Marcionite New Testament only Christianity pros and cons

Sun Apr 07, 2024 6:21 pm

70 °F
like 70°

Nice weather! generally I prefer to be outside when its nice weather.

It's Sunday a week after Easter.

I have thought of the pros and cons of a New Testament (modified, redacted) only Christianity, also known as Marcionite Christianity. Marcion was a second century Christian theologian who taught that the God of Jesus is not the God of the Jews, and only taught from his redacted New Testament, and ditched the Old Testament entirely.

In light of advances in science I think Marcinoism deserves a second look.


What I have in mind is similar in spirit to Marcion, but updated with modern science and technology.

The biggest pros I can think of is that by dispensing the Old Testament children growing up in my proposed Marcionite New Testament church won't have to read all the genocidal psychopathic passages in the Old Testament and ask, why is God such a genocidal maniac. As well as antiquated laws on kosher and animal sacrifice.
Children would only be reading a redacted New Testament, Marcion redactions was to eliminate all references in the New Testament to the Old.

Marcion didn't include some of the gnostic gospels, but I might, such as the Odes of Solomon and the Gospel of Thomas, as well as Christian mystics like Meister Eckhart and Emmanuel Swedenborg

Another benefit for me was the conflict between the theory of evolution and creationism.

My church I attended as a kid taught us to reject Darwin's theory of evolution for creationism and literal truth of Genesis, and young earth creationism.

If you ditch the entire Old Testament, you won't have to promote creationism, you can accept evolution.

You have to re-work historical Marcionite theology to accommodate Evolution and the Big Bang theory but it is feasible. Marcion lived in the second century, where the theory of Evolution, Modern science and physics, and the Big Bang theory was unknown to him.

In the 18th century there was a movement called Christian Deism, with Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson as the most famous proponents. Both also rejected the Old Testament, so some hybrid theology of Christian Deism with Marcionism might work.

Children growing up in this religion won't learn one thing in church, Young earth Creationism, and something quite different in high school and college, Evolution and the Big Bang Theory.

Standard Christian cultural products like Christian rock music, Christian worship music, and Christian art could still be used, so long as it doesn't reference the Old Testament.

some big cons,

Christians convince the naive and gullible that Jesus fulfilled so many prophesies of the Old Testament, he must be the Messiah as foretold by the prophets of the Old Testament. While these claims are patently absurd, naive religious people believe this.

That historical Christianity has taught Jesus was the Jewish Messiah.

and that by ditching the Old Testament, you are creating a new religion, one full of error and heresy, and Christians would not attend such a church for teaching error.

There are also real world issues like LGBT homosexuality transgenderism and abortion.

In the real world you want religious conservative Christians to attend your church and financially support your church and have babies in your church and raise them in your religion, and usually babies come from heterosexual man married to a woman, with traditional gender roles. I am prochoice when it comes to abortion, but many conservative evangelical Christians are anti-abortion, and may not attend a church that supports abortion or gay marriage for that matter. again its not what I want but what the customer wants, conservative evangelical Christians and Catholics and other Christians.

Its not clear conservative highly religious Christians would want to accept a church with seemingly heretical teachings of Marcionism, or with LGBT present.

The historical Marcion taught that the Jews should be ignored, as they belong to a different God and a different religion. Its not clear what Marcion would have thought of a Jew wanting to join his religion. Of course in the modern world we don't have to practice Marcionism in every detail, certainly accepting the theory of Evolution, the big Bang theory, secular physics and DNA science, is a major change.

Jews compose such a tiny percentage of the population and even smaller percentage of Christians they could probably be ignored, but not LGBT. I don't envision this neo-Marcionite church to be hostile to Jews, but it would not teach any significance to Israel. Marcion did not teach Jesus is the Jewish messiah. On the other hand, it would not teach Jews are damned to hell for not believing in Jesus nor engage in any missionary efforts to recruit Jews. Marcion taught there were 2 gods, the God of the Jews and the God of Jesus, and Jews belong to their God and Gentiles to the God of Jesus. The Old testament is completely irrelevant to his religion.

I suppose you can have progessive Marcionite church that accepts abortion and LGBT and performs gay marriage, although I think Unitarian Universalist church have that market cornered. If you are prochoice and LGBT you could simply attend a Unitarian Universalist church or a variety of gay friendly churches like United Church of Christ. And Orthodox Marcionite Church that appeals to conservative Christians that is anti-abortion and traditional marriage and traditional gender roles and values.

in the end, religion is a business to make money. if you open up a neo-Marcionite church with neo-Marcionite theology such as I suggest, and evangelical Christians, Catholics, Mormons, and others show up in huge numbers and have babies in your church and pay you money it is a success. if not then you will go out of business forever, like a lot of my favorite businesses like Blockbuster video rental and Quizno's subs.

actually getting Christians to switch from their current church and bible to this church is a seemingly impossible task.

I left Christianity because its teachings conflict with modern science, and the Old Testament is a rather unpleasant thing to read. Marcionism would prevent those issues to future children born into such a religion.