heretical movement. Marcion, a Christian leader in Pontus (Asia Minor), excommunicated around AD 144, organized his supporters into a kind of church or movement opposing orthodox Christianity. The most important thing in Marcion’s life may have been his canon of Scripture, which consisted of ten Pauline epistles and the Gospel according to Saint Luke (excluding accounts of the birth of Christ). Some have accused him of being a “gnostic”.
According to Marcion, the Old Testament god, the “demiurge,” was an inferior being who created the material world. He was not necessarily evil, but he was not equivalent to the God and Father of Jesus, who came to reveal the true God. In Marcionism there is a discontinuity between the two testaments, as well as between Israel and the Christian church, and between the God of the Old and New Testaments.
Due to the temporary growth of Marcionism, the churches accelerated the process of defining the canon of the Bible.
Source: Dictionary of Religions Denominations and Sects
The name of this sect is due to its founder, Marcion. Born in Sinope (in modern Turkey), in the early years of the 11th century, it seems that he was excommunicated by his own father, Bishop of that Church. Tertullian presents him as a wealthy shipowner (De praescriptione, 30, 1). Arriving in Rome, he became part of that Church, to which he donated 200,000 sesterces, an amount that was returned to him when in 144 he was expelled from the community.
After their separation, Marcion founded a Church endowed with hierarchy, theologians and even martyrs, which “extended to the ends of the earth” (Justin) and was in force until the middle of the 5th century.
Marcion’s original intention seems to be that it was not to found a new Church, but to announce the message of Jesus, which seemed adulterated by the Christian community of his time. The core of the Marcionite doctrine was the proclamation of the redemption accomplished by Jesus through the mercy of God the Father. The realization that the God of the Old Testament did not present the traits of mercy of the God announced by Jesus led Marcion to distinguish between the benevolent God and Father of Christ. that he saves freely and out of love, from the God of the Old Testament, lord of this world whom he subdues through fear and law.
Following this anti-Jewish orientation, Marcion rejected all the books of the Old Testament and even some of the New. which he considered interpolated by the Judaizers. He accepted, albeit with some corrections, Luke and Paul, thus giving life to the first New Testament canon.
On the basis of the existing dualism between the two economies of the Old and New Testaments, Marcion imposed on his followers a very severe morality, which preached abstinence from all the works of God the creator, especially marriage, the use of the flesh and the came.
There is no doubt that Marcion represented one of the gravest dangers to the Christian community in the second century. “He exerted a fundamental influence on the evolution of the Church’s doctrine with his drastic denunciation of a really existing danger, namely, the progressive deformation of the kerygma in a legalistic sense” (B. Aland).
L. Padovese
Bibl.: B. Aland, Marcion, Marcionism. in DPAC, 11, 1354-1355; A. Orbe, Introduction to the theology of the 11th and 3rd Centuries, Follow me, Salamanca 1988.
PACOMIO, Luciano, Encyclopedic Theological Dictionary, Divine Word, Navarra, 1995
Source: Encyclopedic Theological Dictionary