Heresy

I will focus on Marcion and then comment on the Räisänen’s book.

Marcion was a heretic who said that there were two gods. The god of the OT and another god of the New Testament.  He tore the cannon of scripture in two and only accepted St Paul and select books.  I find it very difficult to accept a “sympathetic reading of Marcion”.  Räisänen has a lot to say about inter faith dialogue but I can see this tradition has missed the point.  By trying to do justice for mainline religions and heresies he has violated all.  A true dialogue has to start from where that religion is and then move into dialogue and not compromising for the sake of compromising or some type of evolutionary monstrous monad (The monad of monads).

If we are to get out of any impasse, then God has to be at the centre.  God, The Creator God who loves us.  Obviously, there are dangers along the way in which some in religion have tried to take over the world and force their version of religion on us.  I have to say here though there are many versions of this including versions that are not religious but done in a religious and fanatic way such as atheistic communism, fascism, liberalism, feminism I could go on.  This is an interesting discussion on its own