The Marcionite Church is pleased to announce the release of the Didascalicon, the Church’s formal book of catechesis, doctrine, and ecclesiastical instruction.
The word Didascalicon means a book of teaching. It is the ordered instruction of the Church in the gospel of Christ, the revelation of God the Father, and the apostolic doctrine delivered through Paul. Written in question-and-answer form, it provides the faithful, the catechumen, the clergy, and the inquirer with a clear guide to the faith, worship, discipline, and confession of the Marcionite Church.
The Didascalicon does not alter the canon of the Church. The Testamentum remains the Evangelicon and Apostolicon: the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and the ten epistles of Paul received in the first Christian canon. The Didascalicon explains, defends, and applies that canon so that the Church may teach with clarity, worship with order, and confess the gospel without confusion.
For too long, Marcionite Christianity has been described almost entirely by its adversaries. The Church has been accused of rejecting Christ, rejecting Scripture, or inventing a foreign religion, when in truth it proclaims the gospel of Christ crucified, the grace of God, the liberty of the sons of God, and the revelation of the Father through the Son. The Didascalicon answers these distortions directly and gives the Church a stable confession of what it teaches and why it teaches it.
The Didascalicon is arranged into eighteen lessons:
Lesson I: Foundational Questions
Lesson II: Confessional Questions
Lesson III: Canonical Questions
Lesson IV: Textual Questions
Lesson V: Scriptural Questions
Lesson VI: Historical Questions
Lesson VII: Theological Questions
Lesson VIII: Christological Questions
Lesson IX: Cosmological Questions
Lesson X: Anthropological Questions
Lesson XI: Soteriological Questions
Lesson XII: Eschatological Questions
Lesson XIII: Liturgical Questions
Lesson XIV: Sacramental Questions
Lesson XV: Calendrical Questions
Lesson XVI: Ecclesiastical Questions
Lesson XVII: Ethical Questions
Lesson XVIII: Apologetical Questions
Together, these lessons set forth the whole scope of Marcionite doctrine and practice. They teach the confession of Jesus Christ as Lord, the revelation of God the Father, the authority of the Evangelicon and Apostolicon, the primacy of Paul’s apostolic witness, the mystery of grace, the redemption of souls, the Church’s sacramental and liturgical life, the order of the calendar, the duties of the faithful, and the Church’s answer to false accusations.
The Didascalicon also clarifies the Church’s teaching on the powers and principalities, the elements of this world, the heavens, the fate of the soul, the Holy Mysteries, the Holy Rites, ordained ministry, ecclesiastical authority, and the distinction between the gospel of Christ and the Law. In doing so, it speaks in the language of Christ and Paul rather than in the hostile categories imposed by later opponents.
This release marks an important step in the restoration of Marcionite ecclesiastical life. A church cannot live by controversy alone. It must teach, baptize, worship, sanctify, discipline, and hand down the faith in an ordered form. The Didascalicon serves that purpose. It gives the Church a doctrinal instrument for catechesis, formation, clergy instruction, public apologetics, and private study.
The Didascalicon is also a summons. It calls those weary of contradiction, inherited confusion, and servitude beneath the elements of the world to return to the simplicity of the gospel of Christ: grace, liberty, faith, hope, charity, and the revelation of the Father in the Son.
The Marcionite Church gives thanks to God the Father through Jesus Christ our Lord for the completion and release of this work. May it strengthen the faithful, instruct the catechumens, answer the adversary, and bear witness to the first Christian canon and the apostolic gospel of grace.
Read the Didascalicon here.
