One of the most important theologians of modern times, the German philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) is considered the founder of both Protestant liberalism—a still-influential tendency that seeks grounding in modern philosophy, science, and scholarship—and the academic discipline of religious studies. What is often overlooked about Schleiermacher, argues Samuel Loncar, is the extent to which he and his successors were influenced by the ancient Christian heretic Marcion of Sinope. Loncar explains:
In the 2nd century CE, Marcion taught that Jesus was the revelation of an unknown god, a totally hidden divinity that had nothing to do with creation, which was the work of the god of the Jewish people. . . . The Jewish god was a god of justice and wrath, while the god of Jesus was a god of pure grace, who had come to deliver humanity—though not the Jewish leaders—from the world. Christianity thus had nothing to do with Judaism, and, as a result, Marcion eliminated the Jewish scriptures from the Christian Bible, and excluded all parts of what would become the New Testament that seemed too Jewish.
[A]lthough Marcion’s thought tends towards a universalism, he interprets [Jesus’] descent into hell as saving all those prior to his coming except the Jewish leaders. Thus, in spite of the [Christian] god being the god of love, “the Jews, as the chosen people of the creator of the world, are the enemies of Christ par excellence, and their patriarchs, prophets, and leaders cannot be redeemed.”
Thus, for Marcion and Marcionites, there are no checks on the anti-Semitic tendencies within Christianity. The Eternal One of Israel, who spoke to Moses and appeared at Sinai, is entirely separate from the god of the New Testament and the trinity. God didn’t just revoke the Jews’ chosen status, as some orthodox Christians believe, but never chose them in the first place—their election was the work of a quasi-demonic lesser deity. To a Marcionite, the theological bases for Vatican II or Christian Zionism simply don’t exist.
Schleiermacher believed that “if Marcion had been properly understood” rather than rejected by the early Church, Christian doctrine would be “purer.” Moreover, Marcionism could have saved Christianity from “the dreadful amount of evil” it draws from the Old Testament. This sort of thinking, Loncar argues, can be found throughout Schleiermacher’s writings, as well as those of intellectual heirs. He concludes:
The Christianity at the foundation of modern theology is a Christianity without Judaism. In this elimination of Judaism we find the crucially modern function of Schleiermacher’s Marcionism: a theological flight from history.
In 1939, Marcion’s time did come, in a way, for that was the year that the “Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life” was founded. The fact that Schleiermacher was a Marcionist in key aspects of his theology does not itself constitute evidence that Schleiermacher himself was anti-Semitic. Nevertheless, it would be fatuous to deny any connection between Marcionism and anti-Semitism, for Marcionism presents Judaism as a decidedly inferior religion and Jews as the adherents of an inferior god.
Christian theologians and scholars of Christianity, by failing to recognize either the reality or the significance of Schleiermacher’s Marcionism, have unwittingly covered over the historically momentous fact that the most academically respectable form of Christian theology in the modern world was rooted in a Christianity excised of its Jewishness.
Read more on Marginalia: https://themarginaliareview.com/christianitys-shadow-founder-marcion-anti-judaism-and-the-birth-of-liberal-protestantism/