Marcion: Christianity's First Protestant Theologian?

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:01]If you wish to have all of your assumptions about Marcian challenged, then read this book. One of the most controversial figures in church history was Marian of Cinnipe. You know, in many minds and many imaginations, Marian was the epitome of heresy. He was the arch heretic. You know, the theological deviant par excalance. But others claim that Marian is very misunderstood, even maligned. I mean the standard narrative about Marian both in ancient sources and in scholarship is that Marian was a second century Christian heretic from Pontis and you know in modern day Tokyo who challenged mainstream Christian teaching when he came to Rome sometime around 130 to 140 AD. Uh he apparently rejected the Old Testament entirely. He viewed the God of the Hebrew scriptures as inferior and vengeful compared to the merciful God of Jesus. And Marian believed that Jesus's message was fundamentally incompatible with the Jewish law. Uh Marian was perhaps a gnostic and certainly a dosatist. You know, he didn't believe that Jesus had a real physical body. He created his own literary collection, the New Covenant, the New Testament, which was based on his Evangelion, which is a heavily edited version of the Gospel of Luke.

[00:01:26]Uh, a collection of the Pauline letters, according it's called the Apostolic, which doesn't have the pastoral epistles. And he had a work called the antithesis which was a hermeneutical work designed to show the incompatibility between the Jewish Bible and Marian's New Testament. Though eventually declared heretical by the early church, Marcian's ideas spread widely and forced Christian leaders to formalize their own scriptural cannon as a response to Marian's own literary endeavors.

[00:01:58]However, elements of that narrative have been challenged most recently by David Litwa and his new book on Marian. Now, I had to read this book because it mentions me in the first sentence of the preface. This is what this is what le David David says.

[00:02:21]years ago at a secession of the society of biblical literature annual meeting I listened to a book review on Judith Lou's book you know mastian making of a heretic by Michael Bird in his ineitable Australian accent bird dubbed Lou Lou's book the new Hanek now Hanek was a a scholar of church history who was based in Germany in the late 19th early 20th century the new Hanek I thought we don't need a new hack we need a book on Marian that completely replaced cases Hanak's paradigm that makes us no longer need to read Hanak except to understand the history of Marian's 20th century reception.

[00:03:02]There we go. Uh now you got to know that Adolf Hanuk was a German scholar of the late 19th and early 20th century who was a brilliant historian of the early church, amazing grasp of sources and he wrote amazing works and he dabbled a little bit in liberal theology on the side. It was his book Marian, the gospel of the alien god. First published in 1920, then with a second edition in 924, which was for a long time the standard work on Marian.

[00:03:33]Today, Hanek's book on Marian is clearly dated. Uh many aspects of it have been laid aside. The conversation has certainly moved on, but it's still the starting point for contemporary exploration of Marian. Now, as we'll see, Litwa does not like Hanukk's account of Marian because Hanek said Marian was a ditheist, believed in two gods, doist. He didn't believe Jesus had a physical body and a deleter of scripture. Yet while Litw was Marian might not be Hanakian, Marian is the vehicle to take us to Hanak's theology who in Litwa's view is the ideal example of someone who is and this is my term spiritual but not Old Testament. Uh, and this is what you got to remember. The book is dedicated to spiritual seekers. And I think Litwa views Marian as the quintessential spiritual seeker. While Litwa completely rejects Hanak's account of Marian, you'll see that Litwa really supports Hanak's appropriation of Marian for modern theology. More on that below. But let's kick off first with what does Litwa say about Marian. Okay, this is what he he says to begin with and I think it's it's quite good. To some, Marian of Pontis is a heretic. To others a hero, and to a few what made Marian a hero was the fact that he was a heretic. You know, that's true. That's that's fair enough. Uh Le also thinks there's much in Marian to admire. He says Marian did not just create a school or or thought. Uh the Pontine was a man of action, an ecclesial entrepreneur. He organized churches in different lands.

[00:05:21]He published a particular Bible. He set up strict rules for his community, an order of worship, and a way of life. If he failed, he failed forward. Yet by any measure of success, he did not fall flat. He created an ecclesiastical network that survived until the 10th century. And Christians claiming to be Marianites exist today. And that's right. You can go online, you can find people claiming to be Marianites. Now, if you want to get into the core claims that Litwa makes about Marian, uh it comes down to this. Okay. Marian was born sometime during 85 to 100 in uh Pontis from a ship building family. He came to Rome in the 130s. Marian was never formally excommunicated from the Roman church, though he did found his own assemblies in Rome and elsewhere.

