“Because Marcion was a widely acknowledge heretic”
Ok - again. Why would he claim that his canon was the ‘official canon’ if there existed an Apostolic canon? Marcion wasn’t stupid. At the time there was no canon. Marcion took advantage of this to publish his own!
Sorta like that Martin Luther fella, except Marcion didn’t have the chutzpah tear books he hated out. And sorta like that Mormon dude, except he didn’t invent his own Gospel.
“If you are going to use widely acknowledged heretics as evidence then no Christian theology has ever been established because there have always been heretics challenging orthodoxy”
I am arguing that at the time of Marcion there existed no apostolic canon. This is, in fact, true. The response of the Church fathers wasn’t, “you’re a moron. This is the correct list of books, begone”. Their response was, “this is a problem. We need to come up with a list of official books to counter Marcion’s teachings”.
For the same reason he rejected lots of orthodoxy. He also rejected the Gospel as well as the Apostles creed as we understand it, are you saying there was no generally accepted Gospel or Apostles creed at the time since Marcion rejected them? The Gnostics rejected the Gospel at that time too, so there must not have been any generally accepted orthodoxy of the Gospel back then since the Gnostics didn't accept it.
Which books did Luther "tear out"? He considered James an "epistle of straw" but he still included it at the end of his translation. As well as all the other books.