Book V — Historical footnotes

1890 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

We know nothing of Rhodo except what is contained in this chapter. Jerome gives a very brief account of him in his de vir. ill. 37, but it rests solely upon this chapter, with the single addition of the statement that Rhodo wrote a work Against the Phrygians. It is plain enough, however, that he had for his account no independent source, and that he in this statement simply attributed to Rhodo the work quoted by Eusebius as an anonymous work in chap. 16. Jerome permits himself such unwarranted combinations very frequently, and we need not be at all surprised at it. With him a guess is often as good as knowledge, and in this case he doubtless considered his guess a very shrewd one. There is no warrant for supposing that he himself saw the work mentioned by Eusebius, and thus learned its authorship. What Eusebius did not learn from it he certainly could not, and his whole account betrays the most slavish and complete dependence upon Eusebius as his only source. In chap. 39 Jerome mentions Rhodo again as referring, in a book which he wrote against Montanus, Prisca, and Maximilla, to Miltiades, who also wrote against the same heretics. This report is plainly enough taken directly from Eusebius, chap. 17, where Eusebius quotes from the same anonymous work. Jerome’s utterly baseless combination is very interesting, and significant of his general method. Rhodo’s works are no longer extant, and the only fragments we have are those preserved by Eusebius in this chapter.

Editorial footnote · Book V, Chapter XIII.—Rhodo and his Account of the Dissension of Marcion.; original source section: Chapter 13, editorial note cite_note-1 · Original source

1890 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

It is noticeable that Rhodo says γνώμας, opinions, not parties. Although the different Marcionites held various theoretical beliefs, which gave rise to different schools, yet they did not split up into sects, but remained one church, and retained the one general name of Marcionites, and it is by this general name alone that they are always referred to by the Fathers. The fact that they could hold such variant beliefs (e.g. one, two, or three principles; see below, note 9) without splitting up into sects, shows that doctrines were but a side issue with them, and that the religious spirit was the matter upon which they laid the chief emphasis. This shows the fundamental difference between Marcion and the Gnostics.

Editorial footnote · Book V, Chapter XIII.—Rhodo and his Account of the Dissension of Marcion.; original source section: Chapter 13, editorial note cite_note-4 · Original source

1890 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

These fragments of Rhodo are collected and discussed by Routh in his Rel. Sacræ, I. 437–446.

Editorial footnote · Book V, Chapter XIII.—Rhodo and his Account of the Dissension of Marcion.; original source section: Chapter 13, editorial note cite_note-5 · Original source

1890 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

The Fathers entirely misunderstood Marcion, and mistook the significance of his movement. They regarded it, like Gnosticism in general, solely as a speculative system, and entirely overlooked its practical aim. The speculative and theological was not the chief thing with Marcion, but it is the only thing which receives any attention from his opponents. His positions, all of which were held only with a practical interest, were not treated by him in a speculative manner, nor were they handled logically and systematically. As a consequence, many contradictions occur in them. These contradictions were felt by his followers, who laid more and more emphasis upon the speculative over against the practical; and hence, as Rhodo reports, they fell into disagreement, and, in their effort to remove the inconsistencies, formed various schools, differing among themselves according to the element upon which the greatest weight was laid. There is thus some justification for the conduct of the Fathers, who naturally carried back and attributed to Marcion the principles of his followers. But it is our duty to distinguish the man from his followers, and to recognize his greatness in spite of their littleness. Not all of them, however, fell completely away from his practical religious spirit. Apelles, as we shall see below, was in many respects a worthy follower of his master.

Editorial footnote · Book V, Chapter XIII.—Rhodo and his Account of the Dissension of Marcion.; original source section: Chapter 13, editorial note cite_note-6 · Original source

1890 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

The participle (σεμνυνόμενος) carries with it the implication that Apelles’ character was affected or assumed. The implication, however, does not lessen the value of Rhodo’s testimony to his character. He could not deny its purity, though he insinuated that it was not sincere.

