Apologetica Christos: 7th Disputation

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life - 1 John 1:1

Most worthy Theophilus, I trust you have been well. There is one final much controverted element of the atonement that I would now desire to address. It is of great import to note that in between the incarnation of our Lord and His death there are myriads of points concerning our most holy faith that I would wish to speak to you about, but we must be temperate and confine ourselves to what we can for now “for godliness with contentment is great gain.” (1 Timothy 6:6).

When Jesus died, who was it that died? The sacrifice must be of sufficient value to both satisfy the broken law and pardon the guilty. So important is it to know this in truth and spirit that Paul sounded off a warning to the Church saying, “after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you” (Acts 20:29). Such wolves determined to corrupt our most holy faith. Among those wolves prophesied of Paul was a man by the name of Marcion. He taught that the God of the Old Testament was an evil, wicked, sadistic, selfish bully. He further taught that we ought to discard the Old Testament Scriptures and consequently concern ourselves merely with the New, as the God of the New Testament was a loving, kind, self sacrificing God. Does this sound familiar to the teachings of the Churches today? It should. The whole dispensationalist theology is the child of it.

There’s more to Marcion. The Bible student has to wonder why he hated the God of the Old Testament. His most prominent reason was not because it appeared as though the Old testament God was fond of genocide, as some deceived skeptics believe, but rather because Marcion associated the Old testament God with the act of creation, and wait for it, and he believed that matter is evil (a pagan doctrine of Plato's origin). It follows then that if the God that created matter thereby created evil, well then, that God must be evil Himself. This is pure Platonic philosophy. What is it doing in the teachings of a Christian?

A mural of Marcion of Sinope

Oh! it gets worse. Marcion further taught that since the seventh day Sabbath was the memorial of creation and the sign of the Creator God, the Sabbath too was evil. There is much concerning Marcion we may discuss however, we shall concern ourselves with his most renown extrapolation. Building on his teachings, Marcion finally reached the point to say that because matter is evil, it must die. The spirit is pure and eternal but the material is wicked and must die [which I must reiterate is exactly what Plato taught in his teachings on ‘the idea’] Marcionism is the teaching that when Christ died on the cross, it was only His human body that died and thus the sacrifice for the salvation of mankind was only a human sacrifice. As repugnant as that may be, he gets deeper into his confusion because when properly read, Marcion taught further that since matter is an illusion, even the body that Christ possessed was not a real body. Yet while my Bible says:

“Many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.” (2 John 1:7) 

I think you will find that the Churches today in one form or another teach Marcionism while denouncing it as heresy. It seems to me that on matters of faith men suddenly forget to use their mental faculties. There is a direct line from the Churches to Marcion to Origen back to Plato which we have neither time nor space to explore seeing as we vigorously intend to "have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove [them]." (Ephesians 5:11) Hence, on this one issue of that most excellent divine sacrifice, I will next take you on a great Biblical evidentiary journey as a final emphatic post scriptum to these disputations. Until then, the God of peace be with you.