"I recognize you as the firstborn of Satan."
That may not sound like much of an insult considering some of the things that are said on social media today. But coming from a religious man in the second century, it carries weight. Directed at an early anti-Semite, it's something we should pay attention to today.
"Marcion of Pontus was one of the most dangerous men in Christian history," writes Catholic historian Mike Aquilina in a recent issue of Angelus magazine. Aquilina tells how Polycarp of Smyrna, at the time an aging bishop, ran into Marcion on a Roman street. "Do you recognize me?" Marcion asked Polycarp. The response was recorded by the Church father, Irenaeus of Lyon. The "famous story captures the depth of the Church's revulsion," at Marcion and his nefarious agenda: Marcion wanted to ditch the Old Testament and write Israel and the Jewish people out of Christianity.
Marcion "lived in the aftermath of the great Jewish revolts against Rome — above all the Bar Kokhba revolt of A.D. 132�135," Aquilina writes. There was a real increasing hostility to Jews among Romans. "Emperor Hadrian crushed the revolt with terrible severity, re-founded Jerusalem as a pagan city, and barred Jews from entering it. To many Roman observers, Judaism now appeared stubborn, separatist, and politically dangerous."
Polycarp condemned Marcion so harshly and directly because he understood something about anti-Jewish sentiment that we must always acknowledge: "Marcion was not merely proposing a revised canon or a different interpretation of Paul. He was proposing a Christianity detached from Abraham, Moses, creation, covenant, and history itself."
There is no New Testament without the Old Testament. There are no Christians without Jews.
But Marcion and his ideas did not die, despite the Church's decisive rebuke. It enjoyed a revival in the 19th and early 20th centuries in Germany. Adolf von Harnack wrote "Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God," portraying Marcion as "a tragic reformer" — some would regard him as "the first Protestant."
You can see where this headed.
Aquilina notes that one cannot equate Harnack and others with either Marcion or the Nazis. Marcionism was a theology, not an ideology. Likewise, Harnack was not looking to provide a foundation for the Third Reich. But ideas do have consequences. And Harnack, as Aquilina explains, "admired Marcion's seriousness, his devotion to Paul, and his attempt to distinguish Christianity sharply from Judaism. In one of his most controversial statements, Harnack suggested that while the ancient Church had been right to reject Marcion in the second century, modern Christians no longer needed to retain the Old Testament as fully authoritative Scripture."
That's in some ways even more dangerous—the subtlety by which pernicious ideas can become a part of our intellectual and theological lives.
The bad ideas of history repeat themselves when we are ignorant and they align again with biases and political agendas. Anti-Semitism was evil in the second century, and it is evil now. Listen to the faith of our fathers.
Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review magazine and author of the new book "A Year With the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily Living." She is also chair of Cardinal Dolans pro-life commission in New York and is on the board of the University of Mary. She can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview.com.
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