The Marcionite Castration Ritual

1) More ill-conducted also is Marcion than the wild beasts of that barbarous land: for is any beaver (Lat. castror) more self-castrating than this man who has abolished
marriage? [Tert Against Marcion 1.1]

2) He [Marcion] contracts no marriages, nor recognizes them when contracted, refuses baptism except to the celibate or the eunuch, keeping it back until death or divorce. How then can you call his Christ a bridegroom? This title belongs to him who has joined together male and female, not to one who has put them asunder. [Tert Against Marcion 4. 11]

3) An outrageous thing, if that god is going to make us sons to himself, who by depriving us of matrimony has made it impossible for us to get sons for ourselves. How can he promote his own to that title which he has already abolished ? I cannot become the son of a eunuch, especially when I have for Father the same one whom all things have. For just as he who is the Creator of the universe is the Father of all things, so he who is the creator of no substance is but a eunuch. Even if the Creator had not conjoined the male and the female, even if he had not granted offspring to all living creatures whatsoever, I was in this relation to him before there was paradise, before there was sin, before the expulsion, before the two became one. [ibid 4.17]

4) Among that god's adherents no flesh is baptized except it be virgin or widowed or unmarried, or has purchased baptism by divorce: as though even eunuch's flesh was born of anything but marital intercourse. [Tert Against Marcion 1.29]

5) Can anyone indeed be called abstinent when deprived of that which he is to abstain from? Is there any temperance in eating and drinking during famine? Or any putting away of ambition in poverty? Or any bridling of passion in castration? [ibid]

6) Origen on "For there are eunuchs who were born so from their mother's womb... to: Let him who can grasp it, grasp it." [Matthew 19:12]

Even Philo, in many of his writings on the Law of Moses, which are esteemed by reasonable men, says the following in the book that he titled: The Worse Loves to Attack the Better: "It is better to eunuchize oneself than to lust for unlawful cohabitation."
But one must not believe them, because they have not understood the meaning of the holy scriptures in this case. For if self control is also included among the fruits "of the Spirit" [Galatians 5:22], along with love and joy and patience and the other virtues, then one must rather emphasize self control as a fruit and preserve the body made male by God, instead of risking something else, by which one would violate the instruction that, even taken literally, is very useful: "You must not destroy the appearance of your beard!" [Leviticus 19:27]. In order to deter people who are indeed warmed to the faith, but are still too new, and to whom one must concede that they have a love of abstinence, but one that is "not based on knowledge" [Romans 10:2], the following sentence is also suited: "When people fight with one another, one with his brother" etc., up to "then your eye should know no mercy for her" [Deuteronomy 25:11-12]. For if a hand that has grabbed the testicles of a man is cut off, why not also he who submitted himself to such a danger out of ignorance of the path that leads to abstinence? Thus whoever plans to take such a rash step, should consider what he will have to suffer from those who, while relying on the word: "No one crushed or cut off shall enter the congregation of the Lord!" and counting him among the ones who are cut off, will scorn him. And here I am not even talking about what a person may suffer temporarily from the fact that the seed is obstructed, which (as the students of the physicians say) drops from the head to the male organ and while dropping through the arteries brings forth on the cheeks due to its natural heat the hairs that grow around the chins of males.

These hairs are also taken away from those who think they have to eunuchize themselves physically for the kingdom of heaven's sake. But what will they suffer except that occasionally their heads become heavy from such substance or dizziness harms their understanding and confuses their imagination so that they picture unnatural things? But before I come to the interpretation of this verse, it has yet to be said that Marcion, if he had acted with a little consistency, when he prohibited allegorical interpretations of the scripture, would have rejected these verses too as having not been said by the Savior; he would have had to consider that one would either have to accept (if one says that the Savior said this) that the one who has become a believer should dare to subject himself obediently to such things, or else, if it is not right to risk something like that, because it gives a bad reputation to the Word, one would not be able to believe that these words come from the Savior unless they could be interpreted allegorically.