[00:06:10]Marian was probably influenced by middle platonic thought and perhaps came across the views of a protonostic teacher named Sodo. It is likely too that Marian was influenced by the same pull of thought that gave rise to Sethian and Valentinian nosticism but without Marian himself becoming a gnostic. Uh Marian did not believe in two gods. Uh rather he believed that there was a most high god who was good and a lower god the creator who was evil. Marian believed that God created the heavens and the invisible world while the creator god you know the demioge uh made the earth and the terrestrial world. So Marian's god was not alien. Uh he felt a connection to human beings enough to send his son to save them. Uh Marian's god left judgment to Jesus and punishment to the creator god. Uh Marian was not a dosatus where Jesus's body was completely immaterial but he believed that Jesus's body was probably composed of astral elements as he descended to earth. Uh Marian did not necessarily deny the virgin birth. He simply had no account of the virgin birth in his Evangelian his version of Luke. Uh Marian's Jesus did not defeat the creator with warlike violence but absorbing the creator's violence into himself. Marian's idea of salvation is salvation from the creator god. Marian's gospel, his evangelian started out as the gospel which was available to him in his native pontis and it's a type of protoluke. So an early version of Luke uh Marian and Litwa's view was not anti-Jewish because he preserved Jewish elements in his evangelion.

[00:07:47]So those are effectively the main claims that Litwa is making in his book. Let me now go on to explain where I think I can appreciate and understand the corrections that Liwa is trying to make.

[00:07:59]>> You are a heretic spreading lies. I am not. I am merely a disciple of the Apostle Paul.

[00:08:08]>> Where I think Litwa is right is that Marian was not trying to destroy Christianity. On the contrary, he was trying to retrieve it and to restore it to either what it originally was or what he thought it should be. And Marian was also trying to answer the questions about religion, about God, about meaning posed by Greco Roman religion and philosophy in the second century, utilizing the philosophical resources at hand, trying to be a worshshiper of God, a follower of Jesus, and a disciple of Paul and also wrestling with the morally challenging parts of the Old Testament and establishing a pattern of life that he believed would benefit his church membership.

[00:08:50]uh Lwa's description of Marian in early Christianity though a bit hyperbolic I think rings true uh he says uh Marian was neither a heretic nor a hero he should be treated as a person in the mighty river of history a Christian theologian who lived some 1900 centuries ago when Christianity lacked creeds confessions and ecumenical councils when it had no papacy prelates or political power marian lived in the laboratory in which Christianity was synthesized. Or rather, he lived in the jungle of competing discourses trying to define the faith, the story, and the organization of an institution to simply yet so deceptively called the church. Uh that's a pretty good uh quote and I think that's right. You've got to locate Marian in a the complex context of 2 century Christianity. So, you know, in Rome in the year 150 AD, um, you've got Marian in Rome, you've got Valentinus in Rome, you've got Justin Mer in Rome, and they all have very different ideas on who God is, on who Jesus is, what the gospel is, what's the problem, and what the solution is. Uh, and I think there's much in Lois's uh book on Marian that is is true and valid and helpful. Uh, I think Marian's God did create the heavens. Marian probably drank deeply from Platonic thought. Uh he despised the Judeian god but not necessarily the Judeian people, the Jews. Uh he was not necessarily a strict dosatus about the body of Jesus. Jesus may have had an astral body. So Jesus had a a body that had some level of physicality to it, but it was not a human body and certainly not human in the same way that we conceive of Jesus having a human body with, you know, flesh and blood like ours. So what can we say then in a more critical response to Litwa? Because Litwa's book is very revisionist. Okay, he doesn't trust what the early heresiologists say, Muraeus or Tatalian.

