nature, and that nothing may inordinately desire any of the things that are contrary to nature.”15 This is the center of Basilides’ meditations: it is the problem of evil and, to speak anachronistically, of predestination. The earlier doctrines are far too developed: we would say decadent. One single affirmation of Hippolytus might make us doubt. This is when he attributes to his author the idea that the soul has no more freedom of action than the freedom of belief. It is by nature inclined to sin and will inevitably fail.

We will have to grasp the importance of the problem of evil in the writings of the Gnostic least known to us. It is the same in all Gnostic sects.16 We will not be surprised, therefore, to find, placed in the same standing, the closely related problem of Redemption.

b) Marcion17 is the one among the Gnostics who was most keenly aware of the originality of Christianity. He was aware to such a point that he turned contempt for the Jewish law into a moral. Marcion is not a

14. Ibid., VII, p. 125 [sic], in Amelineau, [Essai sur le Gnosticisme égyptien,] II, 2.
    [Hippolytus, The Refutation of All Heresies, 7.13, trans. J. H. MacMahon, in The AnteNicene Fathers, ed. A. Roberts and J. Donaldson (1870; repr., Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1989), 5:106.—Trans.]
15. Cited by Amelineau, p. 135 [sic]: “Quand tout cela sera définitivement accompli, quand toutes les formes confondues auront été dégagées, et rendues à leur place primitive, Dieu répandra une ignorance absolue sur le monde entier afin que tous les êtres qui le composent restent dans les limites de leur nature et qu’ils ne désirent rien qui en soit en dehors.” Compare this with the old Egyptian beliefs: “The rebels will become motionless during the millions of years.” Cited by Amelineau, p. 152.* [Hippolytus, The Refutation of All Heresies, 7.15, ibid., 108.—Trans.] 16. De Faye, [Gnostiques et Gnosticisme,] in his conclusion, pp. 460–63.
16. In Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem; Clement of Alexandria, Stromates; Origen, De Principiis, bk. II, chs. IV and V; and Philaster, Epiphane pseudo Tertullien; Irenaeus.

speculative thinker but a religious genius. We do not discover in him a system similar to the one of Valentinus. He has founded neither a church nor a school; his books are not original but exegetical.18 In a general way, his thought revolves around three points: first, God; second, Redemption and the person of Christ; and third, morality.
There are two divinities for Marcion: the one is superior and rules in the invisible world, the other is subordinate and is the God of this world. “Well, but our god . . . although he did not manifest himself from the beginnings and by means of the creation, has yet revealed himself in Christ Jesus.”19The God of creation is the second God, the cruel and warlike judge, the God of the Old Testament, the one who persecuted Job to prove his power to Satan, who demanded blood and battles and whose law oppressed the Jewish people.20 There is no Avestic influence here. It is not a matter of two opposing principles of equal force whose struggle sustains the world, but of a God and a demiurge between whom the fight is unequal. By stating the problem in this way, Marcion claimed to be in the truth and could rely on the Gospels (or rather, on the only Gospel he acknowledged, the Gospel of Luke): “No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it upon an old garment . . . And no one puts new wine into old wine skins.”21And again: “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit.”22Above all, he commented on the Epistle

18. De Faye, [Gnostiques et Gnosticisme,] I, 4.
19. In Adversus Marcionem, ch. VIII [sic]: “Notre Dieu n’a pas été révélé dès le commencement, il ne l’a pas été par la création; il s’est révélé lui-même en Jésus-Christ.” Cf. also Adversus MarcionemI, 16: “Consequens est ut duas species rerum visibilia et invisibilia duobus auctoribus deis dividant et ita suo deo invisibilia defendant,” and L, XVII, I, 6.
    [The first passage cited is from Tertullian, Against Marcion, 1.19, trans. P. Holmes, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. A. Roberts and J. Donaldson (1870; repr., Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1989), 3:284. The second text, quoted in Latin, is from Tertullian, Against Marcion,1.16, ibid., 282: “The only resource left to them is to divide things into two classes of visible and invisible, with two gods for their authors, and so to claim the invisible for their own, (the supreme) God.”—Trans.]
20. [There is a remarkably similar assessment of the Jewish God in The Rebel: “Until Dostoievsky and Nietzsche, rebellion is directed only against a cruel and capricious divinity—a divinity who prefers, without any convincing motive, Abel’s sacrifice to Cain’s, and by so doing, provokes the first murder.” Camus says that in this regard “it is the God of the Old Testament who is primarily responsible for mobilizing the forces of rebellion (32– 33).—Trans.]
21. Luke 5:36.
    [The reference should read: Luke 5:36–37.—Trans.]
22. Luke 6:43.

