Marcion of Sinope
Page II
"THE
MARCIONITE ORIGIN OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL"
English Translation
of Le Quatrieme Evangile (Reider,1925)
by
Henri Delafosse ( Joseph Turmel ).
Translated by D.J.
Mahar
The First Redaction of the Fourth Gospel.
The Fourth Gospel /Turmel/
PART I.
1) The Johannine Christ denies Mary.
The Johannine Christ begins his public life in attendance at the wedding of Cana (2:1-12). In the course of the meal, Mary, who is also present, warns him of the wine shortage. And Jesus responds: "What is there between me and you, woman?" Of all time this strange response has troubled the faith of believers. One is asked how an incarnate God could have spoken as such to whom he owes his human nature. Various artificial explanations led all to confuse the question or to displace it. However, Faith couldn't fail but to have the final word. Here, as elsewhere, it triumphed over the difficulty. But it didn't obtain its triumph outside of taking refuge in the mystery. One closed their eyes; one renounced at an understanding. One has to say that God must have had his reasons for speaking as he did. And, for those reasons, one adored them without having any pretension of understanding them.
The believers are not alone in being disconcerted by this response of Christ. The critics, these also, were struck by it of a stupor they couldn't conceal. Perhaps they are no longer held by a God truly made man; they had none other issue than with a fictional deity. But it was necessary for them to justify this fiction. They had to explain how a writer begins with presenting to us the incarnate Word, then places in his mouth some words of repudiation against his mother. They themselves did not set forth in quest of new solutions: they adopted explanations accommodated to believers, explanations of which the principal consists in stating that, in the Christ, the divinity is independent of Mary and that the saying: "What is there in common between me and you?" proclaimed this independence.
So the critics found nothing better for believers to account for the response of the Johannine Christ to Mary. But, while believers, set in the presence of a solution that they know is insufficient, renounce at understanding and take refuge in a mystery, the critics don't have this convenient resource. They do not shelter themselves behind the impenetrable counsels of providence; they don't have the right to the shutting of their eyes; they always have had to keep them wide opened and to declare pitilessly everything that is mere juggling.
We notice three things there: the thought which is expressed , the turn given to this thought, the absence of the word "mother" at the position where the word "woman" is presented. The fundamental thought is that the Christ is nothing to Mary, that Mary is nothing to the Christ. The interrogative turn given to the sentence is the process to which one resorts when one carries a challenge; it has here the sense of a provacation; and, consequently, in the place of attenuating the thought, it accentuates it.
Free of the interrogation which encompasses, the retort means: "I owe nothing to you", or "there is nothing in common between us". With the interrogation the sense is: "Prove therefore, if you can, that I owe anything to you, that there is something in common between us!" And, to complete the defiance, Mary is apostrophized of the name of a woman which implies here: "One regards you as my mother, but you know well that you are not". I said that this word completes the challenge. This is one, indeed, which closes the retort. In the end it is the motive; and the sense of the sentence is this: "You pass as my mother, and my historian himself bestows this name to you to conform to the common opinion that "the mother of Jesus was there" ; but, in reality, you are not my mother; I owe nothing to you".
One will say that I lead myself to an exaggeration. I respond that in theological matters the only exaggerated ideas are those which cannot be situated in history. I will search later whether my interpretation is destitute of attestation during the period of Christian origins. For the moment I have my text without troubling myself with the knowledge where this leads me. I have this, that is to say I march behind this, and I allow myself to be guided by it, and I abstain to supervise myself in the will of my fantasy. The one formal denial, vivid of the divine maternity of Mary. I have to conclude, unless indicated otherwise, that this denial expresses the thought of the author.
Where are these indications? It arrives oftentimes to the speakers being betrayed by the intoxication of words, and to saying what they didn't want to say. But we make issue here to the style of a piece of long studied; we do not have before us an oratorical improvisation. We also see all the day the uncultivated minds and the tired old man led astray in a vocabulary which they never possessed or of which mastery they lost. But the author of the Fourth Gospel knows how to clothe the most elevated ideas in their most delicate nuances.
How can it be believed, when wanting to teach a doctrine, that he had taught something else entirely different than what he had in mind? For this is the result at which one arrives as soon as one departs from the letter of the text. The Johannine Christ, asserts one, teaches us at Cana that Mary contributed nothing to his divinity in the sense of his thaumaturgical power. Granted. But to express this truth so simply, he is served by a turn of phrase which has muddled everything; he didn't know how to say what he wanted to say.
Others assure us that the rebuke of Christ himself was not addressed to Mary but to the synagogue, to his former alliance. I concur here. But one will agree with me that the author was very unfortunate in the choice of his formulas, and that the most ill-mannered clod would have been less clumsy. But then, if he wanted to put into the mouth of Christ some words of condemnations against the synagogue, might he had done this without burdening Mary to represent this moment-- even the synagogue? Didn't the most elementary decorum forbid entering the mother of Christ into this odious symbolism? On the other hand, no man was insane enough to ask if the Christ owes his divinity or his thaumaturigal virtue to Mary. None needed to be set on this point. And the Christ also, as the critics pretend as well as the believers, declares not to have possessed from Mary his divinity and his supernatural powers.
In a few words, the saying "what do I have in common?", such that one understands it plainly, beyond measure that it offends the laws of language, contains more an indecency and an insupportable triviality.
2) The Johannine Christ reveals God to men.
The Johannine Christ came to "bear witness to the truth" (18:37), to make "known the truth" (8:32). The truth that he reveals "frees" men" (8:32), they are made to "pass from death to life" (5:24), preserving them forever from death (8:51). And this truth sums up the knowledge of the one who is "the only true God", since the knowledge of God procures and guarantees eternal life (17:3,5:24).
