It is not uncommon to hear the charge that “apocalyptic” readers of Paul like me have no salvation history and hence are Marcionites and so should have their reading of his gospel rejected out of hand—a very serious charge. I want to unpack this situation in what follows, and it will take us to a very surprising set of conclusions. But first we need a couple of definitions.
“Apocalyptic” is the name that has been given to a group of Pauline scholars heavily influenced by the work of the great US scholar of Paul—and of John’s Gospel—J. L. (Lou) Martyn. The group follow him, along with his illustrious predecessors, in emphasizing the importance of the arriving apocalypse or end times for Paul’s thinking about the significance of Jesus—what scholars call a little more technically “eschatology.” This group of scholars, me included, is convinced that Paul believed a couple of critical things about the end times. First, the end times, with its fiery destruction of everything around us now, and its glorious resurrection and reconstitution of God’s people in a new heaven and a new earth, is very very close. Right at the door. (So don’t get drunk and fall asleep; stay alert!) Second, the end times are pushing into our lives right now. The future is already present, and even past. Jesus’s resurrection has already taken place. God’s own Spirit, poured out in abundance, is with us now, transforming us. Miracles are happening now. Pagans are turning to the God of Israel now. The Scriptures are being fulfilled in our sight and hearing. All very dramatic stuff. In short, apocalyptic interpreters of Paul like me emphasize the way we all participate now in the death and resurrection of Jesus and in God’s Spirit, recalling that when someone rises from the dead, the end times as Jews understand them have begun.
If this is what “apocalyptic” readers of Paul like me think, then what is a Marcionite and why are we accused of being Marcionites?
The church famously rejected a wealthy and vastly influential businessman called Marcion in the second century as a heretic. This was one of the first and most important theological controversies, and it is particularly relevant to Pauline scholars because Marcion was a huge fan of Paul’s. He believed that the Bible should only contain the Gospel of Luke—because Luke was a co-worker of Paul’s—and Paul’s letters, of which he only knew ten. (So he did not include in his Bible 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, known as the Pastorals.) Being a clever businessman, Marcion funded and promoted this Bible and an accompanying organization, and it was quite successful. But part of this popularity was due to the fact that Marcion coupled his Reader’s Digest Bible with a theological programme that cut the Jews and prior creation out of God’s plan. Marcion thought that creation was too evil, as was Israel, for the God revealed by Jesus to be remotely involved with them. The God apparent in relation to the Jews was also just too angry and judgmental. So Marcion grouped creation and Israel under another God, a lesser God, whom the God of Jesus later conquered and overcame with the coming of Jesus and the Spirit. By making these moves, creation, prior history, and the Jews, were all cut off from the Christian dispensation and from the Christian God.
This was a bold plan, and it was nice and easy to understand. Coupled with its little Bible, probably circulating in the trendy new form of a book, it was marketing genius in fact. But it came at a terrible price that the rest of the church recognized and rightly rejected.
What do we really need to say about creation and history and the Jews prior to the coming of Jesus? God had to be involved in creation and with his chosen people in some way before Jesus; God was not absent then even if he wasn’t present in quite the same way as he was after Jesus’s arrival. We don’t want to deny this early, partial presence, because then we would be denying that God is the Lord of all history and of all time and of all creation, which would be very bad ideas. Well, heretical ideas actually. If there is anything historical or temporal or created then God is there in some way. He is the creator and the Lord and the Lord of his first people. So Marcion is rightly remembered as an arch-heretic. It’s a terrible thing to be a Marcionite.
But apparently apocalyptic readers of Paul like me are Marcionites. (I won’t name names, but this “critique” is everywhere.) Apparently the apocalyptic school believe in the sudden “vertical” irruption of God into history through Christ, and this is so dramatic that history is effectively split asunder. Prior to this irruption there is no God, no creation, and no history, or at least none worth speaking of. And after this irruption the good stuff is here. God has triumphed, at least to some degree, and all things are now new.
Now this is a caricature, because clearly no one in their right mind actually says this, let alone apocalyptic scholars. But they do say something that possibly heads in this direction and this is what has led their critics to attack them for being Marcionites.… More soon.