Editorial footnote · Book V, Chapter XIII.—Rhodo and his Account of the Dissension of Marcion.; original source section: Chapter 13, editorial note cite_note-8 · Original source

1890 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

This means that Apelles accepted only one God, and made the creator but an angel who was completely under the power of the Supreme God. Marcion, on the contrary, held, as said below, two principles, teaching that the world-creator was himself a God, eternal, uncreated, and independent of the good God of the Christians. It is true that Marcion represented the world-creator as limited in power and knowledge, and taught that the Christian God would finally be supreme, and the world-creator become subject to him; but this, while it involves Marcion in self-contradiction as soon as the matter is looked at theoretically, yet does not relieve him from the charge of actual dualism. His followers were more consistent, and either accepted one principle, subordinating the world-creator completely to the good God, as did Apelles, or else carried out Marcion’s dualism to its logical result and asserted the continued independence of the Old Testament God and the world-creator, who was thus very early identified with Satan and made the enemy of the Christian God. (Marcion’s world-creator was not the bad God, but the righteous in distinction from the good God.) Still others held three principles: the good God of the Christians, the righteous God or world-creator, and the bad God, Satan. The varying doctrines of these schools explain the discrepant and often contradictory reports of the Fathers in regard to the doctrines of Marcion. Apelles’ doctrine was a decided advance upon that of Marcion, as he rejected the dualism of the latter, which was the destructive element in his system, and thus approached the Church, whose foundation must be one God who rules the world for good. His position is very significant, as remarked by Harnack, because it shows that one could hold Marcion’s fundamental principle without becoming a dualist.

Editorial footnote · Book V, Chapter XIII.—Rhodo and his Account of the Dissension of Marcion.; original source section: Chapter 13, editorial note cite_note-9 · Original source

1890 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

i.e. the Old Testament prophecies. Apelles in his Syllogisms (see below, note 28) exhibited the supposed contradictions of the Old Testament in syllogistic form, tracing them to two adverse angels, of whom the one spoke falsely, contradicting the truth spoken by the other. Marcion, on the other hand (in his Antitheses), referred all things to the same God, the world-creator, and from the contradictions of the book endeavored to show his vacillating and inconsistent character. He, however, accepted the Old Testament as in the main a trustworthy book, but referred the prophecies to the Jewish Messiah in distinction from the Christ of the New Testament. But Apelles, looking upon two adverse angels as the authors of the book, regarded it as in great part false. Marcion and Apelles were one, however, in looking upon it as an anti-Christian book.

Editorial footnote · Book V, Chapter XIII.—Rhodo and his Account of the Dissension of Marcion.; original source section: Chapter 13, editorial note cite_note-10 · Original source

1890 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

Of these two men we know only what is told us here. They are not mentioned elsewhere.

Editorial footnote · Book V, Chapter XIII.—Rhodo and his Account of the Dissension of Marcion.; original source section: Chapter 13, editorial note cite_note-12 · Original source

1890 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

ὁ ναύτης. This word is omitted by many mss., but is found in the best ones and in Rufinus, and is accepted by most of the editors of Eusebius. Tertullian calls Marcion a ship-master (Adv. Marc. III. 6, and IV. 9, &c.) and a pilot (ibid. I. 18), and makes many plays upon his profession (e.g. ibid. V. 1), and there is no reason to take the word in a figurative sense (as has been done) and suppose that he is called a mariner simply because of his nationality. We know that he traveled extensively, and that he was a rich man (for he gave 200,000 sesterces at one time to the church of Rome, which was a large sum for those days; see Tertullian, de Præscript. 30). There is, therefore, no reason to doubt that he was a “ship-master,” as Tertullian calls him.

Editorial footnote · Book V, Chapter XIII.—Rhodo and his Account of the Dissension of Marcion.; original source section: Chapter 13, editorial note cite_note-14 · Original source

1890 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

It was the custom of the Fathers to call the heretics hard names, and Marcion received his full share of them from his opponents, especially from Tertullian. He is compared to a wolf by Justin also, Apol. I. 58, on account of his “carrying away” so many “lambs” from the truth.

