Marcion

Marcion (c 84-160 CE), born to the bishop of Sinope, was condemned a heretic and excommunicated in July of 144. In his teachings, he opposed the Jewish scriptures to new Christian teachings going so far as to claim that the God of the Hebrew scriptures was an evil, creator God and could not therefore be the same God as the father of Jesus Christ. In addition, he proclaimed a docetic view of Christ, claiming that Jesus could not be human, for the evil creator God created flesh. The role of Jesus, in fact, was to liberate Christians from the power of the creator God. He thought that only Paul understood the true teachings of Jesus Christ and accordingly formed the first canonical list of Christian scriptures. It consisted of the ten letters of Paul and the Gospel of Luke, which Marcion believed to have been written by Paul. Thus, Marcion did contribute positively to the history of Christianity by providing the idea of a New Testament canon and forcing the orthodox church to establish its own list of texts. Marcion succeeded in building his own church which survived in the East until the fifth century.

Jennifer M. Brom