N. A.

BERDYAEV (BERDIAEV)
NEW BOOKS
_________
Marcionism
(1928 - #336)
(Henri Delafosse. Le quatrieme evangele; Les ecrits de St. Paul. Le epitre aux Romains; La peiemiere
epitre aux Corinthiens: "Christianisme" Rieder; "La chronique des Idees". L. Gabrilovitch.
Christianisme, marcionisme, antitheisme).1
Thought hostile to Christianity is becoming focused, refined, it assumes new forms, less coarse, it
resorts to new methods of struggle. We see this as regards the "Christianism" series, which is put out as
a publication of Rieder under the editorship of Couchoud. In this series came out also the book of
Couchoud himself, "Le mystere de Jesus", in which is denied the historical existence of Jesus Christ.
Concerning this book, brilliant in form, I have already written in Journal "Put'", in my article "The
Scientific Discipline of Religion and Christian Apologetics". We have at present before us the books of
Delafosse concerning the Fourth Gospel and the Epistles of the Apostle Paul with translated text. The
books of Delafosse, just like the book of Couchoud, just like all the series, cannot be numbered
amongst truly objective scientific investigations. This objective scientific element is something the
most leftwing of German Protestants have, e.g. Harnack. The books however of the "Christianism"
series wage an anti-Christian propaganda and represent a form of negative apologetics. What all this
leads up to ultimately, what it leads up to in the books of Delafosse, and of L. Gabrilovitch in his sharp
article "Christianism, Marcionism, Anti-Theism", printed in Issue No. 17 of "La chronique des Idees",
is of the same sort as presented by Rieder. In his capacity as a Russian, L. Gabrilovitch is more radical
and bold and more inclined towards religio-philosophic generalisations. Modern adversaries of a
churchly Christianity attempt to fight against it with the assist of an uniquely reborn Marcionism.
Marcionism however signifies an acutely vexing setting to the problem of theodicy, which in essence
never had a rational theological resolution, one that is acceptable for the moral consciousness of man.
The governing trends of traditional theology have been a very fertile soil for ever new and anew forms
of Marcionism rising up. Modern man, when he approaches religion, becomes struck and shaken by the
problem of evil and suffering. Ivan Karamazov does not accept "God's world" because of the tears of a
little child. He spurns both the Creator and the creation, in which there is pestilence and plague. This
was a problem formerly, quite striking and shaking for Marcion, a man himself morally deep. In
comparison with him the modern Marcionism is quite muddled an affair. Marcion, just like all the
Gnostics,2 did not understand the mystery of freedom, the mystery of God-manhood, the mystery of
the Holy Trinity. He fought against an abstract monotheism, which is foreign to Christianity and which
is not in the Bible. But the modern Marcionists contend against the abstract monotheism and oppose to
it either an anti-theism or atheism. Marcion rose up against the God of the Bible, the God of the Old
Testament, against the Creator and Fashioner of the world, responsible for having created evil and
suffering, and against this he set in opposition Christ, the revelation of an other and unknowable God,
foreign to the world and not responsible for having created the world. Christ came to set free from the
power of the evil God, the Demiurge, such as had created this evil and tormentive world. If atheism be
something set in opposition to the theistic teaching, according to which this world was created by an
All-Good God, as revealed in the Bible, then Marcion was an atheist. But this is a conditional
terminology. Marcion in actuality was a dualist, just as were all the Gnostics, and he believed in his

own Good God, in which the modern atheistic Marcionists do not believe. Marcion stood religiously
and infinitely higher than the modern Marcionists, who make use of him for propaganda purposes of
atheism. L. Gabrilovitch interprets Marcion in the sense that he taught about an irreal meonic God, at
the same time, as he taught about an unknowable God foreign to the world, in the reality of which he
believed (Vide A. Harnack, "Marcion: Das Evangelium vom Frenden Gott" ["Marcion: Gospel of the
Foreign God"]).
