Marcion's love of creation (Second-century Christian sacramental practice and asceticism)

Although Marcion is often said to have rejected matter as inherently evil, Marcionite sacramental practice and asceticism suggest a more complex and s pecific set of attitudes to material things and practices. Later heresiolog ists analyzed Marcion's rather negative cosmogony and saw inconsistency, bu t Marcionite Christianity was less concerned with the origins of things tha n with their significance in light of the new creative work of the loving S tranger god. What Marcion despised was arguably the order ("kosmos") of cre ation, rather than the mere fact of it. If the higher god saves human being s, who are part of the Creator's work and without affinity to that "Strange r", then by analogy the use of water in baptism or bread in the Eucharist m ay be understood as the ritual reconfiguration of matter into the new order willed by its "new master and proprietor".