Marcion may very well be considered the first heretic.

Two reasons justify this thesis. On the one hand, it is the first Christian who decides to separate from the Church for doctrinal reasons. Furthermore, it is someone from the knowledge of the orthodox doctrine deliberately chooses to deviate from it, to the point of creating its own canon, to maintain the existence of two Gods (one bad and one good) and found their own church.

The image we have today it is determined by the passionate writings of Adolf Harnack, Marcion he saw as a model of Protestant reformer ahead of his time. However, the detailed study of Sebastian Moll highlights that Harnack projected in Marcion their ideas, a Lutheran theologian own nineteenth century, but not of a Christian of the second century.

This monograph presents the life, doctrine, and church writings of Marcion from a historical perspective critical. He notes while the influence this Christian figure of antiquity had in the Great Church, for example, when taking the Old Testament and establish the canon of the New Testament writings.

Sebastian Moll (Cologne, 1980) is a professor at the Faculty of Evangelical Theology at the University of Mainz.