Marcion Breaks with the Roman Church

Marcion of Pontus teaches at Rome that the God of the Jewish scriptures is not the Father of Jesus, and gives his followers one Gospel and ten letters of Paul. By his opponents’ account the Roman church expels him; his followers form churches of their own.

No writing of Marcion’s survives except in what his opponents quote from it. What is known of him comes from the Christians who wrote against him: Justin, who was his contemporary at Rome, Irenaeus a generation later, and above all the five books of Tertullian, written about sixty years after the events.

They agree that he came from Pontus on the Black Sea (Justin, First Apology 26) (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.27.1–2). Tertullian calls him a shipmaster and says that he joined the church at Rome and gave it a sum of money (Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics 30) (Tertullian, Against Marcion 4.4). Irenaeus says that he took up and developed the teaching of Cerdo, who had come to Rome earlier (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.27.1–2).

As his opponents report it, Marcion taught that the God proclaimed by the law and the prophets, the maker of the world, was not the Father of Jesus Christ. The creator was just; above him was another God, good and until then unknown, whom Jesus revealed in the days of Tiberius (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.27.1–2) (Tertullian, Against Marcion 1.2) (Tertullian, Against Marcion 4.6). Tertullian says that he set out the contrasts between law and gospel in a work called the Antitheses (Tertullian, Against Marcion 1.19), and that he baptized only those who were unmarried or had given up marriage (Tertullian, Against Marcion 1.29).

He gave his followers a set of scriptures to match. In place of the Jewish scriptures and the Gospels read in the churches he used one Gospel, a form of Luke without the birth stories and with no author’s name, and ten letters of Paul, which Tertullian goes through one by one, without those to Timothy and Titus (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.27.1–2) (Tertullian, Against Marcion 4.2) (Tertullian, Against Marcion 5.2–21). His opponents say that he cut these texts down. His own claim, as Tertullian reports it, was that he was restoring a gospel that defenders of Judaism had interpolated, and he appealed to Paul’s rebuke of Peter in Galatians (Tertullian, Against Marcion 4.3) (Tertullian, Against Marcion 4.4).

Tertullian says that the church expelled him and gave back his money (Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics 30) (Tertullian, Against Marcion 4.4). Churches that traced themselves to him or to his followers still existed in Tertullian’s day (Tertullian, Against Marcion 4.5). Justin says that in his day Marcion had followers “of every nation” (Justin, First Apology 26) (Justin, First Apology 58). Irenaeus tells how Polycarp, meeting him, called him “the first-born of Satan” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.4).

Irenaeus says that Marcion was the only one who had dared openly to cut the Scriptures (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.27.4). In answering him, the writers of the wider church said which books they received: Irenaeus argued that the Gospels are four, neither more nor fewer, and Tertullian defended Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and the letters to Timothy and Titus that Marcion left out (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.11.7–8) (Tertullian, Against Marcion 4.2) (Tertullian, Against Marcion 5.21). See Irenaeus Sets Out the Rule of Faith and the Muratorian List of New Testament Books.

How this is dated

Traditional date. From later tradition or from internal biblical chronology, with no outside anchor.

The year comes from a figure that Tertullian reports from the Marcionites themselves. They counted 115 years and six and a half months “between Christ and Marcion”, and Tertullian sets Christ’s coming in the fifteenth year of Tiberius (Tertullian, Against Marcion 1.19). Counted from AD 28–29 this gives 144. Tertullian does not say what the interval ends with; it is usually taken to be Marcion’s break with the Roman church. He was writing in the fifteenth year of Severus, AD 207–208, some sixty years later (Tertullian, Against Marcion 1.15).

The other evidence gives only a range. Justin, about 150–155, says that Marcion was still alive and teaching (Justin, First Apology 26). Irenaeus says that he flourished under Anicetus, the tenth bishop of Rome, after Cerdo had come under Hyginus, the ninth (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.4.3). Tertullian elsewhere places Marcion in the Roman church under Eleutherus (Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics 30). That does not fit the other evidence: Irenaeus names Eleutherus as the twelfth bishop, in office when he himself was writing about 180 (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.3). Judith M. Lieu, Marcion and the Making of a Heretic: God and Scripture in the Second Century (2015), examines what can be recovered from these hostile reports.

In context

Marcion Breaks with the Roman Church

How this is dated

Primary sources

First Apology

Against Heresies

Prescription against Heretics

Against Marcion

In context

Grows out of

Leads to

Along the threads