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Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God
English (translation)Original German
182 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 1924
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About the author
Adolf von Harnack
807 books12 followersCarl Gustav Adolf von Harnack (7 May 1851 – 10 June 1930) was a German Lutheran theologian and prominent church historian. He produced many religious publications from 1873 to 1912 (in which he is sometimes credited as Adolf Harnack).
Harnack traced the influence of Hellenistic philosophy on early Christian writing and called on Christians to question the authenticity of doctrines that arose in the early Christian church. He rejected the historicity of the Gospel of John in favor of the Synoptic Gospels, criticized the Apostles' Creed, and promoted the Social Gospel.
Harnack traced the influence of Hellenistic philosophy on early Christian writing and called on Christians to question the authenticity of doctrines that arose in the early Christian church. He rejected the historicity of the Gospel of John in favor of the Synoptic Gospels, criticized the Apostles' Creed, and promoted the Social Gospel.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 15, 2020
*This is a shortened review adapted from a class paper*
In his monograph on Marcion, Adolf Harnack presents the second century controversial figure as the accidental founder of a new religion, as Paul’s most devoted pupil, whose intention was, “to know no other God than the one who had appeared in the Crucified One” (1).
The fact that Adolf Harnack’s Marcion was translated into English seventy years after it was first published demonstrates both its importance and continued significance even today. Harnack made several innovative claims about Marcion that deserve serious consideration and may long be debated. Further, I can only marvel at Harnack’s reconstruction of a second century heretic, whose writings have been preserved only in those who opposed him, yet that so effectively reminds readers of Marcion’s humanness. Harnack succeeds in portraying Marcion as a real human being created in God’s image.
Nevertheless, I think Harnack’s esteem for Marcion went too far and ultimately distorted Marcion and rendered Harnack’s own judgments untenable. In his love for Marcion, Harnack seems to read some of his own views back into him. This distortion of Maricon may be considered in two primary areas. First, Harnack reads Marcion with a Lutheran lens. Harnack’s comparisons of Marcion with Luther are often overt as when he describes Marcion’s trial before the Roman church, “It will always remain memorable that at the first Roman synod of which we know, there stood before the presbyters a man who expounded to them the difference between law and gospel and interpreted their Christianity as a Jewish kind. Who does not think here of Luther?!” (18). Elsewhere, Harnack reinforces this idea more subtly when, for example, he calls Marcion a “Paulinist,” “Protestant,” and “reformer” or describes his teaching as a division between law and gospel. Affiliating Luther with Marcion leads Harnack to explain Marcion’s Creator-God and Redeemer-God distinction in terms of law and grace. Harnack introduced the novel idea that Marcion believed the Creator-God is just but not evil. However, Sebastian Moll gives many reasons why Harnack’s interpretation is unlikely, including the fact that all of the early sources characterize Marcion as a dualist who believed in an evil God. Furthermore, it is legitimate to wonder whether applying Lutheran law and grace categories back onto Marcion is anachronistic. A far better comparison, one which Harnack rejects but actually avoids anachronism, is the several important ways Marcion’s views overlap with Gnostic streams. This overlap may not fit in every category, but this simply conforms to the widely held view today regarding the diversity of early Gnosticism.
The second and even more serious way in which Harnack appears to read his own views back onto Marcion is observed most clearly after reading Harnack’s shocking attitude towards the Old Testament. In the final chapter, Harnack writes,
"The rejection of the Old Testament in the second century was a mistake which the great church rightly avoided; to maintain it in the sixteenth century was a fate from which the reformation was not yet able to escape; but still to preserve it in Protestantism as a canonical document since the nineteen century is the consequences of a religious and ecclesiastical crippling (134)."
Here we may recall Harnack’s historical situation: He was a twentieth century German who ascribed to the historical-critical method. Readers must seriously consider whether Harnack’s love for Marcion is in part due to his own bias against the Old Testament. Yet Marcion believed that the Old Testament was true. He believed the God of the Old Testament was actually real and acted in the way the Jewish Scriptures claimed. Harnack and Marcion approached the Old Testament on very different terms. Most readers, even those who may agree with Harnack’s historical criticism, will not be convinced by either Harnack or Marcion’s call to jettison the Old Testament. Nor should they be for neither Marcion’s actions nor Harnack’s problems with the Old Testament provide compelling reasons for discarding the Old Testament Canon, which has been accepted by Christians and Jews for thousands of years.
