Friday, July 31, 2009
Aphorisms for Marcion
Traditional scholarship needs us to provide REASONS or JUSTIFICATIONS to reject the inherited model of Christianity. They inevitably couch all references to Marcion in language and terminology wholly derived from the hostile propaganda of the Church Fathers. Indeed when we call them out for their uncritical citations of Patristic texts they challenge us to justify our suspicions of the biased reports about Marcion in their Church Fathers.
By the time we finishing all these seemingly endless cycles of reasoning and justifying we discover the original audience for our debate has gone away.
"A victory for Christ Jesus," our opponents mutter to themselves.
The moral of the story is our adversaries always go into the game looking for a draw. A tie means that their agenda wins. Their story of a man who was both mortal and immortal, who assumed flesh to take on sin but was without sin, who was the messiah of the Jews but never ruled as king of the Jews defeats any reasoned argument to the contrary simply because we couldn't knock them off the top of the hill.
That's why each of you must remember in all you do and say - make sure you knock them off the hill.
Losers don't get a second chance in this game.
By the time we finishing all these seemingly endless cycles of reasoning and justifying we discover the original audience for our debate has gone away.
"A victory for Christ Jesus," our opponents mutter to themselves.
The moral of the story is our adversaries always go into the game looking for a draw. A tie means that their agenda wins. Their story of a man who was both mortal and immortal, who assumed flesh to take on sin but was without sin, who was the messiah of the Jews but never ruled as king of the Jews defeats any reasoned argument to the contrary simply because we couldn't knock them off the top of the hill.
That's why each of you must remember in all you do and say - make sure you knock them off the hill.
Losers don't get a second chance in this game.
Email stephan.h.huller@gmail.com with comments or questions.