The Dialekticon is an ecclesiastical book of the Marcionite Church, consisting of Marcionite dialogues and disputations. Dialogue and disputation were ancient forms of Christian literature, used for instruction, controversy, catechesis, and the orderly expression of theology. The Church does not receive the Dialekticon as canonical Scripture or as Deuterocanon, but as an ecclesiastical book useful for teaching doctrine, defending the faith, and showing how Marcionite theology answers error.
At present, the Church has reconstructed one such dialogue: the Dialogue of Megethius Against Hermogenes Concerning Matter, set in 185 C.E. This dialogue presents Megethius as the Marcionite teacher and Hermogenes as the opposing disputant concerning matter, evil, creation, and the origin of the visible world-order. As is common in ancient Christian dialogues, the Church does not require that the disputation happened literally in the exact form presented here, nor does the Church claim that every speech records a stenographic historical exchange. The dialogue form is a teaching instrument: it sets opposing doctrines side by side, tests them by reason and faith, and instructs the Church through ordered disputation.
Why Hermogenes?
Hermogenes is used as the opposing disputant because he was a fitting historical and theological interlocutor. He was a near contemporary of several known Marcionite teachers and advanced a doctrine concerning matter that ancient heresiologists themselves compared and contrasted with Marcionite doctrine. Hermogenes taught that matter was uncreated and eternal, whereas the Church confesses that matter is created, morally neutral, and subordinate to God.
By the time of the later Dialogue of Adamantius, however, Hermogenes and his school were no longer a living or prominent stream of controversy. For this reason, the older Hermogenean dispute over matter appears to have been displaced, confused, or reapplied to other heretical opponents, especially Valentinians. The Dialekticon restores Hermogenes as the more natural disputant for this controversy.
The Confusion of the Heresiologists
The reconstruction also helps explain the confusion among heresiologists concerning Marcionite belief about matter. Some witnesses speak as though Marcionites held a distinct principle of matter, while others do not describe Marcionite doctrine in that way. The Dialogue of Megethius clarifies the distinction.
The Church does not teach eternal matter, evil matter, or matter as a rival god. Rather, it teaches that matter is created and morally neutral, while the present visible world-order is fashioned mediately by lower powers and is subject to corruption, bondage, and death. This distinction could easily be misunderstood or distorted by hostile witnesses who treated every separation between God the Father, matter, and the lower world-order as though it were a doctrine of co-eternal principles.
The Reconstruction of the Dialogue
The reconstruction follows two principal lines of recovery. First, the Church receives the theory of J. Rendel Harris that a section preserved in Methodius’ On Free Will originally belonged to the opening of a Marcionite treatise or disputation. Second, the Church adds Stephan Huller’s theory that the fragments attributed to Maximus concerning matter were originally connected with Megethius.
The names themselves support the possibility of confusion or substitution: Megethius and Maximus are semantically related, both bearing the sense of greatness, one in Greek form and the other in Latin form. Later witnesses after Eusebius, namely Jerome and Epiphanius, attribute Maximus to an otherwise obscure bishop of Jerusalem; the Church judges that this may reflect a later process by which originally Marcionite material was disguised, displaced, or reattributed.
Both streams of material eventually appear to have entered the Dialogue of Adamantius, though in altered, shortened, rearranged, and reattributed form. The Philocalia is also important, as Huller notes, because it helps connect part of the Maximus material with the later Adamantius tradition. The Church therefore restores the Methodius material, following Harris’ theory, and the Maximus/Megethius material, following Huller’s theory, arranging both into one flowing dialogue on matter and evil.
The English form of the Dialogue of Megethius is therefore not a translation from one complete surviving manuscript. It is an ecclesiastical reconstruction and translation, rendered in the scriptural style of the Testamentum, from the surviving ancient witnesses and parallels. The Methodius portion is drawn from the material preserved in Methodius’ On Free Will. The Maximus portion is drawn chiefly from the fragments concerning matter and the origin of evil preserved by Eusebius, especially in the Praeparatio Evangelica, together with the related notices and parallels by which this material was later connected to the Adamantius tradition and the Philocalia.
Public-domain English renderings of these ancient materials were consulted where useful. The Church then restored, harmonized, and arranged the material into a single flowing disputation, recast it into KJV/Jacobean English, and applied the chapter-and-verse structure for liturgical, catechetical, and ecclesiastical use.
The Catholic Reworking of the Material
The Church judges that later Catholic editors and interpolators did not wish Marcionites to appear reasonable, philosophically careful, or theologically detailed in their arguments concerning matter. Therefore, in later forms of the material, the Marcionite side was made to appear heretical or confused, while the original position of Megethius was transferred to an allegedly orthodox speaker. The Dialekticon restores this material to its proper Marcionite setting.
This does not mean that the Dialekticon is presented as a newly discovered manuscript or a verbatim transcript of an ancient debate. It is an ecclesiastical reconstruction: a restored teaching dialogue, built from surviving witnesses, arranged according to the Church’s received doctrine, and given for the instruction of the faithful.
The Argument of Megethius
The basic argument of Megethius is that matter is not eternal, uncreated, or co-equal with God. If matter is compound, it must depend upon simpler principles and therefore cannot be without beginning. If matter is made a second uncreated principle beside God, then God is no longer confessed as supreme over all. If matter is placed within God, then disorder and evil are placed within God. If God is placed within matter, then God is contained and circumscribed by matter. Therefore the doctrine of co-eternal matter fails.
Megethius also teaches that evil is not a substance. Evil is not matter itself, nor is matter wicked by nature. Evil belongs to disorder, corruption, bondage, passion, misuse, false rule, and sinful action. Thus the Church rejects both the Hermogenean error that matter is eternal and the Manichaean error that matter is evil.
Matter is created and morally neutral. God the Father gives being from nothing through the Logos. The lower powers fashion the visible world-order from created matter. The corruption of this world-order does not make God the Father the author of evil.
Why the Dialekticon Matters
The Dialekticon is valuable to the Church because it strengthens the doctrine of created matter, guards against dualism, explains evil without making God its author, and teaches the faithful to distinguish matter, the visible world, the world-order, and the kingdom of God.
It also helps clarify the Church’s doctrine against several errors. Against Hermogenes, the Church denies that matter is eternal. Against the Manichaeans, the Church denies that matter is evil. Against strict dualism, the Church denies that there are two co-eternal gods or two ultimate principles. Against those who confuse the Father with the visible world-order, the Church teaches that God the Father gives being through the Logos, while the lower powers fashion and govern the corruptible order below.
Because the Dialekticon is an ecclesiastical reconstruction, it is read as a teaching book of the Church and not as canonical Scripture, not as Deuterocanon, not as a verbatim transcript, and not as a translation of one complete surviving manuscript. It is useful for doctrine, catechesis, theological instruction, and the defense of the faith.
For further study within the Testamentum, see the Church’s teaching on the origin of matter, the rejection of eternal matter, creation out of nothing, the rejection of co-eternal matter, the non-substantiality of evil, and deferred demiurgy.