Harnack’s identification with Marcion does not of course inoculate the great value that the monograph has for our understanding of Marcion. Clearly it has been well received, embraced, and built upon. However, it is appropriate to ask whether Harnack’s mistakes in the areas above so contributed to his love for Marcion that his monograph distorts the picture of this second century figure. In his book, Marcion and his Influences, Edwin Cyrl Blackman contends that Harnack’s overestimation of Marcion skewed his understandings of the relationship between the church of the New Testament and that of the second century, the early catholic church as a whole, and Marcion’s influence on the canon. Despite the weight and prevalence of Harnack’s scholarship and impact, these critiques are worthy of further discussion.
In his monograph on Marcion, Adolf Harnack presents the second century controversial figure as the accidental founder of a new religion, as Paul’s most devoted pupil, whose intention was, “to know no other God than the one who had appeared in the Crucified One” (1).
The fact that Adolf Harnack’s Marcion was translated into English seventy years after it was first published demonstrates both its importance and continued significance even today. Harnack made several innovative claims about Marcion that deserve serious consideration and may long be debated. Further, I can only marvel at Harnack’s reconstruction of a second century heretic, whose writings have been preserved only in those who opposed him, yet that so effectively reminds readers of Marcion’s humanness. Harnack succeeds in portraying Marcion as a real human being created in God’s image.
Nevertheless, I think Harnack’s esteem for Marcion went too far and ultimately distorted Marcion and rendered Harnack’s own judgments untenable. In his love for Marcion, Harnack seems to read some of his own views back into him. This distortion of Maricon may be considered in two primary areas. First, Harnack reads Marcion with a Lutheran lens. Harnack’s comparisons of Marcion with Luther are often overt as when he describes Marcion’s trial before the Roman church, “It will always remain memorable that at the first Roman synod of which we know, there stood before the presbyters a man who expounded to them the difference between law and gospel and interpreted their Christianity as a Jewish kind. Who does not think here of Luther?!” (18). Elsewhere, Harnack reinforces this idea more subtly when, for example, he calls Marcion a “Paulinist,” “Protestant,” and “reformer” or describes his teaching as a division between law and gospel. Affiliating Luther with Marcion leads Harnack to explain Marcion’s Creator-God and Redeemer-God distinction in terms of law and grace. Harnack introduced the novel idea that Marcion believed the Creator-God is just but not evil. However, Sebastian Moll gives many reasons why Harnack’s interpretation is unlikely, including the fact that all of the early sources characterize Marcion as a dualist who believed in an evil God. Furthermore, it is legitimate to wonder whether applying Lutheran law and grace categories back onto Marcion is anachronistic. A far better comparison, one which Harnack rejects but actually avoids anachronism, is the several important ways Marcion’s views overlap with Gnostic streams. This overlap may not fit in every category, but this simply conforms to the widely held view today regarding the diversity of early Gnosticism.
The second and even more serious way in which Harnack appears to read his own views back onto Marcion is observed most clearly after reading Harnack’s shocking attitude towards the Old Testament. In the final chapter, Harnack writes,
"The rejection of the Old Testament in the second century was a mistake which the great church rightly avoided; to maintain it in the sixteenth century was a fate from which the reformation was not yet able to escape; but still to preserve it in Protestantism as a canonical document since the nineteen century is the consequences of a religious and ecclesiastical crippling (134)."
Here we may recall Harnack’s historical situation: He was a twentieth century German who ascribed to the historical-critical method. Readers must seriously consider whether Harnack’s love for Marcion is in part due to his own bias against the Old Testament. Yet Marcion believed that the Old Testament was true. He believed the God of the Old Testament was actually real and acted in the way the Jewish Scriptures claimed. Harnack and Marcion approached the Old Testament on very different terms. Most readers, even those who may agree with Harnack’s historical criticism, will not be convinced by either Harnack or Marcion’s call to jettison the Old Testament. Nor should they be for neither Marcion’s actions nor Harnack’s problems with the Old Testament provide compelling reasons for discarding the Old Testament Canon, which has been accepted by Christians and Jews for thousands of years.