The Jews themselves do not make exception to the general law. The Johannine Christ tells them that they don't know God: "the one who sent me, you don't know him. I myself know him (7:29). You know neither me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would also know my Father"(8:19); "This is my Father who glorifies me, the one whom you say is your God and that you know not" (8:54-55); "They will do to you all these things because of my name, because they don't know the one who sent me" (15:21, the sequence of the text proving that the Jews are aim here:(v.25) "This came to pass that the word might be fulfilled written in their law..."). And these repeated assertions leave nothing to surprise. What does the author make consequently of the text: "is God known in Judea" (Ps76 :2)? What does he make of the texts in which the psalmist proclaims the fidelity of Israel to God (Ps44: 18,23): "We didn't violate your alliance; is not our heart roundabout... This is because of you that one massacres us all the days?" Since the return from the captivity the Jewish people turned away from the images; one adored God; one desired to bring all the pagans to worship God (Ps.17 :1): "Praise the Lord, all you nations; Celebrate him, all ye tribes of people" . One especially dreaded to see the pagans turn at God in derision (Ps.115:2): "Wherefore should the nations say, Pray where is their God?" The Johannine Christ inscribes in forgery against the numerous texts which testifies of this situation. He stands in opposition to the Old Testament.
3) The Johannine Christ rejects the Old
Testament.
But he pays no heed to the Old Testament. Or, if he does make allusion there, it is in repulsion for it with contempt. In the course of his discussions with the Jews, he alleges sometimes in his favor the texts of the Old Testament. And here is his handling of those texts: "It is written in your law that the testimony of two men is true" (8:17). The ordinance to which he refers here is written down in Deut. 19:15; it had been dictated by God himself to Moses. Its origin is sacred.
But not so to the Johannine Christ, who says scornfully: "Your law". Will one raise as an objection that the mosaic legislation had a transitory character, that with the sacrifice of martyrdom arrived its striking decline and that moreover the Jews alone were subject to it? Granted. But listen again to the Johannine Christ. He says (10:34) "It is written in your law: I said: you are gods"; and (15:25) "This came to pass that the word might be fulfilled written in their law: They hated me without a reason". In these two places his disdain is addressed not primarily to some prescriptions ritualistic or disciplinary; he attains some oracles emanated from the Psalms. The author of the Fourth Gospel mentions the Psalms as we would mention the books of the Illiad or the Aeneide, the maxims of which we exploit without us holding belief to their consideration with the least religious feeling. By means of a literary view he does the same with the Psalms. And because the Psalms and the mosaic legislation constitute the essential part of the Old Testament.
The assertions just made provide us the key to 5:36-37: "The Father who sent me bears witness of me. Ye have never heard his voice nor seen his shape". One often states that it is here an allusion to the prophecies from the Old Testament through which the Father would have bore witness to his Son. To where one concludes that these same prophecies are the "voice" of the Father, a voice which resonated in the ears of the Jews but which the Jews refused to hear, are precisely those which they refused to believe. Wrong. If the voice of the Father is caused to be heard with the Jews then one didn't hear it in the sense that they refused to look at it. Now the face of the Father is never shown to a person and, according to what one reads elsewhere in 1:18: "no one has ever seen God". The Jews didn't see the Father, not because they refused to see him, but because they never were allowed to even look at him. The voice of the Father, it neither ever resonated in the world. And the Jews didn't hear him, not because they refused to believe, but because they were not able to discern the accents. The Father never spoke. The testimony that he rendered to his Son doesn't consist therefore in the prophecies of the Old Testament being full of the oracles which God renders by the mouth of the prophets, of the theophanies agreed to the patriarchs and to Moses. Oracles and theophanies are no avenues for the Johannine Christ: "You have never heard his voice, you have never seen his shape". No avenue is likewise the ascension of the prophet Elijah to heaven in spite of the Books of Kings (2Kin2:1,11), for we read (3:13) "no one has ascended to heaven but the one who has descended from heaven".
4) The Johannine Christ rejects Moses and the
Prophets.
But the Johannine Christ didn't yet provide his full measure. Continue to gather his oracles. He says in the allegory of the good shepherd (10:8) "All those who came before me are robbers and thieves". He says "all"; he doesn't exempt persons, not even the prophets, not even Moses. Terrified by this act of accusation, the Fathers, the apologists, the critics did there what firefighters do in the presence of a fire. They endeavored to isolate it.
One must absolutely preserve their Moses and prophets attained of the Old Testament. But how? Augustine (In Jo. tr.,XLV, 8) explained that the qualification of a robber and thief applied to those here who only came "from outside" of Christ. Now the prophets then are not thieves. I have to say that this advocacy so fanciful didn't convince the critics. They searched for something else. They searched and they found. What? They discovered that the word "all" means "some". For it is there that the critics enter when they relate to us that the Johannine Christ has in view the Jewish doctors of his time or to the false messiahs. So, in the allegory of the good shepherd, the author of the Fourth Gospel has in view some of those who preceded Jesus (in reality his contemporary or even some men who come after him). But if this is what he wanted to say, why is he served with the word "all"? Why hadn't he employed the word "some"? One pauses and one cautions me that in persisting to take on the letter of the 10:8 text, I stray into the domain of fantasy. I will examine this point later. For the moment I note that, in the interpretation of 10:8, the critics reissue, under a new form, the fantasies of Augustine.
5) The Johannine Christ fights the Prince of this World.
The Johannine Christ condemns Moses and the prophets. He bears his higher strikes; he attacks the "prince of this world", the "Devil". He came to the earth to reveal God, the "only true God", to men who didn't know him. But he came also to deliver a battle to the Devil. "The Son of God is manifested to annihilate the works of the Devil" we read in the first epistle (3:8). Before that fight even ended, we are informed of the outcome. The Devil is going to put to death the Son of God who accepts his fate; but he himself is going to be cast out. "Now shall the prince of this world be cast out" (12:31); "the prince of this world is condemned" (16:11); "for the prince of this world cometh, and has nothing on me, but all the same he comes to put me to death so that the world may know that I love the Father and that I do according to what the Father ordained" (14:30).
What is the Devil in the Fourth Gospel? Who is he? What is he in regard to God and men? Considered by himself the Devil is evil or rather "the Evil One". We know him in the gospel where we encounter the Christ asking his father to "preserve from Evil" his disciples (17:15). We know him especially by the first epistle: "You overcame the Evil One" (2:13,14); "Cain was of the Evil One" (3:12); "the Evil One cannot touch him" (the Christian born of God) (1Jo 5:18). Being evil, he sins and he tells lies: "Since the beginning the Devil sins" (1Jo 3:8); "there is no truth in him; when he speaks a lie he speaks of his own" (Jn 8:44).
In regard to God, the Devil is "the Enemy", for such is the sense of the Greek word which designates the Devil. This enmity is attested to us of the Christ when it is stated that he came destroy the works of the Devil. It is moreover inevitable since God is good and the Devil is evil.
