2. His System

ity and Judaism. His comprehen- sive work bore the title "Antitheses," and was a semi-dogmatic treatise contrasting contradictory sentences from the law and the Gospel. Tertullian made industrious use of this work in his reply to Marcion. Origen knew of it, perhaps, and also Ephraem, but Epiphanius and Hippolytus did not use it. Antithetical sentences were used as the chief arguments, but they were fortified by examples taken from other passages. Marcion's teaching is especially remarkable for its lack of interest in metaphysical questions. It is certain, however, that he did not regard the Cosmos as the creation of the supreme God; it was the production of a demiurge. " Marcion has with the help of demons in all countries largely contributed to the expression of blasphemies and to the refusal to recognize as God the creator of our world. He acknowledges another God who because he is essentially greater has done greater deeds than the other " (Justin Martyr, I., xxvi; cf. ANF, i. 171). Marcion differs entirely from Valentinus in failing to discuss eons. Marcion's thought concerns itself entirely with the religious records of the Jews and the Christians. His demiurge is the creator and lord of all men, who has, however, a chosen people, and is the God of the Jews, the God of the Old Testament. Marcion's reading of the Old Testament convinced him that the principle of retributive justice found in the Old Testament could not be reconciled with that of love and goodness as represented by the God of the new covenant (Tertullian, "Against Marcion," I., vi.; ANF, iii. 275). The creating God is just according to the maxim, "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"; this maxim was expressly annulled by the good God (Matt. v. 38-39). The God of creation caused fire to come down from heaven, the good God in Christ forbade his disciples from doing this (II Kings i.; Luke ix. 54-55); stealing was encouraged by the God of creation of the Old Testament (Ex. xii. 35-36) and forbidden in the New; the creation God is neither omnipotent nor omniscient; he had to investigate what Adam was doing and find out what was going on in Sodom. The good God knows all things and is all-powerful. The Old Testament with its ceremonial law and its low standard of morality is quite fitted to the creation God, but neither he nor his book should have recognition among Christians. Marcion did not employ the allegorical method of interpretation, he accepted the letter of the Old Testament with its miracles and its prophecies. He seknowledgod ths,t the creation God was to send a Messiah to collect the chosen people in his kingdom to rule over the whole earth and to exercise judgment upon heathen and sinners. It is at this point that the good God is introduced; before this he was unknown in the world of the demiurge who did not even suspect his existence, but the plan of the demiurge the good God could not allow to be carried out. He wishes to be merciful to sinners and to free all from the bonds of the God of the Jews. He determined

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therefore to appear in the world in the person of Christ, but Marcion took no interest in the nature of the union between the two, though on this point he must be called a docetist (see Docetism; Gnosticism). In the Gospel of St. Luke Marcion made an arbitrary change in the text in order to provide for an immediate appearance of God in the world: " In the fifteenth year of the Emperor Tiberius God came down to Capernaurn and taught on the sab bath days."' In order to influence the Jews, Christ attempted to adapt himself to their conditions, calling himself the Messiah; but in all his activity he showed himself the opposite of the demiurge; while the demiurge only approved of just persons, Christ called to himself publicans and sinners and those who were weary and heavy laden. According to the law lepers were unclean; Christ touched them. Elisha healed one individual by water; Christ healed many through his word. The demi urge sent bears against the children in order to avenge their mockery of Elisha; Christ bade chil dren to come unto him. The Messiah of the demi urge was sent to gather together the Jews of the dispersion, Christ is to free all men. Judaism is restricted to one people; all peoples furnish con verts to Christianity. Jewish hopes are concerned with an earthly kingdom; Christ promises to his own a kingdom heavenly and eternal. Only as time went on did the demiurge understand the sig nificance of Christ's career. When he saw his law being rejected he abandoned the Messiah to the believers in the demiurge who crucified him. Here again his victory over the good God was only ap parent. The dead Christ he sent down to Hades; but Christ preached and found believers even there who rejected the God of the Jews. The veiling of the sun at the time of the crucifixion was the work of the demiurge. The Messiah of the demiurge has still to appear and will establish an earthly kingdom to last 1,000 years, a realm opposed to the heavenly kingdom of Christ where those who have risen from the dead live and reign, released from the impediment of matter after laying aside their earthly bodies. But the good God continues to be the God of love. Those who do not follow him but cling to fellowship with the demiurge he refuses to punish; he simply gives them over to the demiurge in whose fire they will burn. For be lievers in the heavenly father there is no judgment; they exist in God's love and nothing seems more inconceivable to Marcion than the notion of a Christ returning for judgment.