[00:10:55]He's also skeptical of a lot of scholarship, not just Hanak, but also people like, you know, Judith Louu. Uh, and I find he's a lot more critical of the church fathers than he is of, uh, other forms of Christianity. So, he doesn't really trust the protoodox churches, but he does seem to invest a lot more trust in some of the sources connected with Marian. I mean, was never entirely uncritical, but I think he's a little bit uneven as to who can be trusted when it comes to the interrogation of key texts. Uh, for example, a lot of his arguments run like this. He says, "The heresyologists claim that Marian rejected X, but Marian cannot have rejected X because X is found in his Evangelion or his apostolic, you know, his copy of the Gospels and Paul's letters." But it's like saying, well, John Calvin cannot have believed that it's impossible to lose your salvation because Calvin's Bible contains Hebrews 6 with those warning passages about losing your salvation. So obviously Calvin must have believed that it's not impossible to lose your salvation. Um, yeah, I think it's a little bit more complicated than that. Uh also the the idea that Marian's Evangelion was derived from the addition of the gospel that he had in Pontis, a protoluke in effect and that canonical Luke is really a second edition of ProtoLuke written largely in response to Marian's Evangelion. This is treated as axiomatic but I think it's unproven. Uh to be fair, Litwa is not alone in advocating that position. There are a minority of scholars who hold that view such as you know Jason uh Bun but I have to ask what is the evidence for protoluke and an anti-masionite redaction of Luke to produce canonical Luke look you know theories are free but you need evidence to make it stick and I think the evidence for that theory is somewhere between speculative thin and absent uh it faces the same problems as other hypothetical gospel sources you know like an original Hebrew gospel, the saying source, uh Q, the premark and passion narrative, the ohanine sign source. It's all speculation. Uh I think it's more convincing that Marian edited Luke to make it more conducive to his interest just as critics of Marian claimed. Uh I also think uh Litwway is interesting in trying to kind of rehabilitate Marian by making him less radical and more mainstream in the context of second century Christianity.

[00:13:36]So that's to say as if the heresyologists have kind of exaggerated his faults or imputed all sorts of motives and views to him. And I think for Litwa, he wants to see Marian as more of a variation of protoorthodox Christianity rather than as a theological villain. Uh like an Irenaeus who's taken a small step towards a Gnostic like Valentinis and who in the process has mostly unhitched himself from the Old Testament. Uh Marian did attempt to find a place in the great church. So maybe that picture is not entirely false. He thought he could fit in. But I do wonder if Marcian himself pressed his own differences and disagreements with the the great church to purposely differentiate himself and his churches from those who were still purportedly under the spell of the evil creator and who wrongly saw Jesus as an expression of that penitious sub deity.

[00:14:32]Litwa claims too that Marian did not reject the Jewish scriptures. He only rejected them as Christian scripture.

[00:14:40]Well, fine, but that's still a rejection and it's a significant one. Uh, also I cannot go along with Litwell when he says that Marian supersession is no worse than that of the early Catholics.

[00:14:50]Uh, I think that's not true. Uh, Marian supersessionism is simply off the scale.

[00:14:55]Uh, true, Marian may not have excised all citations and illusions of the Old Testament from his uh, Evangelion and his apostolic, but it's precisely because it's practically impossible to do it. I mean, how do you take the Old Testament out of like Romans 9:11 or out of the book of Hebrews? I mean, you'd have nothing left. I think Marian simply lived with the tension or engaged in interpretive maneuvers to get around it.

[00:15:24]Uh, probably the the strangest bit of the book is the conclusion.

[00:15:30]uh and it's very revealing particularly for Litwa's own perspectives and he even gets a bit theological as to how we can appropriate Marian today and you see why Litwa definitely has a soft spot for Marian now in the end litw's book uh on Marian is also about maybe how Christians can learn from Marian about how we can do away with the difficult and terrifying texts of the Old Testament about divine violence And this is where I would say Litwa adopts a Hanakian solution. He thinks we should be, and this is my words, we should be spiritual but not Old Testament. He believes that Christians should decanonize the Old Testament. Uh Litwa believes evangelical apologists who defend the Old Testament. And he mentions here specifically my good friend Dan Kimble and his book How Not to Read the Bible. I love Dan. He does some great work. Uh Litwa doesn't like that. He says, "We've got to reclaim Marian as offering a Christian approach to the Old Testament." Uh, note his words. This is what he says. It's important to correct errors about Marian to prevent apologists from continuing to use him as a foil, a whipping boy, illustrating how not to read scripture.

