Essays

One of the weakest academic activities for me is writing essays.  I can do everything...  except write essays.  I have a lot of ideas, but for some reason I have an extremely difficult time organizing it into a coherent stream.  Last three essays were about the creation story, Psalm 89, and the Nero Persecution.  This time I'm writing about Marcion and his effects on the making of the first Christian canon.

Here's my thought process when it comes to writing:  This is the literal flow of how I write.

Lessee...

Marcion was at first part of the Catholic Christian community.  He was a bishop.  He believed in Jesus and Jesus's authority.  But he saw a difference between the behavior of the 'New Testament God' and the 'Old Testament God'.  To Marcion, the New Testament God was kind, merciful, etc.  The Old Testament God was strict, just, and unforgiving.  He couldn't come to terms with it, and so he started his own theology called "Marcionism."  He taught that there really were two separate gods, and that the new one was the real one.  He taught that Jesus came from the new god, and that anything relating the old god to Jesus should be removed from teaching.  That basically gets rid of the entire Old Testament and all the nativity stories.  He couldn't come to terms with the idea that Jesus was a Jew.  The only things he kept was most of Paul's writings and Luke.  He kept Paul's writings because he believed that Paul was the chosen apostle by Jesus.  Basically, "He rejected the Old Testament as the document of an alien religion; and he taught that Jesus had come to save humankind from the control of the evil Creator to whom the Old Testament witnesses."  (Lee Martin McDonald, James A Sanders, Editors: The Canon Debate; John Barton, Marcion Revisited, p. 354, 2002)

So that would be the intro basically.  Maybe I'll have more dates and stuff in it.  Like when Marcion was born, when he was claimed a heretic, when he was thrown out of the church, etc.

The next section should be...  Marcion and Gnosticism?
Difference between Marcionism and Gnosticism...  Dualism?  Another name for dualism (the idea that spirit is good and matter is evil) is Christoplatonism.  It's Platonism directed to Christianity.

Yeah...  Because Marcionism is related to Gnosticism and Dualism..  so I'll talk about the similarities and differences.

Then should I talk about modern Marcionism?  But it's a history paper so I should stick to just the events that happened in the past.  But if I really can't come up with anything else, I could talk about modern Marcionism.

I defeinitely should talk about the first Christian canon, and how the books were solidified as a part of the canon because Marcion tried to get rid of it.  Then at the very end I need to put in a blurb about even though the canon was created by groups of people, and often edited over the course of many years, and even very recently, we must remember that God works through people and through situations, and even though bad situations may occur, God can put them to good use.  So I believe that God used Marcion to really help settle the books that needed to be included in the Bible.  Then should I say a blurb about the Protestant reformation and the Apocrypha and how that is related, also?

Well the paper is only 3 to 4 pages double spaced so I think that should be enough.
My main point that I want to argue...  Is that the Bible is the work of God, the making and creation of God through people, not of people.

- Bathroom break and lunch break -

And I'm back...

So the different heretic groups back then was Marcionism and Gnosticism (and other ones not mentioned).

First of all, Marcion is often described as a Gnostic philosopher.  Similarities:  they both believed that the creator of the material world and the true god were not the same.  The creator of the material world was evil.  The material world was a place of suffering, and therefore they both reject materialism.  Nothing in this material world contributes to any good.  They both believe that Jesus was a spiritual entity sent by the true god to save humanity.  Jesus was not a Jewish Messiah.  Jesus must have been a spiritual entity because he was good, and good cannot be material.  Also, people cannot come back to life, and therefore Jesus wasn't fully human.

The main difference between the two is that Gnosticism was based on the idea that Jesus had passed down a secret knowledge to the apostles that only the Gnostics knew, and Marcion did not claim such things. Marcion based his teachings on the letters of Paul instead.

About dualism, Dualism is just a reference to the idea of there being two distinct and separate parts, and does not necessarily have to do with religion.  It can be the idea of mind vs. body.  Body vs. soul.  and of course Material vs. Spiritual.  Marcionism and Gnosticism was just a small part under the large umbrella of dualism.  There's also the idea of two separate realities, consciousness and matter (mind and body).  Dualism can be found in all parts of the world, in all different religions.  Even in today's society the concept of dualism exists, even though it is not specifically referred to as dualism.  (the whole mind vs. body thing.  remember the phrase mind over matter?)  There's dualism in science (wave vs. matter)  So to broaden Marcionism to dualism is just misinformation.  Marcionism is a form of Christian dualism.  And as dualism can be seen in so many different aspects, it is not surprise that this concept would have formed, even if it wasn't through Marcion.  So I guess in this particular section of the essay I want to emphasize that this aspect of dualism was inevitable (part of God's plan)

So it was at the end of July 144 CE when Marcion was excommunicated.  He had a hearing in front of the clergy of the Christian congregations in Rome.  Aaaah...  Marcionites set up churches in each city of any importance to defy the Christian ones by the end of the 2nd century.

Reasons why Marcion thought OT god was different from NT god:
OT: eye for eye while NT: turn other cheek
OT: Elisha let children be eaten by bears while NT: 'Let the little children come to me'
OT: Joshua had stopped sun to continue killing his enemies while in NT: Paul said 'Let not the sun go down on your wrath.'
OT: Divorce and polygamy was permitted while NT: Neither divorce nor polygamy
OT: Enforcement of Sabbath and Law while NT: freedom from both
There were contradiction within OT itself:
No work done on Sabbath but Ark was carried around Jericho on Sabbath
No graven image to be made but Moses fashioned a bronze serpent
God is omniscient but asked Adam 'Where are you?'

The Marcion canon:
Luke
Galations
1 + 2 Corinthians
Romans
1 + 2 Thessalonians
Ephesians (called Laodiceans)
Colossians
Philemon
Philippians

The Christian canon was already in progress, but Marcion's canon accelerated the Church's canon.  The Christian canon had already begun in the first half of 2nd cent.  According to:
Grant, Robert M. The Formation of the New Testament. New York: Harper & Row, 1965. p. 126
"Marcion forced more orthodox Christians to examine their own presuppositions and to state more clearly what they already believed."
And Marcion also believed that Jesus couldn't have actually been born because Jesus was a spirit.
Even from the writings of Paul, Marcion got rid of anything that disagreed with his theology, such as Galations 3:16-4:6 because of its reference to Abraham and its descendants  In fact, he made changes to every book that was included in his canon.

I think this will be enough material.  I will reorganize it so that the whole chunk of what Marcionism is will come after the quick Marcion summary and the Gnosticism and Dualism thing will come after that.  Yay.  3 pages here I come.