512 - Marcion (Second Century A.D.)

Marcion (Second Century A.D.)
By Harold McCurdy

Marcion has had, and still has, many followers in later times, probably unconscious of being so.
-Christopher Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln 1881

Marcion of Pontus, and a Bishop's son,
Whom Polycarp at Rome anathematized
As the first-born of Satan, wished to purge
Both Testaments, the Old and New as well,
Of errors and botched faith, among them being
Those major crimes of God the Father Almighty,
Matter and Marriage and Incarnation.

Matter, he held, was evil, wherewith we
Are burdened, and especially by Wives,
And, more especially, Mothers. Therefore Christ
Was tainted, and by Resurrection had sinned
Most carnally and obscenely.

"Fly," cried Marcion,
"The filthy Demiurge, who prompts to lust
And copulation that this vain vile world
Might be repeopled and more souls be lost
By mothering Matter in the labyrinth
Of her abominations, locked in Time.
Break out of Jail! I had a mother once,
Two mothers, in fact. One was called the Church,
The corporal, visible, pregnant Bride of Christ.
I thank the jealousy of my Bishop father
Whose shepherd's crook ejected me from her.
By excommunication I was saved!

A frequent contributor to THEOLOGY TODAY, Harold McCurdy is Professor of Psychology Emeritus at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He has published six volumes of poetry.

513 - Marcion (Second Century A.D.)

"Be, then, like me. And as, self-worshiped, I
Adore myself, do you adore me, too;
Whom if you worship, you shall surely rise
Unbodied, uncommunicating, free,
Into the Absolute, the wholesome Void,
Where Matter is not, and no high-born stars
Twinkle delusively, nor the gross Earth squats
Suckling her little earthlings like a sow
Or like the she-wolf of the Lupercal.

"Faw! I can smell her still, smeared with Christ's blood:
Which I wipe off, dear children, in the name
Of Marcion and Carpocrates and Christ."