Freethought & Rationalism Archive

mountainman · 04-07-2013, 10:22 PM

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Originally Posted by stephan huller

A story from Epiphanius about Marcionites:

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Indeed, I was arguing once with some of his disciples, some Marcionite or other, and remarking how it says in the Gospel that the Spirit took Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And he asked me, 'How could Satan tempt the true God (τὸν ὄντα θεὸν), who is both greater than he and, as you say, his Lord (καὶ κύριον αὐτοῦ ὡς ὑμεῖς λέγετε πειράσαι), Jesus his Master (τὸν Ἰησοῦν τὸν αὐτοῦ δεσπότην)?'

I think this is very significant.

Hardly.

Coneybeare on Epiphanius ...

Alas, that we should depend upon such an author as
this for so much of our knowledge of the early Christian sects.
For as we read his account of the Therapeutae in ch. 29 of his
Panarium, we feel that if such a writer ever told the truth, at least
of his enemies, it must have been by accident.

εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

stephan huller · 04-07-2013, 10:26 PM

In Euripides Helen 14 there is a very similar use of ὄντα

τὰ θεῖα γὰρ τά τ᾽ ὄντα καὶ μέλλοντα πάντ᾽ ἠπίστατο

for she knew whatever the gods design, both present and to come

ὄντα is defined as meaning 'actual' in the sense of the things which actually exist, the present, opp. the past and future. Epiphanius says earlier of Greek grammar:

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And if we say 'god' without the article, we have spoken either of any heathen god, or of the actual God (θεὸν τῶν ἐθνῶν ἢ θεὸν τὸν ὄντα). But if we say 'the God,' it is clear that because of the article we mean the actual God (τὸν ὄντα σημαίνομεν), who is the true God and is known to be (ἀληθῆ τε καὶ γινωσκόμενον).

stephan huller · 04-07-2013, 10:34 PM

I wonder if Epiphanius is giving away the great secret of the Marcionites from his conversation with an actual member of the sect:

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Indeed, I was arguing once with some of his disciples, some Marcionite or other, and remarking how it says in the Gospel that the Spirit took Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And he asked me, 'How could Satan tempt the true God (τὸν ὄντα θεὸν), who is both greater than he and, as you say, his Lord (καὶ κύριον αὐτοῦ ὡς ὑμεῖς λέγετε πειράσαι), Jesus his Master (τὸν Ἰησοῦν τὸν αὐτοῦ δεσπότην)?'

Is Epiphanius saying - Jesus is actually 'God,' greater than Satan and as you Catholics say 'the Lord of him' (= Satan)? Is the Marcionite pointing to the difference in terms of how Jesus called in each sect or simply that the Catholics claim Jesus is the Lord of Satan?

stephan huller · 04-07-2013, 10:48 PM

This might go some ways to determining whether τὸν ὄντα θεὸν was a Marcionite title. A little later in the Panarion:

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Scholion 12 and 20. 'But God hath composed the body.' (1 Cor 12:24)

Elenchus 12 and 20. If 'God' (ὁ θεός) has compounded the body, the apostle is preaching no other God than the true God (τὸν ὄντα). And if he confesses that 'God' has compounded the body by means of its members, he knows no other 'God' than the Demiurge himself, he who is good, creator and just, the maker of all. Of all these works of his one is man, well compounded by him by means of his members.

stephan huller · 04-07-2013, 11:05 PM

Justin's references to Marcion. The first in 1 Apology does not support the two gods, good and evil:

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And there is Marcion, a man of Pontus, who is even at this day alive, and teaching his disciples to believe in some other god greater than the Creator. And he, by the aid of the devils, has caused many of every nation to speak blasphemies, and to deny that God is the maker of this universe, and to assert that some other being, greater than He, has done greater works. All who take their opinions from these men, are, as we before said, called Christians; just as also those who do not agree with the philosophers in their doctrines, have yet in common with them the name of philosophers given to them. And whether they perpetrate those fabulous and shameful deeds--the upsetting of the lamp, and promiscuous intercourse, and eating human flesh--we know not; but we do know that they are neither persecuted nor put to death by you, at least on account of their opinions. But I have a treatise against all the heresies that have existed already composed, which, if you wish to read it, I will give you.[1 Apol. 26]

The second reference neither:

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And, as we said before, the devils put forward Marcion of Pontus, who is even now teaching men to deny that God is the maker of all things in heaven and on earth, and that the Christ predicted by the prophets is His Son, and preaches another god besides the Creator of all, and likewise another son. And this man many have believed, as if he alone knew the truth, and laugh at us, though they have no proof of what they say, but are carried away irrationally as lambs by a wolf, and become the prey of atheistical doctrines, and of devils. For they who are called devils attempt nothing else than to seduce men from God who made them, and from Christ His first-begotten; and those who are unable to raise themselves above the earth they have riveted, and do now rivet, to things earthly, and to the works of their own hands; but those who devote themselves to the contemplation of things divine, they secretly beat back; and if they have not a wise sober-mindedness, and a pure and passionless life, they drive them into godlessness.[ibid 58]

