Paul's Theology and Marcion's Innovation
Paul did not just believe that the Messiah was to come; he had come. The victory is not merely in the future; it has been won. The kingdom of God, the realm of the Spirit, is not just an expectation of the Christian believer; in the church that kingdom is really (though partially) present. The Spirit, which has been given us, is a foretaste of the full eschatological kingdom of God. Paul provides intriguing details about the return of the Lord, as for example 1 Thess. 4:13ff., where the famous ‘rapture’ is described, with living believers being ‘caught up in the air’ and so forth, while the dead believers also receive their spirit bodies and proceed upwards. This account is passed on by Paul as “a word of the Lord”, which we can but take as information conveyed from Jesus directly to Paul.
Many of Paul’s ideas are strange and next to indecipherable, at least to modern readers who have only his letters to rely on. Since the parousia which Paul expected did not occur and has not occurred thus far, it seems natural to ask how Paul’s theology retained its credibility and became central to the Christian message over the succeeding centuries.
Two events which Paul did not live to see were decisive I think. The first was the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E. The effect of this must have been electrifying in early Christianity, appearing as it must have done to be a mighty punishment of the unbelieving Jews who connived at killing Jesus, and secondly, as an undoubted fulfillment of Jesus own threat of destruction against the temple. That much having dramatically come to pass , the pressure was somewhat reduced for the immediate return of Jesus to usher in the new age of peace, justice and righteousness.
The second event, which Paul could hardly have imagined, was the elevation of his own letters to the status of scripture by the visionary heretic and staunch Pauline Christian, Marcion of Sinope. In the Marcionite Bible, there were two parts: Gospel (being an early version of 'Luke'), and Apostle (being the seven undisputed letters of Paul, plus Colossians and Ephesians). The crisis precipitated by Marcion being first in the field with a canon of scripture forced the proto-orthodox (= church of Rome) to either disavow Paul, or include him, embrace him, and somehow take the heretical sting away.
Disavowing Paul was not in the cards at all. A known apostle could not be left to the heretics!
What was done was this: All the letters that Marcion had, as well as some more (forged in Paul’s name) were acknowledged by the Roman church. The added letters were Timothy and Titus, such self-evident frauds that even church fathers suspected them. Then, to dilute the effect of Marcion’s bible further still, more letters written supposedly by other important figures were scouted up. Thus James, Jude, Hebrews, and Peter made their appearance confirming (wonderful good fortune!) proto-orthodox ideas.
More clever, and more telling, that this rummaging around for letters was the creation of an orthodox counter to Marcion’s Gospel and Apostle: this was the pair of books known in our canon as Luke-Acts. To the primitive Luke known to Marcion were added three opening chapters with infancy details to counter the Marcionite docetism. In Acts of the Apostles, there are really only two apostles -- Peter and Paul-- and while Paul is the hero of Acts, he is at all points subject to control from Jerusalem and Peter, to an extent that the historical Paul would have found extremely offensive. The many contradictions between the letters of Paul and Acts have bothered scholars for two thousand years, but the success of the ploy can be seen by the continued reliance of most to accept Acts over Paul’s own testimony about what he thought, said, did, and preached.
Thus did the Roman church co-opt Marcion's Gospel and Apostle innovation with their own bifurcated scripture, first of all Luke-Acts, then subsequently the fourfold gosple and greatly enlarged epistle section.
Many of Paul’s ideas are strange and next to indecipherable, at least to modern readers who have only his letters to rely on. Since the parousia which Paul expected did not occur and has not occurred thus far, it seems natural to ask how Paul’s theology retained its credibility and became central to the Christian message over the succeeding centuries.
Two events which Paul did not live to see were decisive I think. The first was the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E. The effect of this must have been electrifying in early Christianity, appearing as it must have done to be a mighty punishment of the unbelieving Jews who connived at killing Jesus, and secondly, as an undoubted fulfillment of Jesus own threat of destruction against the temple. That much having dramatically come to pass , the pressure was somewhat reduced for the immediate return of Jesus to usher in the new age of peace, justice and righteousness.
The second event, which Paul could hardly have imagined, was the elevation of his own letters to the status of scripture by the visionary heretic and staunch Pauline Christian, Marcion of Sinope. In the Marcionite Bible, there were two parts: Gospel (being an early version of 'Luke'), and Apostle (being the seven undisputed letters of Paul, plus Colossians and Ephesians). The crisis precipitated by Marcion being first in the field with a canon of scripture forced the proto-orthodox (= church of Rome) to either disavow Paul, or include him, embrace him, and somehow take the heretical sting away.
Disavowing Paul was not in the cards at all. A known apostle could not be left to the heretics!
What was done was this: All the letters that Marcion had, as well as some more (forged in Paul’s name) were acknowledged by the Roman church. The added letters were Timothy and Titus, such self-evident frauds that even church fathers suspected them. Then, to dilute the effect of Marcion’s bible further still, more letters written supposedly by other important figures were scouted up. Thus James, Jude, Hebrews, and Peter made their appearance confirming (wonderful good fortune!) proto-orthodox ideas.
More clever, and more telling, that this rummaging around for letters was the creation of an orthodox counter to Marcion’s Gospel and Apostle: this was the pair of books known in our canon as Luke-Acts. To the primitive Luke known to Marcion were added three opening chapters with infancy details to counter the Marcionite docetism. In Acts of the Apostles, there are really only two apostles -- Peter and Paul-- and while Paul is the hero of Acts, he is at all points subject to control from Jerusalem and Peter, to an extent that the historical Paul would have found extremely offensive. The many contradictions between the letters of Paul and Acts have bothered scholars for two thousand years, but the success of the ploy can be seen by the continued reliance of most to accept Acts over Paul’s own testimony about what he thought, said, did, and preached.
Thus did the Roman church co-opt Marcion's Gospel and Apostle innovation with their own bifurcated scripture, first of all Luke-Acts, then subsequently the fourfold gosple and greatly enlarged epistle section.
posted by SkipChurch at
8:46 AM
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