When the Roman governor Pliny the Younger wrote to Emperor Trajan around 112 AD, he unknowingly preserved one of the earliest and most evident testimonies of the true Christian Church—not shaped by Judaism, the Hebrew Scriptures, or the Law, but by the pure Gospel of Paul, revealed not from earth but from the heavens above.
The Christian community Pliny described in his famous letter (Epistulae X.96) bore none of the features of Judaism and none of the marks of the Petrine religion that would come to dominate Rome. What he found in Pontus was a radically different form of Christianity: spiritual, egalitarian, non-Judaizing, and morally upright—not by the Law of Moses, but by the revelation of God the Father through His Son.
At the very time Pliny penned this letter, Marcion of Sinope—by all early accounts the bishop of that city and a son of one of its former bishops—was leading the faithful in the capital of Pontus. What Pliny recorded was not a fringe sect. It was the true Church, alive in the land of Paul, free from the Law, and already bearing fruit. It was this Gospel that Marcion would later defend before the world.
Marcion, Bishop of Sinope
Sinope, the capital of Pontus, was Marcion’s birthplace and spiritual home. Raised by his Christian father, Philologus, who served as a bishop after being ordained by the Apostle Andrew, was one of the Seventy, and a companion of the Apostle Paul. Marcion belonged to that same Pauline tradition of his father that had taken deep root in the region long before Rome’s influence arrived. When Pliny investigated the Christian movement in his province, he found a faith that perfectly matched what Marcionites would later call the “Gospel of the Stranger God”—a Gospel not of Judaism refined, but of Judaism rejected.
Marcion did not invent this Church. He inherited it. He did not create a new gospel. He preserved the one Paul had preached among the Gentiles of Asia Minor. His later rejection of the Petrine system in Rome was not heresy—it was a matter of fidelity.
A New Revelation from God the Father
Pliny reported that Christians gathered before dawn on a fixed day to “sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god.” This was not the messianic worship of a Jewish redeemer, but the exaltation of Christ as the divine emissary of God the Father, wholly distinct from the deity worshipped in the synagogue. The Law is absent. The name of Yahweh is nowhere mentioned. There is no reference to the Sabbath, the Prophets, the Passover, or the Torah.
These Christians bound themselves not by Mosaic precepts, but by an ethical oath: to abstain from theft, fraud, adultery, and perjury. In other words, they lived by conscience, not commandments. They walked by grace, not Law. Their faith was the product of a higher revelation—a spiritual Gospel, not an earthly one.
Singing Psalms to Christ
Pliny’s description of their early morning worship—singing hymns to Christ “as to a god”—perfectly mirrors what would become the Psalmicon of the Marcionite Church. These were not temple psalms inherited from David, but spiritual hymns composed by believers, glorifying the Son who came from beyond this world.
They sang not to Yahweh, but to Christ—because they knew His Father was not the god of Israel, but the eternal and unknown God, now revealed.
Female Deaconesses and Spiritual Equality
One of the most striking details in Pliny’s account is his interrogation of two ministrae—female ministers or deaconesses. This detail cannot be overstated. Long before the Roman Church forbade women from the altar, here were women leading and serving within the Pauline assemblies of Pontus.
This aligns fully with Marcionite ecclesiology, where women served openly in some leadership roles, prayer, and liturgical functions. As Paul declared, “In Christ there is neither male nor female”—a truth the Petrine church would later suppress, but which Marcionite Christians preserved.
The Agape Meal, Not the Jewish Passover
Pliny noted that after their morning worship, the Christians would reassemble to share food “of an ordinary and innocent kind.” This was not a Jewish Seder or sacrificial rite. It was the agape—the love-feast that bound believers together in equality and joy.
It was not an offering to an altar, but fellowship around a table. It was not a ritual blood sacrifice, but a holy meal in the Spirit. Rome would later suppress this by merging and concealing it into their emerging liturgy, but in Pontus, it was still the supper of freedom.
No Place for the Law or Its Apostles
Pliny’s report lacks any mention of Moses, the Prophets, or the Law. There is no trace of Sabbath observance, circumcision, or Jewish ritual. This was not a sect of Judaism—it was the repudiation of it.
The apostles of the circumcision—who sought to tether the Gospel to the Law—had no authority in Pontus. The Christians Pliny encountered followed the teachings of Paul, not Peter. They belonged to the God revealed by Christ, not the god who thundered from Sinai.
To confuse the Father of Christ with the deity called Yahweh is to mistake light for darkness, mercy for vengeance, and liberty for bondage.
Marcion’s Evangelizing Success
Pliny marveled at how far this “superstition” had spread, noting that “the contagion of this superstition has spread not only through the cities but also through the rural areas.” He lamented the decline of pagan sacrifices and the abandonment of temples.
What he observed was not the rise of a fringe sect, but the fruit of Pauline evangelism under Marcion’s episcopacy. The Gospel had taken hold in Pontus so powerfully that it threatened the very religious fabric of the empire. What Pliny condemned as a plague, we know to be the liberating work of God the Father through His Son.
Pliny saw it as superstition. We know it was the overthrow of the devils.
A Roman Witness to the True Church
Pliny’s letter offers no glimpse of Peter, no echo of Jerusalem, and no hint of the Hebrew Bible. What he described—perhaps unknowingly—was the Church of Paul, the Gospel of God the Father, and the worship of Christ alone.
In this short report, we see the essential traits of the Marcionite Church already present:
- Worship of Christ as divine, apart from Yahweh
- Psalms sung to the Son of God the Father
- Female deaconesses serving openly
- Agape meals replacing sacrifice
- Total absence of the Hebrew Bible and its law
This was not the Church of Peter. It was the Church of Paul. And through Marcion, it endured.
Before Rome built its altars, before Peter’s heirs claimed the keys, the Church was already alive in Pontus—singing hymns to the Son of God the Father.
And Marcion was there, guarding the flame.