Delafosse sets himself a more modest scientific-historical task. He argues that the Fourth Gospel
and the Epistles of the Apostle Paul are indeed Marcionist works, which then were subjected to
reworking and re-editing by church people, i.e. in the western terminology, by catalogues. He discerns
elements of Marcionism in the spirituality of the Fourth Gospel and the Epistles of the Ap. Paul, in the
hostility to the "world", in the teaching about redemption, in the surmounting of the Law, i.e. in the
very essence of Christianity. The argumentation of Delafosse can appear seemingly correct only for
those, who fail to see the organic spiritual integral wholeness of Christianity, those inclined to dissect
everything. Delafosse recourses to such an approach: everything organic and unique within
Christianity, everything New Testament, is rendered Marcionism, -- the very idea of God the Redeemer
and Saviour for him is Marcionism, whereas the churchly mindset but strives for a reconciling between
the Gospel's God the Redeemer and Deliverer from this evil world together with the Biblical God as
Creator of this evil world. The defects for this line of argument are for us perfectly clear. Within
Marcionism there were indeed true and genuinely Christian elements, but just as in every heresy, he
permitted for extreme overstatements of these elements and separated them off from the full and
integrated truth of revelation. The surmounting and transforming effect of Marcionism has entered into
the churchly mindset. The true and genuinely Christian elements of Marcionism, combined with the allentire truth, while free of distortions and extremities, the manic-fanatical aspects characteristic to
heresies, represents also the churchly faith and the churchly mindset. But Delafosse does not want to
allow, that the all-entire truth was revealed, that it represents something organic; for him it all exists
merely in the dissected elements, merely in the separated parts. He sees in the Epistles of the Ap. Paul a
struggle against the one-sidedness and extremeness of Marcionism, but for him this is merely an
interpolation, a reworking and re-editing of the primary original Marcionist text. There does not exist
for him an organic core to Christianity. Along this line, Marcion is transformed into the founder of
Christianity, but it is a Christianity not integral, not churchly, rather taken in those its elements, which
moreso tend to please modern people. By such methods one can demonstrate, whatever one pleases.
Delafosse presupposes, that the Fourth Gospel and the Epistles of the Ap. Paul do not possess
wholistically integral a character, but rather are constituted from elements artificially reconciled. For
him the wholistic character of the Christian revelation is inadmissible, since he denies the mystery of
the Christian transfiguration and the uniting of contraries, the mystery of the Incarnation of God.
Everything is rendered divided -- spirit and flesh, God and man, eternity and time, heaven and earth.
The adversaries of Christianity understand the uniting as a mere compromise. And in their opinion, the
aspect about the evil of the world and the need for deliverance from the evil has existed only from
Marcion and has been absent with churchly Christianity.
Delafosse, just like all the modern people out of touch and foreign to Christianity, fails to
understand the mystery of God-manhood, the uniting within Jesus Christ of two natures, the mystery of
God having become flesh and God having become man. The human God, the good God represents
Marcionism for such people, rather than the Christian mystery of God-manhood. With Delafosse, just
as with Couchoud, just like throughout all the historical science effort concerning Christianity, one can
observe a principle of sorts impotence to decide the "mystery of Jesus", the mystery about the origin of
Christianity. Historical science therefore on principle is incapable of deciding the question about the
origin of Christianity, since it comes here into clash with metahistory, and not history. The

metahistorical never yields itself to historical investigation, it yields but to spiritual experience and to
the spiritual tradition of the Church. However, from the outside view for historical science there obtains
merely bits and pieces, merely empirical splinters, merely isolated elements. But the metahistorical
intrudes upon history and acts within it. And thus only there becomes possible the Incarnation of God
in the flesh, the uniting of God and mankind, of spirit and flesh, of heaven and earth. Apart from having
an inner communion with Christ, it is impossible to perceive or comprehend what this tradition is
about, what always instead is seen are merely the disunited elements, God in Heaven and man on earth.
Marcionism always can be investigated moralistically and therefore can be rendered adaptable for the
modern consciousness, imbued as it is by rationalism and having lost its faith. Harnack in his
noteworthy book about Marcion, the finest of all those written by him, tends to say, that Marcion was
somewhere nigh close to Russian religious thought, to Russian writers. This is erroneous. What is nigh
close in Marcion to Russian religious thought is that which in him is genuinely Christian, -- the
understanding of Christianity not as a legalistic religion, but rather the religion of God loving and
suffering, but the heresy itself of Marcionism is something alien to it. The heresy of Marcionism, which
is morally pleasing for modernity, represents a lack of understanding of the fundamental mystery of the
Christian faith, and first of all of the mystery of the Triune God. The opposition between the God, the
Creator of this world as revealed in the Bible, a God foreign and apart from this world, in contrast to
that of the Redeemer and Saviour of this world as revealed in the Bible, represents ignorance of the
mystery of the Divine Trinity. The construct of a theodicy is possible only upon the basis of the
teaching of the Holy Trinity, it is impossible for an abstract monotheism. Christianity teaches, that the
Father is revealed only in the Son. The Son however is God having abased Himself, having exhausted
and emptied Himself (which is kenosis, i.e. "extreme humility"), God suffering and surrendering
Himself up in sacrifice. Through the Son is revealed, that God in His inner life is Love. God, revealed
as Love, is also the God of Trinity. The Lamb pledged prior to the creation of the world and the Divine
Sacrifice enters into the very plan of the world-creation. And Golgotha therefore is not only an
anthropodicy, but also a theodicy, a justification of God, of Love and Sacrifice. The abstract
monotheistic representation of God, as absolute monarch, as some sort of an Assyrian despot, selfsufficient unto Himself and immobile, like some stone sculpture, demanding a grovelling to Himself
and punishing the human race for not fulfilling His will, -- this is not an image of the Christian God,
this is an image of the Mahometan-like God, it is a pagan idol. Through Jesus Christ, -- the Son of God
is revealed not as God different from the God of the Bible, but rather genuinely the other and inwardly,
in esoteric aspect from God the Father.