to the Galatians. And in the continual contrast that Paul makes between the Law and the Gospel, Judaism and Christianity, Marcion believed he saw proof that the two Testaments were inspired by different authors. In the writings of Valentinus also we find this idea of a creator different from the one God. But for him it is a matter of a logical solution necessitated by the problem of evil. With Marcion, on the contrary, it is the very keen sense of the novelty of Christianity that gave birth to this radical opposition. In this sense, we have been right to speak of a political23 rather than a metaphysical thought in the work of Marcion.

We see already the importance that Christ will take on for Marcion. He is nothing less than the envoy of the supreme God, sent to combat the wicked God, the creator of the world, and to deliver man from his domination. Jesus accomplished here below a revolutionary mission. If he atoned for our sins, it is through them that he combats the work of the cruel God. Emancipator as much as Redeemer, he is the instrument of a kind of metaphysical coup d’etat. “Marcion has laid down the position, that Christ who in the days of Tiberius was, by a previously unknown god, revealed for the salvation of all nations, is a different being from Him who was ordained by God for the restoration of the Jewish state, and who is yet to come. Between these he interposes the separation of a great and absolute difference—as great as lies between what is just and what is good; as great as between the law and the gospel; as great, (in short) as is the difference between Judaism and Chris tianity.”24 In support of this remarkable theory, Marcion cites a number of texts, which he interprets in his own way and which he draws mostly from Luke’s Gospel. “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent? . . . If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”25 This

23. De Faye, [Gnostiques et Gnosticisme,] p. 130.
24. Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, IV, 6: “Marcion prétend qu’il y a deux Christs; l’un est révélé au temps de Tibère par un Dieu que l’on ne connaissait pas, avec mission de sauver tous les peuples; l’autre était destiné par le Dieu créateur à restaurer Israël et devait apparaître un jour. Il fait entre ces deux Christs autant de différence qu’entre la Loi et L’Évangile, le Judaïsme et le Christianisme.”
    [Tertullian, Against Marcion, 4.6, trans. Holmes, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 3:351.—
    Trans.]
25. Luke 5:12–14, 5:27–32, 7:9–10, [chs.] 11 and 16, 18:19.
    [This list of references seems to indicate those texts from Luke on which Marcion bases his theory. The text that Camus actually quotes is from Luke 11:11, 13.—Trans.]

strange interpretation finds its crowning achievement in morality. The rule of life that Marcion proposes is ascetic. But it is a proud or arrogant asceticism. One must scorn the goods of this world out of hatred for the Creator. One must give as little influence as possible to his domination. This is Marcion’s ideal. It is a most extreme asceticism. And if Marcion preaches sexual abstinence, it is because the God of the Old Testament says: “Increase and multiply.” In this pessimistic view of the world and this proud refusal to accept can be found the resonance of a completely modern sensibility. This pessimistic view also has its source in the problem of evil. Marcion considers the world to be wicked but refuses to believe that God can be its author. If his solution revolves around Redemption, it is because he views the role of Christ in a more ambitious manner than the Christians themselves. It is a matter of nothing less than the complete destruction of creation.

c) The last two themes of Gnosticism must be considered as closely linked. For if one makes God an incommunicable and nontemporal being, one does not, for all that, give up supposing in him an interest in the world. It is necessary, then, to explain these relations between God and man and, not being able to bring into contact this nothingness and this infinite, at least to acknowledge one or more intermediaries participating at once in the divine infinity and in our finitude. To find these middle terms is more or less the great problem of the first centuries of our era. The