Heresy of the Week: Marcionism

Part two of last week's heresy of the week (Cerdonianism) is Marcionism.

Marcionism was an early church heresy, beginning in the 2nd century, with a dualistic belief system similar to Gnosticism (some have categorized it as Gnostic, others have not), influenced by Cerdonianism. Marcion taught that the Hebrew God was evil and less than the God of the New Testament. He taught that Jesus was the Savior sent by the all-forgiving God and Paul was his chief apostle. His canon consisted of edited portions of the Gospel of Luke and 10 of Paul’s epistles. All other books were rejected. The primary premise of Marcionism is that the teachings of Jesus are incompatible with the actions of the Old Testament God. They opposed any connection between Jesus and the Jewish religion. The God of the Old Testament (creator God—teaching that the material world is defective because it was created by Him) is considered to be wrathful, whereas the New Testament God was unknown before Christ and is only love and mercy. The main difference between Marcionism and Gnosticism is the lack of pursuit of secret wisdom in Marcionism.

Heresy of the week: Cerdonianism

Next week's heresy will be "part two": Marcionism.  They are closely related enough I wanted to do them in a series, but distinct enough to not put them in the same post.

Cerdonianism is a Gnosticism sect founded by Cerdo in the 2nd century. Cerdo was the teacher of Marcion, who founded Marcionism. Very little is known about this sect, other than they held fairly typical Gnosticism beliefs—two “causes”, one perfectly good and one perfectly evil. The evil “cause” created the world and was the Old Testament Jewish God. Christ is the Son of the good “cause”, and He was sent here to oppose evil, but they deny his humanity (Monophysitism). As the body and all material things are evil, they were strict Asceticism followers and had a very severe moral system which must be closely followed for “salvation” (Legalism and Pelagianism).