January 9 - Those Preacher's Kids

January 9 – Those preacher’s kids

As I began studying Christian history, I realized that most of it was never covered in anything I had ever learned in my life. Yet, I would have to argue that learning about how our faith has developed, the people that have impacted it and the way it has interacted with the world, is as important as learning about Christopher Columbus and George Washington. As Christians in today’s world, we tend to have a very narrow view of our history and don’t know much about it except for a few great names and the impact that the last 150 years or so has had.

There are names of men and women that we have never heard, yet they were not only prominent figures in their day, but some of them completely transformed the church.

One of those men was a man named Marcion (MARR-see-un), a preacher’s kid. He wasn’t terribly fond of that business, so bought a ship and traveled the world. Somewhere along the line, he decided that he didn’t approve of the physical world. However, that didn’t stop him from having sex with a girl in his father’s church. He got kicked out and ran to Rome. He took about $2 million with him and the Roman church was more than glad to see him (his money?).

While there, he developed a Gnostic sect. He taught that God was nothing like the Old Testament God and turned Jesus into a spirit, saying that Christ only seemed human. His followers denied all earthly desires, even banning sex between spouses.

This was happening in about 140 AD and the New Testament canon was being put into place. Marcion had a problem with the fact that there weren’t many books in the Bible that actually supported his teachings. So, he created a canon that was to be authoritative. Luke’s Gospel and ten of Paul’s letters were all that made it to the list. To top it off, he removed the story of Jesus’ birth from the Gospel and any mention of the Old Testament from Paul’s letters.

The Roman church was pretty freaked out by the whole thing and in 144AD gave him back his money, did their best to turn him back to the truth, but finally sent him on his way. He went on to Italy and Asia Minor and started his own churches.