The mystery of God as Trinity is foreign to Marcionism, just as the mystery of creaturely freedom
is foreign to it, since it can only think in terms of oppositions. This world, the "world-here" is actually
the child of sin, but this does not signify a blasphemy against the Creator. Sin and evil have entered into
the world through the irrational and primordial creaturely freedom, through the creaturely nothingness.
And Redemption is a deliverance from the dominion of the creaturely nothingness, from sin and evil,
and not from the Creator, it is a bringing of light into the dark creaturely freedom. The Marcionism of
our time has been crafted into a weapon of the struggle against God, rising up against God in the name
of man, in the name of human well-being and happiness, it is a form of the modern humanism. This
spiritual outlook demands its salvation outside of God and in opposition to God, and since its
representatives do not believe in God, they then revolt against the very idea of God, as harmful and
anti-human. The struggle transpires within the sphere of ideas, and not realities, in which Marcion
himself at least still dwelt. The struggle against God here arises in consequence of the irresolvability by
reason of the problem of theodicy, of the problem of evil, of which Dostoevsky was so profoundly
aware. This is the struggle against God by the Euclidean mind. And the unenlightened human mind
proves itself but little resourceful, and merely repeats the old heresies of the first centuries. This is
especially clear and evident in the interesting article of L. Gabrilovitch. L. Gabrilovitch -- is an

humanist, but he is an humanist in a late hour of history. His article to a remarkable degree is grounded
upon wordplay over "anti-theism", "irreality", etc. He is very far distant from Marcion himself, who
belonged to an era of faith, yet he wants to translate him into the language of an era of non-belief. The
God of the Bible, a reality for Marcion, would be transferred instead by him into mere nature,
indifferent to human sufferings and joys, into Spinoza's Deus sive natura. Marcion's good God
however, as Redeemer and Saviour, would be transformed by him into the striving of the suffering
humankind for deliverance and salvation, for the surmounting of the terror of being. This is a totally
anti-Christian and anti-religious state of mind, something akin to a philosophic Buddhism. But then too
this state of mind considers itself the religion of the future. Delafosse is quite more unassuming, he
would as it were but remain within the sphere of historical criticism. He wants to point out, that the
Fourth Gospel, and in the Epistles of the Apostle Paul, the churchly mindset is waging a struggle
against Marcionism, within the loins of Christianity itself. It has to be decidedly admitted, that the
problematics raised by the heresies played a large and positive role in the discerning of the fullness of
truth for the churchly Christianity itself. But the integrally whole truth of the Christian revelation, as it
gradually unfolded within history, is more primary than Marcionism, Montanism and all the heresies,
which themselves are dependent upon the Christian revelation and are but distortions and deformations
of it. It is very interesting to follow out, how the old heresies get reborn into a modernised form, the old
revolts against Christianity. The spiritual effect of the heresies has still not run its course and the
Christian consciousness has not provided answer still to all the difficulties. The old atheism, the
materialism, the positivism of an enlightenment rationalism belongs to a bygone era and now we
should have matters with moreso greater spiritual tendencies. And this signifies, that there ensues more
responsible a time, closer to the endtimes, and moreso oriented to final things.
Nikolai Berdyaev.
1928
2004 by translator Fr. S. Janos
(1928 - 336 - en)
MARKIONIZM. Under section "New Books" in Journal Put', Aug. 1928, No. 12, p. 122-124.
1The series of publications by F. Rieder et C-ie represents in itself an interesting phenomenon. This
publishing work is decidedly hostile to Christianity and has sympathies for Communism. Yet together
with this, Rieder's work involved exclusively an interest for religious questions, and likewise for
philosophy of the utmost quality. It deals with St. Thomas Aquinas, the Eternal Gospel of Joachim of
Flora, Hyppolitus, Schelling, Hegel, etc.
2Among the Gnostics Marcion occupied an altogether unique place. He was first of all a moralist,
inspired by the Gospel, and foreign to him is the cosmological gnosis.