The History of Christian Theology

Lecture 6: Varieties of Early Christianity

scholars are divided on this point. Some may be agrapha, that is, sayings of

Jesus not found in the New Testament.

One of the most important opponents of mainstream Christianity was

Marcion. For Marcion, an avid reader of Paul, the key to salvation is not

knowledge but faith. He taught there are two Gods, the Jewish God who

creates the world and the alien and unknown God, the good God, who out

of sheer grace redeems people from it. In a version of Docetism, Marcion

says Christ is the Son of the good God, sent into the world fully grown with

an angelic body. The good God was utterly unknown before Christ, which

means the Jewish prophets did not serve him, nor did they prophesy Christ’s

coming. To support his views, Marcion accepts as scripture only an abridged

version of the Gospel of Luke and the letters of Paul.

Early orthodoxy was characterized by belief in the goodness of the Creator,

the God of the Jews, who is “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,”

as a recurrent New Testament phrase puts it. The God of the Jews is good,

and therefore the physical world he created is good. The Jewish scriptures

are accepted as the ancient witness to this good Creator and his Son Jesus. Ŷ

“The Gospel of Thomas” in Layton, The Gnostic scriptures.

Jonas, The Gnostic Religion.

Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels.

Pritz, Nazarene Jewish Christianity.

1. Do you ¿ nd Gnostic spirituality attractive? Why or why not?


2. How insistently—or not—should Christianity hang on to its Jewish roots?

Questions to Consider

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