How do you answer someone....

Joseph_Botwinick · Sep 13, 2005

Stefan,

Let's not be too harsh...I don't think most folks knowingly commit this kind of heresy as Marcion did.

Joseph Botwinick

bapmom · Sep 13, 2005

Stefan,

can you clarify that for those of us who don't know who or what Marcionite is?

Joseph_Botwinick · Sep 13, 2005

Marcion was a heretic who ripped out parts of the Bible he didn't like...mostly, I think if my memory serves me correct, those parts that dealt with God's wrath.

Joseph Botwinick

bapmom · Sep 13, 2005

oh, so he didn't like God's wrath?

Joseph_Botwinick · Sep 13, 2005

Marcion's attempt to recover the authentic Jesus has been a constant theme of Christian reformers, reappearing in different guises, for example in the Jefferson Bible, Albert Schweitzer, and the Jesus Seminar.
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In particular, while many modern Christians hold that Christianity is the natural evolution of Jewish belief, Marcion held that the Christ existed outside that context.
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The premise of Marcionism is that many of the teachings of the Christ are incompatible with what is now called the Old Testament. Marcion gathered scriptures from Jewish tradition, and juxtaposed these against the sayings and teachings of the Christ [4] in a work entitled the Antithesis [5]. Marcion's source for the sayings and teachings of the Christ was the Gospel of Luke, which Marcion called simply the "Gospel" [6].

Marcion also produced the Apostolicon, which may have consisted of 10 traditional Letters of Paul. Hebrews and the Pastoral Epistles were apparently not included and instead of Ephesians was Laodiceans. In compiling these texts, he redacted what is perhaps the first New Testament canon of record.

Marcionites hold that the god known as YHWH is inconstant, jealous, wrathful, and legalistic. The material world he created was defective, a place of suffering; the god who made such a world was the bungling or malicious demiurge. In Marcionite belief, Jesus was not the Messiah; the person to whom religious Jews look forward, who is to be a conqueror and a political leader.

Rather, according to the Marcionites, the Christ was sent by the Elohim, which is either one god or a community of gods believed to be greater than YHWH. The role of the Christ was to reveal the supreme God of light and pure mind, different in character from YHWH. This supreme God is held by the Marcionites to be free from passion and wrath, wholly benevolent; and the Christ was sent to lead believers out of subjection to the limited, wrathful YHWH.

Marcionism is not identical to, but is related to, the various beliefs together called Gnosticism. In various sources, Marcion is often reckoned among the Gnostics, but as the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd ed.) puts it, "it is clear that he would have had little sympathy with their mythological speculations" (p. 1034). A primary difference between Marcionites and Gnostics was that the Gnostics based their theology on secret wisdom, as for example described in the Letters of Paul, of which they claimed to be in possession, whereas Marcion based his theology on the contents of the Letters of Paul and the recorded sayings of Jesus, in other words an argument from scripture with Marcion defining what was and wasn't scripture. The Christology of the Marcionites was primarily Docetic, denying the human nature of Christ.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcion_of_Sinope

whatever · Sep 13, 2005

Originally posted by RightFromWrong:
Thanks all

It does seem that God was a God of wrath in the Old Testament and a God of Grace in the New. Ok for me personally, what is peoples understanding of this ?
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Hey RFW,

Here's God's revelation of Himself in the OT (from Exodus 34):

The LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation."
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Let's make a list:

1. merciful
2. gracious
3. slow to anger
4. abounding in steadfast love
5. abounding in faithfulness
6. forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin
7. just in executing judgment

Six out of seven attributes point to grace, and one to wrath. God did not change between the testaments, of course, but even His revelation of Himself is consistent between the two testaments.

Marcia · Sep 13, 2005

Originally posted by Joseph_Botwinick:
My understanding is that God was a God of wrath and Grace in both the Old and New Testaments.

Joseph Botwinick
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I agree. And not onlyl that, but God was always warning people in the OT about what would happen to them if they disobeyed, yet they went ahead and disobeyed or didn't believe God anyway. He was very patient with people.

TexasSky · Sep 14, 2005

I do like the point that you shouldn't get sidetracked from the gospel message, but I understand that sometimes you get caught by the person and they demand an answer.

I point out to them that God is the King of Kings and that as a King, He is the responsible for dispensing justice.

I point out that before God ever shows His wrath, He set boundaries, made those boundaries clear to mankind, warned mankind that they needed to repent when they violated the boundaries, and that as far as I can read, the only times His wrath shows is when the people who love and follow Him are suffering because of the people who not only ignore Him, but torment His people.

I remind them that God is concerned with our souls, and that taking a person who is harming many other people from the earth is not so different, in the eyes of an omnipotent God, as expelling the drug-abusing, violent, loud mouthed student from a school of gentle spirited children.

If you know your bible history, you will see a pattern. The times when God wipes out groups of people the groups of people are not just your run of the mill sinners who made a simple mistake. They are people who perform human sacrifice, people who attack God's people over and over and over, people who rape their neighbors. They are dangerous to the people of God.

I've discovered that many people who are pro-death-penalty in human life, seem to think God is "wrong" to enforce His own version of the death penalty for far better reasons than mankind uses it.

Dr. Bob · Sep 14, 2005

And even when God executes earthly judgment (like taking a life) He does it out of MERCY!

Every day, the unregenerate are heaping up greater and greater judgment for all eternity. Bu cutting off sin earlier, there will be less severity of judgment in the long run.

God is Just and Holy, but is always merciful.

TexasSky · Sep 14, 2005

One other thing to consider -

Given all that God did for us.
What litlte God demands from us.
How rebellious we are - --

The question we should be asking is not, "Why is He venegeful," but "How can He still love us and still us forgive us knowing all we've done?"

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