In all these speculations there is one great funda mental thought, viz., the idea of the absolute orig inality and independence of Christianity. This was brought out in Marcion's dispute with 3. Relation the Roman presbyters, in which he to Chris- quoted from Luke v. 36-37, vi. 43. In tianity and applying this to Christianity Marcion the New indicated his conviction that its con Testament. nection with Judaism should be en tirely severed. For Marcion's New Testament see Canon of Scripture, II., 3, § 1. His position was that the original Christian records as they were handed down in the Church had either been intentionally falsified or been written by men to whom the spirit of Christ was foreign. The first place in his class of false apostles was occupied by Peter, James, and John, and he was careful to support this position by citing the Epistle to the Galatians. For him Paul alone was the true apostle; yet he disregarded the Jewish elements in Paulinism. The favorite Pauline antitheses between the law and the Gospel, anger and grace, works and faith, flesh and spirit, sin and righteousness, death and life, were congenial to his thought and germane to his method. In Marcion's system the Gospel of the free grace of God in Jesus Christ is given so much weight that it caused him to view the Church conception of the Gospel as an unpermissible falsification.

As to whether Marcion was a Gnostic or not it must be said that in many different directions he was distinct from the Gnostics, whose orientalism was absent from his system. He was not interested in religious philosophy, and reo-

4t His ognized no distinction between faith

Affiliations and gnosis. The Gnostic division of and Signifi- classes with different standards of concance. duct and different aims he did not accept, and the teaching concerning eons he entirely omitted. His work is chiefly important from the point of view of Christian ethics. All works of the creating God, he affirmed, were to be rejected. He preached the strictest asceticism, denied the lawfulness of marriage, and issued strict provisions in regard to fasting (Tertullian, "Against Marcion," I., xxix., IV., xvii., xxix., xxxiv., xxxviii., xliv., etc.). The type of his propaganda also differed from the Gnostics'. A purified church in which all were to have a place was his aim. He kept many of the church customs in their entirety, baptizing with water and with the trinitarian formula. He did not, however, distinguish between the baptized and catechumens (see Catechumenate), but it was especially his strict asceticism which opposed an obstacle to the growth of his party. Marcion was highly reverenced in his communities, being called the most holy master. His antitheses were given a canonical position. His popularity and his wide influence over the masses made his work the gravest danger to the Church in the second century. He exerted a power never attained by the Valentinians and other Gnostic groups, and was especially dreaded by the orthodox. Possibly the baptismal creed of Rome was prepared to counteract his teaching.

Many of Marcion's followers did not adhere strictly to his teachings. Some of them agreed with their master in recognizing two principles, others insisted that there were three. Apelles, the Marcionite about whom most is known g. His (Tertullian, Prcescrniptio, xxx.; ANF, School iii. 257), seems to have engaged in and Sect. magical practises and paid great attention to visions, to the utterances of oracles, and to the prophetical revelations of a woman named Philumene, his companion. He dif fered also from Marcion in his metaphysical inter ests. His rule of faith began with the words: "There is one good God and one beginning and one power unnamable" (Epiphanius, Hær., xliv. 1-2). But he denied with the Marcionites that the