That which the Devil is in relationship to the world, the Johannine Christ teaches us in two words when he calls him "the prince of this world". The world is his kingdom, he is the king of it. The same idea reappears under another form in the following text of the first epistle (5:19) "The whole world lies in the power of the Evil One".
As Master of the world, the Devil is the source from whence emanates all political authority. To Pilate who boasts of the power of his will to put to death or to deliver him, the Johannine Christ replies (19:11) "You could have no power against me except it were given to you from above". Then he adds: "This is why the one who delivers me to you commits a greater sin". This answer contains two assertions. The first, we learn that Pilate holds his authority "from above", which is from a Being superior to men, from a Being to which he is a lieutenant and to whom he must do obedience. According to the second assertion it is this superior Being, this Being "above" who delivered the Christ to Pilate his lieutenant; and "this is why" the responsibility of Pilate in the death of Christ is mitigated. The great culprit is this Being "above", who placed his proxy Pilate in an inextricable situation. This Being "above" who is fierce against the Christ to the point of delivering him to Pilate, is "the Enemy", the Devil. He appears to us here as the sovereign holder of political authority of which he gave a parcel to the Roman governor. And it is in the logic of things, since "the whole world is in the power of Evil One" and that this Evil One is the prince of this world.
The Son of God, who came to battle the Devil, must necessarily extract the empire of the world from him. It is this program that he formulates in 12:31: "The prince of this world is going to be cast out". And there again is that thought which is in the background of the following texts (3:17) "God sent not his Son into the world so that he would condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved by him"; (12:47) "I came, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved". The Johannine Christ saves the world by freeing it from the yoke of the Devil, and he achieves this emancipation by casting the Devil out.
However, this result doesn't have to be attained in the future. From the moment Christ is on the earth, the world contaminated by its master is evil. The one who came to overthrow the Devil has to begin by overthrowing the world; or in the words, (16:33): "You will have some tribulations in the world; but have confidence, I have overthrown the world". The triumph of Christ over the world is progressive. It consists of expelling little by little the Devil in the manner of restricting the domain of his empire. And this expulsion is accomplished through the creation of the children of God. One will see this further concerning those born the children of God. We note here that the children of God are out of the Devil's range: "Whoever was born of God does not sin; but the one who was born of God, he protects and the Evil One does not touch him" (1Jo5:18). To where it follows, insofar as the world is the property of the Devil, the children of God are not of the world: "Whoever is born of God has the victory over the world". (1Jo5:4); "If you were of the world, the world would love it's own; but because you are not of this world ...the world hates you" (15:19; see 17:14,16).
But the children of God, at least throughout the days of the earthly life of Christ, form only a very small herd. What is the condition of other men, which comprise the vast majority, closer to the general entirety of the human race? The Johannine Christ teaches us this in the words which follow (8:23-44) "You are from below, I myself am from above. You are of this world, I myself am not of this world ... I speak that which I see by my Father; and you, you do that which you see in your father. If God was your Father, you would love me, ... you are of the Devil and you will accomplish the desires of your father".
The Jews are "of the Devil"; the Devil is their "father"; they are his children. From whence comes this appalling blemish to them? By this they are those "from below", by this they are those "of the world". If one is "from above", if one "is not of this world", they would be the children of God; but being from below and of the world they are of necessity the children of the Devil.
Follow the reasoning why one is a child of God. These, our texts states, are the children of God who received the Light coming into the world (1:9-13), those who believed in the Son of God and who, for that reason, have the eternal life (6:27a, 29, 35-40). Elsewhere, one has to believe in the Son by reason of the miracles that he does (5:36; 10:25,37-38; 14:11); and nonetheless, the one here only comes to the Son and believes in him whom the Father draws (6:44) and who yielded himself to the Son (6:37;10:29;17:6). Don't look for how this attraction of the Father conciliates with the obligation which would have men believing in miracles; suppose, to the contrary, the problem resolved (our author is confused here, but the theologians are just as tangled in our day as he), and consider the children of God. They, they are not "of the world" (15:19; 17:14); they received the birth "from above" which Jesus speaks of in his discussion with Nicodemus (3:3-7); they are "born of God" (1:13; 1Jo2:29; 3:9); they are "of God" (8:47; 1Jo4:6;5:19).
But, to receive these privileges, they must first of all believe in the Son, and, to believe in the Son, they had to be drawn to the Father. How would they have been drawn to the Father and how, drawn of faith, would they have believed, if he had not already existed ? Therefore they existed. The birth from above which made them children of God, came only in the second place. Before obtaining it they received a first birth which made them of men. First men, then children of God: there is the succession.
We apprehend the first birth, the one that deals to men the human condition. If it was from above, it would appoint them children of God, which it doesn't do. We are thus constrained to conclude that the first birth is from below. Moreover we would not be receiving an illusion forbidden to us, since the 1:12,13 text opposes there the birth of children of God to the one by which the principle is in the blood, in the will of the flesh and in the will of man. This birth is accomplished by the flesh and by the blood and in which the human Will presides, and this is precisely the one through which we enter into the world, through which we are introduced into the vast human family. And it is this birth that 1:13 opposes to the birth of the children of God, to the one which, in 3:3,7, is called the birth from above.
Thus concludes that the first birth is from below. And, as there, whoever is from below comes from the Devil, resigns us to that other conclusion that the first birth comes from the Devil. It is necessary to arrive to this position. The Jews to whom the Johannine Christ reproaches as being the children of the Devil, are thus due to their human condition. The man, on account of the very constitution of his nature, has for his father the Devil. What is missing in the Johannine "Devil", in the "prince of this world", in the "Evil One" in the Fourth Gospel as being regarded the author of the human race? What separates him from the Creator of the universe, from the author of the work of six days? We attend a duel between the God of the creation- who is also the God of Moses- and a different God represented by the Christ. The Creator, from whom Pilate holds his authority, is going to deliver to his proxy the Son of God with the command to put him to death. He is going to kill the Christ, as he kills all men, for he is "since the beginning a slayer of men" (8:44). But, despite this ephemeral victory, he will be overthrown. "You are of God, you, children, and you overcame them (the agents of the devil) because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world" (1Jo4:4).
6) The Johannine Christ rejects the resurrection of the flesh.
