Marcion is an intriguing figure in early Christian history. He has commanded attention on two topics: the church's appropriation of the scriptures of Judaism, and the emergence of a canon of specifically Christian scriptures. A major corollary of Marcion's ditheism was a sharp disparagement of the creation. His disdain for the material order found two principal expressions, namely docetic Christology and moral rigorism. Ditheism, docetism and devaluation of the material world and the body, Marcion's teaching is in other ways distinct from Christian Gnostic systems. Beyond his ditheism, what drew the strongest fire of Marcion's critics was his view of Jewish scripture. Marcion's rejection of the scriptures of Judaism amid the challenges posed by the Christian employment of Jewish scriptures, it had some appeal within the Gentile church. Marcion's activity was the sine qua non of the formation of the New Testament, and that the New Testament canon arose principally or even exclusively as a reaction to him.

From the evidence of Porphyry, drawn from Against the Christians and included by Eusebius immediately before Origen's letter, it is clear that his philosophy teacher was the Platonist Ammonius Saccas. Origen himself explained the relationship which should pertain between philosophy and Christianity in a letter to his disciple Gregory: just as geometry, music, grammar, rhetoric and astronomy are considered auxiliary to philosophy, so philosophy is an aid to Christianity. One of the positive effects of Origen's use of philosophy is that he has contributed to our knowledge of the writings and theories of earlier philosophers especially in the Contra Celsum. Hence, one can identify two basic philosophical worlds: Stoicism; and Platonism. In Origen's time Gnosticism opposed the revelation of a higher God to that of a lower, who speaks through Jewish Scripture. Two texts sum up the character of Origen's work, showing distinct degrees of his ongoing integration of theology and exegesis: On First Principles and the Commentary on John.