Marcionism

Marcion held to many errant views, but he is primarily known for his belief that the Old Testament Scriptures were not authoritative for a Christian. He said that the God of the Old Testament was a different God than the one in the New Testament. Thus, Jesus was not the Son of the deity described in the Hebrew Scriptures. Marcion did not deny the existence of the god of the Old Testament (what he called a Demiurge), but classified this god as a secondary deity.

Marcion held that Jesus should not be seen as having fulfilled Old Testament messianic prophecies. Rather, he saw the prophecies as predicting a future earthly savior of the Jewish nation. He was thewrefore espousing a radical discontinuity between Old Testament Judaism and the message of Jesus. He also affirmed a form of Docetism, the view that Jesus was not truly a man but only appeared to be human. 

After being expelled from the church in Rome in AD 144 for his unorthodox teachings, Marcion formed several of his own churches. From these, Marcion’s views began to spread. However, he also rejected the authenticity of many New Testament documents. Any apostolic writing that did not agree with his theories was eliminated leaving only ten of Paul’s letters (minus 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) and a highly edited version of the Gospel of Luke. While Marcion saw Paul as the only legitimate apostle, he even edited  Paul’s writings, removing any passage that identified the God of the Old Testament with the Father of Jesus. 

Marcionism was one of the earliest rivals to the Christian church. The lesson to be learned from Marcionism is that we have no right to act as editor of God’s Word, but we must accept and believe the “whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27) and “contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people” (Jude 1:3).