The Johannine Christ reveals to men God, the "only true God", because the knowledge of God is, for those who possess it, a principle of eternal life. He expels the God of the creation, because this perverse Being burdened upon men the cruel law of death followed by the condemnation to hell. In sum the final goal of the coming of Christ is to extract men from death, to procure for them eternal life. Such is the doctrine which emits from the following texts: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but shall have eternal life" (3:16); "the one who believes has life eternal ...I am the bread which descends from heaven so that the one who eats shall never die ... the one who eats this bread shall live eternally" (6:29-58); "If any one keeps my word, he shall never see death" (8:51).
According to what rule is this kindness of eternal life dispensed? Does one possess it since now? Or do we not currently have the pledge of this goodness of which the possession is postponed to an ulterior date? One can draw nothing from the 17:3 text, where we read: "Eternal life is that they know you". But the following texts are decisive: "the one who ... believes in the one who sent me has the eternal life, *** he is passed from death to life" (5:24); "passed from death to life" (1Jo3:14). This death is the state of the soul which is ignorant of God, the God whose existence Christ came to reveal. This death ceases and makes room for the life as soon as the soul acquires the knowledge of God, or, those who return to the same, the faith in the Son. The Christian possesses from henceforth eternal life: "These things I have written to you that you may know that you have eternal life, you who believe in the name of the Son of God" (1Jo5:13). He died, he lives. And the life which he possesses is a real life produced through a veritable generation. Only this generation has nothing in common with the one that introduced us into this world. It is "from above" (3:3); it is "from God" (1:13, they are "born of God"); it is produced by "the seed of God" (1Jo3:9) "The seed of God abides" in the Christian. From henceforth the Christian is the child of God. All the privileges of faith are, for the moment, hidden, and are not manifested (1Jo3:2): "We are the children of God and it is not yet manifested what we shall be")
Since the resurrection is the transition from death to life, the Christian is, from henceforth, resurrected. The resurrection is an accomplished fact in him; but this resurrection is of a spiritual order. The author of the Fourth Gospel rejects the Jewish dogma of the resurrection of the body; he substitutes it with the resurrection of the soul which has its principle in the knowledge of God.
7)The Johannine Christ is a spiritual being.
During the feast of Tabernacles the Jews try to arrest Jesus to put him to death. But, declares the evangelist (7:30) "no one set their hand on him, because his hour had not come". After an interval of days, a second tentative arrest fails likewise. Two other times (8:59;10:31) Jesus escapes, without anyone knowing how, to the torment of their lapidation. Some days before the passover, new arrest measures made for him have no sequel (11:57; 12:36). The Johannine Christ is not submissive to the ordinary laws of location.
The law of suffering doesn't seem to reach him either. Some hours before the agony of Calvary he speaks of it with some lyrical strain: "Father, the hour is come, glorify your Son, that your Son may also glorify you" (17:1).
High on the cross, he dictates with quietude his final briefing to his beloved disciple and to Mary whom he avoids calling his mother (19:27). In addition, our physiological regime is foreign to him. To the disciples who invite him to eat he answers (4:32,34) "I have a food to eat that you know nothing of... My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to accomplish his work". He dies, but only because he wants to and when he wishes it. No one takes away his life from him (10:18); the prince of this world himself has no hold over him (14:30). He dies solely to obey the command of his Father (14:31). He doesn't give up the spirit until after noting that his mission is accomplished (19:28,30).
The Johannine Christ has only the appearance of a human body. And one understands now why he says to Mary: "What is there between I and you, woman"; why he says to the Jews: "You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world; I am not of this world"; why the author of the gospel discreetly fights the common belief of the Davidic origin of Christ and the legend of Bethlehem (7:42); why he doesn't mention the virginal conception. The Johannine Christ owes nothing to David, owes nothing to Mary. He came directly from heaven into Galilee without passing through Bethlehem, without passing through Nazareth.
The Fourth Gospel /turmel/p30.
8) SURVEY OF THE MARCIONITE DOCTRINE.
Marcion, born in the vicinity of the year 100, at Sinope on the edges of the bridge Pont-Euxin (today the Turkish province of Anatolie) worked for a time in the marine profession (Tertullian enjoys giving to him the name "pilot"). But he renounced early on the sea and focused his attention to the Christian religion in which he had probably been raised since his childhood. Epiphanius (Haer. XLII), tells that Marcion was the son of a bishop; this information that he probably received from Hippolyte, cannot be admitted on the condition of taking the word "bishop" in a very general sense.
About the year 130 he preached, with a success continually increasing, first in Asia then at Rome where he arrived in the vicinity of 138, a theology of which he owed the germ to Cerdon and which the objective was toward resolving the problem of evil. I borrow from Tertullian, whose work entitled "Against Marcion" is our main source of information, for this survey of the marcionite system which one is about to read. Justin dedicated some lines to his contemporary Marcion in his First Apology, XXVI, 5; LVIII, 1. The same observation applies to Rhodon, from whom Eusebius provides us a fragment in his "Ecclesiastical History", V13, 3. Irenaeus, who often takes on Marcion in part, gives a general view of his doctrine in Adv.Haer.1:27. Also see the Panarion of Epiphanius, Haer. XLII. The "Dialogues of Adamantius" presents to us a marcionism quite advanced.
1) The problem of evil cannot itself be resolved until one admits there are two Gods, the one evil, the other good.
2) The evil God is the Creator God, that is to say, the one who made the visible world. This God boasts himself in Isaiah (45:7) as being the author of evil. He is indeed cruel and belligerent. It is by his incumbent responsibility that the fall of man took place since his beginning. Later, in the mosaic law, which is his work, he is shown to be barbaric and fanciful. Moreover, if the Creator God didn't foresee the evil that exists in the world created by him, he is ignorant; if, having foreseen it, he didn't want to prevent it, he is evil; if, he wanted to prevent it but was unable, he is impotent.
3) The Creator God, who is the author of the mosaic law , is also the author of the books of the Old Testament. The prophets are his agents. It is he who speaks through their mouths.
4) The Creator God announced by his prophets that he would send his Christ. But this Christ, whose coming the books of the Old Testament foretells, is a political individual as well as religious.
He has for a mission to unveil the throne of David, to provide to the Jewish people his old-fashioned strength. He has nothing in common with Jesus. Moreover, in the era of Marcion, which was more than a hundred years following the coming of Jesus on the earth, the Christ of the Creator God had not yet arrived.
