What was the Heresy of Marcion and the Marcionites?
What was the Heresy of Marcion and the Marcionites?
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The heresies of Marcion are akin to those of Mandaeanism, Manichaeism, and some other Gnostic heresies in that they do not accept the God of the Old Testament, JHWH or Elohim as the same God Who is the Father of Jesus Christ and the God of the New Testament. They call the God of the Old Testament a demiurge or a lesser artificer god who could create a world which contained evil, but who is subordinate to a completely incorporeal and spiritual supreme deity, who is detached from the creation. Therefore, Marcion rejected the entire Old Testament and only kept 10 epistles of Paul and some of the gospel of Luke which he also rewrote into his own version.
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This philosophy agrees with Hinduism and such religions which posit an all being or supreme god who is utterly immaterial and detached from creation. It is given to lesser gods to create. In this view everything material is intrinsically evil. So a demiurge or lesser god is in opposition to their supreme god merely in the act of creating. However, the Catholic view is that God created the heavens and the earth and saw that it was good. The fall of man, not the creation itself is the source of evil in the world.
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Jesus Himself and the writers of the Gospels, as well as Paul, especially in his epistle to the Hebrews, constantly show Jesus to be the Messiah or Christ promised to the Jewish people in the Old Testament, and point to the many prophecies that Jesus fulfilled.
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Present day heterodox groups, such as "emergent church" and those who posit Mary as a member of the Trinity hold beliefs in common with Marcion and other heretical Gnostic sects. For this reason it is important to study and know what are the orthodox beliefs of the true Church.
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Tertullian wrote five-book treatise Adversus Marcionem (c. 208 C.E.) exposing the heresies of Marcion and the Marcionites.