Editorial footnote · Book V, Chapter XIII.—Rhodo and his Account of the Dissension of Marcion.; original source section: Chapter 13, editorial note cite_note-15 · Original source

1890 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

Of Syneros we know only what is told us here. He is not mentioned elsewhere. Had the Marcionites split into various sects, these leaders must have been well known among the Fathers, and their names must have been frequently referred to. As it was, they all remained Marcionites, in spite of their differences of opinion (see above, note 4).

Editorial footnote · Book V, Chapter XIII.—Rhodo and his Account of the Dissension of Marcion.; original source section: Chapter 13, editorial note cite_note-17 · Original source

1890 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

διδασκ€λιον, which is the reading of the majority of the mss., and is adopted by Heinichen. Burton and Schwegler read διδασκαλεῖον, on the authority of two mss.

Editorial footnote · Book V, Chapter XIII.—Rhodo and his Account of the Dissension of Marcion.; original source section: Chapter 13, editorial note cite_note-18 · Original source

1890 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

Apelles was evidently like Marcion in his desire to keep within the Church as much as possible, and to associate with Church people. He had no esoteric doctrines to conceal from the multitude, and in this he shows the great difference between himself and the Gnostics. Marcion did not leave the Church until he was obliged to, and he founded his own church only under compulsion, upon being driven out of the Catholic community.

Editorial footnote · Book V, Chapter XIII.—Rhodo and his Account of the Dissension of Marcion.; original source section: Chapter 13, editorial note cite_note-19 · Original source

1890 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

This is a truly Christian sentiment, and Apelles should be honored for the expression of it. It reveals clearly the religious character of Marcionism in distinction from the speculative and theological character of the Gnostics, and indeed of many of the Fathers. With Marcion and Apelles we are in a world of sensitive moral principle and of deep religious feeling like that in which Paul and Augustine lived, but few others in the early Church. Rhodo, in spite of his orthodoxy, shows himself the real Gnostic over against the sincere believer, though the latter was in the eyes of the Church a “blasphemous heretic.” Apelles’ noble words do honor to the movement—however heretical it was—which in that barren age of theology could give them birth. The latter clause, taken as it stands, would seem to indicate an elevation of good works to the level of faith; but though it is possible that Apelles may have intended to express himself thus, it is more probable, when we remember the emphasis which Marcion laid upon Paul’s doctrine of salvation by the grace of God alone, that he meant to do no more than emphasize good works as a natural result of true faith, as we do to-day. The apparent co-ordination of the two may perhaps lie simply in Rhodo’s reproduction of Apelles’ words. He, at least, did not comprehend Paul’s grand doctrine of Christian liberty, nor did any of his orthodox contemporaries. The difference between the common conception of Christ’s relation to the law, and the conception of Paul as grasped by Marcion and perhaps by Apelles, is well illustrated by a passage in Tertullian, in which he expresses astonishment that the Marcionites do not sin freely, so long as they do not expect to be punished, and exclaims (to his own dishonor), “I would sin without scruple, if I believed as you do.”

Editorial footnote · Book V, Chapter XIII.—Rhodo and his Account of the Dissension of Marcion.; original source section: Chapter 13, editorial note cite_note-21 · Original source

