III — Was Marcion a Great Man?

[p. 24] The great man in history founds an age. That M. did not do; for he was unable to prevail, however much he did, both negatively and positively, to bring the old-Catholic age into being. This age is not to be conceived without M., any more than post-Tridentine Catholicism is to be conceived without Luther.¹ But has he a significance still today? In fact he has not. Ought he to have one? I rather think so, and I expressed this in the closing sentence of my presentation (p. 265): “One can only wish that in the choir of those who seek God, Marcionites should be found again today too!” The saying has been misunderstood and held against me with more or less indignation. Although the context in which it stands makes it beyond doubt that I reject the fundamental idea of Marcionite Christianity and, over against it, hold fast to the confession Πιστεύω εἰς θεὸν πατέρα παντοκράτορα [“I believe in God the Father almighty”] (on religious and on historical grounds), I am nonetheless supposed to have become a Marcionite!² But the wish that there might after all be God-seeking Marcionites among us sprang, and springs, merely from the perception of how strange and inferior numerous groups of God-seekers among us today are, and how hopelessly misleading their ways! Over against them Marcionitism is a most valuable phenomenon — not as a “doctrine of first principles”, but as a religious world-view and world-judgment, and as a doctrine of redemption through faith; yet even in the doctrine of first principles Marcion’s most important disciple, Apelles, found his way back to monotheism, which does after all lie latent in the master’s own teaching. Ought one not to wish that the seekers, instead of passing through the fashionable errors, should rather go Marcion’s way and then find the truth?

[p. 25] I come once more to Marcion’s world-creator. It is established that M. designated him, exhaustively, as δίκαιος καὶ πονηρός (see above). If one sets, as M. himself requires, world-creator = world and conversely,³ is this formulation not brilliant, and does it move far from the Johannine word Ὁ κόσμος ὅλος ἐν τῷ πονηρῷ κεῖται [“the whole world lies in the power of the evil one”]? It is only more definite and deeper than that word; for M. added the δίκαιον as a ground-colour and thereby made a discovery in the field of morals. For πονηρός we have no corresponding word in German; the Greek even called a great hero ἄριστος καὶ πονηρότατος, that is, “the most sorely tried”. M. too will have thought, in connection with πονηρός, not only of how oppressive, burdensome and wretched the world and its course are through the power that rules in it, but also of the fact that its God is himself a harassed God: for he is unable to abolish the struggle between “righteous” and “bad”, unable to suppress what is sensual, and unable to prevent the falling away of his creatures to matter. But I will not go further into detail; I will simply set out the ideas in Marcion’s teaching that remain of significance for all times — they need not therefore be taken throughout as “final” words:

1. The resolute judgment upon the world, in the totality of its being and in its living movement, as “world”, with which the Christian is not to become entangled, although he stems from it and, as a physical-moral being, belongs to it.⁴

2. The threefold division of ethical condition and the resulting division of men into bad, righteous and good (but without the Gnostics’ assumption that these classes are given by constitution and that the individual belongs by nature and forever to one of them).

3. The discovery (following Paul) that the “righteous” is indeed better than the “bad”, but that it [p. 26] is less receptive to the “good” and offers heavier resistance to it than the bad does.

4. The grasping of the divine exclusively under the aspect of merciful love, and the equally exclusive equation “God’s working = redemption”.

5. The recognition that faith in the crucified Jesus Christ alone is able to receive and hold fast redemption, and that therefore salvation consists in this faith alone.

6. The rejection of all philosophical reflection (metaphysics) in so far as it does not present itself of its own accord through empirical and religious considerations — that is, indifference toward “doctrines of first principles”.

If one asserts that M. has nothing more to say to our age, then one must show either that M. did not teach as is here set out, or that these teachings of his are of no consequence for us.⁵