Amazingly, I find that Justin is not the problem. From whence came then the doctrine of radical dualism (= good and evil)? Wow! I am glad I double checked my sources.

stephan huller · 04-07-2013, 11:24 PM

The radical dualism starts with Irenaeus in Book One in the description of the Marcionites:

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Marcion of Pontus succeeded him, and developed his doctrine. In so doing, he advanced the most daring blasphemy against Him who is proclaimed as God by the law and the prophets, declaring Him to be the author of evils (malorum factorum), to take delight in war, to be infirm of purpose, and even to be contrary to Himself. But Jesus being derived from that father who is above the God that made the world, and coming into Judaea in the times of Pontius Pilate the governor, who was the procurator of Tiberius Caesar, was manifested in the form of a man to those who were in Judaea, abolishing the prophets and the law, and all the works of that God who made the world, whom also he calls Cosmocrator. Besides this, he mutilates the Gospel which is according to Luke, removing all that is written respecting the generation of the Lord, and setting aside a great deal of the teaching of the Lord, in which the Lord is recorded as most dearly confessing that the Maker of this universe is His Father. He likewise persuaded his disciples that he himself was more worthy of credit than are those apostles who have handed down the Gospel to us, furnishing them not with the Gospel, but merely a fragment of it. In like manner, too, he dismembered the Epistles of Paul, removing all that is said by the apostle respecting that God who made the world, to the effect that He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and also those passages from the prophetical writings which the apostle quotes, in order to teach us that they announced beforehand the coming of the Lord.

But is that enough to secure the fact that Marcion was a radical Persian-style dualist? Not a chance. He manufactures evils and delights in war and the like may well be typical exaggerations on Irenaeus part. It sounds very similar to what appears in a later book in Irenaeus:

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And, indeed, the followers of Marcion do directly blaspheme the Creator, alleging him to be the creator of evils, [but] holding a more tolerable theory as to his origin, [and] maintaining that there are two beings, gods by nature, differing from each other,--the one being good, but the other evil. [3.12.12]

But that is it for any specific reference to Marcion's radical dualism in the writings of Irenaeus. There rest of the references as I have demonstrated here support the 'good' and 'just' distinction between the two powers in heaven. The first reference did not appear in Hippolytus's copy of Irenaeus's work(s) or he deliberately chose not to recopy it (which is hard to believe).

Instead we get this rather bald statement at the beginning of the section on Marcion in the Philosophumena:

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But Marcion, a native of Pontus, far more frantic than these (heretics), omitting the majority of the tenets of the greater number (of speculators), (and) advancing into a doctrine still more unabashed, supposed (the existence of) two originating causes of the universe, alleging one of them to be a certain good (principle), but the other an evil one. And himself imagining that he was introducing some novel (opinion), founded a school full of folly, and attended by men of a sensual mode of life, inasmuch as he himself was one of lustful propensities. This (heretic) having thought that the multitude would forget that he did not happen to be a disciple of Christ, but of Empedocles, who was far anterior to himself, framed and formed the same opinions,--namely, that there are two causes of the universe, discord and friendship [7.17]

Then after a long section where Hippolytus presents Marcion as having the exact opposite of a Persian dualistic good and evil division between the two gods (he speaks in stead of Empedocean friendship and discord) Hippolytus does go back to the 'good and evil' well by saying:

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And (Marcion) despoiled this (philosopher), and imagined that up to the present would pass undetected his transference, under the same expressions, of the arrangement of his entire heresy from Sicily into the evangelical narratives. For bear with me, O Marcion: as you have instituted a comparison of what is good and evil, I also to-day will institute a comparison following up your own tenets, as you suppose them to be. You affirm that the Demiurge of the world is evil--why not hide your countenance in shame, (as thus) teaching to the Church the doctrines of Empedocles? You say that there is a good Deity who destroys the works of the Demiurge: then do not you plainly preach to your pupils, as the good Deity, the Friendship of Empedocles. [7.18]

Indeed Hippolytus does do something very significant in what follows, he identifies Marcion as stealing his 'good and evil' distinction from Empedocles when he writes:

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For Empedocles asserts that the world is managed by wicked Discord, and that the other (world) which (is managed) by Friendship, is cognisable by intellect. And (he asserts) that these are the two different principles of good and evil, and that intermediate between these diverse principles is impartial reason, in accordance with which are united the things that have been separated by Discord, (and which,) in accordance with the influence of Friendship, are accommodated to unity.

and again:

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Marcion, adopting these sentiments, rejected altogether the generation of our Saviour. He considered it to be absurd that tinder the (category of a) creature fashioned by destructive Discord should have been the Logos that was an auxiliary to Friendship--that is, the Good Deity. (His doctrine,) however, was that, independent of birth, (the Logos) Himself descended from above in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, and that, as being intermediate between the good and bad Deity, He proceeded to give instruction in the synagogues. For if He is a Mediator, He has been, he says, liberated from the entire nature of the Evil Deity. Now, as he affirms, the Demiurge is evil, and his works. For this reason, he affirms, Jesus came down unbegotten, in order that He might be liberated from all (admixture of) evil. And He has, he says, been liberated from the nature of the Good One likewise, in order that He may be a Mediator, as Paul states, and as Himself acknowledges: "Why call ye me good? there is one good," These, then, are the opinions of Marcion, by means of which he made many his dupes, employing the conclusions of Empedocles.

The only problem is that Empedocles is not a radical dualist of this kind. No one that I know of condemns Empedocles for introducing 'good and evil' dichotomy in the heavens. As such we can dismiss the charges. So much for the Philosophumena.

stephan huller · 04-07-2013, 11:42 PM

It is important to note that when we go back to Irenaeus's original identification of Marcion as 'making evil' the Against All Heresies associated with Tertullian ascribes this section to Marcion's predecessor Cerdo and speaks in terms of 'cruelty' rather than 'evil':

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To this is added one Cerdo. He introduces two first causes, that is, two Gods--one good, the other cruel: the good being the superior; the latter, the cruel one, being the creator of the world. He repudiates the prophecies and the Law; renounces God the Creator; maintains that Christ who came was the Son of the superior God; affirms that He was not in the substance of flesh; states Him to have been only in a phantasmal shape, to have not really suffered,but undergone a quasipassion, and not to have been born of a virgin, nay, really not to have been born at all. A resurrection of the soul merely does he approve, denying that of the body. The Gospel of Luke alone, and that not entire, does he receive. Of the Apostle Paul he takes neither all the epistles, nor in their integrity. The Acts of the Apostles and the Apocalypse he rejects as false.

After him emerged a disciple of his, one Marcion by name, a native of Pontus, son of a bishop, excommunicated because of a rape committed on a certain virgin. He, starting from the fact that it is said, "Every good tree beareth good fruit, but an evil evil," attempted to approve the heresy of Cerdo; so that his assertions are identical with those of the former heretic before him.

stephan huller · 04-08-2013, 08:34 AM

It is Tertullian who presents the most consistent portrait of the 'good/evil' dichotomy. But notice again that at least at the beginning of Book One the emphasis - as in Irenaeus - is that he made evil. The gnostic myth of the fall of Sophia is an example of the production of evil by a divine figure who wasn't evil per se:

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The heretic of Pontus introduces two Gods, like the twin Symplegades of his own shipwreck: One whom it was impossible to deny, i.e. our Creator; and one whom he will never be able to prove, i.e. his own god. The unhappy man gained the first idea of his conceit from the simple passage of our Lord's saying, which has reference to human beings and not divine ones, wherein He disposes of those examples of a good tree and a corrupt one; how that "the good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit, neither the corrupt tree good fruit." Which means, that an honest mind and good faith cannot produce evil deeds, any more than an evil disposition can produce good deeds. Now (like many other persons now-a-days, especially those who have an heretical proclivity), while morbidly brooding over the question of the origin of evil, his perception became blunted by the very irregularity of his researches; and when he found the Creator declaring, "I am He that createth evil," inasmuch as he had already concluded from other arguments, which are satisfactory to every perverted mind, that God is the author of evil, so he now applied to the Creator the figure of the corrupt tree bringing forth evil fruit, that is, moral evil, and then presumed that there ought to be another god, after the analogy of the good tree producing its good fruit. Accordingly, finding in Christ a different disposition, as it were--one of a simple and pure benevolence--differing from the Creator, he readily argued that in his Christ had been revealed a new and strange divinity; and then with a little leaven he leavened the whole lump of the faith, flavouring it with the acidity of his own heresy.

He had, moreover, in one Cerdon an abettor of this blasphemy,--a circumstance which made them the more readily think that they saw most clearly their two gods, blind though they were; for, in truth, they had not seen the one God with soundness of faith. To men of diseased vision even one lamp looks like many. One of his gods, therefore, whom he was obliged to acknowledge, he destroyed by defaming his attributes in the matter of evil; the other, whom he laboured so hard to devise, he constructed, laying his foundation in the principle of good. In what articles he arranged these natures, we show by our own refutations of them. [Adv Marc 1.3]

This is also where Moll got the idea that Marcion was more interested in the OT than the gospel. The new generation of scholars ...

stephan huller · 04-08-2013, 08:37 AM

Yes notice if we dig carefully in Tertullian - no less than Irenaeus as we already showed - the tripartate Marcionite understanding where matter is 'evil' and the third god is also present:

