto unknown god, who was different from the god of the Hebrew Bible. According to Marcion, the god of the Hebrew Bible was jealous, wrathful, and legalistic. The material world he created was defective, a place of suffering; the god who made such a world was the bungling or malicious demiurge. Jesus was not the Messiah promised by Judaism; that Messiah was to be a conqueror and a political leader. Rather, Jesus was sent by a god greater than the Creator. His role was to reveal the transcendent god of light and pure mind, different in character from the creator god of the Hebrew Bible. Jesus's god was free from passion and wrath, wholly benevolent; and Jesus was sent to lead believers out of subjection to the limited, wrathful creator god of the Old Testament. Christ was not a real man, and did not really die on the cross. Marcion taught that his body was phantasmal; a view attacked by Tertullian in De Carne Christi. Like many other gnostics, Marcion produced his own bible. He rejected the Old Testament altogether. He also rejected three of the four gospels. The fourth, the Gospel of Luke, he edited to remove what he considered to be 'Judaizing' interpolations in support of the Old Testament, and called simply the 'Gospel'. He rejected the Acts of the Apostles, and used only ten of the epistles of St Paul of Tarsus. (He omitted Paul's pastoral epistles, addressed to Timothy and Titus). The rest of the New Testament he did not use. Along with these he produced his own text, the Antitheses, showing the opposition between the Old Testament and the New. Marcion's version of the Gospel of Luke can be substantially reconstructed from the citations made from it by Tertullian in his 'Adversus Marcionem' book 4; in book 5 of the same work Tertullian went through his collection of epistles, pointing out the problems with it. It has been said that Marcion produced the first Christian canon, or list of the books of the Bible that he considered authoritative; however it is unclear in what way he did anything different from other Christian groups. Marcion's position is not identical to, but is closely related to, the various belief sets together called Gnosticism. In various sources, he is often reckoned among the Gnostics, but as the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd ed.) puts it, "it is clear that he would have had little sympathy with their mythological speculations" (p. 1034). Like the Gnostics, his Christology was Docetic. His thinking, untenable to most Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians throughout history, shows the influence of Hellenistic philosophy on Christianity, and the moral critique of the Hebrew Bible from the ethics of Platonism. His editing of the Gospel and Letters may have led Christians to formulate a canon of authoritative Scripture of their own, and so produce the current canon of the New Testament. His writings have all been lost, but it is possible to reconstruct and deduce a large part of what he taught based on what other writers said concerning him, especially Tertullian. He was also known to have imposed a severe morality on his followers, some of whom suffered in the persecutions. Others of his followers, such as Apelles, created their own sects with variant teaching. External links Sources The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd ed.), pp. 1033-34 REFUTATION OF THE SECTS, A Retelling of Yeznik Koghbatsi's Apology, translated by Thomas Samuelian (Armenian Church Classics). Paperback: 68 pages. Publisher: St Vartan Pr (October 1, 1986). ISBN: 0934728135. An English translation of the refutation of the Armenian Yeznik (or "Eznik"), who lived from 387-450 CE. Book IV is his "Refutation of the Heretic Marcion", which contains the later marcionite myth of creation. Contents: Book I - The Nature of God; Book II -Refutation of Zurvanism (an offshoot of Zoroastrianism); Book III - Refutation of the Greek Philosophers.
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