schism · 144 · Rome
Marcion was a shipowner's son from Sinope who came to Rome about 140 and gave the church there two hundred thousand sesterces, which is a fortune. In 144 he was expelled for his teaching and the money was returned. He held that the God of the Old Testament — just, jealous, the maker of a botched material world — is a different and lesser being from the Father Jesus revealed; that the Jewish scriptures are therefore not Christian scripture at all; and that the apostles had misunderstood almost everything, Paul alone excepted. To support this he assembled a canon: one gospel, an edited Luke, and ten letters of Paul, cut where they cited the law. He was not expelled and forgotten. He built a parallel church with its own bishops and its own scriptures that lasted into the fifth century in the east and was, for a generation, a serious rival. And the church answered him in the way that shaped everything after: by arguing for the unity of the two testaments, by insisting the creator is the Father, and by settling which books were its own. It is too simple to say Marcion caused the New Testament canon, and it is not simple enough to say he had nothing to do with it. He is the reason the question was asked out loud.
Which came first, Marcion's canon or the church's?
His. That is the uncomfortable part, and it is why he matters more than any other opponent here.