5) The Good God is the author of invisible beings, of these here only. Creating neither the visible world nor man, he was completely unknown in this world until the day when Jesus revealed his existence. The evil God himself did not know him.
6) The Good God is gentle, tender, lenient, compassionate, incapable of becoming angry. This God, seeing that man was oppressed by the Creator who strived to make him miserable, became interested in him and resolved to save him. To save him, that is, to deliver and liberate him from the power of the God who had created him.
7) To achieve his objective, the Good God, under the reign of the emperor Tiberius, departed from his heaven, the third heaven; he crossed the heaven of the Creator situated beneath his own; he descended upon the earth into Galilee and went immediately to work. Immediately-- and here is why. He had only the appearance of a human body. In reality he was a spirit, a spirit savior.
He received nothing from Mary, he was not born, he didn't need to grow up. But is this the property of the Good God who personally came to the earth? Is he not limited to delegate someone? It was He Himself who was manifested to us under the appearance of a human body and who is called the Christ. The Christ is thus the Good God clothed with an ethereal cloak which renders him visible. (It is this ethereal covering, the appearance of a human body, which is entitled "son of God" and which calls God his father ( I, 19 , The marcionite Christ, having had no childhood, descended from the heaven in the 29th year of our era, right at the moment where his public life began; I.,14-15;IV,7; I., 24;III,10; IV, 19,21;I,19,14;II,27). The spiritual Christ possesses a principle of life analogous to the human soul which allows him to experience, as he wishes and is without it subject, to the psychological and physiological phenomena that we experience.
8) Upon arriving to the earth to deliver men who groaned under the cruel yoke of the Creator God, the Good God couldn't let stand the mosaic law, who on one hand, being incarnated, allowed the barb- arism of the evil God. On the other hand he could dispense in revealing himself to men as their savior. He abolished thus the law and, along with the law, the prophets. He is, all the more, made known to men. As much as the Son he revealed the Father; as much as the Father he revealed the Son, according to what he himself declared: "no one knows who the Son is but the Father; and no one knows who the Father is but the son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him" (Luke 10:22).
9) The Creator, seeing the Christ working against him, determined his loss. And, for best appeasing the hate that this rival inspired in him, he attempted to inflict upon him the torment that his law, the mosaic law, reserved for the accursed, which was the agony of the cross. The Christ was therefore crucified by the virtues and strengths of the Creator; he died on a cross (Tertullian noted that the death of the marcionite Christ was only a sham since his body was only a phantom; but the marcionite spoke of the crucifixion and death of Christ as a phenomenon truly accomplished ( AM I., 25,11; III, 23;4,21;III, 19; here Tertullian reproaches Marcion to speak of the death of Christ whose birth he rejected; III, 8, same reproaching of the inconsistencies held by Marcion who believed in the death of Christ).
10) The Christ died; but he saved men in the sense that he liberated them from the yoke of the Creator. To be exact he saved their souls, expecting that the flesh was destined to perish. The resurrection, understood in the sense of a return of the flesh to the life which would take place at the end of the world, is an illusion. However there exists for the soul a spiritual resurrection that takes place everyday. This spiritual resurrection is produced when the soul passes from error to truth, which is when it detaches from the Creator God in order to be given to the Good God whose existence was revealed to him by the Christ. This conversion is, indeed, the transition from death to life ( I., 24). Tertullian mentions several times in his "Resurrection of the Flesh" (notably XIX) the spiritual resurrection admitted by Marcion. Irenaus, Adv. Haer. II, 31,2, mentions the same doctrine by the gnostics .
11) The Good God does not punish sinners, nor does he judge them. His judgement is limited, in effect, to declaring those who are evil. The evil God causes fear, but the Good God is love. The Good God consequently has no inferiority. In the final day, he will satisfy the anger of the Creator God with the guilty which the Creator will then gather into his hell.
Add that Marcion had confessed penance at one time in the Roman church, but the Roman clergy had cast him out in 144.
9) ORIGIN OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
For as long as one attributed the fourth gospel to John, an immediate disciple of Jesus, one placed the composition of this book at the extreme limit of the first century. One didn't dare go any higher on account of Irenaus who portrayed the fourth gospel as a refutation against Cerinthus. On the other hand, one couldn't go down any lower for the difficulty of conferring an improbable length to the life of John. One attached then a historic value to the narrations of the fourth gospel. When this illusion fell, when the fictional character of the book attributed to the apostle John was established, a problem entirely new stood before the critics. One asked whether an immediate disciple of Jesus, through a colorful recounting of his life, might have been capable of transforming his master into an abstraction.
The answer to this question does not have to wait.
One realizes easily that this human fantasy has some impassable boundaries and that a witness to the life of Jesus would have never been able to write a fiction as the one which unfolds beneath our eyes in the fourth gospel. Historicity and Johannine origin are two intertwined facts, inseparable and of which the first drags the other in its fall. Historically, the fourth gospel could be by the author to whom tradition assigns it. But, if it is only a liberal composition, it cannot, to any degree, emanate from a companion of Jesus, and one is forced thereby to search for a different origin.
The critics searched. And if this didn't succeed in determining by whom the fourth gospel was written, they believed to have succeeded in fixing the approximate date of its composition. According to them this book was composed by an unknown in the neighborhood of the year 100; and, consequently, the tradition is not mistaken if partially accounted. It is wrong to attribute to it an apostolic plume; but this becomes reason for placing it at the fringe of the first century. In regard to the epistles of Ignatius and of Polycarp: these writings, they say, underwent the influence of Johannine literature and are clearly later; now these become set in the vicinity of the year 100.
This reasoning, as one comes to see, hinges everything entirely upon the dating of the letters of Ignatius and Polycarp; if this date should turn out to be wrong, this falls to the ground. Now all the correspondence of Ignatius is a fabrication subsequent to 150. As for the letter of Polycarp to the Philippians it is- barring some lines- authentic, but again it doesn't go any higher than the middle of the second century. In sum, Polycarp and the false Ignatius limits us to saying that the fourth gospel existed in the middle of the second century. Try to find elsewhere some information less vague.
