Tertullian:
Every opinion and the whole scheme of the impious and sacrilegious Marcion we now bring to the test of that very Gospel which, by his process of interpolation, he has made his own. To encourage a belief of this Gospel he has actually devised for it a sort of dower, in a work composed of contrary statements set in opposition, thence entitled Antitheses, and compiled with a view to such a severance of the law from the gospel as should divide the Deity into two, nay, diverse, gods — one for each Instrument, or Testament as it is more usual to call it; that by such means he might also patronize belief in the Gospel according to the Antitheses. These, however, I would have attacked in special combat, hand to hand; that is to say, I would have encountered singly the several devices of the Pontic heretic, if it were not much more convenient to refute them in and with that very gospel to which they contribute their support.
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/03124.htm
His ditheistic beliefs and the discontinuity between old and new testaments are really two sides to the same coin.
Marcion was a wealthy shipowner and a member of the Christian community. In 144 AD there was a hearing before the Chrisitan clergy in Rome where Marcion explained his teachings. It resulted in a very harsh rejection of his views and he was formally excommunicated.
After that he went his own way spreading his teachings. He wrote a sincle work called Antitheses (or Contradictions). As you can imagine from the title, the point of the work was to highlight all these contradictions from old and new testaments (sometimes even within the old testament and itself) and as a result deduce that there was an inferior God of justice who was the Creator and the God of the Jews, and that there was another Supreme God of goodness who has sent Christ and is the Father of Jesus Christ.
The code of conduct advocated by Moses was ‘an eye for an eye’, but Christ set this precept aside. Elisha had had children eaten by bears; Christ said, ‘Let the little children come to me’. Joshua had stopped the sun in its path in order to continue the slaughter of his enemies; Paul quoted Christ as commanding, ‘Let not the sun go down on your wrath’. In the Old Testament divorce was permitted and so was polygamy; in the New Testament neither is allowed. Moses enforced the Jewish sabbath and Law; Christ has freed believers from both. — Metzger, Bruce M.. The Canon of the New Testament (Its Origin, Development, and Significance) (pp. 91-92). Clarendon Press. Kindle Edition.
He also thought that the Gospel authors and the authors of the Catholic epistles have misunderstood the teachings of Jesus because they thought that Jewsas was the Messiah of the Jewish God and that therefore even the NT was corrupted.
His view was that only Paul understood the true Gospel and therefore is the only true apostle.
This of course leads Marcion to:
Completely reject the Old Testament scriptures
Reject any NT writings that assume any sort of continuation between God of the Jews and the Supreme God of goodness. This meant that he rejected all Catholic epistles. And all gospels apart from Luke. We are not sure why Luke in particular, but most likely it was because he believed that Luke was Paul’s disciple.
Furthermore, his selection of texts (comprising Luke and some of Paul’s letters) needed pruning and editorial adjustments. Passages that Marcion could regard as Judaizing interpolations were smuggled into the text by false apostles and so they must be removed.
Jesus only had the appearance of a man according to Marcion and was not a real man so he cannot have been born of a woman
These are the things he removed from Luke and Paul’s letters:
Marcion omitted most of the first four chapters of Luke (the birth of John the Baptist, the nativity, Jesus’ baptism and temptation, with his genealogy, and all reference to Bethelehem and Nazareth). Marcion’s gospel began with Luke iii. I, ‘In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar,’ and continued with iv. 31, ‘God descended into Capernaum, a city of Galilee’. In the last chapters of Luke the omissions are rather more numerous than in the first; the resurrection of Jesus is passed over in silence.31 As for the Epistles, Marcion removed whatever he judged were interpolations—that is, anything that did not agree with his understanding of what Paul should have written. Thus, Gal. iii. 16–iv. 6 was deleted because of its reference to Abraham and his descendants; and 2 Thess. i. 6–8, because God is not concerned with ‘flaming-fire’ and punishment. — Metzger, Bruce M.. The Canon of the New Testament (Its Origin, Development, and Significance) (p. 93). Clarendon Press. Kindle Edition.
You can imagine why all of these would be problematic. Irenaeus for example in Against the Heresies maintains painstakingly that God of the OT must be the Father of Jesus Christ. There’s like two dozen pages where he argues for that so anything other than that was not acceptable to him according to the scriptures he had.
Marcionism teaches that the god of the old testament is not the same as the one that Christ revealed. He only believed in some of Paul’s letters which he considered to be authentic and not forgeries as well as a version of The Gospel of Luke which he just called “The Gospel of The Lord”. Many Christians did not like this since many of them were Pagans who turn to faith in Christ but many were Jews also. They also didn’t like that Marcionism claims that Jesus was never physical but was a spirit who revealed the invisible God.
These ideas may sound strange to many Christians today, but he had some verses to make his arguments.
For example,
In Luke 17:20-21, Christ says that The Kingdom of God is hidden within, “And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”
In Luke 10:22, Jesus Christ says, “All things are delivered to me of my Father: and no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him.”
Marcion could make the argument that, if it’s true that The Kingdom of God is within but no one can truly understand God and connect with God except through the Teachings of Jesus which reveals Him, then it’s not possible that the old testament already taught the correct understanding of God.
According to Luke 6:35-38, being a Child of God is a reward of being merciful as God is merciful, and karma is real in the sense that what you give will be given back to you, therefore according to these verses, in order to connect with The Merciful Heavenly Father, a person must be merciful.
“But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful. Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven: Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.”
The old testament says that God is a man of war (Exodus 15:3) and that He forces people into cannibalism (Leviticus 26:29) and tells people to show no pity but to get revenge and follow an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (Deuteronomy 19:21). These ideas contradicts the understanding of God in Marcionism which used a version of The Gospel of Luke and in Luke 6:35-36, it says that a person must be merciful as Christ taught that The Heavenly Father is merciful and kind to all.
In Luke 6:43, Christ says, “For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.”
In Luke 18:19, Christ says, “And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God.”
Marcion could argue that if good only brings forth good, and a truly good tree would not bring forth bad fruit, and only God is truly good, then God could not create a tree with the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, because bringing forth anything associated with evil would be against the perfectly good nature of God and true goodness doesn’t brings forth any evil.
By those same Gospel of Luke verses, Marcion could argue against the old testament verse of Isaiah 45:7
“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.”
Mercion even wrote a book called “antithesis” talking about how the old testament’s view of God and The Gospel’s and Paul’s understanding of God were different.
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