Harnack’s identification with Marcion does not of course inoculate the great value that the monograph has for our understanding of Marcion. Clearly it has been well received, embraced, and built upon. However, it is appropriate to ask whether Harnack’s mistakes in the areas above so contributed to his love for Marcion that his monograph distorts the picture of this second century figure. In his book, Marcion and his Influences, Edwin Cyrl Blackman contends that Harnack’s overestimation of Marcion skewed his understandings of the relationship between the church of the New Testament and that of the second century, the early catholic church as a whole, and Marcion’s influence on the canon. Despite the weight and prevalence of Harnack’s scholarship and impact, these critiques are worthy of further discussion.
June 6, 2022
This introduction to Marcion is one of the few book-length critical studies on the gnostic teacher of the second century--Marcion, the creator of a New Testament consisting only of seven of Paul's letters and an edited version of the Gospel Luke. That seems to be his main claim to fame, when one reads about him in other works. He posited that the god of the New Testament was a different one than the Old Testament and that all the rest of the Bible was twisted by Jewish thinkers and believers, who had fallen for the doctrines of the old fake god.
As one commentator said Harnack's work, Harnack makes Marcion almost into a Protestant hero. Here is a man who understands the difference between the god of the Old and New Testament, who had the guts to know that grace is by faith alone. Indeed, parts of Harnack's work definitely come across that way, especially in the introduction and conclusion. But Harnack does draw a line at claiming there were actually two gods; he sees that as Marcion's bridge to far for Christians.
In between, however, Harnack does a good job of showing some of the subtle aspects of Marcion's thought. One would get the sense that Marcion was an antinomialist, and yet in reality, he was an ascetic. If the Old Testament is the work of a evil creator god, then one must do what one can to prevent the continuation of the creation. That means no sex, no joy in physical things. They're all fake and keep people bound to that fake god, just as much as the law, so one is to avoid them. Interestingly, while Marcion saw much of the New Testament as corrupted (thus his throwing away of much of it), he saw the Old Testament as an unadulterated complete work. And it is in fact the means by which one comes to know the difference between the good god and the bad one, so even though he dismisses it as scripture, it has a purpose. As Harnack implies, Marcion wouldn't have even had a problem with much of the content of the law (no murder, adultery, etc.); rather, his problem was with the motivation for keeping that law. The good god is all love; he will not judge. Rather, one falls out of contact with that god and thus loses out on the goodness. The evil god, by contrast, punishes for not keeping his law. But the evil god and his law will one day pass away with all that is physical.
Of particular interest to those technically inclined is Harnack's inventory of items that Marcion deleted from or changed in Luke's Gospel and even from Paul's letters (I hadn't realized he'd made changes to Paul's letters before; makes one wonder what exactly Marcion thought he was looking at that he felt like he knew better than the texts handed to him; I mean, if these works are full of errors, why bother trying to rescue them?).
Marcion, according to Harnack (and many who have written about Marcion since), was also the impetus between the canonization of the New Testament and the organization of the larger Christian church. In this view, his New Testament predated that of the orthodox church; it was to refute him that the church came up with its own list of acceptable books. Likewise, his church was earlier organized, in this view, with a hierarchy of structure and government.
As one commentator said Harnack's work, Harnack makes Marcion almost into a Protestant hero. Here is a man who understands the difference between the god of the Old and New Testament, who had the guts to know that grace is by faith alone. Indeed, parts of Harnack's work definitely come across that way, especially in the introduction and conclusion. But Harnack does draw a line at claiming there were actually two gods; he sees that as Marcion's bridge to far for Christians.
In between, however, Harnack does a good job of showing some of the subtle aspects of Marcion's thought. One would get the sense that Marcion was an antinomialist, and yet in reality, he was an ascetic. If the Old Testament is the work of a evil creator god, then one must do what one can to prevent the continuation of the creation. That means no sex, no joy in physical things. They're all fake and keep people bound to that fake god, just as much as the law, so one is to avoid them. Interestingly, while Marcion saw much of the New Testament as corrupted (thus his throwing away of much of it), he saw the Old Testament as an unadulterated complete work. And it is in fact the means by which one comes to know the difference between the good god and the bad one, so even though he dismisses it as scripture, it has a purpose. As Harnack implies, Marcion wouldn't have even had a problem with much of the content of the law (no murder, adultery, etc.); rather, his problem was with the motivation for keeping that law. The good god is all love; he will not judge. Rather, one falls out of contact with that god and thus loses out on the goodness. The evil god, by contrast, punishes for not keeping his law. But the evil god and his law will one day pass away with all that is physical.