[00:16:45]And he adds things like, "Stories of divine violence simply get God wrong, and apologists need to face this fact without apology." So you can see there's some very clear language about what Litwa thinks about the Old Testament and what we should do with it. This is where Litwa leans hard into Hanachon Hanek. While Litwa rejects Hanak's account of Marian, he endorses nonetheless Hanak's Marian inspired deriggation of the Old Testament. Litwa includes a quotation from Hanak in in the book and this is very interesting and illuminating. Okay, this is this is what Hanak said. To reject the Old Testament in the second century was a mistake which the church rightly repudiated. To retain it in the 16th century was a fate which the Reformation could not yet avoid. But to continue to keep it in Protestantism as a canonical document after the 19th century is the consequence of religious and ecclesiastical paralysis.

[00:17:58]Uh Hanek Litwa uh they're not big fans of the Old Testament. Uh now to be fairly well he doesn't want Christians to wholeheartedly and completely and utterly reject the old testament but he wants to see it decanonized and reduced to jitterrocononical status kind of like in the same category as the apocrypha.

[00:18:22]Listen to here to what Litwa says about deanonization.

[00:18:27]He says decanonization need not be done with an axe but with a scalpel. Not everything needs to go because not everything is theologically unredeemable. Entire books need not be omitted. Only passages and verses from both testaments. When it comes to revising the canon, there is the problem of inertia, but also a lack of courage.

[00:18:48]It should be remembered, however, that God spoke scripture, not canon. God never said this book is in the canon and this one isn't. Canon lists are entirely human products representing an ancient but never complete consensus about what books churches took to be scriptural.

[00:19:07]Accordingly, the canon can always be revised. If a purge was done in the 16th century, it can be done today.

[00:19:16]Now, what do we make of that view? Um, the problem is I've heard similar arguments of editing out bits of the Bible before. Well, I mean there was like, you know, Thomas Jefferson, but if you go back to Nazi Germany, the uh Deutsche Christens, the German Christians printed Bibles during the Third Reich called the Botchath Got, you know, the message of God. And the uh uh Institute for the Study and eradication of Jewish influences on German church life printed a Bible called the Vulks Testament, the people's testament. And in these so-called Bibles, uh, I mean, I don't think they're real Bibles. Uh, the Old Testament was removed and even New Testament was cleansed of all Jewish elements like removing references to the Old Testament genealogies and the Jewishness of Jesus. Um, Litwar is not a Nazi. Let's be very clear. He's not a 20th century fascist.

[00:20:16]But if at the end of the day you want to edit the Bible and if your revised Bible is similar to the Third Reich's Botcha Gotes and their Vulks New Testament or their Vulks testament, I don't think that's a book anyone should be reading.

[00:20:33]Now I guess that's me. I'm just a little bit biased against anything that sounds remotely like Nazis or Third Reich theologians, but that's just me. In summary, this is indeed a fascinating book on Marian. It corrects some long-standing caricatures of Marian. I think it is thoughtprovoking in many ways. He challenges with, "Well, yeah, but did Marian really do that? Is he really as bad as everyone says he is?"

[00:21:01]So, I I think it is informative. It's worth wrestling with in the history of second century Christianity and the study of Marian. In other ways, I think it is uh very unconvincing. And most of all, his hanakian take on the Old Testament left me deeply confused and concerned. Be that as it may, I would love to see a society of biblical literature or a, you know, Petristic Society meeting discuss this book at a panel. I'd love to have some very interesting conversations with uh David, you know, Dr. Litwa about his view of the Old Testament. Maybe with some Old Testament scholars, maybe with some Jewish scholars of the Old Testament.

[00:21:44]That would that would be a lot of fun.

[00:21:46]That would be a very interesting conversation. But we'll uh we'll have to wait and see what happens in the future.

[00:21:53]Hey, hope you like that book review of David Litwar's book on Marian. I had to read that book. I literally get mentioned in the preface and I do see David around from time to time. He's a he's a lovely chap. Uh if you like this content, uh feel free have a browse around the channel. I've got a lot of book reviews. I've got a lot of lectures. I cover hot topics on the Bible, church history, theology, and if you like that type of thing, hit the subscribe button, punch the bell, and that way you'll never miss out on new content when it gets released.

[00:22:27]Otherwise, it's goodbye from me, and I look forward to seeing you somewhere around the channel, Early Christian History. Until next time, take care.