The next heresy in B. Quash and M. Ward, Heresies and How to Avoid Them: Why It Matters What Christians Believe
concerns Marcion and asks this question: Can Christians dispense with the God of the Old Testament?I hear this one all the time: the so-called "God of the Old Testament" is fierce and wrathful but the God of Jesus is gracious and loving. This heresy is that the God of the Old Testament and the God of Jesus are at odds with one another.
What makes this one so bitterly distasteful is not only the number of its early proponents and defenders, but the incredible offense it brings to the unity of the Bible, to the Israelite roots of the Christian faith, and to the potential damage in anti-Semitism.
Ultimately, as Angela Tilby (author of this chp; Anglican Vicar) argues, Marcion found holiness and love incompatible. Marcion would have nothing to do with the threat of judgment, the warning of hell, the law, and the call to obedience. And the reason why Marcion thought so many Christians believed these things? The Old Testament. Solution: chuck it and its Jewish heritage. The God of the OT was ignorant (Gen 1:9), immoral (2 Sam 5--24), and inconsistent (Exod 20 and Numb 21:8).But this landed Marcion in trouble with the continuity themes and with texts like Matthew, so he thought Jews had corrupted the grace of Jesus and he -- in Thomas Jefferson-like fashion -- cut out those parts too. He believed on Luke's Gospel and some of the letters of Paul.
Tilby does not think Julian of Norwich or Martin Luther were Marcionites, even if some have tried to read them that way. She finds closer parallels in the "later liberal Protestantism" of Germany. Think Adolf von Harnack. She also admits to being tempted to this when she listens to the bullying approaches of some conservative Christians today. She also sees a similar thing in the bullying intolerance of some liberals, and mentions David Jenkins.
Marcion really rejected creation. She finds Marcionistic-like thinking in the Jesus Seminar. A useful test for the presence of Marcionism is anti-Semitism. Instead of searching for contradictions, she advises searching for compatibilities.
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Thanks for your comment, Dana...I totally agree!
Thinking back to yesterday's #7 post (which I just read and commented on), God provides us, in the OT, opportunities to look at relationship from many different sides. If we're not remembering God as covenant maker and faithful covenant keeper, we will not see that uniting thread that is woven from beginning to end.
To say that God cannot be surprised and must have everything figured out and known in advance shows exactly how we just cannot understand the mystery and paradox that IS God.
I like to split hairs by saying that God has everything under control (as in Rom 8:28, where God is actively working in and through each circumstance to show his faithful hesed for us), while not being in control -- which denies freedom of actions and will in humans.
...I would also say that the restraint of God, which is a key component to God's nature, is something that is not recognized often enough for my liking!
If God chooses to limit parts of their reality in order to enter into relationship with us, that is within their rights! God is, after all, God! We cannot put God is a box, neat and contained!
Hmmm ... I'll probably be taking a "heretic" hit for that one, but that's okay with me...
Joey @ 10 & Dan @ 11,
I mean that "I don't know" (or better, "I don't know right now") is an acceptable response to certain specific problematic texts, not that we shouldn't believe strongly in the unity of the whole Scripture, or that we just throw up our hands in bewilderment. I say unity because part of this is our inability to accept that the Bible might sometimes endorse contrasting viewpoints. But truth, like life, is sometimes ambiguous, contradictory, and paradoxical, and we need to be able to live in the creative tensions between, say, mercy and justice.
I also agree that Jesus is our primary way of understanding God, but we also (like the ancients) need to learn to see Jesus in both Testaments. Jesus isn't just any powerful guy come to save us, he's specifically the expected Jewish Messiah, and the God whose Son he is began the long-gestating work of redemption in the narrative of the Jewish people as recorded in what we call the Old Testament (btw, I'm in favor of dropping that name, due to all the problems we've been discussing). There are parts of that narrative that are confusing to us, but we cannot discard it like Marcion, or we are cutting off the branch we're sitting on.
As a universalist (did I miss discussion of this heresy, universal salvation or isn't it one?), I feel somewhat attracted toward the Marcion view. I can not believe in a God who would damn any of his children to eternal torment or who appoves of atrocities. However, most of the Old testament describes a loving God, and there is so much else of beauty, so perhaps "Jeffersoning" the Old Testament instead of rejecting it is the better alternative. I don't think you can just explain away some of the passages. We have only one Rabbi in Saprtanburg, SC. He gave the sermon at the local Inman Methodist Church, where I live, a couple of weeks ago and will be giving the sermon at our UU church on April 19. I plan to ask him some questions about Jewish heresies (Christianity is one of them!) and how Judaism deals with the atrocities in the OT, when we have our discussion with him following the service. My initial impression is that that Talmudic commentary is far more wide-ranging and accepting of many diverse views compared to Christianity's more doctrinaire approach, but that occured post-Maimonides. I wonder if there are any actual historical examples of a link between a Marcionite view and anti-semitism? I suppose in some sense it's an affront to Jews and Christians alike to excise passages, but how could some of them ever be compatible with a loving God? BTW, we're studying "Lost Christianities" at church, a chapter a week.
Doug
What's this mean: "She finds Marcionistic-like thinking in the Jesus Seminar"?
I just think God mellowed out after he had a kid.
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