This book is a theological argument from a single library: the True Testament, the Assembly’s reconstruction and translation of the Evangelion and Apostolikon from the hostile patristic witnesses who quoted them. It does not treat the conventional Christian Bible as one continuous authority. It treats those two collections, eleven books in all, as sufficient for the diagnosis it offers.
The eleven-book canon
Positive doctrine in these pages comes only from eleven books:
- Evangelion, the account of Christ that Marcion published around 140, as the Assembly has reconstructed it
- Apostolikon, ten epistles: Galatians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Romans, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, Laodiceans, Colossians, Philippians, Philemon
Material many printed Bibles label Ephesians appears here as Laodiceans, with versification following the True Testament.
The following are not cited as our scripture for positive claims: the Hebrew Bible; Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; Acts; the Pastorals (1–2 Timothy, Titus); Hebrews; the Catholic epistles; Revelation. Some material in later printed Bibles is absent from the True Testament, notably most of the long comparison of Adam and Christ in Romans 5 and the paragraph on governing authorities in Romans 13. This book treats that material as outside its Apostolikon. Absence from the reconstruction does not by itself prove that the material was interpolated into an earlier text of Paul. Patristic silence, a reconstructed omission, a textual variant, and a demonstrated interpolation are four different claims, and I try to keep them apart.
The textual edition
Quotations are taken from True Testament: The Restored Marcionite Canon, Sixth Edition (True Testament Publishing, 2026), the Assembly’s received reconstruction and translation, in the wording, versification, and apparatus used by the print reader and digital library. The edition reconstructs lost texts; it is not an extant Marcionite manuscript.
This book does not argue from the Septuagint, from Byzantine or majority-text readings foreign to the True Testament, or from concordance glosses that contradict the True Testament’s rendering. Greek terms are given where they help.
Where a point rests on a rendering peculiar to this edition, I try to say so.
Citation and numbering
TT after a reference means: True Testament, Sixth Edition, our canon, our versification, our wording.
- Running references use the form (Book chapter:verse TT), for example (Galatians 1:4 TT).
- Quotation marks followed by a TT reference enclose TT wording copied from the edition.
- Standalone quote blocks end with the reference in parentheses, for example (Galatians 1:4 TT).
Chapter and verse numbers follow True Testament versification, not the numbering of later Bibles. When a familiar passage sits at a different address in TT, this book uses the TT address only.
Why conventional passages are not used
Western theology often proves its anthropology from a merged library: Hebrew prophecy, the four gospels harmonized, Acts as church history, Pastorals as Paul, and composite Romans. That library produces the readings this book refuses: original guilt, penal substitution, eternal torment, and a Father who is also the warden of this aeon.
Perishing does not replay that method. It asks what Paul says when his canon is read on its own terms inside the True Testament. Conventional passages are named only to show what composite-canon Christianity brought in. They are never used as TT proof.
Opposing views are engaged so the reader can see what Paul does not say: popular evangelical hell preaching, Augustinian original guilt, Reformed reprobation, penal substitution, annihilationism. The positive case rests on TT text alone.
What the text says and what we hold
Some claims in this book are explicit in TT wording: that the god of this aeon has blinded the minds of the untrusting (2 Corinthians 4:1 TT), that deliverance is from the present evil aeon (Galatians 1:4 TT), that all will be made alive in Christ (1 Corinthians 15:19 TT), that the purpose is “to reconcile all things” through Him (Colossians 1:19 TT).
Other claims are readings we hold. We hold that the god of this aeon and the person of fault in 2 Thessalonians 2 are the Creator and not the Good Father. Paul does not use the word Creator there, and others read him differently. We hold that rulers, powers, and elements belong to one administration of the same aeon. We hold that aeonic ruin is not the Father rejecting souls forever, and that the rescue reaches everyone in the end. No single verse says “every soul.” We reach that by reading 1 Corinthians 15:19, Colossians 1:19, 2 Corinthians 5:10, and Galatians 3:12 TT together. These are Marcionite readings, not results of Greek grammar alone.
I mark these here so that the chapters can speak plainly. A reading of this kind is not speculation. It is following Paul’s referents consistently when he separates the one who blinds from the one who rescues, and the house that is dissolving from the Father’s kingdom.