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world was created by the good God. He taught a fully developed system of angelic mediation, in which there was a creative angel, a fire angel, an angel who spoke to Moses. The ancient authori ties differed as to the number of these beings in his system. Apelles differed also from Marcion in his Christology. Christ did not merely seem to have appeared; in truth he took on flesh, he had real flesh and body. He really appeared in the world, and was truly crucified and truly buried and truly rose again. But Apelles did not accept the virgin birth of Christ, and according to him Christ had a sidereal body. He agreed with Marcion as to the origin of the Old Testament and its unsuitability for Christians, the whole volume being unworthy of credence. He wrote a book to show that what ever Moses had written about God was untrue. He called the story of the ark a fable on the ground that it could not have held more than four ele phants. The orthodox party accused him of picking and choosing according to his inclinations, to which he replied by quoting Christ's well-known apochryphal saying "be ye skilful money changers" (see Agrapha, 5). Altogether his teaching shows a roturq to Gnosticism. Three other Marcionites appear in early Christian literature, Lucian, Megethius, and Mark. Some of these recognized three principles, a good and evil principle in addition to the demiurge. The only complete account of any late marcionite system is found in the Armenian writer Eznik. He speaks of three principles, of the creation being due to a just God, while the creation God succeeds in getting it into his power, and then forming an aW anre with Adam. Matter by itself produces dia bolical creation. This chaotic condition is'cured by the supreme God sending his son from heaven. Those who believe on him as he is revealed through Paul are saved. Marcionite communities seem to have been found especially throughout the East, but also in the West. Their ardor in braving per secution was equal to that of the orthodox, and Marcionite martyrs are frequently mentioned in Eusebius. Near Damascus a description of a Mar cionite church has been found proving that in the year 318 the Mareionites were allowed to worship freely (P. Le Bas and W. H. Waddington, Inscrip tions Grecquea, Vol. iii. p. 582, no. 2558, Paris, 1870). But a few years later the sect was prohibited by Constantine (Eusebius, Vita, iii. 64). It disap peared earlier in the West than in the East, where it lasted still for a number of centuries. Theo doret, for example, claims to have converted 1,000 Marcionites in eight villages (MPG, lxxxv. 1316),. They were also numerous in Armenia. Perhaps the Paulicians (q.v.) originated from the Marcion ites.

(G. Krüger.)

Bibliography: The principal sources, though indicated in the text, may be stated again here for convenience: Tertullian's "Against Marcion" (the main source), " Prescription against Heretics," " On. the Flesh of Christ," and "On the Resurrection of the Flesh," all in Eng, transl. in ANF, vol. iii.; Justin Martyr, L, xavi., lviii.; Ire-us, Has, I. Xcviii., IV., iii. sqq.; Hippolytus, Philosophumena, VII., nix.; Epiphanius, Bar., alii.; Philaster, Her., alv.; and Eenik, Germ. travel. from the Armenian, by J. M. Schmid, Vienna, 1900, of. C. F. Neumann, in ZHT, iv (1834).

The subject is treated in most of the works on GNos- mccem-consult especially the books by Neander. Be-. Matter, Lipaus, Hamaok, Msnsel, and King--and in those mentioned in and under Docranrz, HxsTos: or (q.v.). A monograph in by H. U. Meyboom, Marcion en de Man cioniten, Leyden, 1888. Of the highest value is Harnack, Geschichte, i. 191-197, 839-840, ii. 1. pp. 297 sqq., 591, ii. 2, pp. 537 sqq. et passim, consult index under Marcionites; also his Dogma, i.-iii. paeaim, consult index; cf. 21VT, ria (1876), 80-120. Other references are A. Lipsius, Quellen der allmten Ketrergeschichte, Leipsic, 1875; A. Hilgenfeld, Die Keturgeschichte des Urchristenthums 2 vols., ib. 1884-86; idem, Cordon and Marcion, in ZWT, acv (1881), 1-37; F. Kattenbusch, Das apostolische Sym bol, vol. ii. passim, Leipsic, 1900; R. Liechtenhan; Die Offenbarung im Gnosticismus, pp. 3410, Göttingen, 1901; A. C. McGiffert, The Apostles' Creed, New York, 1902; Schaff, Christian Church, 1482 sqq.; Neander, Christian Church, i. 458-473 et passim; Krager, History, pp. 7782; DCB, iii. 816-824.

For Marcion's relation to the canon consult the works cited under Canon of Scripture, especially that of Zahn. Other works pertinent are: A. Hahn, Das Evangelium Marciona in seiner urapranplichen Gestalt, Königsberg, 1823; G. Volkmar, Die Evangeliurn Marcions, Leipsic, 1852; W. Sanday, The Gospels in the Second Century, London, 1876; [W. R. Cassels], Supernatural Religion, 3 vols., 1879. On Apelles consult A. Harnack, Do Apellie pnoai monarchioa, Leipsic, 1874; and TU, vi. 3 (1890), 109-120, xx. 3 (1900), 93-100.