‘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 student of John, the disciple of Jesus, in the second century, it not only stings but reverberates with an important caution about the evil of antisemitism to this day.

“Marcion of Pontus was one of the most dangerous men in Christian history,” according to Catholic writer of Catholic history, doctrine, and devotion, Mike Aquilina. Writing in a recent issue of Angelus, Aquilina relays how Polycarp of Smyrna, at the time an aging bishop, ran into the dangerous man 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.

You may be wondering how that’s even possible, given Christ Himself was a Jew. You would have a healthy response to the heresy.

But it was a convenient one as it arose, well aligned with Roman prejudices. 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, refounded Jerusalem as a pagan city, and barred Jews from entering it. To many Roman observers, Judaism now appeared stubborn, separatist, and politically dangerous.”

Marcion was wealthy, son of a bishop (yes, speaking of sin . . .), and probably thought he could buy his way into his unholy project. “He was wealthy, brilliant, disciplined, and utterly convinced that the Church had misunderstood the Gospel. Christianity, he believed, could not be reconciled with the religion of ancient Israel.” He insisted that: “The God of the Old Testament was a deity of law, wrath, judgment, and tribal violence. The Father proclaimed by Jesus Christ was a different God altogether — a God of mercy, love, and pure grace.” It was a “bold and terrifyingly simple” solution he proposed: “Cut Christianity loose from Judaism.” That meant: “Discard the Old Testament. Reject the creator God. Keep only a purified version of Luke’s Gospel and the letters of Paul.”

That doesn’t work. But if you’ve had Jewish fatigue and wanted to throw your weight around with the legitimacy of rewritten history and tradition, this was the way to go. Questions at the time included: Is Christianity merely a sect of Judaism? Heavens, no, Marcion exclaimed. “Marcion offered a radical answer. Christianity, he insisted, had nothing essentially to do with Judaism at all,” Aquilina writes.

Polycarp answered so harshly and directly because he understood something about the Marcion project 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 the 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, where Marcion was viewed as a reformer. 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.”

“Harnack did not embrace Marcion’s theology outright,” Aquilina explains. “Yet he 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.”

You can see where this is 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 did, as Aquilina explains, “admire 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. Before long, people are using it to do much more than erase Jews from the history and tradition of Christianity — but from the face of the earth.

It is imperative to remember and reject Marcionism anew because there is, not for the first time, a Christian distancing from Judaism and Israel. That’s, of course, on top of outright antisemitism we see regularly on college campuses. Add to that the existential threats Israel faces — the October 7, 2023, attacks and their reverberations being the gravest and terrifyingly contagious.

These dances with looking anew at Jews suspiciously at best are warning signs of a civilization that hasn’t learned its lessons from the past, that didn’t actually mean “never again.” The bad ideas of history repeat themselves when we are ignorant, and they align again with biases — and political agendas.

This is why Tucker Carlson giving a platform to antisemitic podcaster Nick Fuentes, and the vice president casually mouthing off on Joe Rogan, blaming Israel for Iran, cannot be shrugged off. The antisemitic posture was evil in the second century, and it is evil now. Listen to the faith of our fathers. It is ours. The other is heresy. And will leave us answering for following the wrong teachers down the darkest road. 

This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.