Marcionism

And by the way, just another obvious thing to end with, if we don't know this, we're going to make the same errors over and over and over.

I see a full-fledged return of Marcionism today.

That's the heresy that says the God of the Old and New Testament are totally different gods and all that.

And Tertullian answered him absolutely fully about 1800 years ago.

It's not like the idea of atonement is not clearly taught, obviously, in Leviticus 16 and many other places in the Hebrew Bible, but also in the In the New Testament.

And unless we are Marcionites, of which there is a lot, you know, there's a lot of Marcionism in American evangelicalism where you have a wrathful Old Testament God and an all-loving New Testament God.

You know, that's the essence of Marcionite theology.

And I'm afraid there's a lot of that.

And then he even says, if you ever hear of any that are called Christians taking their name, not from the Lord Jesus Christ, but from some other.

And he gives the example of Marcionites, Valencians, and so on.

We might give the example of Lutherans and Calvinists and so on.

He says, you may be sure that you have there not the church of Christ, but the synagogue of Antichrist.

So that was a thing that the early church dealt with.

It was called Marcionism.

And I just wonder out of curiosity if you know why Marcionism was defeated.

Let me respond to this, Jonathan.

Marcionism is the belief that Yahweh and the Old Testament is, first off, one single entity, which the orthodoxy holds the same exact view, both are wrong.

And second off, the belief that that singular entity, which it's not, is Satan.

That's the issue with that.

A little later, you had the Gnostic Christians.

You had the Marcionites.

Then you had the Ebionites and so on.

And then the proto-Orthodox, as Bart Ehrman calls them.

What is exactly he referring to? The teaching that the Catholic Church is still nourished by the Old Testament and the spiritual patrimony? If you're saying that the Old Testament is the word of God, well, I agree with that.

I am not a Marcionite, okay? I accept that this is the word of God.

But then he goes on to say, "...in completely garbled form, that well-collivated olive tree." What is the olive tree he's referring to here is, I believe, this is Christ.

This is the Logos incarnate.

All through the centuries, there have been false teachings that threaten to hijack the church.

The first one, I call it the Ur heresy, the original heresy, was Marcionism.

Marcion was a rich convert to Christianity.

He comes, he brings all his wealth.