Gnostics, Montanists and Marcion

The second century was a time of ferment. Christianity spread throughout the Empire, and several currents offered their own reading of Jesus. The Church Fathers would judge them heretical. But it was in answering them that the Church stated precisely what it believed.

These movements must be distinguished from outside opponents such as the pagan philosopher Celsus, who attacked Christianity in his The True Word. The Gnostics, the Montanists and Marcion, by contrast, called themselves Christians. They could therefore unsettle believers from within.

Gnosticism

The word comes from the Greek γνῶσις, “knowledge”. As Roger Olson points out, it is a “generic label” covering several systems. Their common features:

• A dualism: spirit is divine, matter is evil. The material world is a prison.
• A spiritual Christ: he is a messenger sent by an unknown God to free the divine sparks imprisoned in bodies. He did not truly take flesh.
• A secret knowledge: salvation comes from hidden knowledge, handed down through supposed secret apostolic traditions and reserved for the initiated.

The danger was real. Many Christians were drawn to the idea of a truth “higher” and “more spiritual” than the one preached to the crowds. Yet the Gospel of Jesus and the apostles was a simple message, proclaimed to all in the same way.

Montanism

Around 170, in Phrygia, a new convert named Montanus began to prophesy. His followers called the movement the New Prophecy. Montanus was a demanding ascetic who judged the official Church spiritually dead. He presented himself as the mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit and spoke in the first person, as if God were speaking through him, while in a trance.

The problem is obvious: if someone claims to be the voice of God, how can anyone contradict him? Montanism forced the Church to ask where revelation is found, and whether it can still be added to what the apostles handed down.

Marcion

Marcion, a wealthy shipowner who came to Rome around 140, admired Paul, whom he considered the only apostle to have understood Jesus. He set two gods against each other: the God of the Old Testament, a just Creator God, and the good and supreme God revealed by Christ. For him, Jesus only had the appearance of a man.

Logically, Marcion rejected the Old Testament. He kept only ten of Paul’s letters and a version of Luke’s Gospel from which he removed whatever seemed too Jewish to him. In a sense, he thus proposed the first Christian “canon”, but a truncated one.

The Church’s response

According to Bruce Metzger, these movements forced the Church to do three things:

1. State its faith more precisely, because false knowledge had to be fought with a clearer definition of the true.
2. Say which writings were authoritative, in the face of the Gnostics’ secret gospels, the Montanists’ new prophecies and Marcion’s reduced canon.
3. Affirm the value of the Old Testament and the link between Judaism and Christianity.

Heresies were therefore, paradoxically, one of the driving forces behind the clarification of the Christian faith.