For their search it suffices to concentrate on the school of the Johannine Christ and to gather his oracles. "What is there between me and you, woman?"; "You know neither me nor my Father"; "you never heard his voice, you never saw his shape"; "All those who came before me are thieves and robbers"; "The World is in the power of the Evil One"; "You have for a father the Devil"; "the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world"; "the one who hears my word... has passed from death to life"; "I have a food to eat that you don't know".
Before these texts and others still, believers and critics close their eyes for not comprehending them. But it is impossible for them to consider the surface without seeing the source. The author of the fourth gospel constructed his edifice with some stones taken from the yard of Marcion.
This becomes especially obvious in the text of 5:24, where the Christ declares that the one who hears his word "has passed from death to life" and in the parallel text of the first epistle, 3:14, where the author, using this expression of Christ, states: "passed from death to life". These two oracles set before us the spiritual resurrection, that resurrection which consists in the conversion to the Christian faith, these reflecting the marcionite doctrine which likewise taught the spiritual resurrection. I know that some are going to raise an objection to this. Some are going to say that the dependence is on the side of Marcion who monopolized the Johannine formula and in so doing abused it to serve his ends.
This explanation strikes against the text of the second epistle to Timothy, 2:17-18, in which the two heretics Hymenaeus and Philetus are denounced because they "concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection already arrived" and that, in doing so, "they overthrow the faith of some". The theologians say that this denunciation emanates from Paul himself, who wrote the second epistle to Timothy in the year 62, shortly before his death.
The critics estimate that the author who wrote this was a Catholic in the vicinity of 125. If Paul himself, in the year 62, forbade from presenting the resurrection as a fact already accomplished, how explain that around the year 100, the author of the fourth gospel had no reservations about using a formula which threatened, in a saying of a great apostle, to "overthrow the faith of some"? And if the pastoral epistles are from the vicinity of 125, how explain that, at this date, a Catholic condemns, without any restriction, without any distinction, a formula that he could not have failed to read in the fourth gospel and in the first Johannine epistle, since the critics place these writings in the vicinity of the year 100? I am bound for the moment to conclude that the Catholic editor of the pastoral epistles (I will prove that he stands in the vicinity of 150) denounces precisely, under the names of Hymenaeus and Philetus , the marcionite writers, which included the author of the fourth gospel.
The book that one calls the Gospel of Saint John is, considered in its first edition, a marcionite product. It didn't see the light of day until after the first third of the second century. This date illuminates the 5:43 text, in which the Johannine Christ, after having reproached the Jews for not receiving him, he who came in the name of his Father, added: "If another comes in his own name you will receive him". The apologists and the critics, who persist in remaining in the vicinity of the year 100, confess here honestly their embarrassment and confess their incapability to identify the "other" to whom the Jews will make a favorable welcome. Here is the sense of the oracles: "You refuse to receive me, I who came in the name of my Father; but, in a hundred and three years, you will receive the impostor Barkochba who himself will claim a heavenly mission ". The Johannine Christ describes what occurred in the year 132 when the Jews, led by Barkochba, revolted against Rome.
The fourth gospel reflects the doctrines of Marcion. How, with such an original stigma, had it succeeded in becoming accepted by the Church? One cannot respond to this question other than by some conjecture. Here is one that might be deduced:
Marcion was excommunicated by the Roman clergy in 144. The same measure was perhaps already taken against him and his adherents by the churches in Asia where he had sojourned before coming to Rome. Other churches later followed the example given to them.
In the vicinity of 150 Marcion was a terror to the catholic surroundings; one agreed with Polycarp to consider him the "eldest son of Satan". But note that he had spent time in Rome. Marcion arrived in the imperial city around 138; it was only in 144 that he was forbidden from the assembly of the faithful. During six years he could gather some disciples, inoculate his ideas into them and nevertheless maintain contact with the Church. During six years he and his disciples participated at the liturgical reunions without alarming the clergy.
This was not made possible outside of strict discipline. Marcion imposed himself and imposed to his circle of friends a great deliberation. He did not express overtly his ideas to where he felt defiance he became reserved. He let rather his theories be guessed if he had not formulated them. He put into practice the maxim (Matt7 :6): "do not give that which is holy to dogs, and do not cast your pearls before swine".
It is in this state of mind that the first writing of the fourth gospel was written in the proximity of 135 (the allusion to Barkochba is understood best two or three years after the revolt of 132, rather than eight or ten years later). The author, a disciple of Marcion, had sojourned to Jerusalem and in Palestine before the war of 132 (one can depict a man like Justin born in Palestine and, consequently, be familiar with the Jewish conventions as also with the topography of the country). The new gospel was destined to expound, by putting into the mouth of Jesus, the good doctrine, the doctrine of Marcion. He expounded it with a level of uneasiness which capitalized on the current prejudices. Thanks to the ambiguous formulas that he used, thanks also to his reticence, the Johannine Christ remained in evident obscurity. He told the faithful: "Your doctors sketched for you a rough as well as inaccurate portrait of my person". And he outlined, on his origin, on his intimate nature, some explanations which pricked the curiosity without satisfying it, and which demanded the same to be completed at an opportune time with some oral explanations.
The fourth gospel saw its day in Asia (during this time Marcion had not returned to Rome). The Church where it appeared admitted to its liturgy - the disciples of the spiritual Christ whose doctrine she knew only so vaguely. When the new gospel was presented, she didn't try to study thoroughly; she contented in admiring the face of the edifice; the differences escaped her. She took confidence in the book one of her children had composed and she allowed its reading in her assembly. Other churches followed. About the year 140, the fourth gospel- or to be exact, the form in which it existed then- received authority in some of the main communities of the Orient.
Ten years later, Marcion and his disciples were despised. But the tree that they had planted in the garden of Christ had had time there to deepen its roots. It remained. The fourth gospel nourished the faith and piety of the faithful who themselves managed not to comprehend it; it continued exercising its mission. It no longer belonged to its author who, moreover, had launched it under the veil of anonymity. The Church, the great Church- that of the Orient- had taken possession of it with the same fact that she had introduced it into her liturgical assemblies. She guarded her treasure, reserving the sole right to enrich it.
Fourth Gospel /turmel/p47. Part II..
Second Redaction of the Fourth Gospel.