1890 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

Rhodo had probably brought forward against Apelles proof from prophecy which led to the discussion of the Old Testament prophecies in general. Although Apelles had rejected Marcion’s dualism, and accepted the “one principle,” he still rejected the Old Testament. This is quite peculiar, and yet perfectly comprehensible; for while Marcion was indeed the only one of that age that understood Paul, yet as Harnack well says, even he misunderstood him; and neither himself nor his followers were able to rise to Paul’s noble conception of the Old Testament law as a “schoolmaster to bring us to Christ,” and thus a part of the good God’s general plan of salvation. It took, perhaps, a born Jew, as Paul was, to reach that high conception of the law in those days. To Marcion and his followers the law seemed to stand in irreconcilable conflict with the Gospel,—Jewish law on the one side, Gospel liberty on the other,—they could not reconcile them; they must, therefore, reject the former as from another being, and not from the God of the Gospel. There was in that age no historical interpretation of the Old Testament. It must either be interpreted allegorically, and made a completely Christian book, or else it must be rejected as opposed to Christianity. Marcion and his followers, in their conception of law and Gospel as necessarily opposed, could follow only the latter course. Marcion, in his rejection of the Old Testament, proceeded simply upon dogmatic presumptions. Apelles, although his rejection of it undoubtedly originated in the same presumptions, yet subjected it to a criticism which satisfied him of the correctness of his position, and gave him a fair basis of attack. His procedure was, therefore, more truly historical than that of Marcion, and anticipated modern methods of higher criticism.

Editorial footnote · Book V, Chapter XIII.—Rhodo and his Account of the Dissension of Marcion.; original source section: Chapter 13, editorial note cite_note-22 · Original source

1890 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

A true Gnostic sentiment, over against which the pious “agnosticism” of Apelles is not altogether unrefreshing. The Church did not fully conquer Gnosticism,—Gnosticism in some degree conquered the Church, and the anti-Gnostics, like Apelles, were called heretics. It was the vicious error of Gnosticism that it looked upon Christianity as knowledge, that it completely identified the two, and our existing systems of theology, some of them, testify to the fact that there are still Gnostics among us.

Editorial footnote · Book V, Chapter XIII.—Rhodo and his Account of the Dissension of Marcion.; original source section: Chapter 13, editorial note cite_note-23 · Original source

1890 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

Of this Callistio we know nothing; but, as has been remarked by another, he must have been a well-known man, or Eusebius would probably have said “a certain Callistio” (see Salmon’s article in Smith and Wace).

Editorial footnote · Book V, Chapter XIII.—Rhodo and his Account of the Dissension of Marcion.; original source section: Chapter 13, editorial note cite_note-24 · Original source

1890 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

Whether Rhodo fulfilled this promise we do not know. The work is mentioned by no one else, and Eusebius evidently had no knowledge of its existence, or he would have said so.

Editorial footnote · Book V, Chapter XIII.—Rhodo and his Account of the Dissension of Marcion.; original source section: Chapter 13, editorial note cite_note-27 · Original source

1890 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

εἰς τὴν ἑξαήμερον ὑπόμνημα. This work of Rhodo’s, on the Hexæmeron (or six days’ work), is mentioned by no one else, and no fragments of it are known to us. For a notice of other works on the same subject, see below, Bk. VI. chap. 22, note 3.

Editorial footnote · Book V, Chapter XIII.—Rhodo and his Account of the Dissension of Marcion.; original source section: Chapter 13, editorial note cite_note-28 · Original source

1890 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

Upon Marcion and Marcionism, see Bk. IV. chap. 11, note 22.

Editorial footnote · Book V, Chapter XIII.—Rhodo and his Account of the Dissension of Marcion.; original source section: Chapter 13, editorial note cite_note-3 · Original source

1890 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

Upon Tatian, see Bk. IV. chap. 29, note 1.

Editorial footnote · Book V, Chapter XIII.—Rhodo and his Account of the Dissension of Marcion.; original source section: Chapter 13, editorial note cite_note-25 · Original source

1890 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

Upon this work (προβλημ€των βιβλίον) see ibid.

Editorial footnote · Book V, Chapter XIII.—Rhodo and his Account of the Dissension of Marcion.; original source section: Chapter 13, editorial note cite_note-26 · Original source

1890 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

See Bk. IV. chap. 29.

Editorial footnote · Book V, Chapter XIII.—Rhodo and his Account of the Dissension of Marcion.; original source section: Chapter 13, editorial note cite_note-2 · Original source