Marcionites: The Christian Sect You Never Heard About

If you were to ever read and study the early history of Christianity, you would find a faith that had several competing factions, several competing sects each claiming to be Christian, but with vastly different theologies (belief systems).

One such group were the Marcionites, most Christians and non-Christians have probably never heard or knew about this group, but indeed, I personally find this sect to be one of the most interesting ones in early Christianity.

The belief of Marcionism originated from the teachings of a man named Marcion, a Christian theologian, and son of a Christian Bishop. Marcion began to formulate his theology around the year 144, one must note that during this time there was no official Bible cannon as we have today, and this even predated the Nicaea creed when Christians finally decided to formalize an official Church and orthodox doctrine!

So with all of that said, what was Marcion’s theology, what made it so interesting, and what made it such a major heresy to the ?orthodox’ Christians. Well, believe it or not, Marcion separated the Jewish Bible from the New Testament; Marcion rejected the Jewish Bible, as well as the Jewish God. For Marcion, the God of the Jewish Bible was vastly different to the God of the New Testament. For instance in the Jewish Bible, God was always commanding genocide, murder, mass slaughtering, and Marcion could not reconcile such things.

He viewed the God of the Old Testament as being EVIL! He regarded the God of the Old Testament as some lesser god, and the root of all evil! Now indeed, one cannot blame Marcion for such beliefs, in fact we can say that he was consistent at least! If one were to read the Old Testament one would be shocked and stunned at the level of sickening violence, for instance here are a few verses for you to take in:

Zephaniah 2:12-15

“You Ethiopians will also be slaughtered by my sword,” says the LORD. And the LORD will strike the lands of the north with his fist. He will destroy Assyria and make its great capital, Nineveh, a desolate wasteland, parched like a desert. The city that once was so proud will become a pasture for sheep and cattle. All sorts of wild animals will settle there. Owls of many kinds will live among the ruins of its palaces, hooting from the gaping windows. Rubble will block all the doorways, and the cedar paneling will lie open to the wind and weather. This is the fate of that boisterous city, once so secure. “In all the world there is no city as great as I,” it boasted. But now, look how it has become an utter ruin, a place where animals live! Everyone passing that way will laugh in derision or shake a defiant fist

 

Ezekiel 9:5-7

“Then I heard the LORD say to the other men, “Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all – old and young, girls and women and little children. But do not touch anyone with the mark. Begin your task right here at the Temple.” So they began by killing the seventy leaders. “Defile the Temple!” the LORD commanded. “Fill its courtyards with the bodies of those you kill! Go!” So they went throughout the city and did as they were told.”

Deuteronomy 3:1-7

1 Then we turned, and went up the way to Bashan: and Og the king of Bashan came out against us, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei. 2 And the LORD said unto me, Fear him not: for I will deliver him, and all his people, and his land, into thy hand; and thou shalt do unto him as thou didst unto Sihon king of the Amorites, which dwelt at Heshbon. 3 So the LORD our God delivered into our hands Og also, the king of Bashan, and all his people: and we smote him until none was left to him remaining. 4 And we took all his cities at that time, there was not a city which we took not from them, threescore cities, all the region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan. 5 All these cities were fenced with high walls, gates, and bars; beside unwalled towns a great many. 6 And we utterly destroyed them, as we did unto Sihon king of Heshbon, utterly destroying the men, women, and children, of every city. 7 But all the cattle, and the spoil of the cities, we took for a prey to ourselves

Deuteronomy 7:1-2

When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations?the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you- and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally.  Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.

So Marcion read passages like the above, which are filled throughout the Old Testament, and concluded that this God was pure evil, and could not be followed, hence Marcion rejected this God and claimed that he was not the true God but a lesser god.

Marcion based his theology on the Bible as well! He would use scripture to argue for his beliefs, for instance he would use the writings of Paul, as well as a version of the Gospel of Luke to argue his case. He would contrast these New Testament writings with the Old Testament, and he would see a completely different God, in the New Testament there was talk of love, grace, and all of these nice things, and for Marcion this could not be reconciled with the angry god of the Old Testament, who was out there making harsh rules, getting jealous, and committing mass slaughter of people.

Marcion was consistent, he had the decency to admit that the god of the Old Testament was a vicious God, and I and most Muslims would agree with him, in fact just like Marcion, we Muslims also reject such dreadful passages from the Old Testament, but unlike Marcion, we do not conclude that these texts were referring to some different lesser god, rather we say that these are corrupted texts within the Old Testament, which paint a distorted picture of the true Abrahamic God.

In fact one can call modern day Christians as being semi-Marcionites! Most modern day Christians want nothing to do with the Old Testament, whenever you bring it up, they immediately start saying the OT has nothing to do with them, and that they now follow the New Testament! Hence you can see that modern day Christians are not willing to discuss the OT at all, they completely put it behind them, and want to move on. So just like Marcion, modern day Christians also reject the OT! Yet they don’t say it as clear as Marcion, while Marcion outright denied and rejected the Old Testament, modern day Christians will say it in a nicer way of simply saying oh the Old Testament is not for me, but for the Jews, I have a NT!

This is very similar to what Marcion said, which is why I call these Christians semi-Marcionites. Marcion rejected the Old Testament and viewed it as a Jewish text separated from Christianity and the Christian text, now doesn’t that similar to modern day Christians who say oh yes the Old Testament is for the Jews, not for us Christians, we have a new Covenant! You see the similar wording?

Furthermore, most modern Christians deep down reject the cruelty and viciousness of the Old Testament, yet they cannot openly admit it, but inside they reject it, which is why they never bother to defend it, and which is why they say the OT is not for them, but for the Jew! They absolutely want nothing to do with the Old Testament.

Ironically though, there are some modern day Christian Marcionites, yet they don’t call themselves Marcionites because they don’t even know about it. I have personally talked with Christians who have OPENLY ADMITED that the God of the Old Testament is evil and scary, yes they called him scary!!! Yet they don’t reject the New Testament, or the God of the New Testament, they say he is nice, caring, and loving! So even today you can find a modern day version of a Marcionite who will use the very plain and bold language Marcion did when describing the Old Testament and the God of the Old Testament, all you have to do is look around and you will easily find them.

With all of that said I would like to quote the writings of Barth Erhman, a major New Testament scholar, and what he has to say concerning the Marcionites, he writes about them in Lost Christianities:

Living at the same time and also enjoying the unwanted attention of the proto-orthodox opponents, though standing at just the opposite end of the theological spectrum, were the a group of Christians known as the Marcionites. In this instance, there is no question concerning the origin of the name. These were followers of the second century evangelist/theologian Marcian, known to later Christianity as one of the arch heretics of his day, but by all accounts one of the most significant Christian thinkers and writers of the early centuries…The Marcionites on the other hand, had a highly attractive religion to many pagan converts, as it was avowedly Christian with nothing Jewish about it. In fact, everything Jewish was taken out of it. Jews, recognized around the world for customs that struck many pagans as bizarre at best, would have difficulty recognizing in the Marcionite religion as an offshoot of their own. Not only were Jewish customs rejected, so, too, were the Jewish scriptures and the Jewish God. From a historical perspective, it is intriguing that any such religion could claim direct historical continuity with Jesus.

I should say a word about the about the theology Marcion developed, which was seen as distinctive, revolutionary, compelling, and therefore dangerous. Among all Christian texts and authors at his disposal, Marcion was especially struck by the writings of the apostle Paul, and in particular the distinction Paul drew in Galatians and elsewhere between the Law of the Jews and the gospel of Christ. As we have seen, Paul claimed that a person is made right with God by faith in Christ, not by doing the works of the Law. This distinction became fundamental to Marcion, and he made it absolute. The Gospel is good news of deliverance; it involves love, mercy, grace, forgiveness, reconciliation, redemption, and life. The Law, however, is the bad news that makes the gospel necessary in the first place; it involves harsh commandments, guilt, judgment, enmity, punishment, and death. The Law is given to the Jews. The gospel is given by Christ.

How could the same God be responsible for both? Or put in other terms: How could the wrathful, vengeful God of the Jews be the loving, merciful God of Jesus? Marcion maintained that these attributes could not belong to one God, as they stand at odds with one another: hatred and love, vengeance and mercy, judgment and grace. He concluded that there must in fact be two Gods; the God of the Jews, as found in the Old Testament, and the God of Jesus, as found in the writings of Paul.

Once Marcion arrived at this understanding, everything else naturally fell into place. The God of the Old Testament was the God who created this world and everything in it, as described in Genesis. The God of Jesus, therefore, had never been involved with this world but came into it only when Jesus appeared from heaven. The God of the Old Testament was the God who called the Jews to be his people and have them his law. The God of Jesus did not consider the Jews to be his people (for him; they were the chosen of the other God), and he was not a God who gave laws.

The God of Jesus came into this world in order to save people from the vengeful God of the Jews. He was previously unknown to this world and had never had any previous dealings with it. Hence Marcion sometimes referred to him as God the stranger. Not even the prophecies of the future Messiah come from this God, for these refer not to Jesus but to a coming Messiah of Israel, to be sent by the God of the Jews, the creator of this world and the God of the Old Testament. Jesus came completely unexpectedly and did what no one could possibly have hoped for: He paid the penalty for other people’s sins, to save them from the just wrath of the Old Testament God.

What we do know is that he based this entire system on sacred texts that he had in his church. These included, but were not limited to, the writings of Paul. Tertullian indicates, for example, that Marcion was particularly attracted to the saying of Jesus that a tree is known by its fruit (see Luke 6:43-44): Good trees do not produce rotten fruit, and rotten trees do not produce good fruit. What happens when the principle is applied to the divine realm? What kind of God creates a world wracked with pain, misery, disaster, diseases, sin, and death? What kind of God says that he is the one who ?creates evil’ (Amos 3:6)? Surely a God who is himself evil. But what Kind of God brings love, mercy, grace, salvation, and life? A God who does what is kind and generous and good? A God who is good.

There are two Gods, then, and according to Marcion, Jesus himself says so. Moreover, Jesus explains that no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the old wineskins burst and both they and the wine are destroyed (Mark 2:22). The Gospel is a new thing that has come into the world. It cannot be put into the old wineskins of the Jewish religion.

One Marcion had worked out his theological system, he incorporated it into his two literary works. The first was his own composition, a book that no longer survives, except in the quotations of his opponents. Marcion called the book the Antitheses (Contrary statements). It was evidently a kind of commentary on the Bible, in which Marcion demonstrated his doctrinal views that the God of the Old Testament could not be the God of Jesus.

Many Christians today might be sympathetic with Marcion’s view, as one often hears even still about the wrathful God of the Old Testament and the loving God of the New. Marcion, however, drove the idea to its limit, in a way many moderns could not accept. For him, there really were two Gods, and he set out to demonstrate it by appealing to the Old Testament. In this book of Antithesis, Marcion showed that he was not willing to explain away these passages by providing them with a figurative or symbolic interpretation: for him, they were to be taken literally. And when so read, they stood in the stark contrast with the clear teachings of Jesus and his gospel of love and mercy.

Marcion’s New Testament consisted of eleven books. Most of these were the letters of his beloved Paul, the one predecessor whom Marcion could trust to understand the radical claims of the gospel. Why, Marcion asked, did Jesus return to earth to convert Paul by means of a vision? Why did he not simply allow his own disciples to proclaim his message faithfully throughout the world. According to Marcion, it was because Jesus’ disciples-themselves Jesus, followers of the Jewish God, readers of the Jewish Scriptures-never did correctly understand their master. Confused by what Jesus taught them, wrongly thinking he was the Jewish Messiah, even after his death and resurrection they continued not to understand, interpreting Jesus’ words, deeds, and death in light of their understanding of Judaism. Jesus then had to start afresh, and he called Paul to reveal to him ‘the truth of the gospel.’ That is why Paul had to confront Jesus’ disciple Peter and his earthly brother James, as seen in the letter to the Galatians. Jesus had revealed the truth to Paul, and these others simply never understood.

Paul understood, however, and he alone. Marcion therefore included ten of his letters in his canon of Scripture, all, in fact, of those that eventually came to be found in the New Testament with the exception of the Pastoral epistles; 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. We may never know why these three were not include as well. It may be that they were not as widely circulated by Marcion’s time and that he himself did not know of them.

Marcion included a Gospel in his canon, a form of the Gospel of Luke. It is not clear why Marcion chose Luke as his Gospel, whether it was because its author was allegedly a companion of the apostle Paul, or because it showed the greatest concern for Gentiles in the ministry of Jesus, or, perhaps more plausibility, because it was the Gospel he was raised on in his home church of Sinope.

Marcion returned to Asia Minor to propagate his version of faith, and he was fantastically successful in doing so. We cannot be sure exactly why, but Marcion experienced an almost unparalleled success on the mission field, establishing churches wherever he went, so that within a few years, one of his proto-orthodox opponents, the apologist and theologian in Rome, Justin, could say that he was teaching his heretical views to ?many people of every nation’(Apology 1.26). (Bart, Ehrman. Lost Christianities. Oxford University press, 2003. PP. 103-109)

So as you can see, Marcion based his theology on the writings of Paul, and the Gospel of Luke!

In conclusion the Marcionites provide us with a very interesting glimpse of early Christianity, and how there were some very different and contrasting Christian theologies that to the ones we have come to know. Marcionism was a major Christian theology in his day, and lasted for about 3 centuries until it was drowned out by the supposedly ‘orthodox’ Christians.

The Opponents of Paul: First Century Disputes Within Christianity

Throughout the writings of Paul we find about competing and different set of beliefs that are being passed around, and we know this thanks to Paul himself, who condemns and attacks these people for preaching a different message to what he was. The only unfortunate issue is that we don’t have the writings of those people, rather we can only rely on Paul.

The main importance of this is that it shows early differences in first century Christianity, THE very first decades of Christianity itself! Modern day Christians often try to downplay Christian groups that disagree with their doctrine based on their dates, for instance many Christian sect and groups that vastly disagree with orthodox Christianity appeared during the 2^nd-4^th century, and modern day Christians say since they aren’t first century, and come sometime after Jesus, they aren’t to be taken too seriously. Although this logic is faulty because there was no official orthodox position until the 4^th century! Hence anything between the first century and 4^th century could be considered fair game, in fact the term early Christianity denotes the time between the 1^st century to the 4^th, after the Council of Nicaea!

In this case though, Christian apologists won’t be able to play that game, as we are appealing to the very writings of Paul, in the first century, and a couple of decades after Jesus. So with all of that said, let us go into the writings to see the disputes and differences he was having.

We start with the book of Galatians, where Paul writes the following:

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel? which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned! Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ. I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ. (Galatians 1:6-12)

So according to Paul, another Gospel was being preached, and not only was it being preached, but many people were deserting Paul’s teaching for this other Gospel! Off course Paul is not too pleased about that, and he condemns the people who are preaching the different Gospel, he claims that they are eternally condemned, and that they are trying to pervert the Gospel message. Paul warns the people, to not dare follow any other Gospel message that is different from his, even if it was an angel giving the message!

What gets more interesting is that Paul begins to try and convince the people that the Gospel he has is divine, and not from any normal man, but it was revealed to him by Jesus Christ. Obviously he makes this plea because people were beginning to doubt him and his authenticity, yet he is trying to convince the people otherwise, that his message is from Jesus.

Now what could these opponents be preaching? Well we know they were preaching something different to Paul, hence we ask what was Paul preaching? One of the hallmarks of Paul’s theology is that the Law doesn’t matter anymore, that the Jewish Laws and customs are useless, and it’s all about faith and grace now. So we can assume that these opponents were obviously preaching something opposite to this.

In the next chapter we get the context of what Paul is talking about, and WHO Paul is talking about in Galatians chapter two:

Fourteen years later I went up again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas. I took Titus along also. I went in response to a revelation and set before them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. But I did this privately to those who seemed to be leaders, for fear that I was running or had run my race in vain. Yet not even Titus, who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek. This matter arose because some false brothers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves. We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you. As for those who seemed to be important?whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not judge by external appearance?those men added nothing to my message. On the contrary, they saw that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as Peter had been to the Jews For God, who was at work in the ministry of Peter as an apostle to the Jews, was also at work in my ministry as an apostle to the Gentiles. James, Peter and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the Jews. All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do. When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray. When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?  ”We who are Jews by birth and not ‘Gentile sinners’ know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified. “If, while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! If I rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I am a lawbreaker. For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”

So in this chapter we see the differences arise again, and this time we see the specific people who are being confronted by Paul, and it happens to be Peter! The very same Peter who was a disciple of Jesus, and said to be the right hand man of Jesus! Paul confronts Peter, and calls Peter a hypocrite! The obvious major disagreement here has to do concerning the Jewish Law, as Paul makes it clear, the Jewish Law in no way saves a person, rather it is by faith in Jesus’ sacrifice that people are saved. Obviously this means that Peter and his group were preaching something different, the opposite to this, that the Jewish Law DID matter, and was not as useless as Paul was making it out to be.

Now let us not forget, in the previous chapter, Galatians 1, Paul CONDEMNS his opponent, and claims they are perverting the Gospel, now is it possible that these harsh rebukes were in fact directed towards Peter as well? We could speculate about this, and it would seem that Paul is not only talking about Peter, but all those others who are disagreeing with him as well, so we can see major differences arising here.

In fact in the book of Acts were read more about the major disagreements Paul is having:

When we arrived at Jerusalem, the brothers received us warmly. The next day Paul and the rest of us went to see James, and all the elders were present. Paul greeted them and reported in detail what God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. When they heard this, they praised God. Then they said to Paul: “You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the law. They have been informed that you teach all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to turn away from Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or live according to our customs. What shall we do?They will certainly hear that you have come, so do what we tell you. There are four men with us who have made a vow. Take these men, join in their purification rites and pay their expenses, so that they can have their heads shaved. Then everybody will know there is no truth in these reports about you, but that you yourself are living in obedience to the law. As for the Gentile believers, we have written to them our decision that they should abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality.” The next day Paul took the men and purified himself along with them. Then he went to the temple to give notice of the date when the days of purification would end and the offering would be made for each of them. When the seven days were nearly over, some Jews from the province of Asia saw Paul at the temple. They stirred up the whole crowd and seized him, shouting, “Men of Israel, help us! This is the man who teaches all men everywhere against our people and our law and this place. And besides, he has brought Greeks into the temple area and defiled this holy place.” (They had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian in the city with Paul and assumed that Paul had brought him into the temple area.) The whole city was aroused, and the people came running from all directions. Seizing Paul, they dragged him from the temple, and immediately the gates were shut. While they were trying to kill him, news reached the commander of the Roman troops that the whole city of Jerusalem was in an uproar. He at once took some officers and soldiers and ran down to the crowd. When the rioters saw the commander and his soldiers, they stopped beating Paul. The commander came up and arrested him and ordered him to be bound with two chains. Then he asked who he was and what he had done. Some in the crowd shouted one thing and some another, and since the commander could not get at the truth because of the uproar, he ordered that Paul be taken into the barracks. When Paul reached the steps, the violence of the mob was so great he had to be carried by the soldiers. The crowd that followed kept shouting, “Away with him!” (Acts 21:17-36)

So according to the above, Paul was summoned to Jerusalem, and they were obviously concerned with what they were hearing about Paul, that he was effectively turning the Jewish Law into nothing, which was true. The situation completely heats up later on when a group of Jewish followers see Paul, and they want to get at him because of his teachings against the Jewish Law, and Paul is eventually forced into protection. So you can see how tense and heated the situation is, this isn’t some minor small disagreement we have here, this is a major issue running through the early Christian church.

In fact the situation is so heated that as we saw in the book of Galatians, Paul is eternally condemning his opponents, and warning the people to not follow them!

In Acts 22 we continue to read more about this situation:

“Brothers and fathers, listen now to my defense.” When they heard him speak to them in Aramaic, they became very quiet. Then Paul said: “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city. Under Gamaliel I was thoroughly trained in the law of our fathers and was just as zealous for God as any of you are today. I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison, as also the high priest and all the Council can testify. I even obtained letters from them to their brothers in Damascus, and went there to bring these people as prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished. “About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me. I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, ‘Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?’ ” ‘Who are you, Lord?’ I asked. “?I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,’ he replied. My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me. “‘What shall I do, Lord?’ I asked. ”‘Get up,’ the Lord said, ‘and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do.’ ¹¹My companions led me by the hand into Damascus, because the brilliance of the light had blinded me. “A man named Ananias came to see me. He was a devout observer of the law and highly respected by all the Jews living there. ¹³He stood beside me and said, ‘Brother Saul, receive your sight!’ And at that very moment I was able to see him. “Then he said: ‘The God of our fathers has chosen you to know his will and to see the Righteous One and to hear words from his mouth. You will be his witness to all men of what you have seen and heard. And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name.’ “When I returned to Jerusalem and was praying at the temple, I fell into a trance and saw the Lord speaking. ‘Quick!’ he said to me. ‘Leave Jerusalem immediately, because they will not accept your testimony about me.’ ” ‘Lord,’ I replied, ‘these men know that I went from one synagogue to another to imprison and beat those who believe in you. And when the blood of your martyr^[a] Stephen was shed, I stood there giving my approval and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him.’ “Then the Lord said to me, ‘Go; I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’ “ The crowd listened to Paul until he said this. Then they raised their voices and shouted, “Rid the earth of him! He’s not fit to live!” As they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, the commander ordered Paul to be taken into the barracks. He directed that he be flogged and questioned in order to find out why the people were shouting at him like this. As they stretched him out to flog him, Paul said to the centurion standing there, “Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who hasn’t even been found guilty?” When the centurion heard this, he went to the commander and reported it. “What are you going to do?” he asked. “This man is a Roman citizen.”The commander went to Paul and asked, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?” “Yes, I am,” he answered. (Acts 22:1-27)

So here Paul tries to explain himself to the Jewish Christians of Jerusalem, and they are having none of it, they all become very agitated at Paul, and eventually Paul escapes punishment because he is a Roman citizen. Many scholars often point to this incident and call this the moment Christianity split, the split between the Jewish Christians and Paul’s version of Christianity.

We continue to read about the differences other Christians were having with Paul, this time from 2 Corinthians:

I hope you will put up with a little of my foolishness; but you are already doing that. I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough. But I do not think I am in the least inferior to those “super-apostles.” I may not be a trained speaker, but I do have knowledge. We have made this perfectly clear to you in every way.

Was it a sin for me to lower myself in order to elevate you by preaching the gospel of God to you free of charge? I robbed other churches by receiving support from them so as to serve you. And when I was with you and needed something, I was not a burden to anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied what I needed. I have kept myself from being a burden to you in any way, and will continue to do so. As surely as the truth of Christ is in me, nobody in the regions of Achaia will stop this boasting of mine. Why? Because I do not love you? God knows I do! And I will keep on doing what I am doing in order to cut the ground from under those who want an opportunity to be considered equal with us in the things they boast about. For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve. (2 Corinthians 11:1-15)

Paul yet again warns the people to be wary of following another Gospel, or following another different Jesus that is being preached! Paul goes on to call these people false apostles, deceitful workers, fakes, and he even likens them to satan!

Now since we don’t have the writings of these people we don’t really know what they were preaching, but what we do know is that it was something different to what Paul was preaching, as Paul said, they are preaching a different Jesus, a different Gospel. Obviously this means that these Christians had something different, they most likely taught that the Law should be applied, and should be followed, and that it wasn’t as useless as Paul was teaching, that salvation was not on faith alone. Anything else is speculation, it could be on a wide range of issues in which they disagreed with Paul, and preached something different, what it was, we don’t really know. What we DO KNOW is that these texts prove that there were some serious early disagreements within the early Christian Church, and that there were competing messages being taught.

Christians may simply try to downplay this, but the text doesn’t allow them to do so, for if these were some minor disagreements, then Paul would not have been so harsh in his condemnations, and he would not be so eager to make sure that this different message to his was not being accepted and followed. Therefore it’s quite clear that there were some major disagreements happening here, and indeed it should be a cause for concern!

In fact according to Philippians chapter 4, Paul claims that many churches rejected him:

Moreover, as you Philippians know, in the early days of your acquaintance with the gospel, when I set out from Macedonia, not one church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you only (Philippians 4:15)

So there were several Churches rejecting Paul, not wanting to work with him! Now if that’s not a major difference then I really don’t know what is! And this is from the FIRST CENTURY! A few decades after Jesus!

So let us summarize everything we have:

1-Other gospels and opposing teachings were being made

2-These teachings were gaining followers, and people were abandoning Paul’s message

3-Paul condemned his opponents, calling them deceivers, fakes, and likened them to satan

4-Some of Pauls opponents included the disciples, such as Peter, whom Paul confronted and insulted

5-Paul was summoned by the Church in Jerusalem, who themselves had disagreements with Paul, the Christian Jews of Jerusalem under James, forced Paul out of Jerusalem

6-Many Churches were rejecting Paul, and refused to work with him

So we can clearly see some major disagreements in early Christianity, first century Christianity, just a few decades after Jesus, and many of these Christians who disagreed with Paul eventually became to known as Ebionites, and other early Christian 2^nd century groups, their foundations all lied in the first century.