Of particular interest to those technically inclined is Harnack's inventory of items that Marcion deleted from or changed in Luke's Gospel and even from Paul's letters (I hadn't realized he'd made changes to Paul's letters before; makes one wonder what exactly Marcion thought he was looking at that he felt like he knew better than the texts handed to him; I mean, if these works are full of errors, why bother trying to rescue them?).
Marcion, according to Harnack (and many who have written about Marcion since), was also the impetus between the canonization of the New Testament and the organization of the larger Christian church. In this view, his New Testament predated that of the orthodox church; it was to refute him that the church came up with its own list of acceptable books. Likewise, his church was earlier organized, in this view, with a hierarchy of structure and government.
November 18, 2018
Barely into the 2nd century AD, Marcion, #1 Paul Fan-Boy Extraordinaire, set out to personally fix all of early Christianity's problems (as he saw them): 1) God in the Old Testament was a huge jerk; 2) the original 12 apostles were all well-meaning but missed the point; 3) there was no official canon for Christianity; and 4) the works early Christians were reading had already been corrupted by dastardly Judaizing pseudo-apostles. (He had many more gripes as well, but those four are the gist of it).
What resulted was, as argued by the author, an entirely new religion with a brand new, previously un-contacted "Alien" God who had sent his Son to Earth to save us from the inept creation of the petty demiurge who so haphazardly created us.
Marcion's message was so successful that the early Catholic Church's All-Stars were still writing refutations of Marcionism hundreds of years later, and ended up adopting many of his innovations, the most notable of which being his idea of an official canon of holy literature.
This book was pretty dense but a lot of fun to read. Marcion had some really great ideas and also tons of crazy ones.
What resulted was, as argued by the author, an entirely new religion with a brand new, previously un-contacted "Alien" God who had sent his Son to Earth to save us from the inept creation of the petty demiurge who so haphazardly created us.
Marcion's message was so successful that the early Catholic Church's All-Stars were still writing refutations of Marcionism hundreds of years later, and ended up adopting many of his innovations, the most notable of which being his idea of an official canon of holy literature.
This book was pretty dense but a lot of fun to read. Marcion had some really great ideas and also tons of crazy ones.
January 18, 2023
This is a very good book about one of the major influences on the early Church. Harnack is very favorable towards Marcion while still pointing out the flaws in his reasoning. He does this from both a Biblical and a philosophical viewpoint, so it should appeal to readers regardless of religious leanings.
February 27, 2015
The Jesus Seminar folks fascinate me. They are so committed to their presuppositions that they go to incredible lengths to reimagine the Gospels. They can't bear the idea that the miracles happened. That Christ was raised. That God exists.
Marcion proves this sentiment is as old as the Gospels themselves. Marcion was among the first heretics. He couldn't countenance the God of the Old Testament, and he couldn't bear the Jewishness of the new faith. So taken by these presuppositions that he red-penned much of the writings that would become the New Testament.
Even so, it's interesting to see how those who got it wrong help to point us in the right direction. Marcion's was the first "canon' of the New Testament. The church responded, and it helped to clarify what the actual New Testament was.
I'm reminded how easily we get lost when we don't start with the right map.
Marcion proves this sentiment is as old as the Gospels themselves. Marcion was among the first heretics. He couldn't countenance the God of the Old Testament, and he couldn't bear the Jewishness of the new faith. So taken by these presuppositions that he red-penned much of the writings that would become the New Testament.
Even so, it's interesting to see how those who got it wrong help to point us in the right direction. Marcion's was the first "canon' of the New Testament. The church responded, and it helped to clarify what the actual New Testament was.
I'm reminded how easily we get lost when we don't start with the right map.
January 20, 2015
Just finished this one. Pretty dry but fills you in on all there is about this heretical, early Christian branch. This topic has always fascinated me and this book is a one-stop-shop for all that is Marcion and his church. I don't think I'd read it again but I'll keep it for reference.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews