The Rise of the Heretics and the Need for A New Testament Canon – Marcion

We have seen that the apostles and a few of their companions wrote a number of documents that they taught were the Word of God, equal in authority with the writings of the Old Testament and that after the apostles had died these writings were read, studied, and taught in the same way as the writings of the Old Testament.

However, no “official” list of these documents yet existed. The need for this was not seen until heretics arose and put forward their own writings or tried to reject some of the authentic writings. Two key heretics/groups were (1) Marcion and (2) Valentinus and the Gnostics. This week we will look at Marcion.

Marcion tried to truncate the New Testament canon by rejecting books that were received by the church as being inspired by God and thus part of the canon. Marcion was born around 100AD and had been raised in the church. However, he was an extreme antinomian – one who rejects the law. He rejected any use of the law as being incompatible with grace and justification by faith. This extreme view led Marcion to state that the “god” of the Old Testament was NOT the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. Furthermore, he stated that of the apostles only Paul kept the Gospel pure; the other apostles all corrupted it with Old Testament law.

Because of this, Marcion developed a very truncated “canon”. He began by completely rejecting the Old Testament. It was the writing of those who were worshipping a “god” of law – a different God than the God of the New Testament.

Second, he rejected all of the Gospels except Luke – and he edited Luke to remove anything he thought was a corruption. This included the birth narratives of John the Baptist and Christ (which are full of quotes from the Old Testament), the ministry of John the Baptist, and the genealogy (since it showed Jesus was the fulfillment of the Old Testament. In short, anything in the Gospel of Luke that quoted or was built upon the Old Testament was removed.

Third, he retained edited versions of Paul’s 10 main epistles – rejecting the Pastoral epistles (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) completely. Furthermore, even even the 10 epistles he retained were highly edited. In short, he removed anything that quoted the Old Testament or even viewed it in a favorable light.

Thus, Marcion presented a challenge to the church by truncating and rejecting writings that were actually inspired by God and received by the church at large as part of the New Testament canon.

Next week we will look at Valentinus and the Gnostics and how they tried to alter the New Testament canon through a reinterpreted canon and the addition of additional books.

In Christ,

Bret