Marcion presents the life, thought, and work of Marcion of Pontus in its historical, theological, ethical, and liturgical contexts. It distinguishes itself from its competitors by employing a new method: rigorously critiquing heresy reports by means of the testimony of Marcion's scriptures. It devotes attention to the reliable reconstruction of those scriptures, arguing for the chronological priority of Marcion's Gospel over what is now known as canonical Luke. It seeks to overthrow the common heresiological (and sometimes scholarly) portraits of Marcion as a ditheist, a docetist, a world-denier, requiring divorce, and deleting scripture. In so doing, it creates a new portrait of Marcion that is substantially different from everything that has come before.
M. David Litwa is a prolific scholar of ancient Christianities, including Gnostic Christianities, in their ancient Mediterranean contexts. With over a dozen years of experience teaching in person and online, he's helping to change academic culture as a public intellectual with global reach.
Introduction Part I: Setting the Scene The Roman Empire in Marcion's Time Marcion's Life Part II: Marcion's Scriptures The Priority of Marcion's Gospel The Shape of Marcion's Canon Reconstructing Marcion's Scriptures Marcion's Antitheses, with A Hypothetical Reconstruction Marcion, Judaism, and Jewish Scripture Marcion's View of Church History Part III: Beginning with the Gospel--What Marcion Believed The Good God The Evil Creator Coda: Marcion and Gnosticism Marcion's View of Christ Marcion's View of Salvation Going to Church with Marcion Marcion's Disciples Conclusion: Rejecting Biblical Violence
David Litwa's book provides a fresh start with Marcion. The author offers for the first time an investigation of Marcion that breaks with reliance on the polemical remarks of his opponents and lets go of the questionable project of trying to reverse-engineer those polemical distortions to arrive at reliable information. For those who thought that was our only option, Litwa's book will be eye-opening. He assembles a portrait based primarily on material traceable to Marcion himself, as either author or authorizer. Building on recent advances in reconstructing the Marcionite scriptures, Litwa gives a careful reading of the theology they support. His close analysis of the remains of Marcion's Antitheses is unparalleled in previous scholarship for its depth and insight. The result is a major contribution to the current renaissance of work on Marcion. At the same time, it is a lesson in the difference a disciplined methodology can make in a field where the "church fathers" all too often still set the terms of our understanding of early Christianities. --Jason BeDuhn, professor of the comparative study of religions, Northern Arizona University In attempting to remove Marcion from the long shadow of Adolf von Harnack, Litwa aims to undermine any and all heresiologically inflected interpretations of Marcion on the grounds that they are inescapably reductionistic. In addition to offering an interesting reconstruction of Marcion's life and thought, Litwa provocatively proposes that present-day Christians would do well to carry on Marcion's legacy by rejecting any hint of divine terror or violence. The Old Testament and biblical passages containing any trace of divine violence, Litwa argues, should be "decanonized." That is, they should by no means be received as divinely inspired. Litwa suggests further that Christians' attempts to account for divine violence in the Bible must be supplanted in favor of Marcion's Gospel of the wholly good God according to which Jesus's Father cannot be identified with the God of Israel in the Old Testament. In short, Litwa reinvigorates Marcion in order to venerate him and the legacy he putatively ought to have among Christians today. --Alexander H. Pierce, assistant professor of historical theology, North American Lutheran Seminary In the last four or five decades, Marcion has been the focus of much innovative and intense research that has challenged many of the assumptions of previous scholarship, in particular that of Adolf von Harnack. David Litwa's new book is a welcome and bold attempt at formulating a new interpretation of Marcion for the twenty-first century. It is comprehensive and circumspect in its handling of the sources, well informed in its critical dialogue with the whole range of previous scholarship, cautious regarding the many methodical problems besetting its subject matter, and precise in its proposals of new interpretations. Readers--be they experts on the topic or new to it--will find their views of Marcion and the theological and philosophical context of the second century enriched and challenged at every turn. Moreover, Litwa's perceptive exploration of Marcion's theology and the ancient controversies triggered by it is constantly alive to their modern resonance. This monograph will surely inform future debates on the shape of early Christian theological discourse and one of its most controversial protagonists. --Winrich Loehr, University of Heidelberg