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And thus you may, if you please, reckon up so far, three gods as Marcion's,--the Maker, local space, and matter. Furthermore, he in like manner makes the Creator a god in local space, which is itself to be appraised on a precisely identical scale of dignity; and to Him as its lord he subordinates matter, which is notwithstanding unbegotten, and unmade, and by reason hereof eternal. With this matter he further associates evil, an unbegotten principle with an unbegotten object, an unmade with an unmade, and an eternal with an eternal; so here he makes a fourth God. [Adv Marc 1:15]

stephan huller · 04-08-2013, 09:27 AM

Indeed I am quite surprised to see the degree to which what is actually preserved in Tertullian conforms to the tripartate division of the Marcionite godhead (= the Syriac sources). The one accusation that I see leveled against the Marcionite interpretation of Yahweh (= the Lord) is that he created and 'tolerated' evil. In the Syriac tradition we see the idea that the Lord stands in the middle between good and evil, being swayed either way until ultimately repenting of his ways.

Just look now at Book One Chapter 22. The accusation is perfectly in keeping with a traditional Jewish division of the godhead along 'good' and 'just' but with the additional idea that Jesus (= the good god) was unknown (to the Jewish people or perhaps the religion of the Pharisees):

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In God, therefore, goodness is required to be both perpetual and unbroken, such as, being stored up and kept ready in the treasures of His natural properties, might precede its own causes and material developments; and if thus preceding, might underlie every first material cause, instead of looking at it from a distance, and standing aloof from it. In short, here too I must inquire, Why his goodness did not operate from the beginning? no less pointedly than when we inquired concerning himself, Why he was not revealed from the very first? Why, then, did it not? since he had to be revealed by his goodness if he had any existence. That God should at all fail in power must not be thought, much less that He should not discharge all His natural functions; for if these were restrained from running their course, they would cease to be natural. Moreover, the .nature of God Him self knows nothing of inactivity. Hence (His goodness) is reckoned as having a beginning, if it acts. It will thus be evident that He had no unwillingness to exercise His goodness at any time on account of His nature. Indeed, it is impossible that He should be unwilling because of His nature, since that so directs itself that it would no longer exist if it ceased to act.

In Marcion's god, however, goodness ceased from operation at some time or other. A goodness, therefore, which could thus at any time have ceased its action was not natural, because with natural properties such cessation is incompatible. And if it shall not prove to be natural, it must no longer be believed to be eternal nor competent to Deity; because it cannot be eternal so long as, failing to be natural, it neither provides from the past nor guarantees for the future any means of perpetuating itself. Now as a fact it existed not from the beginning, and, doubtless, will not endure to the end. For it is possible for it to fail in existence some future time or other, as it has failed in some past period. Forasmuch, then, as the goodness of Marcion's god failed in the beginning (for he did not from the first deliver man), this failure must have been the effect of will rather than of infirmity. Now a wilful suppression of goodness will be found to have a malignant end in view. For what malignity is so great as to be unwilling to do good when one can, or to thwart what is useful, or to permit injury? The whole description, therefore, of Marcion's Creator will have to be transferred to his new god, who helped on the ruthless proceedings of the former by the retardation of his own goodness. For whosoever has it in his power to prevent the happening of a thing, is accounted responsible for it if it should occur. Man is condemned to death for tasting the fruit of one poor tree, and thence proceed sins with their penalties; and now all are perishing who yet never saw a single sod of Paradise. And all this your better god either is ignorant of, or else brooks.

Is it that he might on this account be deemed the better, and the Creator be regarded as all that the worse? Even if this were his purpose he would be malicious enough, for both wishing to aggravate his rival's obloquy by permitting His works to be done, and by keeping the world harrassed by the wrong. What would you think of a physician who should encourage a disease by withholding the remedy, and prolong the danger by delaying his prescription, in order that his cure might be more costly and more renowned? Such must be the sentence to be pronounced against Marcion's god: tolerant of evil, encouraging wrong, wheedling about his grace, prevaricating in his goodness, which he did not exhibit simply on its own account, but which he must mean to exhibit purely, if he is good by nature and not by acquisition, if he is supremely good in attribute and not by discipline, if he is God from eternity and not from Tiberius, nay (to speak more truly), from Cerdon only and Marcion. As the case now stands, however, such a god as we are considering would have been more fit for Tiberius, that the goodness of the Divine Being might be inaugurated in the world under his imperial sway!

Is it enough to suppose that at the time Tertullian (or perhaps Irenaeus - if we push the dating of this idea in the Philosophumena and Adv Marc to its earliest possible date now that we have excluded Justin) the knowledge of the Jewish belief in two powers in heaven had so completely disappeared from the world that the context needed to understand Marcionitism had also vanished?

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