It enriches one. The new acquires a home without at first seeing the advantage. Then, little by little, some shortcomings are unfolded, of inconveniences, of gaps which require some retouches, some complements. At it's convention, several weak points appeared in the fourth gospel. One perceived that its discourses of such high inspiration and its narrations of such majestic pace not only defended wrongdoing against the marcionite heresy, but appeared here and there to actually be favorable to it. It was necessary to remedy this troublesome situation. From there, some interpolations destined toward explaining the primitive text, struggle with it, illuminate with it, but which, in reality, pervert it.
1) The carnal body of Christ.
The Johannine epistles denounce with horror men who refused to believe in the flesh of Jesus. These people here admitted that Jesus possessed divinity; but they claimed that this divinity did not take on flesh to enter into our midst. It is in this negation of the flesh that consists of their crime. A monstrous crime: "many seducers came into the world who do not confess that Jesus came in the flesh. The one (who thinks thus) is the seducer and the antichrist" (2Joh 7); "Any spirit who confesses that Jesus Christ came in the flesh is of God; and any spirit who does not confess Jesus (as having come in the flesh) is not of God; this one is of the antichrist which you have heard that he comes and who is already present in the world" (1Joh4:2,3); "This is he, Jesus Christ, who came by the water and the blood"; "not in the water only but in the water and the blood" (1Joh 5:6); the targeted culprits acknowledge that Jesus received the baptism, but they didn't admit that he had actually died; the water designates the baptism of Jesus by John, the blood designating his actual death. Thus one is an antichrist when one confines to admitting Jesus' divinity and rejecting his incarnation.
How could an author so anxious to setting into relief the human nature of Christ, elsewhere leave it in the shadow? One will say that he was not constrained to always repeating everywhere the same thing. Okay. But one must at least supervise his formulas and take guard in providing some ammunition against the "antichrists", against the "seducers" that he denounces here with so much vehemence. Now the following professions of the faith, that one reads in other places, could they only be welcome against the disputers of the incarnation, for all those who had believed in the rule of the faith, when they had proclaimed the divinity of Jesus: "the one who confesses that Jesus is the son of God, God abides in him and he in God" (1Joh4:15); "the one who believes in the Son of God has this testimony in himself *** These things I have written to you that you may know that you have eternal life, you who believes in the name of the Son of God" (1Joh5:10,13). How could the apostle of Christ's incarnation not see that he borrowed here from his adversaries their own language? But it is precisely not him who speaks in large part to us now, but rather the spokesman on behalf of the "antichrists".
He preaches the marcionite Christ, the Christ who is not incarnate; and the partisan of the incarnation is a Catholic who endeavors to neutralize this doctrine but who doesn't dare to entirely suppress the formulas.
I have just interrogated the Johannine epistles. I pass now to the gospel. It says (19:34) that a Roman soldier, seeing that Jesus had died, pierced his side with a lance, and out from him poured blood and water. This entirely natural fact appears to us banal. Also one is surprised at hearing the narrator make a solemn guarantee of the reality by this formula, the equivalent which does not reappear anywhere else except in the final remark: "the one who saw this bares witness and his witness is true; and he knows that he tells the truth so that you also believed".
Why does he consequently attach so much significance to a detail which has none for us? The text of 1Joh5:6, that we have just encountered, allows us to catch a glimpse into the solution behind this enigma. The blood and the water that the piercing of the lance caused to gush is the corroboration from the history of the didactic teaching given by the epistle. This last one professes that Jesus didn't come only with the water, but also with the blood; that he was not limited to receiving John's baptism, but that he also shed his blood, that he really died for us. The gospel exposes that which is past. When the Roman soldier approached the cross, Jesus had died already. However one would raise objection that he had died as phantoms die, that he had died only in appearance. The piercing of the spear dissipates this suspicion. The side of Jesus was pierced by the lance, blood flowed out with water. There was a blood flow: evidence that Jesus had a carnal body like that of our own, for an ethereal body would not have had blood. But was this blood of his possibly artificial? No, for had it been artificial, it would have had a vermilion color. Now, with the blood it became decomposed by death; thus evidence that this blood was of the same quality as ours and that Jesus possessed very much a human nature that was in every respect equal to that of our own.
The piercing of the spear, with what ensues, is therefore an apologetic history, a history destined toward confirming the incarnation of Jesus the Son of God. But what becomes of the witness with the certificate of high integrity that is delivered of him? This is the expedient to which one resorts when one has reservations to battle, and mistrusts to uproot. The author is taken up with some Christians who preached the doctrine of the spiritual Christ and who, if they did not already devote their adherence there, is on the verge of giving it. He says to them:
"There was the blood flow from the side of Christ pierced by the lance; blood mixed with water. This is well certain, for the witness to this fact is above all suspicion. Believe not thus in the phantom Christ, and hasten yourself to withdrawing your faith in him if you had the misfortune of agreeing with him. Do not let yourself become beguiled by this doctrine of delusion. Stay faithful to the incarnate Christ. Return to him if you left him ". He goes to war with docetism.
He battles with it. He has not thus been able to encourage it. It is not he who would have desired to yield to Christ the perception of a phantom. Well we know about some texts in which the Christ speaks, as an alien to the laws of humanity: "What is there between I and you, woman?" "You are from below; I myself am from above; you are of this world, I myself am not of this world "; "I have a food to eat that you know not"; "Father, the hour has come, glorify your son". Among these texts and the history of the piercing of the lance there is an abyss, -- an abyss which separates the marcionite christology from the catholic christology.
2)The Bread of Life.
We now pause before the speech on the bread of life (in chapter 6) to leaving aside the promises on the resurrection that one finds there and which I will occupy in the notes. Jesus, seeing the Jews in quest of material bread, exhorts them to procure "the food which subsists for the eternal life", the "true bread from heaven", to which the manna was only the shadow. The Jews exclaim: "Lord, give us always this bread". Jesus answers: "I am the bread of life. The one who comes to me will never hunger and the one who believes in me will never thirst *** (40) The will of my Father, is that whoever sees the Son and believes in him has the life eternal *** (47) Verily, verily, I tell you this, the one who believes in me has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the desert and they died. This is here the bread that descends from the heaven so that the one who eats it will never die. (51) I am the living bread who is descended from the heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live eternally *** (60) Several of his disciples, after having heard this, said: This saying is hard; who can hear it?" Jesus, knowing within himself that his disciples murmured on this subject, tells them: It is the spirit who vivifies, the flesh serves to nothing. The words that I told you are spirit and life. This discourse proclaims the virtue of faith, as he would later do in the discourse on the communion. Then Jesus says (17:3) "The eternal life is this, that they may know you, the only true God, and the one that you sent, the Christ". Today he says: "the one who comes to me will never hunger, and the one who believes in me will never thirst *** The will of my Father is that whoever sees the Son and believes has in him the eternal life". The faith is "the food that subsists for eternal life". And, since this faith has for the objective the Son of God (thus that of the Father; but the Father is only One with his Son, 10:30) , and whoever sees the Son sees the Father (14:7-9), it ensues that the Son of God is "the bread of life", the bread that one must eat to live eternally.
But how does one eat the Son of God? One eats him as soon as one believes in him, since, as soon as one believes in him, one has eternal life. And the words of Augustine are true (In Jo, XXV, 12) " This has nothing to do here with the teeth, the belly. Believe in him - this is to eat the living bread. The one who eats ".
To this spiritual manducation at the time there was moreover an explanation that Augustine didn't see, that his catholic convictions forbade him to see, but which the Johannine Christ deals to us through his frequent discretion. "The flesh serves to nothing". It wouldn't serve toward anything for the Son of God to accomplish his life-imparting mission. It is not by the flesh that he must nourish us; it is by the spirit. The Christ in the discourse on the bread of life is a spiritual Christ. But I omitted one entire section to this discourse on the bread of life. And this section, which goes from 6:51b to 6:57, seems to reduce to nought my conclusions, that one may determine from there. After having declared that he is the bread descended from heaven and that the one who eats of this bread will live eternally, the Christ adds:
(51b) "And the bread that I will give, this is my flesh that I will give for the life of the world", thereof the Jews disputed among themselves, saying: "How can he give to us his flesh to eat?" Jesus tells them:
"Verily, verily I say to you, that if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of the man and if you do not drink his blood, you will not have the life in you. The one who eats my flesh and who drinks my blood has eternal life and I will revive him on the last day. For my flesh is truly a drink. The one who eats my flesh and who drinks my blood abides in me and I abide in him. As the Father who is living has sent me and that I live by the Father, thus the one who eats me will live through me ".
There the flesh sets forth the first plan. But, at the same stroke, here the maxim "the flesh serves to nothing" becomes forgotten. Because between this and that there is an absolute contradiction. Not for the theologians, naturally. They never are short of explanations. To conciliate the dogma of hell with some perplexing texts they distinguished a fire that burns and a fire that doesn't burn, of pains that inflict punishment and of pains that don't punish. By the same they distinguish a carnal flesh to which applies the aforesaid maxim and a flesh not carnal, objective of the precept: "If you don't eat the flesh of the Son of the man ***". Leave aside this childishness and end it. It is apparent that, if the flesh serves to nothing, one does not have to preoccupy oneself with eating the flesh of Christ. It is just as apparent that the flesh has a capital significance, if in order to have the eternal life, one has to eat the flesh of Christ. Between "if you don't eat" and "the flesh serves to nothing", the opposition is truly irreducible.
To this first observation some append another. One recognizes generally that the relative declarations on the mastication of the flesh causes a certain contrast with the remainder of the discourse on the bread of life. But one assures that this contrast is in the precision of reflection and not in their opposition. Look at it closer. Believe in the divinity of Christ and eat his flesh- which this or the sense of the last statement- expresses two different ideas. One could believe that the Christ possesses divinity without eating his flesh; reciprocally one could eat- in the sense that one would please- the flesh of Christ without believing in his divinity. Now each of these two acts are presented to us successively as necessary and sufficient. At a place in the discourse the eternal life is guaranteed to all those who accept the divinity of Christ. Then, a little further, we are required to eat his flesh. If this last operation is indispensable, faith in the Son of God is thus insufficient. And if faith is sufficient, then the mastication of the flesh is superfluous. For the second time we have before us an irreducible opposition.
The discourse on the bread of life is not consistent. Two authors collaborated there. The first said: "The bread of life, this is the Son of God. This celestial bread feeds the soul who believes in him; and the food that he gives guarantees to the soul immortality. But, in this feeding there is nothing carnal; for the Christ is spirit and the flesh serves to nothing ". The second said: "The Christ procured the eternal life to men by pouring out his blood. It is his immolated flesh which is the bread of life because it is that which gave salvation to the world. Believe thus in the flesh and in the blood of Christ; for if we believe in a phantom Christ, we will not possess the eternal life that Christ obtained for us by his flesh and blood ".
We have before us two authors. And, as each sets their doctrine in this plugging of Christ, we have before us two Christs. Either two agrees with us on the question of faith, declaring to us that, without faith, we do not have eternal life (though the second adds the resurrection). Only they differ on the object of faith. The one is not occupied with his divinity: this is the marcionite Christ. The other thinks only of his incarnation: this is the catholic Christ. If we believe in the Son of God, we will be in line with the first. To satisfy the second it will be necessary for us to believe that the Christ had flesh and was not a phantom.
Herein a question becomes inevitably posed. If the catholic Christ simply demands us to believe in the reality of his flesh, why does he tell us to eat it? One saw that the marcionite Christ systematically shunned the light too oft supposed and moreover wrapped a light in a veil for fear of startling the conscience. But the catholic Christ doesn't have the same susceptibilities in this respect. Why therefore is the Catholic Christ so obscure? He was strained to obscurity by professional duty. What role does he boast here? He pretends to interpret. Interpret the words of the marcionite Christ. In reality he suppresses them; but he suppresses them by way of commentary. An elegant process, but one which is not without imposing an intention. The dissertation on the flesh must adjust to the oracle that it was supposed to explain; it had to give the illusion that this prolonged it. Now the marcionite Christ had presented the faith under the symbol of the bread which feeds the soul and procures eternal life to it.
This symbol became utilized by the catholic Christ which was then cast into the mold of his dissertation. The flesh became a bread of immortality: "The bread that I will give, this is my flesh that I will give for the life of the world". Transformed into bread, the flesh became the food for the soul which eats it. Then the blood, reclaimed by the symmetry, intervened to play the role of a drink. There is how the necessity of the faith in the incarnation of Christ became translated into the necessity of eating the flesh and drinking the blood out of that situation. The author was far in foreseeing the enormous mystery which his makeshift would become as cause for posterity.
Reproduced gratefully from:
