The Nag Hammadi Library
http://www.gnosis.org/library/valentinus/index.html
The Gospel of Truth
Translated by Harold W. Attridge and George W. MacRae
The gospel of truth is joy for those who have received from the Father of truth the grace of knowing him, through the power of the Word that came forth from the pleroma, the one who is in the thought and the mind of the Father, that is, the one who is addressed as ‘the Savior’, (that) being the name of the work he is to perform for the redemption of those who were ignorant of the Father, while in the name of the gospel is the proclamation of hope, being discovery for those who search for him.
When the totality went about searching for the one from whom they had come forth – and the totality was inside of him, the incomprehensible, inconceivable one who is superior to every thought – ignorance of the Father brought about anguish and terror; and the anguish grew solid like a fog, so that no one was able to see. For this reason, error became powerful; it worked on its own matter foolishly, not having known the truth. It set about with a creation, preparing with power and beauty the substitute for the truth.
This was not, then, a humiliation for him, the incomprehensible, inconceivable one, for they were nothing, the anguish and the oblivion and the creature of deceit, while the established truth is immutable, imperturbable, perfect in beauty. For this reason, despise error.
Thus, it had no root; it fell into a fog regarding the Father, while it was involved in preparing works and oblivions and terrors, in order that by means of these it might entice those of the middle and capture them.
The oblivion of error was not revealed. It is not a […] from the Father. Oblivion did not come into existence from the Father, although it did indeed come into existence because of him. But what comes into existence in him is knowledge, which appeared in order that oblivion might vanish and the Father might be known. Since oblivion came into existence because the Father was not known, then if the Father comes to be known, oblivion will not exist from that moment on.
Through this, the gospel of the one who is searched for, which revealed to those who are perfect, through the mercies of the Father, the hidden mystery, Jesus, the Christ, enlightened those who were in darkness through oblivion. He enlightened them; he showed (them) a way; and the way is the truth which he taught them.
For this reason, error grew angry at him, persecuted him, was distressed at him, (and) was brought to naught. He was nailed to a tree (and) he became fruit of the knowledge of the Father. It did not, however, cause destruction because it was eaten, but to those who ate it, it gave (cause) to become glad in the discovery, and he discovered them in himself, and they discovered him in themselves.
As for the incomprehensible, inconceivable one, the Father, the perfect one, the one who made the totality, within him is the totality, and of him the totality has need. Although he retained their perfection within himself, which he did not give to the totality, the Father was not jealous. What jealousy indeed (could there be) between himself and his members? For if this aeon had thus received their perfection, they could not have come […] the Father. He retains within himself their perfection, granting it to them as a return to him, and a perfectly unitary knowledge. It is he who fashioned the totality, and within him is the totality, and the totality was in need of him.
As in the case of a person of whom some are ignorant, he wishes to have them know him and love him, so – for what did the totality have need of if not knowledge regarding the Father? – he became a guide, restful and leisurely. In schools he appeared, (and) he spoke the word as a teacher. There came the men wise in their own estimation, putting him to the test. But he confounded them, because they were foolish. They hated him, because they were not really wise.
After all these, there came the little children also, those to whom the knowledge of the Father belongs. Having been strengthened, they learned about the impressions of the Father. They knew, they were known; they were glorified, they glorified. There was manifested in their heart the living book of the living – the one written in the thought and the mind of the Father, which from before the foundation of the totality was within his incomprehensibility – that (book) which no one was able to take, since it remains for the one who will take it to be slain. No one could have become manifest from among those who have believed in salvation unless that book had appeared. For this reason, the merciful one, the faithful one, Jesus, was patient in accepting sufferings until he took that book, since he knows that his death is life for many.
Just as there lies hidden in a will, before it is opened, the fortune of the deceased master of the house, so (it is) with the totality, which lay hidden while the Father of the totality was invisible, being something which is from him, from whom every space comes forth. For this reason Jesus appeared; he put on that book; he was nailed to a tree; he published the edict of the Father on the cross. O such great teaching! He draws himself down to death, though life eternal clothes him. Having stripped himself of the perishable rags, he put on imperishability, which no one can possibly take away from him. Having entered the empty spaces of terrors, he passed through those who were stripped naked by oblivion, being knowledge and perfection, proclaiming the things that are in the heart, […] teach those who will receive teaching.
But those who are to receive teaching are the living, who are inscribed in the book of the living. It is about themselves that they receive instruction, receiving it from the Father, turning again to him. Since the perfection of the totality is in the Father, it is necessary for the totality to ascend to him. Then, if one has knowledge, he receives what are his own, and draws them to himself. For he who is ignorant is in need, and what he lacks is great, since he lacks that which will make him perfect. Since the perfection of the totality is in the Father, and it is necessary for the totality to ascend to him, and for each one to receive what are his own, he enrolled them in advance, having prepared them to give to those who came forth from him.
Those whose name he knew in advance were called at the end, so that one who has knowledge is the one whose name the Father has uttered. For he whose name has not been spoken is ignorant. Indeed, how is one to hear, if his name has not been called? For he who is ignorant until the end is a creature of oblivion, and he will vanish along with it. If not, how is it that these miserable ones have no name, (that) they do not have the call? Therefore, if one has knowledge, his is from above. If he is called, he hears, he answers, and he turns to him who is calling him, and ascends to him. And he knows in what manner he is called. Having knowledge, he does the will of the one who called him, he wishes to be pleasing to him, he receives rest. Each one’s name comes to him. He who is to have knowledge in this manner knows where he comes from and where he is going. He knows as one who, having become drunk, has turned away from his drunkenness, (and) having returned to himself, has set right what are his own.
He has brought many back from error. He has gone before them to their places, from which they had moved away, since it was on account of the depth that they received error, the depth of the one who encircles all spaces, while there is none that encircles him. It was a great wonder that they were in the Father, not knowing him, and (that) they were able to come forth by themselves, since they were unable to comprehend or to know the one in whom they were. For if his will had not thus emerged from him – for he revealed it in view of a knowledge in which all its emanations concur.
This is the knowledge of the living book, which he revealed to the aeons at the end as his letters, revealing how they are not vowels nor are they consonants, so that one might read them and think of something foolish, but (rather that) they are letters of the truth, which they alone speak who know them. Each letter is a complete , like a complete book, since they are letters written by the Unity, the Father having written them for the aeons, in order that by means of his letters they should know the Father.
While his wisdom contemplates the Word, and his teaching utters it, his knowledge has revealed . While forebearance is a crown upon it, and his gladness is in harmony with it, his glory has exalted it, his image has revealed it, his repose has received it into itself, his love has made a body over it, his fidelity has embraced it. In this way, the Word of the Father goes forth in the totality, as the fruit of his heart and an impression of his will. But it supports the totality, purifying them, bringing them back into the Father, into the Mother, Jesus of the infinite sweetness.
The Father reveals his bosom. – Now his bosom is the Holy Spirit. – He reveals what is hidden of him – what is hidden of him is his Son – so that through the mercies of the Father, the aeons may know him and cease laboring in search of the Father, resting there in him, knowing that this is the (final) rest. Having filled the deficiency, he abolished the form – the form of it is the world, that in which he served. – For the place where there is envy and strife is deficient, but the place where (there is) Unity is perfect. Since the deficiency came into being because the Father was not known, therefore, when the Father is known, from that moment on, the deficiency will no longer exist. As in the case of the ignorance of a person, when he comes to have knowledge, his ignorance vanishes of itself, as the darkness vanishes when the light appears, so also the deficiency vanishes in the perfection. So from that moment on, the form is not apparent, but it will vanish in the fusion of Unity, for now their works lie scattered. In time, Unity will perfect the spaces. It is within Unity that each one will attain himself; within knowledge, he will purify himself from multiplicity into Unity, consuming matter within himself like fire, and darkness by light, death by life.
If indeed these things have happened to each one of us, then we must see to it above all that the house will be holy and silent for the Unity – as in the case of some people who moved out of dwellings having jars that in spots were not good. They would break them, and the master of the house would not suffer loss. Rather, is glad, because in place of the bad jars (there are) full ones which are made perfect. For such is the judgment which has come from above. It has passed judgment on everyone; it is a drawn sword, with two edges, cutting on either side. When the Word appeared, the one that is within the heart of those who utter it – it is not a sound alone, but it became a body – a great disturbance took place among the jars, because some had been emptied, others filled; that is, some had been supplied, others poured out, some had been purified, still others broken up. All the spaces were shaken and disturbed, because they had no order nor stability. Error was upset, not knowing what to do; it was grieved, in mourning, afflicting itself because it knew nothing. When knowledge drew near it – this is the downfall of (error) and all its emanations – error is empty, having nothing inside.
Truth appeared; all its emanations knew it. They greeted the Father in truth with a perfect power that joins them with the Father. For, as for everyone who loves the truth – because the truth is the mouth of the Father; his tongue is the Holy Spirit – he who is joined to the truth is joined to the Father’s mouth by his tongue, whenever he is to receive the Holy Spirit, since this is the manifestation of the Father, and his revelation to his aeons.
He manifested what was hidden of him; he explained it. For who contains, if not the Father alone? All the spaces are his emanations. They have known that they came forth from him, like children who are from a grown man. They knew that they had not yet received form, nor yet received a name, each one of which the Father begets. Then, when they receive form by his knowledge, though truly within him, they do not know him. But the Father is perfect, knowing every space within him. If he wishes, he manifests whomever he wishes, by giving him form and giving him a name, and he gives a name to him, and brings it about that those come into existence who, before they come into existence, are ignorant of him who fashioned them.
I do not say, then, that they are nothing (at all) who have not yet come into existence, but they are in him who will wish that they come into existence when he wishes, like the time that is to come. Before all things appear, he knows what he will produce. But the fruit which is not yet manifest does not know anything, nor does it do anything. Thus also, every space which is itself in the Father is from the one who exists, who established it from what does not exist. For he who has no root has no fruit either, but though he thinks to himself, “I have come into being,” yet he will perish by himself. For this reason, he who did not exist at all will never come into existence. What, then, did he wish him to think of himself? This: “I have come into being like the shadows and phantoms of the night.” When the light shines on the terror which that person had experienced, he knows that it is nothing.
Thus, they were ignorant of the Father, he being the one whom they did not see. Since it was terror and disturbance and instability and doubt and division, there were many illusions at work by means of these, and (many) empty fictions, as if they were sunk in sleep, and found themselves in disturbing dreams. Either (there is) a place to which they are fleeing, or without strength they come (from) having chased after others, or they are involved in striking blows, or they are receiving blows themselves, or they have fallen from high places, or they take off into the air, though they do not even have wings. Again, sometimes (it is as) if people were murdering them, though there is no one even pursuing them, or they themselves are killing their neighbors, for they have been stained with their blood. When those who are going through all these things wake up, they see nothing, they who were in the midst of all these disturbances, for they are nothing. Such is the way of those who have cast ignorance aside from them like sleep, not esteeming it as anything, nor do they esteem its works as solid things either, but (rather,) they leave them behind like a dream in the night. The knowledge of the Father, they value as the dawn. This is the way each one has acted, as though asleep at the time when he was ignorant. And this is the way he has , as if he had awakened. {and} Good for the man who will return and awaken. And blessed is he who has opened the eyes of the blind.
And the Spirit ran after him, hastening from waking him up. Having extended his hand to him who lay upon the ground, he set him up on his feet, for he had not yet risen. He gave them the means of knowing the knowledge of the Father and the revelation of his Son. For when they had seen him and had heard him, he granted them to taste him, and to smell him, and to touch the beloved Son.
When he had appeared, instructing them about the Father, the incomprehensible one, when he had breathed into them what is in the thought, doing his will, when many had received the light, they turned to him. For the material ones were strangers, and did not see his likeness, and had not known him. For he came by means of fleshly form, while nothing blocked his course, because incorruptibility is irresistible, since he, again, spoke new things, still speaking about what is in the heart of the Father, having brought forth the flawless Word.
When light had spoken through his mouth, as well as his voice, which gave birth to life, he gave them thought and understanding, and mercy and salvation, and the powerful spirit from the infiniteness and the sweetness of the Father. Having made punishments and tortures cease – for it was they which were leading astray from his face some who were in need of mercy, in error and in bonds – he both destroyed them with power and confounded them with knowledge. He became a way for those who were gone astray, and knowledge for those who were ignorant, a discovery for those who were searching, and a support for those who were wavering, immaculateness for those who were defiled.
He is the shepherd who left behind the ninety-nine sheep which were not lost. He went searching for the one which had gone astray. He rejoiced when he found it, for ninety-nine is a number that is in the left hand, which holds it. But when the one is found, the entire number passes to the right (hand). As that which lacks the one – that is, the entire right (hand) – draws what was deficient and takes it from the left-hand side and brings (it) to the right, so too the number becomes one hundred. It is the sign of the one who is in their sound; it is the Father. Even on the Sabbath, he labored for the sheep which he found fallen into the pit. He gave life to the sheep, having brought it up from the pit, in order that you might know interiorly – you, the sons of interior knowledge – what is the Sabbath, on which it is not fitting for salvation to be idle, in order that you may speak from the day from above, which has no night, and from the light which does not sink, because it is perfect.
Say, then, from the heart, that you are the perfect day, and in you dwells the light that does not fail. Speak of the truth with those who search for it, and (of) knowledge to those who have committed sin in their error. Make firm the foot of those who have stumbled, and stretch out your hands to those who are ill. Feed those who are hungry, and give repose to those who are weary, and raise up those who wish to rise, and awaken those who sleep. For you are the understanding that is drawn forth. If strength acts thus, it becomes even stronger. Be concerned with yourselves; do not be concerned with other things which you have rejected from yourselves. Do not return to what you have vomited, to eat it. Do not be moths. Do not be worms, for you have already cast it off. Do not become a (dwelling) place for the devil, for you have already destroyed him. Do not strengthen (those who are) obstacles to you, who are collapsing, as though (you were) a support (for them). For the lawless one is someone to treat ill, rather than the just one. For the former does his work as a lawless person; the latter as a righteous person does his work among others. So you, do the will of the Father, for you are from him.
For the Father is sweet, and in his will is what is good. He has taken cognizance of the things that are yours, that you might find rest in them. For by the fruits does one take cognizance of the things that are yours, because the children of the Father are his fragrance, for they are from the grace of his countenance. For this reason, the Father loves his fragrance, and manifests it in every place. And if it mixes with matter, he gives his fragrance to the light, and in his repose, he causes it to surpass every form (and) every sound. For it is not the ears that smell the fragrance, but (it is) the breath that has the sense of smell and attracts the fragrance to itself, and is submerged in the fragrance of the Father, so that he thus shelters it, and takes it to the place where it came from, from the first fragrance, which is grown cold. It is something in a psychic form, being like cold water which has frozen (?), which is on earth that is not solid, of which those who see it think it is earth; afterwards, it dissolves again. If a breath draws it, it gets hot. The fragrances, therefore, that are cold are from the division. For this reason, faith came; it dissolved the division, and it brought the warm pleroma of love, in order that the cold should not come again, but (that) there should be the unity of perfect thought.
This the word of the gospel of the discovery of the pleroma, for those who await the salvation which is coming from on high. While their hope, for which they are waiting, is in waiting – they whose image is light with no shadow in it – then, at that time, the pleroma is proceeding to come. The of matter came to be not through the limitlessness of the Father, who is coming to give time for the deficiency, although no one could say that the incorruptible one would come in this way. But the depth of the Father was multiplied, and the thought of error did not exist with him. It is a thing that falls, (and) it is a thing that easily stands upright (again), in the discovery of him who has come to him whom he shall bring back. For the bringing-back is called ‘repentence’.
For this reason, incorruptibility breathed forth; it pursued the one who had sinned, in order that he might rest. For forgiveness is what remains for the light in the deficiency, the word of the pleroma. For the physician runs to the place where sickness is, because that is the will that is in him. He who has a deficiency, then, does not hide it, because one has what the other lacks. So the pleroma, which has no deficiency, but (which) fills up the deficiency, is what he provided from himself for filling up what he lacks, in order that therefore he might receive the grace. For when he was deficient, he did not have the grace. That is why there was diminution existing in the place where there is no grace. When that which was diminished was received, he revealed what he lacked, being (now) a pleroma; that is the discovery of the light of truth which rose upon him because it is immutable.
That is why Christ was spoken of in their midst, so that those who were disturbed might receive a bringing-back, and he might anoint them with the ointment. This ointment is the mercy of the Father, who will have mercy on them. But those whom he has anointed are the ones who have become perfect. For full jars are the ones that are usually anointed. But when the anointing of one (jar) is dissolved, it is emptied, and the reason for there being a deficiency is the thing by which its ointment goes. For at that time a breath draws it, a thing in the power of that which is with it. But from him who has no deficiency, no seal is removed, nor is anything emptied, but what he lacks, the perfect Father fills again. He is good. He knows his plantings, because it is he who planted them in his paradise. Now his paradise is his place of rest.
This is the perfection in the thought of the Father, and these are the words of his meditation. Each one of his words is the work of his one will in the revelation of his Word. While they were still depths of his thought, the Word, which was first to come forth, revealed them, along with a mind that speaks the one Word in silent grace. He was called ‘thought’, since they were in it before being revealed. It came about, then, that he was first to come forth, at the time when the will of him who willed desired it. And the will is what the Father rests in, and is pleased with. Nothing happens without him, nor does anything happen without the will of the Father, but his will is unsearchable.
His trace is the will, and no one will know him, nor is it possible for one to scrutinize him, in order to grasp him. But when he wills, what he wills is this – even if the sight does not please them in any way before God – desiring the Father. For he knows the beginning of all of them, and their end. For at their end, he will question them directly. Now, the end is receiving knowledge about the one who is hidden, and this is the Father, from whom the beginning came forth, (and) to whom all will return who have come forth from him. And they have appeared for the glory and the joy of his name.
Now the name of the Father is the Son. It is he who first gave a name to the one who came forth from him, who was himself, and he begot him as a son. He gave him his name, which belonged to him; he is the one to whom belongs all that exists around him, the Father. His is the name; his is the Son. It is possible for him to be seen. The name, however, is invisible, because it alone is the mystery of the invisible, which comes to ears that are completely filled with it by him. For indeed, the Father’s name is not spoken, but (rather,) it is apparent through a Son.
In this way, then, the name is a great thing. Who, therefore, will be able to utter a name for him, the great name, except him alone to whom the name belongs, and the sons of the name, in whom rested the name of the Father, (who) in turn themselves rested in his name? Since the Father is unengendered, he alone is the one who begot him for him(self) as a name, before he brought forth the aeons, in order that the name of the Father should be over their head as lord, that is the name in truth, which is firm in his command, through perfect power. For the name is not from (mere) words, nor does his name consist of appellations, but (rather,) it is invisible. He gave a name to him alone, since he alone sees him, he alone having the power to give him a name. For he who does not exist has no name. For what name is given to him who does not exist? But the one who exists, exists also with his name, and he alone knows it, and (he) alone (knows how) to give him a name. It is the Father. The Son is his name. He did not, therefore, hide it in the thing, but it existed; as for the Son, he alone gave a name. The name, therefore, is that of the Father, as the name of the Father is the Son. Where indeed would compassion find a name, except with the Father?
But no doubt one will say to his neighbor: “Who is it who will give a name to him who existed before himself, as if offspring did not receive a name from those who begot ?” First, then, it is fitting for us to reflect on this matter: What is the name? It is the name in truth; it is not therefore the name from the Father, for it is the one which is the proper name. Therefore, he did not receive the name on loan, as (do) others, according to the form in which each one is to be produced. But this is the proper name. There is no one else who gave it to him. But he unnamable, indescribable, until the time when he who is perfect spoke of him alone. And it is he who has the power to speak his name, and to see it.
When, therefore, it pleased him that his name, which is loved, should be his Son, and he gave the name to him, that is, him who came forth from the depth, he spoke about his secret things, knowing that the Father is a being without evil. For that very reason, he brought him forth in order to speak about the place, and (about) his resting-place, from which he had come forth, and to glorify the pleroma, the greatness of his name, and the sweetness of the Father. About the place each one came from, he will speak, and to the region where he received his establishment, he will hasten to return again and to take from that place – the place where he stood – receiving a taste from that place, and receiving nourishment, receiving growth. And his own resting-place is his pleroma.
Therefore, all the emanations of the Father are pleromas, and the root of all his emanations is in the one who made them all grow up in himself. He assigned them their destinies. Each one, then, is manifest, in order that through their own thought <…>. For the place to which they send their thought, that place, their root, is what takes them up in all the heights, to the Father. They possess his head, which is rest for them, and they are supported, approaching him, as though to say that they have participated in his face by means of kisses. But they do not become manifest in this way, for they are not themselves exalted; (yet) neither did they lack the glory of the Father, nor did they think of him as small, nor that he is harsh, nor that he is wrathful, but (rather that) he is a being without evil, imperturbable, sweet, knowing all spaces before they have come into existence, and he had no need to be instructed.
This is the manner of those who possess (something) from above of the immensurable greatness, as they wait for the one alone, and the perfect one, the one who is there for them. And they do not go down to Hades, nor have they envy nor groaning nor death within them, but (rather) they rest in him who is at rest, not striving nor being twisted around the truth. But they themselves are the truth; and the Father is within them, and they are in the Father, being perfect, being undivided in the truly good one, being in no way deficient in anything, but they are set at rest, refreshed in the Spirit. And they will heed their root. They will be concerned with those (things) in which he will find his root, and not suffer loss to his soul. This is the place of the blessed; this is their place.
For the rest, then, may they know, in their places, that it is not fitting for me, having come to be in the resting-place, to speak of anything else. But it is in it that I shall come to be, and (it is fitting) to be concerned at all times with the Father of the all, and the true brothers, those upon whom the love of the Father is poured out, and in whose midst there is no lack of him. They are the ones who appear in truth, since they exist in true and eternal life, and (since they) speak of the light which is perfect, and (which is) filled with the seed of the Father, and which is in his heart and in the pleroma, while his Spirit rejoices in it and glorifies the one in whom it existed, because he is good. And his children are perfect and worthy of his name, for he is the Father; it is children of this kind that he loves.
Original translation of this text was prepared by members of the
Coptic Gnostic Library Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, Claremont Graduate School.
The Coptic Gnostic Library Project was funded by UNESCO, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and other Institutions.
E. J. Brill has asserted copyright on texts published by the Coptic Gnostic Library Project.
The translation presented here has been edited, modified and formatted for use in the Gnostic Society Library.
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The Gospel of Truth
Translated by Robert M. Grant
The gospel of truth is joy to those who have received from the Father of truth the gift of knowing him by the power of the Logos, who has come from the Pleroma and who is in the thought and the mind of the Father; he it is who is called “the Savior,” since that is the name of the work which he must do for the redemption of those who have not known the Father. For the name of the gospel is the manifestation of hope, since that is the discovery of those who seek him, because the All sought him from whom it had come forth. You see, the All had been inside of him, that illimitable, inconceivable one, who is better than every thought.
This ignorance of the Father brought about terror and fear. And terror became dense like a fog, that no one was able to see. Because of this, error became strong. But it worked on its hylic substance vainly, because it did not know the truth. It was in a fashioned form while it was preparing, in power and in beauty, the equivalent of truth. This then, was not a humiliation for him, that illimitable, inconceivable one. For they were as nothing, this terror and this forgetfulness and this figure of falsehood, whereas this established truth is unchanging, unperturbed and completely beautiful.
For this reason, do not take error too seriously. Thus, since it had no root, it was in a fog as regards the Father, engaged in preparing works and forgetfulnesses and fears in order, by these means, to beguile those of the middle and to make them captive. The forgetfulness of error was not revealed. It did not become light beside the Father. Forgetfulness did not exist with the Father, although it existed because of him. What exists in him is knowledge, which was revealed so that forgetfulness might be destroyed and that they might know the Father, Since forgetfulness existed because they did not know the Father, if they then come to know the Father, from that moment on forgetfulness will cease to exist.
That is the gospel of him whom they seek, which he has revealed to the perfect through the mercies of the Father as the hidden mystery, Jesus the Christ. Through him he enlightened those who were in darkness because of forgetfulness. He enlightened them and gave them a path. And that path is the truth which he taught them. For this reason error was angry with him, so it persecuted him. It was distressed by him, so it made him powerless. He was nailed to a cross. He became a fruit of the knowledge of the Father. He did not, however, destroy them because they ate of it. He rather caused those who ate of it to be joyful because of this discovery.
And as for him, them he found in himself, and him they found in themselves, that illimitable, inconceivable one, that perfect Father who made the all, in whom the All is, and whom the All lacks, since he retained in himself their perfection, which he had not given to the all. The Father was not jealous. What jealousy, indeed, is there between him and his members? For, even if the Aeon had received their perfection, they would not have been able to approach the perfection of the Father, because he retained their perfection in himself, giving it to them as a way to return to him and as a knowledge unique in perfection. He is the one who set the All in order and in whom the All existed and whom the All lacked. As one of whom some have no knowledge, he desires that they know him and that they love him. For what is it that the All lacked, if not the knowledge of the Father?
He became a guide, quiet and in leisure. In the middle of a school he came and spoke the Word, as a teacher. Those who were wise in their own estimation came to put him to the test. But he discredited them as empty-headed people. They hated him because they really were not wise men. After all these came also the little children, those who possess the knowledge of the Father. When they became strong they were taught the aspects of the Father’s face. They came to know and they were known. They were glorified and they gave glory. In their heart, the living book of the Living was manifest, the book which was written in the thought and in the mind of the Father and, from before the foundation of the All, is in that incomprehensible part of him.
This is the book which no one found possible to take, since it was reserved for him who will take it and be slain. No one was able to be manifest from those who believed in salvation as long as that book had not appeared. For this reason, the compassionate, faithful Jesus was patient in his sufferings until he took that book, since he knew that his death meant life for many. Just as in the case of a will which has not yet been opened, for the fortune of the deceased master of the house is hidden, so also in the case of the All which had been hidden as long as the Father of the All was invisible and unique in himself, in whom every space has its source. For this reason Jesus appeared. He took that book as his own. He was nailed to a cross. He affixed the edict of the Father to the cross.
Oh, such great teaching! He abases himself even unto death, though he is clothed in eternal life. Having divested himself of these perishable rags, he clothed himself in incorruptibility, which no one could possibly take from him. Having entered into the empty territory of fears, he passed before those who were stripped by forgetfulness, being both knowledge and perfection, proclaiming the things that are in the heart of the Father, so that he became the wisdom of those who have received instruction. But those who are to be taught, the living who are inscribed in the book of the living, learn for themselves, receiving instructions from the Father, turning to him again.
Since the perfection of the All is in the Father, it is necessary for the All to ascend to him. Therefore, if one has knowledge, he gets what belongs to him and draws it to himself. For he who is ignorant, is deficient, and it is a great deficiency, since he lacks that which will make him perfect. Since the perfection of the All is in the Father, it is necessary for the All to ascend to him and for each one to get the things which are his. He registered them first, having prepared them to be given to those who came from him.
Those whose name he knew first were called last, so that the one who has knowledge is he whose name the Father has pronounced. For he whose name has not been spoken is ignorant. Indeed, how shall one hear if his name has not been uttered? For he who remains ignorant until the end is a creature of forgetfulness and will perish with it. If this is not so, why have these wretches no name, why do they have no sound? Hence, if one has knowledge, he is from above. If he is called, he hears, he replies, and he turns toward him who called him and he ascends to him and he knows what he is called. Since he has knowledge, he does the will of him who called him. He desires to please him and he finds rest. He receives a certain name. He who thus is going to have knowledge knows whence he came and whither he is going. He knows it as a person who, having become intoxicated, has turned from his drunkenness and having come to himself, has restored what is his own.
He has turned many from error. He went before them to their own places, from which they departed when they erred because of the depth of him who surrounds every place, whereas there is nothing which surrounds him. It was a great wonder that they were in the Father without knowing him and that they were able to leave on their own, since they were not able to contain him and know him in whom they were, for indeed his will had not come forth from him. For he revealed it as a knowledge with which all its emanations agree, namely, the knowledge of the living book which he revealed to the Aeons at last as his letters, displaying to them that these are not merely vowels nor consonants, so that one may read them and think of something void of meaning; on the contrary, they are letters which convey the truth. They are pronounced only when they are known. Each letter is a perfect truth like a perfect book, for they are letters written by the hand of the unity, since the Father wrote them for the Aeons, so that they by means of his letters might come to know the Father.
While his wisdom mediates on the logos, and since his teaching expresses it, his knowledge has been revealed. His honor is a crown upon it. Since his joy agrees with it, his glory exalted it. It has revealed his image. It has obtained his rest. His love took bodily form around it. His trust embraced it. Thus the logos of the Father goes forth into the All, being the fruit of his heart and expression of his will. It supports the All. It chooses and also takes the form of the All, purifying it, and causing it to return to the Father and to the Mother, Jesus of the utmost sweetness. The Father opens his bosom, but his bosom is the Holy Spirit. He reveals his hidden self which is his son, so that through the compassion of the Father the Aeons may know him, end their wearying search for the Father and rest themselves in him, knowing that this is rest. After he had filled what was incomplete, he did away with form. The form of it is the world, that which it served. For where there is envy and strife, there is an incompleteness; but where there is unity, there is completeness. Since this incompleteness came about because they did not know the Father, so when they know the Father, incompleteness, from that moment on, will cease to exist. As one’s ignorance disappears when he gains knowledge, and as darkness disappears when light appears, so also incompleteness is eliminated by completeness. Certainly, from that moment on, form is no longer manifest, but will be dissolved in fusion with unity. For now their works lie scattered. In time unity will make the spaces complete. By means of unity each one will understand itself. By means of knowledge it will purify itself of diversity with a view towards unity, devouring matter within itself like fire and darkness by light, death by life.
Certainly, if these things have happened to each one of us, it is fitting for us, surely, to think about the All so that the house may be holy and silent for unity. Like people who have moved from a neighborhood, if they have some dishes around which are not good, they usually break them. Nevertheless the householder does not suffer a loss, but rejoices, for in the place of these defective dishes there are those which are completely perfect. For this is the judgement which has come from above and which has judged every person, a drawn two-edged sword cutting on this side and that. When it appeared, I mean, the Logos, who is in the heart of those who pronounce it – it was not merely a sound but it has become a body – a great disturbance occurred among the dishes, for some were emptied, others filled: some were provided for, others were removed; some were purified, still others were broken. All the spaces were shaken and disturbed for they had no composure nor stability. Error was disturbed not knowing what it should do. It was troubled; it lamented, it was beside itself because it did not know anything. When knowledge, which is its abolishment, approached it with all its emanations, error is empty, since there is nothing in it. Truth appeared; all its emanations recognized it. They actually greeted the Father with a power which is complete and which joins them with the Father. For each one loves truth because truth is the mouth of the Father. His tongue is the Holy Spirit, who joins him to truth attaching him to the mouth of the Father by his tongue at the time he shall receive the Holy Spirit.
This is the manifestation of the Father and his revelation to his Aeons. He revealed his hidden self and explained it. For who is it who exists if it is not the Father himself? All the spaces are his emanations. They knew that they stem from him as children from a perfect man. They knew that they had not yet received form nor had they yet received a name, every one of which the Father produces. If they at that time receive form of his knowledge, though they are truly in him, they do not know him. But the Father is perfect. He knows every space which is within him. If he pleases, he reveals anyone whom he desires by giving him a form and by giving him a name; and he does give him a name and cause him to come into being. Those who do not yet exist are ignorant of him who created them. I do not say, then, that those who do not yet exist are nothing. But they are in him who will desire that they exist when he pleases, like the event which is going to happen. On the one hand, he knows, before anything is revealed, what he will produce. On the other hand, the fruit which has not yet been revealed does not know anything, nor is it anything either. Thus each space which, on its part, is in the Father comes from the existent one, who, on his part, has established it from the nonexistent. […] he who does not exist at all, will never exist.
What, then, is that which he wants him to think? “I am like the shadows and phantoms of the night.” When morning comes, this one knows that the fear which he had experienced was nothing. Thus they were ignorant of the Father; he is the one whom they did not see. Since there had been fear and confusion and a lack of confidence and doublemindness and division, there were many illusions which were conceived by him, the foregoing, as well as empty ignorance – as if they were fast asleep and found themselves a prey to troubled dreams. Either there is a place to which they flee, or they lack strength as they come, having pursued unspecified things. Either they are involved in inflicting blows, or they themselves receive bruises. Either they are falling from high places, or they fly off through the air, though they have no wings at all. Other times, it is as if certain people were trying to kill them, even though there is no one pursuing them; or, they themselves are killing those beside them, for they are stained by their blood. Until the moment when they who are passing through all these things – I mean they who have experienced all these confusions – awake, they see nothing because the dreams were nothing. It is thus that they who cast ignorance from them as sleep do not consider it to be anything, nor regard its properties to be something real, but they renounce them like a dream in the night and they consider the knowledge of the Father to be the dawn. It is thus that each one has acted, as if he were asleep, during the time when he was ignorant and thus he comes to understand, as if he were awakening. And happy is the man who comes to himself and awakens. Indeed, blessed is he who has opened the eyes of the blind.
And the Spirit came to him in haste when it raised him. Having given its hand to the one lying prone on the ground, it placed him firmly on his feet, for he had not yet stood up. He gave them the means of knowing the knowledge of the Father and the revelation of his son. For when they saw it and listened to it, he permitted them to take a taste of and to smell and to grasp the beloved son.
He appeared, informing them of the Father, the illimitable one. He inspired them with that which is in the mind, while doing his will. Many received the light and turned towards him. But material men were alien to him and did not discern his appearance nor recognize him. For he came in the likeness of flesh and nothing blocked his way because it was incorruptible and unrestrainable. Moreover, while saying new things, speaking about what is in the heart of the Father, he proclaimed the faultless word. Light spoke through his mouth, and his voice brought forth life. He gave them thought and understanding and mercy and salvation and the Spirit of strength derived from the limitlessness of the Father and sweetness. He caused punishments and scourgings to cease, for it was they which caused many in need of mercy to astray from him in error and in chains – and he mightily destroyed them and derided them with knowledge. He became a path for those who went astray and knowledge to those who were ignorant, a discovery for those who sought, and a support for those who tremble, a purity for those who were defiled.
He is the shepherd who left behind the ninety-nine sheep which had not strayed and went in search of that one which was lost. He rejoiced when he had found it. For ninety-nine is a number of the left hand, which holds it. The moment he finds the one, however, the whole number is transferred to the right hand. Thus it is with him who lacks the one, that is, the entire right hand which attracts that in which it is deficient, seizes it from the left side and transfers it to the right. In this way, then, the number becomes one hundred. This number signifies the Father.
He labored even on the Sabbath for the sheep which he found fallen into the pit. He saved the life of that sheep, bringing it up from the pit in order that you may understand fully what that Sabbath is, you who possess full understanding. It is a day in which it is not fitting that salvation be idle, so that you may speak of that heavenly day which has no night and of the sun which does not set because it is perfect. Say then in your heart that you are this perfect day and that in you the light which does not fail dwells.
Speak concerning the truth to those who seek it and of knowledge to those who, in their error, have committed sin. Make sure-footed those who stumble and stretch forth your hands to the sick. Nourish the hungry and set at ease those who are troubled. Foster men who love. Raise up and awaken those who sleep. For you are this understanding which encourages. If the strong follow this course, they are even stronger. Turn your attention to yourselves. Do not be concerned with other things, namely, that which you have cast forth from yourselves, that which you have dismissed. Do not return to them to eat them. Do not be moth-eaten. Do not be worm-eaten, for you have already shaken it off. Do not be a place of the devil, for you have already destroyed him. Do not strengthen your last obstacles, because that is reprehensible. For the lawless one is nothing. He harms himself more than the law. For that one does his works because he is a lawless person. But this one, because he is a righteous person, does his works among others. Do the will of the Father, then, for you are from him.
For the Father is sweet and his will is good. He knows the things that are yours, so that you may rest yourselves in them. For by the fruits one knows the things that are yours, that they are the children of the Father, and one knows his aroma, that you originate from the grace of his countenance. For this reason, the Father loved his aroma; and it manifests itself in every place; and when it is mixed with matter, he gives his aroma to the light; and into his rest he causes it to ascend in every form and in every sound. For there are no nostrils which smell the aroma, but it is the Spirit which possesses the sense of smell and it draws it for itself to itself and sinks into the aroma of the Father. He is, indeed, the place for it, and he takes it to the place from which it has come, in the first aroma which is cold. It is something in a psychic form, resembling cold water which is […] since it is in soil which is not hard, of which those who see it think, “It is earth.” Afterwards, it becomes soft again. If a breath is taken, it is usually hot. The cold aromas, then, are from the division. For this reason, God came and destroyed the division and he brought the hot Pleroma of love, so that the cold may not return, but the unity of the Perfect Thought prevail.
This is the word of the Gospel of the finding of the Pleroma for those who wait for the salvation which comes from above. When their hope, for which they are waiting, is waiting – they whose likeness is the light in which there is no shadow, then at that time the Pleroma is about to come. The deficiency of matter, however, is not because of the limitlessness of the Father who comes at the time of the deficiency. And yet no one is able to say that the incorruptible One will come in this manner. But the depth of the Father is increasing, and the thought of error is not with him. It is a matter of falling down and a matter of being readily set upright at the finding of that one who has come to him who will turn back.
For this turning back is called “repentance”. For this reason, incorruption has breathed. It followed him who has sinned in order that he may find rest. For forgiveness is that which remains for the light in the deficiency, the word of the pleroma. For the physician hurries to the place in which there is sickness, because that is the desire which he has. The sick man is in a deficient condition, but he does not hide himself because the physician possesses that which he lacks. In this manner the deficiency is filled by the Pleroma, which has no deficiency, which has given itself out in order to fill the one who is deficient, so that grace may take him, then, from the area which is deficient and has no grace. Because of this a diminishing occurred in the place which there is no grace, the area where the one who is small, who is deficient, is taken hold of.
He revealed himself as a Pleroma, i.e., the finding of the light of truth which has shined towards him, because he is unchangeable. For this reason, they who have been troubled speak about Christ in their midst so that they may receive a return and he may anoint them with the ointment. The ointment is the pity of the Father, who will have mercy on them. But those whom he has anointed are those who are perfect. For the filled vessels are those which are customarily used for anointing. But when an anointing is finished, the vessel is usually empty, and the cause of its deficiency is the consumption of its ointment. For then a breath is drawn only through the power which he has. But the one who is without deficiency – one does not trust anyone beside him nor does one pour anything out. But that which is the deficient is filled again by the perfect Father. He is good. He knows his plantings because he is the one who has planted them in his Paradise. And his Paradise is his place of rest.
This is the perfection in the thought of the Father and these are the words of his reflection. Each one of his words is the work of his will alone, in the revelation of his Logos. Since they were in the depth of his mind, the Logos, who was the first to come forth, caused them to appear, along with an intellect which speaks the unique word by means of a silent grace. It was called “thought,” since they were in it before becoming manifest. It happened, then, that it was the first to come forth – at the moment pleasing to the will of him who desired it; and it is in the will that the Father is at rest and with which he is pleased. Nothing happens without him, nor does anything occur without the will of the Father. But his will is incomprehensible. His will is his mark, but no one can know it, nor is it possible for them to concentrate on it in order to possess it. But that which he wishes takes place at the moment he wishes it – even if the view does not please anyone: it is Gods will. For the Father knows the beginning of them all as well as their end. For when their end arrives, he will question them to their faces. The end, you see, is the recognition of him who is hidden, that is, the Father, from whom the beginning came forth and to whom will return all who have come from him. For they were made manifest for the glory and the joy of his name. And the name of the Father is the Son. It is he who, in the beginning, gave a name to him who came forth from him - he is the same one - and he begat him for a son. He gave him his name which belonged to him - he, the Father, who possesses everything which exists around him. He possess the name; he has the son. It is possible for them to see him. The name, however, is invisible, for it alone is the mystery of the invisible about to come to ears completely filled with it through the Fathers agency. Moreover, as for the Father, his name is not pronounced, but it is revealed through a son. Thus, then, the name is great.
Who, then, has been able to pronounce a name for him, this great name, except him alone to whom the name belongs and the sons of the name in whom the name of the Father is at rest, and who themselves in turn are at rest in his name, since the Father has no beginning? It is he alone who engendered it for himself as a name in the beginning before he had created the Aeons, that the name of the Father should be over their heads as a lord – that is, the real name, which is secure by his authority and by his perfect power. For the name is not drawn from lexicons nor is his name derived from common name-giving, But it is invisible. He gave a name to himself alone, because he alone saw it and because he alone was capable of giving himself a name. For he who does not exist has no name. For what name would one give him who did not exist? Nevertheless, he who exists also with his name and he alone knows it, and to him alone the Father gave a name. The Son is his name. He did not, therefore, keep it secretly hidden, but the son came into existence. He himself gave a name to him. The name, then, is that of the Father, just as the name of the Father is the Son. For otherwise, where would compassion find a name – outside of the Father? But someone will probably say to his companion, “Who would give a name to someone who existed before himself, as if, indeed, children did not receive their name from one of those who gave them birth?”
Above all, then, it is fitting for us to think this point over: What is the name? It is the real name. It is, indeed, the name which came from the Father, for it is he who owns the name. He did not, you see, get the name on loan, as in the case of others because of the form in which each one of them is going to be created. This, then, is the authoritative name. There is no one else to whom he has given it. But it remained unnamed, unuttered, `till the moment when he, who is perfect, pronounced it himself; and it was he alone who was able to pronounce his name and to see it. When it pleased him, then, that his son should be his pronounced name and when he gave this name to him, he who has come from the depth spoke of his secrets, because he knew that the Father was absolute goodness. For this reason, indeed, he sent this particular one in order that he might speak concerning the place and his place of rest from which he had come forth, and that he might glorify the Pleroma, the greatness of his name and the sweetness of his Father.
Each one will speak concerning the place from which he has come forth, and to the region from which he received his essential being, he will hasten to return once again. And he want from that place – the place where he was – because he tasted of that place, as he was nourished and grew. And his own place of rest is his Pleroma. All the emanations from the Father, therefore, are Pleromas, and all his emanations have their roots in the one who caused them all to grow from himself. He appointed a limit. They, then, became manifest individually in order that they might be in their own thought, for that place to which they extend their thoughts is their root, which lifts them upward through all heights to the Father. They reach his head, which is rest for them, and they remain there near to it so that they say that they have participated in his face by means of embraces. But these of this kind were not manifest, because they have not risen above themselves. Neither have they been deprived of the glory of the Father nor have they thought of him as small, nor bitter, nor angry, but as absolutely good, unperturbed, sweet, knowing all the spaces before they came into existence and having no need of instruction. Such are they who possess from above something of this immeasurable greatness, as they strain towards that unique and perfect one who exists there for them. And they do not go down to Hades. They have neither envy nor moaning, nor is death in them. But they rest in him who rests, without wearying themselves or becoming involved in the search for truth. But, they, indeed, are the truth, and the Father is in them, and they are in the Father, since they are perfect, inseparable from him who is truly good. They lack nothing in any way, but they are given rest and are refreshed by the Spirit. And they listen to their root; they have leisure for themselves, they in whom he will find his root, and he will suffer no loss to his soul.
Such is the place of the blessed; this is their place. As for the rest, then, may they know, in their place, that it does not suit me, after having been in the place of rest to say anything more. But he is the one in whom I shall be in order to devote myself, at all times, to the Father of the All and the true brothers, those upon whom the love of the Father is lavished, and in whose midst nothing of him is lacking. It is they who manifest themselves truly since they are in that true and eternal life and speak of the perfect light filled with the seed of the Father, and which is in his heart and in the Pleroma, while his Spirit rejoices in it and glorifies him in whom it was, because the Father is good. And his children are perfect and worthy of his name, because he is the Father. Children of this kind are those whom he loves.
From Robert M. Grant, Gnosticism (Harper & Brothers, New York, 1961),
as quoted in Willis Barnstone, The Other Bible (Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1984).
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VALENTINUS
A Gnostic for All Seasons
by Stephan A. Hoeller
When questioned regarding the personal elements in his lifelong interest in matters Gnostic, Professor Gilles Quispel, the noted Gnostic expert and associate of C.G. Jung, tells a remarkable story. During the dark and hopeless years of World War II, when life and the world seemed lacking in hope and joy, Quispel turned to the study of the message of the great Gnostic teacher and poet, Valentinus. The inspiration, comfort, and faith derived from the writings of Valentinus were instrumental in turning Quispel into a devoted and thoroughly sympathetic scholar of Gnosticism. It would not be a gross exaggeration to state that the experience of the Dutch scholar is far from unique and that numerous persons in our contemporary world are finding the message of this greatest of all Gnostic teachers of eminent and helpful relevance in their lives.
The Almost Pope
G.R.S. Mead, the great early translator and theosophical interpreter of Gnostic documents, called Valentinus “the great unknown” of Gnosticism, and indeed it is true that we do not possess much information regarding his life and personality. He was born in Africa, probably within the territory of the ancient city of Carthage, around or before 100 A.D. He was educated in Alexandria and in the prime of his years transferred his residence to Rome, where he achieved a high degree of prominence in the Christian community between 135 and 160 A.D. Tertullian wrote that Valentinus was a candidate for the office of bishop of Rome and that he lost the election by a rather narrow margin. This same failed orthodox church father (Tertullian himself joined the heresy of Montanism) alleges that Valentinus fell into apostasy around 175 A.D. There is much evidence indicating, however, that he was never universally condemned as a heretic in his lifetime and that he was a respected member of the Christian community until his death. He was almost certainly a priest in the mainstream church and may even have been a bishop.
It is certainly a question of some interest what the course of Christian theology might have been had Valentinus been elected to the office of bishop of Rome. His hermeneutic vision combined with his superb sense of the mythical would have probably resulted in a general flowering of the Gnosis within the very fabric of the Church of Rome, and might have created an authoritative paradigm of Gnostic Christianity that could not have been easily exorcised for centuries, if at all.
Like many of the greatest Gnostic teachers, Valentinus claimed to have been instructed by a direct disciple of one of Jesus’ apostles, an “apostolic man” by the name of Theodas. Tertullian also stated that Valentinus was personally acquainted with Origen, and one may speculate with some justification that his influence on this orthodox church father was considerable. The overall character of his contribution has been accurately summarized by Mead in the following manner:
The Gnosis in his hands is trying to . . . embrace everything, even the most dogmatic formulation of the traditions of the Master. The great popular movement and its incomprehensibilities were recognized by Valentinus as an integral part of the mighty outpouring; he laboured to weave all together, external and internal, into one piece, devoted his life to the task, and doubtless only at his death perceived that for that age he was attempting the impossible. None but the very few could ever appreciate the ideal of the man, much less understand it. (Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, p. 297)
Valentinus, the Gnostic who almost became pope, was thus the only man who could have succeeded in gaining a form of permanent positive recognition for the Gnostic approach to the message of Christ. The fact that circumstances and the increasing floodtide of a regressive pseudo-orthodoxy caused his efforts to fail must be reckoned among the greatest tragedies of the history of Christianity. Still, many essential features of his unique contribution have survived and more have recently surfaced from the sands of the desert of Egypt. We shall address ourselves to the most important of these in the following pages.
Psycho-Cosmogony and the Pneumatic Equation
The often-debated cosmogony of Valentinus might be most profitably understood as being based on a single existential recognition, which might be summarized thus: Something is wrong. Somewhere, somehow, the fabric of being at the existential level of human functioning has lost its integrity. We live in a system which is lacking in essential integrity, and thus is defective. So-called orthodox Christians as well as Jews recognize that there is a certain “wrongness” in human existence, but they account for it chiefly in terms of the effects of human sin, original or other. Jews and Christians hold that whatever is wrong with the world and human existence is the result of human disobedience to the creator. This means, that all evil, discomfort, and terror in our lives and in history are somehow our fault. A great cosmic statement of “Mea Culpa” runs through this world view, which permanently affixes to the human psyche an element of titanic guilt. Valentinus, in opposition to this guilt-ridden view of life, held that the above-noted defect is not the result of our wrongdoing, but is inherent in the system of existence wherein we live and move and have our being. Moreover, by postulating that creation itself is lacking in integrity, Valentinus not only removes the weight of personal and collective guilt from our shoulders but also points to the redemptive potential resident in the soul of every human being.
Humans live in an absurd world that can be rendered meaningful only by Gnosis, or self-knowledge. When referring to the myth of the creation of the world by a god, Valentinus shifts the blame for the condition of cosmic defect from humanity to creative divinity. That God the creator could be at fault in anything is of course tantamount to blasphemy in the eyes of the orthodox. What we need to recognize, however, is that Valentinus does not view the creator with the worshipful eyes of the Judeo-Christian believer, but rather sees the creator – along with other divinities – as a mythologem. Much evidence could be adduced to demonstrate this, but one must suffice here, taken from the Gospel of Philip:
God created man and man created God. So is it in the world. Men make gods and they worship their creations. If would be fitting for the gods to worship men. (Logion 85: 1-4)
The present writer holds that Valentinian (as well as all other) Gnosticism can be understood in psychological terms, so that the religious mythologems treated by the Gnostics are taken to symbolize psychological conditions and intra-psychic powers of the mind. Taking this approach we might conclude that what Valentinus tells us is that because our minds have lost their self-knowledge, we live in a self-created world that is lacking in integrity. The word kosmos used by Gnostics does not mean “world,” but rather “system,” and thus can be perfectly well applied to the systematization of reality created by the human ego. We need not worry overmuch about whether Valentinus insults Jehovah by calling him a demiurge. What matters is that we act as our own psychic demiurges by first creating and the inhabiting a flawed kosmos created in the image and likeness of our own flaws.
The proposition that the human mind lives in a largely self-created world of illusion from whence only the enlightenment of a kind of Gnosis can rescue it finds powerful analogues in the two great religions of the East, i.e., Hinduism and Buddhism. The following statement from the Upanishads could easily have been written by Valentinus or another Gnostic: “This (world) is God’s Maya, through which he deceives himself.” According to the teachings of Buddha, the world of apparent reality consists of ignorance, impermanence, and the lack of authentic selfhood. Valentinus is in very good company indeed when he establishes the proposition of the wrong system of false reality that can be set aright by the human spirit.
This brings us to the second part of what some scholars have called the “pneumatic equation” of Valentinus. After accepting the proposition of the flawed system, the mind needs to recognize a second and complementary truth. Irenaeus in his work against heresies quotes Valentinus concerning this:
Perfect redemption is the cognition itself of the ineffable greatness: for since through ignorance came about the defect . . . the whole system springing from ignorance is dissolved in Gnosis. Therefore Gnosis is the redemption of the inner man; and it is not of the body, for the body is corruptible; nor is it psychical, for even the soul is a product of the defect and it is a lodging to the spirit: pneumatic (spiritual) therefore also must be redemption itself. Through Gnosis, then, is redeemed the inner, spiritual man: so that to us suffices the Gnosis of universal being: and this is the true redemption. (Adv. Haer. I. 21,4)
The ignorance of the agencies that create the false system is thus undone and rectified by the spiritual Gnosis of the human being. The defect can be removed from being by Gnosis. There is no need whatsoever for guilt, for repentance from so-called sin, neither is there a need for a blind belief in a vicarious salvation by way of the death of Jesus. We don’t need to be saved; we need to be transformed by Gnosis. The wrong-headedness, perversity, obtuseness, and malignancy of the existential condition of humanity can be changed into a glorious image of the fullness of being. This is done not by guilt, shame, and an eternal saviour but by the activation of the redemptive potential of self-knowledge. Spiritual self-knowledge thus becomes the inverse equivalent of the ignorance of the unredeemed ego. The elaborate mythic structures of cosmogonic and redemptive content bequeathed to us by Valentinus are but the poetic-scriptural expressions of this grand proposition, which has a direct relevance to the existential condition of the human psyche in all ages and in all cultures.
The Gnostic Saviour: a Maker of Wholeness
It would be erroneous to deduce from the foregoing that Valentinus negated or even diminished the importance of Jesus in his teachings. The great devotion and reverence shown for Jesus by Valentinus is amply manifest with sublime poetic beauty in the Gospel of Truth, which in its original form was in fact authored by Valentinus himself. According to Valentinus, Jesus is indeed Saviour, but the term needs to be understood in the meaning of the original Greek word, used by orthodox and Gnostic Christian alike. This word is soter, meaning healer, or bestower of health. From this is derived the word today translated as salvation, i.e., soteria, which originally meant healthiness, deliverance from imperfection, becoming whole, and preserving one’s wholeness. What then is the role of the soter of spiritual maker of wholeness, if he clearly has no need to save humankind from either original or personal sin? What is the state or condition of newly found spiritual health bestowed or facilitated by such a healer-saviour?
The Gnostic contention is that both the world and humanity are sick. The sickness of the world and its equivalent human illness both have one common root: ignorance. We ignore the authentic values of life and substitute unauthentic ones for them. The unauthentic values are for the most part either physical or of the mind. We believe that we need things (such as money, symbols of power and prestige, physical pleasures) in order to be happy or whole. Similarly we fall in love with the ideas and abstractions of our minds. (The rigidities and the hardness of our lives are always due to our excessive attachment to abstract concepts and precepts.) The sickness of materialism was called hyleticism (worship of matter) by the Gnostics, while the sickness of abstract intellectualism and moralizing was known as psychism (worship of the mind-emotional soul). The true role of the facilitators of wholeness in this world, among whom Jesus occupied the place of honor, is that they can exorcise these sicknesses by bringing knowledge of the pneuma (spirit) to the soul and mind.
What is this pneuma, this spirit, which alone brings Gnosis and healing to the sickness of human nature? We cannot truly say what it is, but we can indicate what it does. It has been said that the spirit bloweth where it listeth. It brings flexibility, existential courage of life. By way of the healing agency of pneuma, the soul ceases to be fascinated and confined by things and ideas and thus it can address itself to life. The obsession of the human psyche with the importance of the material world and/or of the abstract intellectual and moral world is the sickness from which the great saviours of humanity redeem us. The obsessive state of material and mental attachments is thus replaced by spiritual freedom; the unauthentic values of the former are made to give way to the authentic ones brought by the spirit.
Union and Redemption as Sacraments
The methods advocated by Valentinus for the facilitating of a true spiritual Gnosis are not confined to philosophical doctrines and poetic mythologems. The Valentinian system was above all a system of sacrament. The Gospel of Philip mentions five of the seven historical sacraments (or rather their original Gnostic forms) explicitly and mentions the two remaining ones by implication.
In addition to baptism, anointing, eucharist, the initiation of priests and the rites of the dying, the Valentinian Gnosis mentions prominently two great and mysterious sacraments called “redemption” (apolytrosis) and “bridal chamber” respectively. While many of the formulae for these rites have been lost, their essential meanings can still be discovered by perusing the various accounts given by the church fathers and the references contained in the Gnostic scriptures.
The bridal chamber, or pneumatic union, is by far the most frequently alluded to of the greater sacraments. The Gospel of Philip makes constant references to it and statements concerning it are scattered in a large number of the Gnostic scriptures. Irenaeus associates this sacrament primarily with the followers of Valentinus, but the theoretical foundations serving as its psychological rationale are present in the corpus of Gnostic writings generally. Thus the Gospel According to Thomas, which is generally considered to be relatively free of Valentinian influences, presents us with what might be considered the clearest formulation of the theoretical foundation of the bridal chamber in its 22nd Logion:
When you make the two one, and when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner and the above as the below, and when you make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male will not be male and the female not be female . . . then shall you enter the kingdom.
The psychological basis upon which the bridal chamber ritual is founded is fairly easily understood. The Gnosis considers the human being as divided and fragmented within itself. The divisions have numerous aspects: We are involved in what modern psychology would call an Ego-Self dichotomy, in an Anima-Animus dichotomy, in a body-mind dichotomy, in a subjective-objective dichotomy, and many others. All of these divisions require mending, or healing. Even as the Pleroma, or divine plenum, is characterized by wholeness, so the human being must once again become whole and thereby acquire the qualifications to reenter the Pleroma. Contemporary, especially Jungian depth psychology envisions such a pneumatic union as the ultimate objective of what it calls the individuation process. Unlike Jungian psychologists who can offer only the practice of analysis as an instrumentality of the process of reunification, Valentinus was apparently inspired to document and ritually dramatize this union in the great sacrament of the bridal chamber. The Sophia myth serves in many ways as the mythological support of this sacrament. The myth implies that the creation of the imperfect world and the confinement of the soul within it originated through the disruption of the original spiritual unity of the Pleroma, so that the return of the soul into the loving embrace of her bridegroom, as indicated by the return of Sophia into the arms of Jesus, then represents the healing of this disruption and restoration of wholeness.
The sacrament of the bridal chamber more than any other feature of the Valentinian Gnosis gives us a clear indication of the psychological versus the theological character of Gnostic teaching and practice. The professed purpose of this rite is the individual and personal ‘becoming one’ of the soul of the initiate, and cosmic and eschatological considerations play no role in this. It is not abstract being or creation that is healed and unified in this sacrament but the interior being of a human individual. It might be fair to say that Valentinus practiced an individuation rite, the need for which in today’s world is evidenced by the highest and best of psychological research. It is perhaps characteristic of the sad deterioration of the sacramental system in historic Christianity that this intrapsychic union has been allowed to devolve into the sacrament of matrimony, signifying a contractual relationship of two terrestrial personalities within the context of the flawed order of societal mores.
However, it is not sufficient to be unified in one’s nature – so Valentinus implied – one must also be redeemed from the corrupting and confusing thralldom of the false existential world wherein one lives. This liberation from the clutches of the world of defect was accomplished by the sacrament of redemption (apolytrosis) sometimes also called restoration (apokatastasis). This might be called the final act of separation from the rule of illusory and deceptive states of mind. While it is by no means established whether the sacrament of the bridal chamber was administered first and the redemption later, it is the conviction of the present writer that this indeed was the case. The individual in whom the dualities have been united and the splits healed (the individuated person, as Jung might have called him or her) is now empowered to repudiate the forces bereft of illuminating meaning. This is well-expressed in one of the formulae of restoration preserved from Valentinian source:
I am established, I am redeemed and I redeem my soul from this aeon and from all that comes from it, in the name of IAO, who redeemed his soul unto the redemption in Christ, the living one. (Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. I. 21,5)
Even as Buddha is said to have triumphantly repudiated the works of Mara the deceiver subsequent to his enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree, so the Gnostic severs every connection with the unconsciousness and compulsion and lives and dies as a sovereign being of light and power henceforth. There is every indication that the double sacraments of the bridal chamber and redemption caused enormous transformations and brought a great empowerment to the lives of their recipients. (These rites survived in modified form among the followers of the prophet Mani and the Cathars of the Languedoc. The latter had a great sacrament resembling the apolytrosis, called the consolamentum, which gave its recipients not only a great serenity of live but a virtually unequaled courage to face death.)
The foregoing – and much other material relating to the Valentinian Gnosis that had to remain unexplored in this brief exposition – serve to illustrate the great and undeniable virtues of this heritage of wisdom. Philosophic integrity, psychological insight, poetic and artistic exaltation and beauty, mingled with true religious devotion and emotion characterize the contribution of Valentinus and elevate it over most Gnostic and semi-Gnostic systems and schools. Were one to combine the highest and best products of Existentialism, one might only hope to approximate the sublime message of the great technician of human transformation who beckons to us from the distance of nearly two millennia. Valentinus indeed lives. He was and is a knower, a Gnostic for all seasons, a source of inspiration and guidance for persons in every age and clime: a timeless messenger of the mysteries of the soul. One could not conclude this brief exposition and tribute with a more appropriate hope than the one embodied in the following fragment of a Valentinian blessing:
May the Grace beyond time and space that was before the beginnings of the Universe fill our inner man and increase within us the semblance of itself as the grain of mustard seed.
The article first appeared in Gnosis: A Journal of Western Inner Traditions (Vol.1)
From Easter to Valentinus and the Apostles’ Creed Once More: A Critical Examination of James Robinson’s Proposed Resurrection Appearance Trajectories
Dr. William Lane Craig
William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife Jan and their two teenage children Charity and John. At the age of sixteen as a junior in high school, he first heard the message of the Christian gospel and yielded his life to Christ. Dr. Craig pursued his undergraduate studies at Wheaton College (B.A. 1971) and graduate studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.A. 1974; M.A. 1975), the University of Birmingham (England) (Ph.D. 1977), and the University of Munich (Germany) (D.Theol. 1984). From 1980-86 he taught Philosophy of Religion at Trinity, during which time he and Jan started their family. In 1987 they moved to Brussels, Belgium, where Dr. Craig pursued research at the University of Louvain until 1994.
James Robinson argues that parallel trajectories, springing from primitive Christian experiences of post-resurrection appearances of Christ as a luminous bodily form, issued in the second-century Gnostic understanding of the appearances as unembodied radiance and in the second-century orthodox view of the appearances as non-luminous physical encounter. Craig examines his four arguments in support of these hypothesized trajectories and finds them unconvincing. There is no reason to think that the primitive experiences always involved luminosity or that if they did, this was taken to imply non- physicality. Nor does the evidence support the view that Gnostics rejected corporal or even physical resurrection appearances of Christ.
“From Easter to Valentinus and the Apostle’s Creed Once More: A Critical Examination of James Robinson’s Proposed Resurrection Appearance Trajectories.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 52 (1993): 19-39.
Introduction
Several years ago in his SBL Presidential Address, James Robinson sought to delineate three related sets of parallel trajectories stretching from a common origin in primitive Christianity to their termini in second-century Gnosticism and in credally orthodox Christianity, both of these later viewpoints being divergent (mis)interpretations of the beliefs and experiences of the earliest Christians.{1} Trajectory 1 represents the development beginning with the traditions concerning the first disciples’ experiences of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances and ending with, on the one hand, the orthodox interpretation of these as physical, corporeal manifestations of the resurrected Christ, and, on the other hand, the Gnostic interpretation of these as visions of disembodied radiance. Trajectory 2 charts the emergence of the orthodox doctrine of the final resurrection of believers in each individual’s fleshly body, on the one hand, and of the Gnostic doctrine of spiritual and mystical resurrection attained already in baptism, on the other, from the original apocalyptic expectation of a resurrection of believers at the end of time in a luminous, heavenly body comparable to Christ’s. Finally, Trajectory 3 concerns the evolution of the sayings attributed to Jesus to, on the one hand, the orthodox incarnation of Jesus’ sayings within the pre-Easter biography of Jesus in the canonical Gospels and, on the other hand, the mystification of Jesus’ sayings by means of hermeneutically loaded dialogues of the risen Christ with his Gnostic disciples. Robinson emphasizes that neither the orthodox nor the Gnostic position represents the original Christian position, though both are consistent and serious efforts to interpret it.{2} Although both positions should be heeded as worthy segments of the heritage of transmission and interpretation of Christian beliefs, nevertheless neither can be literally espoused by serious critical thinkers of today.{3}
The existence of Trajectory 1 is logically foundational for Robinson’s construction of the other two, and so in this paper I wish to focus our critical attention on his case for the existence of this first trajectory. According to Robinson, the primitive resurrection appearances were visualizations of the resurrected Christ as a luminous, heavenly body. But due to their aversion to bodily existence, Gnostics disembodied Christ’s appearances so as to retain the original luminous visualization while abandoning any corporeality associated with that radiance. In reaction, the emerging orthodoxy emphasized the corporeality of the resurrection appearances by construing them in terms of the resurrection of the flesh, so that in the canonical Gospels Christ’s appearances are not only corporeal, but material as well.
Robinson’s proposed reconstruction is probably quite appealing to many, since he is claiming, in effect, that the received view in German theology of the resurrection body and appearances of Christ was, in fact, the view of the primitive church itself, and it is rather reassuring to believe that one is holding steadfastly to the faith of the Urgemeinde in the face of extremist corruptions thereof. But does a dispassionate weighing of the evidence really support Robinson’s proposal? In order to answer that question, let us turn to an examination of his arguments.
Examination of Robinson’s Proposed Trajectories
In support of his claim that the primitive traditions of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances related luminous, bodily visualizations which were subsequently construed in opposite directions by orthodoxy and Gnosticism, Robinson adduces four lines of evidence: (1) the only two NT eyewitnesses of a resurrection appearance both authenticate visualizations of luminous appearances; (2) vestiges of luminous appearances remain in the non-luminous resurrection appearance stories and in the misplaced appearance stories; (3) the only two eyewitnesses of a resurrection appearance both identify the resurrected Christ with the Spirit; and (4) the outcome of these trajectories may be seen in second-century Gnosticism.
In support of (1), Robinson appeals to the experiences of (a) the apostle Paul and (b) John of Patmos. (a) On the basis of Paul’s reference to Christ’s ‘glorious body’ in Phil. 3.21 (cf. I Cor. 15:43), Robinson concludes, ‘Thus, it is clear that Paul visualized the resurrected Christ as a heavenly body, luminous’.{4} The Acts accounts of Paul’s Damascus Road encounter (Acts 9:1-19; 22:4-16; 26:9-19) seem to reflect accurately Paul’s own visualization of his experience. (b) InRev. 1:13-16 we have another resurrection appearance narrated, although it is usually overlooked because it lies outside the Gospels. Like Paul, John of Patmos experienced an ‘uninhibited luminous visualization of the resurrection’.{5} Since these are the only two resurrection appearances recorded by eyewitnesses and both were of the luminous kind, we may conclude ‘that the original visualizations of resurrection appearances had been luminous, the experiencing of a blinding light, a heavenly body such as Luke reports Stephen saw (Acts 7:55-56)’.{6}
In support of (2), Robinson sees vestiges of the original luminous, non-human visualizations in the following: (a) the angelic attendants at the empty tomb of Jesus are described as clothed in ‘white’ (Mk 16:5), in ‘dazzling apparel’ (Lk. 24:4), having an appearance ‘like lightning and … raiment white as snow’ (Mt. 28:2-3). Says Robinson, ‘In the canonical Gospels this luminous apparition of the attendant is all that is left of the luminous visualization of the resurrected Christ…'{7} (b) In ‘quite docetic style’ Jesus passes through locked doors (Jn 20:19, 26; cf. Lk. 24:36) and disappears abruptly (Lk. 24:31, 51; Acts 1:.9). (c)The non- recognition motif of some resurrection appearance stories (Jn 20:14-15; 21:4; Lk. 24:16, 31) may derive ultimately from the luminous visualization, as is evident from Paul’s question ‘Who are you, Lord?’ in his Damascus Road experience (Acts 9:5; 22:8; 26:15). It is understandable that one would not recognize a blinding light, but the lack of recognition and then sudden recognition of Jesus is no longer intelligible in the canonical Gospels’ all-too-human visualizations. Thus, this motif may be a vestige from the more primitive luminous, non-human visualizations. (d) Christ’s resurrection appearance to Peter seems to be described in 2 Pet. 1:16-17 using the motif of luminosity. Although these verses probably refer to Jesus’ transfiguration, the Markan account of that event (Mk 9:2-8) is probably a misplaced resurrection narrative. ‘Mark has “historicized” what was originally the resurrection appearance to Peter, tying it down to an unambiguous bodiliness by putting it well before the crucifixion, in spite of its luminousness…'{8} Robinson conjectures that the reason Mark narrates no resurrection appearances is ‘perhaps because those available were so luminous as to seem disembodied’.{9}
In support of (3), Robinson argues that in the two instances where the NT contains an eyewitness report of a resurrection appearance, the identification of that appearance as the Spirit seems near at hand. (a) Paul calls the resurrection body ‘spiritual’ (I Cor. 15:44), identifies the last Adam as ‘a life-giving Spirit’ (I Cor. 15.45) and calls Christ ‘the Spirit’ (2 Cor. 3:17- 18). (b) John of Patmos describes his experience as ‘in the Spirit’ (Rev. 1:10) and, although the revelation is from the resurrected Christ, John repeatedly exhorts his readers to hear ‘what the Spirit says to the churches’ (Rev. 2.7, 11, 17, 29; 3.6, 13, 22). In fact, says Robinson, it is precisely ‘this identification of the luminously resurrected Christ as the Spirit’ that Luke rejects when he denies that what the disciples saw was a ghost.{10}
Finally, in support of (4), Robinson cites a number of second-century Gnostic texts which, he claims, show that the resurrection appearances were being construed as visions of disembodied radiance. It was in reaction to this tendency that the non-luminous resurrection appearance stories in Matthew, Luke, and John were composed. Thus, just as the trajectory from Easter to Valentinus involved increasing spiritualization, so the trajectory from Easter to the Apostles’ Creed involved increasing materialization.
Examination of Argument (1)
Robinson’s first argument, that the only two NT witnesses of a resurrection appearance both authenticate visualizations of luminous appearances, implicitly presupposes that we do not have the voice of an eyewitness behind the resurrection appearance stories in the Gospel of John. But whatever his identity, the person known in Johannine circles as the Beloved Disciple is explicitly stated to be an eyewitness whose testimony stands behind the events narrated in the Gospel (Jn 21:24). Although in the past some scholars have regarded the Beloved Disciple as a pure symbol lacking any historical referent, the leading contemporary commentators, such as Brown and Schnackenburg, agree that the Beloved Disciple was a historical person whose testimony, as an eyewitness to some of the events recorded in the latter part of the Gospel of John, including the appearances, stands authoritatively behind them.{11} And, of course, the appearances related in that Gospel are physical and bodily.
Moreover, Robinson’s point seems to serve a purpose more polemical than historical, since it ignores altogether the genuinely relevant question of whether the appearance traditions embodied in the Gospels are historically credible in favor of the less relevant question of whether the accounts are first-hand, eyewitness reports. It would be far too facile to dismiss as unhistorical the narratives of, for example, the post-resurrection appearance to the Twelve simply because they were not written by an eyewitness. Hence, even if Robinson’s first point were correct, it is far from clear how much force it really has.
But is it in fact correct? Consider first (a) Paul’s testimony concerning his Damascus Road experience. Because Paul elsewhere characterizes Christ’s resurrection body as ‘glorious’, are we justified in inferring that it is luminous? In I Cor. 15:40-41 Paul uses ‘glory’ as a synonym for luminosity, for the differing glory of the sun, moon and stars is their varying brightness. Significantly, the difference between the glory of terrestrialversus celestial bodies is used as an analogy between the present body and the resurrection body. But did Paul think that whereas our earthly body is dull, our resurrection body will be literally luminous? Is that the difference he means to express between them in saying that the resurrection body is glorious? ‘There are reasons to doubt it, for in contrasting the earthly body with the resurrection body, the antithesis he draws in I Cor. 15:43 is not between their relative luminescence, but between their relative honor. The present body is dishonorable, no doubt due to sin and its consequences (e.g. mortality), whereas the resurrection body is glorious (cf. the contrast between the lowly state of the earthly body and the exalted state of Christ’s resurrection body in Phil. 3.21). This suggests that the glory of the resurrection body has to do with majesty, exaltation, honor and so forth, rather than its becoming luminous.{12} Indeed, if it were not for the Acts narrative of Paul’s experience on the Damascus Road, it seems extremely doubtful that anyone could have taken Paul’s ‘glorious’ to mean that the resurrection body would be shining. Paul himself gives no indication of the nature of Christ’s appearance to him.{13} From all we know from his hand, the appearance to Paul could have been as physical as the resurrection appearances in the Gospels.{14} In fact, it has even been argued that Luke has de-materialized the appearance to Paul because it was in Luke’s scheme a post-ascension encounter and so could not involve Christ’s material presence, since Christ had ascended!{15} Be that as it may, I think it is evident that Paul does not provide eyewitness testimony to a luminous resurrection appearance of Christ.
Still, most critics are prepared to accept the general historicity of the Acts account, and Robinson might appeal to that as grounds for regarding the original resurrection appearances as visualizations of a luminous body. But now a number of difficulties arise.
If one is willing to accept the substantial historicity of Luke-Acts with regard to the appearance to Paul, then one must re-open the question of the historical credibility of Luke-Acts with respect to the appearances to the disciples. Why are we willing to accept the one but not the other, apart from an aversion to the physical realism of the Gospel appearances?{16}
On what grounds do we assume that Paul’s Damascus Road experience involved the visualization of a bodily shape? As the narrative presents it the experience was of a non-corporeal radiance and auditory phenomena, which were also, with some inconsistency, also experienced by Paul’s traveling companions. In other words, the narrative presents prima facie precisely the sort of unembodied luminous experience which Robinson wishes to locate on the Gnostic trajectory. Paul’s experience thus provides no clear basis for the claim that visualizations of a luminous bodily form were primitive.
On what basis are we to assume that Paul’s experience on the Damascus Road was normative for the experiences of the disciples, so that its form can be imposed on them and used as a yardstick for assessing historicity? It is sometimes said that in placing himself in the list of witnesses to the resurrection appearances in I Cor. 15:3-8, Paul implies that all of these experiences were of the same sort. But surely Paul’s concern here is with who appeared, not with how he appeared; moreover, in placing himself in the list, Paul is not trying to put the others’ experiences on a plane with his own, but, if anything, is rather trying to level up his own experience to the objectivity and reality of the others’.{17} Luke presents Paul’s experience as sui generis, and, far from contradicting this, Paul also seemed aware of its unusualness (I Cor. 15:8) and was anxious to class himself with the apostles as a recipient of an authentic resurrection appearance. If we are to use Paul’s experience as a criterion for the historicity of other appearance narratives, then Robinson owes us substantial reasons for such a methodology.
Robinson’s argument seems to rest upon a fundamental presupposition that luminosity and physicality are mutually exclusive categories, such that if the visualized bodily shape were luminous, it could not also be material and tangible. Without such an assumption I cannot see that the demonstration that the original visualizations of Jesus were characterized by luminosity does anything logically to prove that they did not also involve the perception of a physical object. Unfortunately, Robinson’s presupposition is obviously false. Paul himself, as we have seen, referred to the brightness of the sun, moon and stars, which he no doubt took to be physical objects; even more relevantly, he mentions the brightness of Moses’ face as it shone with splendor (2 Cor. 3:7, 12). The decisive counter-example to Robinson’s principle is his own example of the transfiguration, in which Jesus’ face and garments shone, but for all that did not become immaterial or intangible. Robinson simply assumes that the luminosity of some appearing entity is evidence of that entity’s non-physicality. Indeed, that conclusion seems to be implicit in Robinson’s use of the very term ‘visualization’, which he never defines, but which seems to carry with it connotations of subjectivity and non-physicality. After all, one would hardly speak of the disciples’ ‘visualizing’ the pre-Easter Jesus; why, then, apply this term to the post-resurrection appearances, unless one is already assuming their purely intra-mental reality? The vocabulary associated with the resurrection appearances in the NT is fully consistent with their physicality and objectivity.{18} Hence, the demonstration that the original resurrection appearances involved luminosity does nothing to demonstrate that the physicality of those appearances is a later corruption on the trajectory from Easter to the Apostles’ Creed. It seems to me, then, that on the basis of Paul’s experience, we are not entitled to conclude either that the original resurrection appearances were characterized by luminosity or that, even if they were, they were therefore non-physical in character.
(b) What, then, can we conclude about John of Patmos’s experience of the exalted Christ? It is rather surprising thatRobinson should categorize this as a resurrection appearance. The reason it is ‘overlooked’ by all students of the resurrection is not because it occurs outside the Gospels, but because it is quite clearly a vision rather than a resurrection appearance.{19} Although the resurrection appearances took place within a community that enjoyed visions, revelations and ecstatic experiences (I Cor. 12-13; 2 Cor. 12:1-5; Gal. 2:1; Acts 16:9), that community nevertheless drew a distinction between visions of Christ and the resurrection appearances of Christ: the appearances were restricted to a small circle designated as witnesses, and even to them Jesus did not continually reappear but appeared only at the beginning of their new life. Thus, for example, although Paul considers Christ’s appearance to him to have been ‘last of all’ (I Cor. 15:8), nevertheless, he continued to experience ‘visions and revelations of the Lord’ (2 Cor. 12:1; cf. Acts 22:17). Similarly, the revelation of Christ to John on Patmos is clearly a vision of the exalted Christ, replete with allegorical imagery, not a resurrection appearance of Christ. In the same way, the visions of Christ seen by Stephen, Ananias and Paul (Acts 7:55-56; 9:10; 22:17) are not regarded by Luke as resurrection appearances of Christ, but as veridical, divinely induced visions of Christ. Thus, Robinson’s appeal to John’s experience as an eyewitness account of a resurrection appearance is spurious.
Nor is this all, however, for the question at once arises as to what distinguishing feature served to mark off an experience as a resurrection appearance of Jesus rather than as a merely veridical vision of Jesus? So far as I can tell, the answer of the NT to that question is that only an appearance involved extra-mental realities, whereas a vision, even if veridical, was purely intra-mental.{20} But if that is the case, then Robinson’s construction collapses, since the hypothesized trajectories did not then grow out of visualizations of Christ lacking any extra-mental referent, experiences which would have been indistinguishable from simple visions. It is therefore incumbent upon Robinson, at the expense of his construction, to provide us with a more plausible explanation of the basis upon which the early church distinguished between resurrection appearances and visions of Christ.
I thus find Robinson’s first argument based on the testimony of Paul and John rather unconvincing. We have not seen any compelling reasons to think that the original resurrection appearances were uniformly characterized by luminosity or that if they were, this fact implies non-physicality. On the contrary, the distinction drawn by the NT church between a resurrection appearance and a veridical vision suggests that the appearances were conceived to be physical events in the external world.
Examination of Argument (2)
Let us then turn to point (2) concerning the vestiges of luminosity in the canonical Gospel appearance stories. With the collapse of point (1), Robinson faces here a very difficult methodological problem: how does one prove that elements of luminosity in the narratives are truly a vestige rather than simply a feature of the stories? In other words, in the absence of a prior proof that the original resurrection appearances were uniformly luminous in character, the elements of luminosity in the Gospel stories cannot themselves be taken as evidence of some more primitive stage. With that in mind, let us consider Robinson’s examples.
a. The Angelic Attendants at the Tomb
Robinson is not clear whether the primitive tradition underlying these stories attributed luminosity to the angels or whether this feature of the story is a relic of a luminosity originally attributed to the risen Christ but, under the pressure of opposing Gnosticism, now transferred to the angelic attendants. If the luminescence is truly a vestige of a luminous resurrection appearance, then it would seem that the latter would have to be the case. But the difficulty in proving such a supposed transference is that divine beings are typically portrayed as radiant or clothed in white robes (Ezek. 10; Dan. 7:9; 10:5-6; Lk. 2:9; Acts 1:10; 2 Cor. 11:14; Rev. 4:4; 10:1; I En. 62:15- 16; 2 En. 22:8). So why should it be thought that the angels being dressed in white or dazzling in appearance is a vestige of a radiance originally attributed to the risen Christ? Robinson himself seems to recognize the frailty of such an inference, for he asserts, ‘The apologetic that apparently caused the resurrected Christ’s luminosity to fade into the solidity of a physical body did not affect the luminosity of the accompanying figure(s)’.{21} In this statement he seems to allow that the radiance of the angel(s) is primitive and that only the original luminescence of Christ has disappeared. But in that case, how is the angelic radiance a vestige of a luminous resurrection appearance? Once one allows it to be primitive and distinct, then it becomes question-begging to assume that it is all that remains of a doubly ascribed luminescence in the original tradition.
b. The Docetic Elements in the Narratives
Contrary to what Robinson states, Jesus is never said to pass through locked doors in the appearance narratives. He simply appeared miraculously in the closed room, even as he miraculously vanished during bread-breaking in Emmaus. The physical demonstrations of showing his wounds and eating before the disciples indicate that Jesus is conceived to appear physically. His appearances are no more docetic than are similar angelic appearances, which may also begin and end abruptly. In fact, it is instructive to note that the rabbis distinguished between a mere vision of an angel and an extra-mental appearance of an angel precisely on the basis of whether food seen to be consumed by the angelic visitant remains or is gone after the angel disappears.{22} The mode of his coming or going is irrelevant to his physical reality.
c. The Non-recognition Motif as a Vestige of Luminous Appearances
This is an ingenious and more interesting argument. Two questions arise in assessing its force. Does luminosity serve to obscure the identity of the individual appearing? And does the non-recognition motif serve some theological purpose in the resurrection narratives or is it a useless, vestigial feature in those accounts? In favor of an affirmative answer to the first question Robinson appeals to Paul’s question, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ in the Acts narrative of his Damascus Road experience. But the force of this example is diminished by two facts. (1) The Acts account does not say that Paul saw any bodily form whatsoever in the blinding light that surrounded him. Hearing the voice, he asks for the identity of the speaker. Thus, the incident is not portrayed as a recognition scene.{23} (2) Since Paul had apparently never known the earthly Jesus, it is not clear that he could be expected to recognize him (as opposed to, say, an angel), even if he saw him in the light. Since they had lived with Jesus, the disciples’ case would thus be different. Moreover, a forceful counter-example to Robinson’s claim that luminescence conceals identity is again his own example of the transfiguration of Jesus. The disciples had no difficulty recognizing Jesus and distinguishing him from Elijah and Moses. This counter-example presses all the more strongly against Robinson if one takes this pericope to be a misplaced resurrection appearance story. Hence, I think it is far from clear that the luminosity of an appearing individual masks his identity. As to the second question, is the nonrecognition motif really so unintelligible and useless that it is probably vestigial? I am not so sure. Could it not, for example, serve to underline the difference between the earthly Jesus and the numinous, risen Lord, to say to the disciples that their former way of relating to Jesus was now at an end and a new relationship had begun? That seems to be the point of Jesus’ cryptic remark to Mary, ‘Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father…’ (Jn 20:17). So while the nonrecognition motif is puzzling, it is not evident that it should be regarded as a relic of some earlier stage in the tradition.
d. The Account of the Transfiguration
It is remarkable that Robinson is prepared to accept 2 Pet. 1:16-17 as a factual description of the appearance to Peter, while rejecting the Gospel accounts of the resurrection appearances. One can only take this double standard to result from Robinson’s apologetic zeal. As to the claim that the transfiguration represents a misplaced resurrection appearance story, while we may agree that Mark does think of it as a proleptic display of Christ’s coming glory, perhaps even rendering a narration of a resurrection appearance in fulfillment of the angel’s prediction (16:7) therefore superfluous, nevertheless the narrative is so firmly embedded in its context that it is unlikely to be a misplaced appearance story .{24} More importantly, we have seen that this story actually serves to undercut rather than support Robinson’s construction, for it shows that luminosity is not incompatible with physicality and does not serve to obscure the identity of the glorified individual. Hence, it seems to me that Robinson has failed to demonstrate that the elements of luminosity in the canonical Gospels are truly vestiges or that their presence supports his proposed trajectories.
Examination of Argument (3)
Turning to point (3), we need to ask whether Paul and John of Patmos really believed, as Robinson apparently claims, that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are numerically identical, that in rising from the dead Jesus was somehow transformed into the Holy Spirit. Consider first the case of Paul. When Paul speaks of soma pneumatikon, we must not overlook the obvious fact that he is talking about a soma not an incorporeal spirit. Although soma is often taken to be a synonym for the whole person, it is evident that in I Corinthians 15 it is used to refer to the physical body and is roughly synonymous with ‘flesh’ in a morally neutral sense.{25} Modern commentators agree that by a ‘spiritual body’ Paul does not mean a body made out of spirit, but a body under the domination of and oriented toward the Spirit.{26} Now when Paul says that the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit, he does not mean that Jesus turned into the Holy Spirit (thereby negating his somatic reality) any more than when Paul says the first Adam became a living soul, he means that Adam turned into a disembodied psyche.{27}
Rather, he describes the same two entities respectively as soma psychikon (15.44), psyche zosa (15.45), to psychikon (15.46), and soma pneumatikon (15.44), pneuma zoopoioun (15.45), to pneumatikon (15.46). It is because of his desire to construct a parallelism on the words of Gen. 2:7 that Paul abbreviates his reference to Christ’s spiritual body in 15:45. As for 2 Cor. 3:17-18, there is no good reason to think that Paul is claiming more than an identity of function between the risen Lord and the Holy Spirit.{28} Given his teaching on the resurrection soma and his personal belief in the bodily return of Christ (I Thess. 4:16-17; 2 Thess. 1:7-8, 10; 2:1, 8; 1 Cor. 15:23; Phil. 3:20-21; 4:5; Col. 3:4), it seems to me exegetically fanciful to suppose that Paul thought the risen Christ was numerically identical with the Holy Spirit.
The evidence for the case of John is even less compelling for Robinson’s thesis. John’s being in the Spirit refers only to the mode of his vision of Christ. That Christ himself commands the churches to give heed to the Spirit affords no inference that Christ has turned into an unembodied Spirit, especially when one contemplates John’s vision of Christ’s millennial reign and personal presence in the new heavens and new earth (Rev. 20-21). Hence, I must confess that I find Robinson’s third point to be the weakest of the four.
Examination of Argument (4)
Finally, in support of point (4) Robinson cites a number of second century Gnostic texts in order to show that the Gnostics held the resurrection appearances to be visualizations of pure radiance without any bodily form. Here two questions present themselves. (a) Are the second-century Gnostic beliefs the issue of a process of reinterpretation of primitive traditions of visualizations of a luminous bodily form? And (b) did the second-century Gnostics hold that the resurrection appearances of Christ were visions of pure, unembodied radiance? With respect to (a), it seems clear that apart from his first three points, Robinson’s fourth point alone does nothing to prove the existence of an earlier, developing trajectory, but only shows us what second-century Gnostics believed. What Robinson must show is that the second-century Gnostic position is the terminus of a process whereby primitive visualizations of a radiant bodily shape were transformed into visualizations of unembodied radiance. Not only has he failed to shoulder that burden of proof, but, it seems to me, such a hypothetical development is quite improbable. There is simply no evidence that the New Testament writers were opposed by persons who espoused luminous resurrection appearances lacking a bodily shape. In fact, Robinson appears to be lapsing back into nineteenth-century German exegesis’s identification of soma with the form of the body and light or glory as its substance. Under the influence of idealism, theologians like Holsten and Lüdemann held that the soma is the form of the earthly body and the sarx its substance.{29} This enabled one to maintain that in the resurrection the soma, or bodily form was retained but was endowed with a new spiritual substance. In this way one could affirm a bodily resurrection without affirming its physicality. Hence, in the older commentaries such as Hans Lietzmann’s commentary on the Corinthian correspondence, one finds the soma pneumatikon to be conceived as a body made out of himmlischer Lichtsubstanz.{30} Although Gundry states that this interpretation has now been almost universally abandoned,{31} Robinson seems to be presupposing such an understanding. For he thinks that the Gnostic aversion to the soma meant an aversion to bodily form and that Paul’s affirmation of a resurrection soma meant an affirmation of bodily form. But what Paul affirmed and the Gnostics objected to was real, physical, material corporeality, not just the form thereof. Proto-Gnostics could have affirmed quite happily the allegedly primitive visualizations of an intangible, immaterial, luminous bodily form.
In fact–and this leads me to my second point (b)–an examination of Robinson’s texts reveals that this is precisely what the Gnostics often did affirm. For, contrary to Robinson, the Gnostic resurrection appearance texts do not speak of a bodiless radiance, but usually refer to visions of a luminous human bodily form. The only text which suggests a bodiless radiance is found in the Letter of Peter to Philip and even that text is not unequivocal, stating, “then a great light appeared so that the mountain shone from the sight of him who bad appeared’ (134.10-13).{32} For the rest, bodily appearances are clearly described. For example, in the Apocryphon of John we find a sort of trinitarian vision described in which the same human being appears successively as a youth, an old man and a servant, all enveloped in light (1.302.9).{33} In the Pistis Sophia 1.4 we read of a post-ascension appearance of Jesus in radiant bodily form:
As they were saying these things and were weeping to one mother, on the ninth hour of the following day the heavens opened, and they saw Jesus coming down, giving light exceedingly, and there was no measure to the light in which he was. {34}
In the Sophia of Jesus Christ we read,
After he rose from the dead, his twelve disciples and seven women followed him and went to Galilee on the mountain that is called ‘Place of Harvesttime and Joy’…The Savior appeared not in his first form, but in the invisible spirit. And his form was like a great angel of light. And his likeness I must not describe. No mortal flesh can endure it, but only pure and perfect flesh like that which he taught us about on the mountain called ‘Of the Olives’ in Galilee. And he said, ‘Peace to you! My peace I give to you!’ And they all wondered and were afraid.
The Savior laughed and said to them, ‘What are you thinking about? Why are you perplexed?’ (90.14-92.2).{35}
In fact in some of the Gnostic resurrection appearance stories the element of luminosity is completely lacking. For example, in the Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles Peter is confronted by a pearl merchant named Lithargoel, who is described in the following way:
A man came out wearing a cloth bound around his waist, and a gold belt girded it. Also a napkin was tied over his chest, extending over his shoulders and covering his head and arms.
I was staring at the man, because he was beautiful in his form and stature. There were four parts of his body which I saw: the tops of his feet, and a part of his chest, and the palm of his hand, and his visage (2:10-24).{36}
Lithargoel later changes into the dress of a physician, and a recognition scene follows in which Lithargoel reveals his true identity as the risen Christ:
He answered and said, ‘It is I! Recognize me, Peter.’ He loosed his garment, which clothed him–the one into which he had changed himself because of us–revealing to us in truth that it was he.
We prostrated ourselves on the ground and worshipped him. We comprised eleven disciples. He stretched forth his hand and caused us to stand (9.13-23).{37}
This story is especially interesting, since it adopts the recognition motif from the canonical appearance stories and yet without any use of the luminosity motif. Another non-luminous resurrection appearance is related in the Apocryphon of James:
Now when the twelve disciples were all sitting together and recalling what the Savior had said to each one of them… lo, the Savior appeared, after he had departed from us, and we had waited for him. And after five hundred and fifty days since he had risen from the dead, we said to him, ‘Have you departed and removed yourself from us?’
But Jesus, said, ‘No, but I shall go to the place from whence I came. If you wish to come with me, come!’… And having called [James and Peter] he drew them aside and bade the rest occupy themselves with that which they were about (2.7-39).{38}
In this text it is only with Jesus’ ascension into heaven that the fleshly body is stripped away; similarly in the Pistis Sophia 1.1-6 Jesus is said to have spent eleven years with his disciples after his resurrection prior to his ascension in radiant glory (and even in his post-ascension appearance he, at the disciples’ request, retracts his radiance so as to appear in a non-luminescent condition). This is instructive because it shows that the resurrection of the physical body and physical appearances were not objectionable to Gnostics, since further transformation could always be deferred until the ascension. In fact, some Gnostic texts are quite content to preserve the flesh throughout resurrection and glorification, insisting only that in the resurrection the body comes to possess a higher, incorruptible flesh (Treat. Res. 47. 2-12).{39} Thus in Gos. Phil. 57.18-19 we read, ‘It is necessary to rise in the flesh, since everything exists in it’.{40} With regard to Jesus’ resurrection the same text states, ‘The Lord rose from the dead. He became as he used to be, but now his body was perfect. He did indeed possess flesh, but this flesh is true flesh. Our flesh is not true, but we possess only an image of the true.’ (68.31-37) {41} With such a conception of the resurrection body we can readily understand why Gnostic writings show no compunction about relating bodily and even physical resurrection appearances. Thus, it seems that the view which Robinson wants to pass off as ‘the original Christian position’ is in danger of being even more Gnostic than that of the Gnostics!
It therefore seems to me that Robinson’s construction of a trajectory from Easter to Valentinus collapses. The Gnostics did not take as their point of departure visualizations of a radiant bodily form and then disembody them to arrive at visions of pure radiance. Rather, they departed from the primitive conception of physical, bodily resurrection appearances and sometimes dematerialized them in order to arrive at visualizations of a radiant bodily form.{42}
By the same token, it does not seem that Robinson has provided sufficient evidence to support his constructed parallel trajectory from Easter to the Apostles’ Creed. We have seen no convincing reasons to think that the original resurrection appearances were visualizations of an immaterial and intangible refulgent bodily form. Indeed, had this been the case, then it is difficult to understand why the trajectory should have advanced to the Apostles’ Creed’s affirmation of the resurrection of the flesh, for faced with the supposed Gnostic denial of bodily form in the radiance, all that would have been necessary was to reaffirm the bodily form or shape of the resplendent glory, not to materialize it by means of crass physical demonstrations of displaying wounds and eating fish. And those who like Robinson are wont to speak of Luke or John’s ‘apologetic against Gnosticism’ need to recall that the physicalism of the stories belongs to the traditional material received by these authors, not their redaction of it. There are, in fact, substantive reasons for thinking that the physicalism of the resurrection appearance stories is not a counter-response motivated by Gnostic opponents.{43} Therefore, I see no reason to think that Robinson’s hypothesized trajectory from Easter to the Apostles’ Creed is any firmer a span than the bridge he has built from Easter to Valentinus.
Conclusion
In summary, none of Robinson’s four points supplies sufficient evidence for the existence of twin trajectories taking as their common point of departure primitive first-century visualizations of the resurrected Christ as a luminous bodily form and finding their respective termini in second-century Gnosticism’s supposed reinterpretation of these experiences as visions of unembodied luminosity, on the one hand, and in the affirmation of the Apostle’s Creed of the resurrection of the flesh, on the other. Robinson has invested an enormous amount of time and industry in the study of the Nag Hammadi documents, and he is understandably anxious that these texts should prove fruitful in the interpretation of the New Testament. But the results of this examination suggest that their value is not to be found in their relevance to the post-resurrection appearances of the Gospel tradition.
Endnotes
{1} J.M. Robinson, ‘Jesus from Easter to Valentinus (or to the Apostles’ Creed)’, JBL 101 (1982), pp. 5-37.
{2} Robinson, ‘Easter to Valentinus’, p. 37.
{3} Robinson, ‘Easter to Valentinus’, p. 37.
{4} Robinson, ‘Easter to Valentinus’, p. 7.
{5} Robinson, ‘Easter to Valentinus’, p. 10.
{6} Robinson, ‘Easter to Valentinus’, p. 10.
{7} Robinson, ‘Easter to Valentinus’, p. 14.
{8} Robinson, ‘Easter to Valentinus’, p. 9.
{9} Robinson, ‘Easter to Valentinus’, p. 10.
{10} Robinson, ‘Easter to Valentinus’, p. 13.
{11} R.C. Brown, The Gospel according to John (AB, 29A; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970), pp. 1119- 20; idem, The Community of the Beloved Disciple (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), pp. 22-23; R. Schnackenburg, Das Johannesevangelium (3 vols.; HTKNT, 4; Freiburg: Herder, 1976), III, pp. 368, 452-56; so also B. Lindars (ed.), 7he Gospel of John (NCB; London: Oliphants, 1972), p. 602.
{12} See the study by J. Coppens, ‘La glorification céleste du Christ dans la théologie néotestamentaire et l’attente de Jésus’, in E. Dhanis (ed.), Resurrexit (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1974), pp. 37-40.
{13} Sometimes appeal is made to 2 Cor. 4.6, which is thought to refer to the blinding light on the Damascus Road. But in fact the verse does not seem to be connected to Paul’s conversion experience: the light is the light of the gospel (4.4) and is compared to God’s act of creation (cf. Gen. 1.3). There appears to be no reason to think that it refers to the Damascus Road experience.
{14} All Paul tells us is that Jesus appeared (ophthe) to him (I Cor. 15.8). that he saw (heoraka) Jesus (I Cor. 9. 1), and that God revealed (apokalupsai) his Son to him (Gal. 1.16). Dunn argues that Paul’s use of en emoi in Gal. 1.16 instead of the simple dative shows that he is describing ‘a personal subjective experience’ (J.D.G. Dunn, Jesus and The Spirit [London: SCM 1975], pp. 105-106), but Dunn concedes that it is his conversion that Paul describes as a subjective experience; Paul ‘is not talking about the visionary side of his conversion experience as such’. Hoffmann agrees that en emoi says nothing about the nature of Paul’s experience, but he appeals to apokalupsai as evidence of the appearance’s being visionary and eschatological (P. Hoffmann, ‘Auferstehung II. Auferstehung Jesu Christi II/1. Neues Testament’, TRE [1979], pp. 492-97). But apart from other difficulties, Hoffmann’s argument rests on the unproven presupposition that in the mind of the biblical writers one cannot have an apocalyptic-eschatological experience of a physically real entity.
{15} See P. Borgen, ‘From Paul to Luke’, CBQ 31 (1969), p. 180; cf. C.F. Evans, Resurrection and the New Testament (SBT, 12; London: SCM Press, 1970), pp. 55-56; X. Léon-Dufour, ‘L’apparition du Ressucité á Paul’, in Dhanis (ed.), Resurrexit, p. 294; C.W. Hedrick, ‘Paul’s Conversion/Call: A Comparative Analysis of the Three Reports in Acts’, JBL 100 (1981), pp. 430-31.
{16} See the remarks of J .E. Alsup, The Post-Resurrection Appearance Stories of the Gospel-Tradition (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1975), pp. 32, 34, 54.
{17} For good statements of this point, see B.F. Westcott, The Gospel of the Resurrection (London: Macmillan, 1906), pp. 93-94; J. Orr, The Resurrection of Jesus (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1909), p. 39; P. Gardner-Smith, The Narratives of the Resurrection (London: Methuen, 1926), pp. 21-22; J.A.T. Robinson, ‘Resurrection in the New Testament’, IDB. Dunn even hypothesizes that Paul’s placing himself in the list could be a case of special pleading– interpreting a less distinctive religious experience as a resurrection appearance in order to boost his claim to apostolic authority (Dunn, Jesus and the Spirit, p. 99)! Dunn rejects the hypothesis in the end because the pillar apostles accepted Paul’s claim without serious dispute (Jesus and the Spirit, p. 108).
{18} See H. Grass, Ostergeschehen und Osterberichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 4th edn, 1970), pp. 186-89.
{19} On the difference between a resurrection appearance and a vision see the discussion by Grass, Ostergeschehen, pp. 189-207. It should he noted that this distinction is conceptual in nature, not primarily linguistic.
{20} See the discussion in W.L. Craig, Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus (Studies in the Bible and Early Christianity, 16; Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1989), pp. 68-69.
{21} Robinson, ‘Easter to Valentinus’, p. 15.
{22} See various tests cited in K. Berger, Die Auferstehung der Propheten und die Erhöhung des Menschensohnes (SUNT, 13; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976), pp. 159, 458.
{23} This conclusion is not affected by any inference from Paul’s letters that he saw a bodily form in the light, for the question concerning the speaker’s identity occurs in the Acts account only, and in that account there is no suggestion of a bodily form.
{24} For a discussion of suggested misplaced appearance stories, see C.H. Dodd, ‘The Appearances of the Risen Christ: A Study in Form-Criticism of the Gospels’, in More New Testament Studies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1968), pp. 119-22; R.H. Fuller, The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives (London: SPCK, 1972), pp. 160-67;Alsup, Post-Resurrection Appearance Stories, pp. 139-44.
{25} See J. Weiss, Der erste Korintherbrief (KEK, 5; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1910), p. 372. The most important work on this subject is certainly R.H. Gundry, Soma in Biblical Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976); see his summary statement on p. 50. See also J. Gillman, ‘Transformation in 1 Cor.15, 50-53’, ETL 58 (1982), pp. 328-39.
{26} See the discussion in Craig, New Testament Evidence for the Resurrection, pp. 133-37.
{27} Kleinknecht et al., ‘pneuma’, TWNT. I am astounded by the number of scholars who appeal to I Cor. 15.45; 2 Cor. 3.17-18, etc., to prove that Christ turned into the Spirit at the resurrection and so is now immaterial and invisible (e.g. Robinson, ‘Easter to Valentinus’, p. 13). Morissette shows from Jewish texts that ‘life-giving’ means ‘to resurrect’ and comments,
‘The appellation “Spirit”, for its part, is sometimes used by Paul to designate Christ. [Cf. 2 Cor. 3-17a, 18c; comp. Rom. 8:9-1 1. This affirmation is implied occasionally by Luke: Comp. Lk. 12.12; 21.15; Acts 16.6, 7.] Nonetheless, there is no formal identification whatever. [Between 2 Cor. 3.17a (‘the Lord is the Spirit’) and 18c (‘the Lord who is the Spirit’) Paul distinguishes in v. 17b ‘where the Spirit of the Lord is, etc.’] The identification is always functional: it serves to show what Christ means “now” for the faithful. [The Apostle frequently attributes similar functions to Christ and the Spirit; W. D. Davies in Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, p. 177, has a good summary of these texts]. The statement of I Cor. 15.45b is no exception, as the verb zoopoioun . . . and the entire context indicate’ (Rodolphe Morissette, ‘L’antithese entre le “psychique” et le “pneumatique” en I Corinthiens, XV, 44 à 46’, RSR 46 [1972], p. 141).
{28} See the remarks of Dunn (Jesus and the Spirit, pp. 318-26), particularly the following: ‘Of course he is speaking primarily in existential rather than in ontological terms. Jesus still has a personal existence; there is, we may say, more to the risen Jesus than life-giving Spirit (cf., e.g., Rom. 1.3f.; 8.34; 1 Cor. 15.24-28). But so far as the religious experience of Christians is concerned Jesus and the Spirit are no different. The risen Jesus may not be experienced independently of the Spirit, and my religious experience which is not in character and effect an experience of Jesus Paul would not regard as a manifestation of the life-giving Spirit'(pp. 322-21).
{29} C. Holsten, Zum Evangelium des Paulus und des Petrus (Rostock: Stiller, 1868); H. Lüdemann, Die Anthropologie des Apostel Paulus und ihre Stellung innerhalb seiner Heilslehre (Kiel: Universitätsverlag, 1872).
{30} H. Lietzmann, An die Korinther I, II (rev. W.G. Kümmel; HNT, 9; Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 4th edn, 1949), p. 194.
{31} Gundry, Soma in Biblical Theology, pp. 161-62, where he lists six factors contributing to this consensus.
{32} Text from J.M. Robinson (ed.), The Nag Hammadi Library (Leiden: Brill, 1977), p. 395.
{33} Robinson, Nag Hammadi Library, p. 99.
{34} Text in C. Schmidt (ed.), Pistis Sophia (trans. V. MacDermot; NHS, 9;Leiden: Brill, 1978), p. 15.
{35} Robinson, Nag Hammadi Library, pp. 207-208
{36} Robinson, Nag Hammadi Library, p. 266.
{37} Robinson, Nag Hammadi Library, p. 269.
{38} Robinson, Nag Hammadi Library, p. 30.
{39} Robinson, Nag Hammadi Library, p. 52. For a list of similar Gnostic affirmations of the resurrection of the flesh or body, see the comment on this passage by M.L. Peel, The Epistle to Rheginos (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969).
{40} Robinson, Nag Hammadi Library, p. 135.
{41} Robinson, Nag Hammadi Library, p. 141.
{42} See the remarks of E.E. Ellis, The Gospel of Luke (NCB; London: Nelson, 1966), p. 175; Dunn, Jesus and the Spirit, pp. 119-20; K. Bornhäuser, Das Recht des Bekenntnisses zur Auferstehung des Fleisches (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1899), pp. 47-61; W. Künneth, The Theology of the Resurrection (trans. J.W. Leitch; London: SCM Press, 1965), pp. 92-93.
{43} See discussion in Craig, New Testament Evidence for the Resurrection, pp. 335-39.
Valentinus (1) (OualentinoV), founder of one of the Gnostic sects which originated in the first half of 2nd cent.
1. Biography.–According to the tradition of the Valentinian school witnessed to by Clemens Alexandrinus (Strom. vii. 17, 106, p. 898, Potter), Valentinus had been a disciple of Theodas, who himself, it is very improbably said, knew St. Paul. Valentinus cannot have begun to disseminate his Gnostic doctrines till towards the end of the reign of Hadrian (117-138). Before this he is said to have been a Catholic Christian. It must have been, therefore, at most only shortly before his appearance as the head of a Gnostic sect that Valentinus became a hearer of Theodas and received, as he said, his doctrines from him. The Gnostics were fond of claiming for their secret doctrines apostolic tradition and tracing them back to disciples of the apostles. To this otherwise unknown Theodas the Valentinians appealed as an authority in much the same way as Basilides was said to have been a disciple of Glaucias, and he, in turn, an “interpreter of Peter.”
Irenaeus (i. 11, 1) speaks of Valentinus as the first who transformed the doctrines of the Gnostic “Heresy” to a peculiar doctrinal system of his own (eis idion carakthra didaskaleiou). By the expression gnwstikh we understand a party which called themselves “Gnostics,” whom we may recognize in the so-called Ophites, described by Irenaeus (i. 30), when he remarks that the Valentinian school originated from those unnamed heretics as from the many-headed Lernean Hydra (i. 30, 15). Concerning the home and locality of these so-called “Gnostics” Irenaeus tells us nothing. But we know from other sources that those Ophite parties to whom he refers had their homes both in Egypt and Syria.
Concerning the fatherland of Valentinus himself Epiphanius is the first to give accurate information, which, however, he derived simply, it appears, from oral tradition (Epiph. Haer. xxxi. 2). According to this his native home was on the coast of Egypt, and he received instruction in Greek literature and science at Alexandria. Epiphanius, who makes him begin to teach in Egypt, relates further that he also went to Rome, and appealed as a religious teacher there, but that, both in Egypt and at Rome, he was regarded as orthodox, and first made shipwreck of faith in Cyprus and began to disseminate heretical opinions. But this statement rests merely on a combination of different accounts. According to Irenaeus, Valentinus “flourished” at Rome in the times of Pius and Anicetus. Epiphanius, on the other hand, read (as we learn from Philaster, Haer. 38) in the suntagma of Hippolytus, that Valentinus stood once in the communion of the church, but being drawn by overweening pride into apostasy had, during his residence in Cyprus, propounded his heretical doctrine. But we cannot doubt that when Irenaeus speaks of Valentinus’s flourishing at Rome during the times of Pius and Anicetus, he refers to the fact that his chief activity as a religious teacher was then displayed, and that under Anicetus he stood at the head of his own Gnostic school. With this there is no difficulty in reconciling Tertullian’s statement, that Valentinus no more than Marcion separated himself from the Church on his arrival at Rome (Praescript. Haeret. 36). For the Gnostics, for the very sake of disseminating their doctrines the more freely, made a great point of remaining in the Catholic church, and made use for that end of a twofold mode of teaching, one exoteric for the simpler sort of believers, the other esoteric for the initiated, as is shewn in the fragments which have come down to us, the most part of which purposely keep the peculiarly Gnostic doctrines in the background.
We may, then, conclude that Valentinus, towards the end of Hadrian’s reign (c. 130), appeared as a teacher in Egypt and in Cyprus, and early in the reign of Antoninus Pius he came to Rome, and during the long reign of Antoninus was a teacher there. He had probably developed and secretly prepared his theological system before he came to Rome, whither he doubtless removed for the same motive as led other leaders of sects, e.g. Cerdon and Marcion, to go to Rome–the hope to find a wider field for his activity as a teacher. From a similar motive he attached himself at first to the communion of the Catholic church.
II. History of the Sect.–Valentinus had numerous adherents. They divided themselves, we are told, into two schools–the anatolic or oriental, and the Italian school (Pseud-Orig. Philosoph. vi. 35, p. 195, Miller, cf. Tertullian, adv. Valentinian. c. 11, and the title prefixed to the excerpts of Clemens Ek tou Qeudotou tai thV AnatolikhV kaloumenhV didaskaliaV). The former of these schools was spread through Egypt and Syria, the latter in Rome, Italy, and S. Gaul. Among his disciples, Secundus appears to have been one of the earliest. Tertullian (adv. Valentinian. 4) and the epitomators of Hippolytus mention him after Ptolemaeus (Pseudo-Tertull. Haer. 13; Philast. Haer. 40); the older work, on the other hand, excerpted by Irenaeus is apparently correct in naming him first as Valentines s earliest disciple (Haer. i. 11, 2). Then follows, in the same original work as quoted by Irenaeus (Haer. i. 11, 3), another illustrious teacher (alloV epifanhV didaskaloV), of whom a misunderstanding of later heresiologists has made a Valentinian leader, named Epiphanes; who this illustrious teacher was is matter of dispute. The more probable conjecture is with Neander (Gnostische Systeme, p. 169) and Salmon to suppose it was MARCUS (17), whose first Tetrad exactly corresponds to that of this unnamed teacher (cf. Haer. i. 15, 1, kaQ a proeirhtai). Marcus himself will, in any case, be among the earliest of Valentinus’s disciples (Lipsius, Quellen der ältesten Ketzergesch. p. 33). His labours in Asia were probably contemporaneous with Valentinus’s residence and activity at Rome, and there a “godly elder and herald of the truth,” whom Irenaeus quotes from as an older authority, made him the subject of metrical objurgation as the “forerunner of anti-Christian malice” (Iren. Haer. i. 15, 6).
PTOLEMAEUS, on the other hand, was a contemporary of Irenaeus himself, and one of the leaders of the Italian school (Iren. Haer. Praef. 2, Pseud-Orig. Philos. vi. 35), whom Hippolytus in the Syntagina, and probably on the basis of an arbitrary combination of Iren. i. 8, 5 with 11, 2, puts at the head of all other disciples of Valentinus. HERACLEON was still younger than Ptolemaeus, and the second head of the Italian school. His doctrinal system appears to be that mainly kept in view in the Philosophumena (cf. vi. 29, 35). Irenaeus names him as it were in passing (Haer. ii. 4, 1), while Tertullian designates his relation to his predecessors with the words, Valentinus shewed the way, Ptolemaeus walked along it, Heracleon struck out some side paths (adv. Valentinian. 4). He makes also the like remark concerning Secundus and Marcus. Clemens speaks of Heracleon (c. 193) as the most distinguished among the disciples of Valentinus (Strom. iv. 9, 73, p. 595), meaning, of course, among those of his own time. Origen’s statement, therefore, that he had a personal acquaintance with Valentinus (Origen, in Joann. t. ii. 8) is to be received with caution. In part contemporaneously with him appear to have worked the heads of the anatolic (oriental) school Axionikos and Bardesanes (‘ArdhsianhV, Philos. vi. 35), who both lived into the first decennia of cent. iii.
Axionikos was still working at Antioch when Tertullian composed his book against the Valentinians, therefore c. 218 (Tertull. l.c.). We cannot here discuss how far the celebrated Edessene Gnostic BARDESANES (ob. 223) is rightly accounted a Valentinian. Tertullian indicates Axionikos as the only one who in his day still represented the original teaching of Valentines. Theotimus, therefore, who is previously mentioned by Tertullian, and seems to have occupied himself much with the “Figures of the Law,” was, it appears, an older teacher. The same was also probably the case with Alexander, the Valentinian whose syllogisms Tertullian had in his hands (de Carne Christi cc. 16 sqq.).
Concerning the later history of the Valentinian sect we have but meagre information. Tertullian, writing c. 218, speaks of the Valentinians in his book against them as the “frequentissimum collegium inter haereticos.” This is confirmed by what is told us of the local extension of the sect. From Egypt it seems to have spread to Syria, Asia Minor, and to Rome. Its division into an oriental and an Italian school shews that it had adherents even after the death of its founder, in both the East (Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia) and West (specially at Rome). In Asia Minor the doctrine appears to have been mainly disseminated by Marcus, who was so vigorously attacked (c. 150) by the “godly elder,” quoted by Irenaeus (Haer. i. 15, 6). Disciples of Marcus were found by Irenaeus in the Rhone districts (Haer. i. 13, 7), where also he appears to have met with adherents of Ptolemaeus (Haer. Praef. 2). In Rome, c. 223, an important work of the Italian school came into the hands of the writer of the Philosophumena, who speaks of both schools as being in existence in his time (Philos. vi. 35, p. 195). Tertullian also mentions the duae scholae and duae cathedrae of the party in his time (adv. Valent. 11). Remains of the sect were still found in Egypt in the time of Epiphanius (Haer. xxxi. 7). Theodoret, on the other hand (H. f. Praef.), can only speak of the Valentinians as of other Gnostic sects (whom he deals with in his first book) as belonging to the past–palaiaV aireseiV–of whom he possesses a mere historical knowledge.
III. Writings.–The fragments of the writings of Valentinus have been collected by Grabe (Spicilegium, ii. 45-48), and more completely by Hilgenfeld (Ketzergeschichte, pp. 93-207). They consist of fragments of letters and homilies preserved by Clemens Alexandrinus (Strom. ii. 8, 36, p. 448; ii. 20, 114, pp. 488 seq.; iii. 7, 59, p. 538; iv. 13, 91, p. 603; vi. 6, 52, p. 767), and of two pieces contained in the Philosophumena, the narrative of a vision (orama) seen by Valentinus (Philos. vi. 42, p. 203), and the fragment of a psalm composed by him (Philos. vi. 37, pp. 197 seq.). Psalms of Valentinus’s authorship are mentioned by Tertullian (de Carne Christi, 17, 20).
Remains of the writings of the school of Valentinus are more abundant. Beside the numerous fragments and quotations in Irenaeus and the Philosophumena, and in the excerpts from Theodotus, and the anatolic school, which seem yet to need a closer investigation, we may mention: the letter of Ptolemaeus to Flora (ap. Epiphan. Haer. xxxiii. 3-7), numerous fragments from the commentaries (upomnhmata) of Heracleon on St. Luke (ap. Clem. Alex. Strom. iv. 9, 73 seq., pp. 595 seq.; excerpt. ex prophet. § 25, p. 995), and on St. John (ap. Origen in Joann. passim), collected by Grabe (Spicil. i. 80-117) and Hilgenfeld (Ketzergeschichte, 472-498); lastly, a rather large piece out of an otherwise unknown Valentinian writing preserved by Epiphanius (Haer. xxxi. 5 and 6).
IV. Accounts given by the Fathers.–Statements concerning Valentinus and his school are very numerous, but many are so contradictory that it is difficult to distinguish the original doctrine of Valentinus from later developments. Even in his day Tertullian made the complaint (adv. Valentinian. 4), “Ita nunquam jam Valentinus, et tamen Valentiniani, qui per Valentinum.” Among those who before him had controverted the Valentinians, Tertullian enumerates (ib. 5): Justin Martyr, Miltiades, Irenaeus, and the Montanist Proculus. Of the writings of these four on this subject one only has been preserved, the great work of Irenaeus in five books, entitled ElegcoV kai anatroph thV yeudwnumou gnwsewV, which has come down to us in great part only in the ancient Latin version. This work was written (see iii. 3, 3) in the time of the Roman bp. Eleutherus, c. 180-185. The greater part of bk. i., which Epiphanius has preserved to us almost completely, deals exclusively with the Valentinians, and the refutations in the following books are principally concerned with them.
The sources which Irenaeus used are of sufficient variety. In the preface to bk. i. (c. 2 ) he refers to the writings of those who call themselves disciples of Valentinus, adding that he had met some of them himself and heard their opinions from their own mouths. Immediately afterwards he indicates that the contemporary Valentinians, whose doctrine he promises to describe, are those of the school of Ptolemaeus. In bk. i. (c. 8, 5) he introduces into a detailed description of the Valentinian method of interpreting Scripture a large fragment which undertakes to prove the truth of the higher Ogdoad of the Valentinian Pleroma from the prologue of the Gospel of St. John. The concluding notice (found only in the Latin text) expressly ascribes the authorship of this fragment to Ptolemaeus. Irenaeus likewise obtained his information as to the doctrine and practices of the Marcosians partly from a written source, partly from oral communications. We can hardly assume that Marcus was still alive when Irenaeus wrote, but it is not unlikely that adherents of Marcus may have appeared then in the Rhone districts. The section which specially treats of Marcus (i. 12-15) is apparently from a written source; but what he brings to light for the first time (cc. 16-18) concerning the mysteries celebrated by the Marcosians is from oral information.
Next in importance to the statements of Irenaeus, as a source of information concerning Valentinus and his school, are the fragments preserved among the works of Clemens Alexandrinus, and entitled ‘Ek tvn Qeodotou kai thV anatolikhV kaloumenhV didaskaliaV epitomai. The text has come down to us in a somewhat forlorn condition. The best ed. is Bunsen’s, in Analecta Antinicaena, vol. i. (Lond. 1854), pp. 205-278. The general character of these excerpts is similar to others in other writings of Clemens Alexandrinus, and does not justify the assumption that their present abrupt fragmentary form proceeded from Clemens himself.
Very little is obtainable from the Syntagma of Hippolytus, preserved in the excerpts of Pseudo-Tertullian (Haer. 12) and by Philaster (Haer. 38), as also partly by Epiphanius (Haer. xxxi. 8; cf. Quellen d. alt. Ketzergesch. p. 166). Hippolytus combined Irenaeus (cc. 1-7) with some authority belonging to the older anatolic system.
Pseud-Origines, now almost universally assumed to be HIPPOLYTUS, gives us in the Philosophumena (the larger ‘ElegcoV kata pasvn airesewn) a quite peculiar account of the Valentinian system, one mere uniform and synoptical than that of Irenaeus. The original authority on which this description is based cannot have been the same as that in the Syntagma which belonged to the anatolic school, the former being a product of the Western or Italian. The doctrinal system reproduced by Pseud-Origines is in general akin to the Ptolemaic presented by Irenaeus. But his original authority is entirely independent of the sources used by Irenaeus.
Tertullian’s tractate adversus Valentinianos is not an independent authority. Apart from a few personal notices concerning him and his disciples which he may have taken from the lost work of Proculus (c. 4, cf. c. 11), his whole account is a paraphrase of Irenaeus, whom he follows almost word for word, and more or less faithfully from c. 7 onwards.
Epiphanius (Haer. xxxi. 9-32) has incorporated the whole long section of Irenaeus (i. 1-10) in his Panarion. Haer. xxxii. and xxxiv. (Secundus, Marcus) are simply taken from Irenaeus. He follows Irenaeus also in his somewhat arbitrary way in what he says about Ptolemaeus, Colarbasus, Heracleon (Haer. xxxiii. xxxv. xxxvi.). On the other hand, Haer. xxxi. 7, 8, is taken from the Syntagma of Hippolytus: Haer. xxxiii. 3-7 contains the important letter of PTOLEMAEUS to Flora. Haer. xxxi. 5 and 6 gives a fragment of an unknown Valentinian writing, from which the statements in c. 2 are partly derived. This writing, with its barbarous names for the Aeons and its mixture of Valentinian and Basilidian doctrines, shows anatolic Valentinianism as already degenerate.
Later heresiologists, e.g. Theodoret, who (Haer. Fab. i. 7-9) follows Irenaeus and Epiphanius, are not independent authorities.
V. The System.–A review of the accounts given by the Fathers confirms the judgment that, with the means at our command, it is very difficult to distinguish between the original doctrine of Valentinus and the later developments made by his disciples. A description of his system must start from the Fragments, the authenticity of which (apart from the so-called oroV Oualentinou in Dial. de Recta Fide) is unquestioned. But from the nature of these fragments we cannot expect to reconstruct the whole system out of them. From an abundant literature a few relics only have been preserved. Moreover, the kinds of literature to which these fragments belong–letters, homilies, hymns–shew us only the outer side of the system, while its secret Gnostic doctrine is passed over and concealed, or only indicated in the obscurest manner. The modes of expression in these fragments are brought as near as possible to those in ordinary church use. We see therein the evident desire and effort of Valentinus to remain in the fellowship of the Catholic church. Of specific Gnostic doctrines two only appear in their genuine undisguised shape, that of the celestial origin of the spiritual man (the Pneumaticos), and that of the Demiurge; for the docetic Christology was not then, as is clear from Clemens Alexandrinus, exclusively peculiar to the Gnostics. All the more emphatically is the anthropological and ethical side of the system insisted on in these fragments.
As the world is an image of the living Aeon (tou zvntoV aivnoV), so is man an image of the pre-existent man of the anqrwpoV prown. Valentinus, according to Clemens Alexandrinus (Valentini Homil. ap. Clem. Strom. iv. 13, 92), spoke of the Sophia as an artist (zwgrafoV) making this visible lower world a picture of the glorious Archetype, but the hearer or reader would as readily understand the heavenly Wisdom of the Book of Proverbs to be meant by this Sophia as the 12th and fallen Aeon. Under her (according to Valentinus) stand the world-creative angels, whose head is the Demiurge. Her formation (plasma) is Adam created in the name of the ‘AnqrwpoV prowm. In him thus made a higher power puts the seed of the heavenly pneumatic essence (sperma thV anwqen ousiaV). Thus furnished with higher insight, Adam excites the fears of the angels; for even as anqropoi are seized with fear of the images made by their own hands to bear the name of God, i.e. the idols, so these angels cause the images they have made to disappear (Ep. ad Amicos ap. Clem. Alex. Strom. ii. 8, 36). The pneumatic seed (pneuma diaferon or genoV diaferon) nevertheless remains in the world, as a race by nature capable of being saved (fusei swzomenon genoV), and which has come down from a higher sphere in order to put an end to the reign of death. Death originates from the Demiurge, to whom the word (Ex. xxxiii. 20) refers that no one can see the face of God without dying. The members of the pneumatic church are from the first immortal, and children of eternal life. They have only assumed mortality in order to overcome death in themselves and by themselves. They shall dissolve the world without themselves suffering dissolution, and be lords over the creation and over all transitory things (Valent. Hom. ap. Clem. Strom. iv. 13, 91 seq.). But without the help of the only good Father the heart even of the spiritual man (the pneumaticos) cannot be cleansed from the many evil spirits which make their abode in him, and each accomplishes his own desire. But when the only good Father visits the soul, it is hallowed and enlightened, and is called blessed because one day it shall see God. This cleansing and illumination is a consequence of the revelation of the Son (ib. ii. 20, 114).
We learn from the fragments only (Valent. Ep. ad Agathopoda ap. Clem. Strom. iv. 7, 59) that Jesus, by steadfastness and abstinence, earned for Himself Deity, and by virtue of His abstinence did not even suffer to be corrupted the food which He received (i.e. it did not undergo the natural process of digestion), because He Himself was not subject to corruption. It must remain undetermined how Valentinus defined the relation of Jesus to the uioV. If the text of the passage quoted above be sound, Jesus put Himself in possession of Godhead by His own abstinence, a notion we should expect in Ebionite rather than in Gnostic circles. But the true reading may be eikazeto (not eirgazeto), and in that case the meaning will be that by an extraordinary asceticism Jesus avoided every kind of material pollution, and so became Himself the image of the incorruptible and imperishable Godhead. At any rate, this fragment does not tell us whether, according to the teaching of Valentinus, the body of Jesus was pneumatic or psychical. According to another fragment attributed to Valentinus, and preserved by Eulogius of Alexandria (ap. Photium, Bibl. Cod. 230), he appears to have treated with ridicule the opinion of the “Galileans” that Christ had two natures, and to have maintained that He had but one nature composed of the visible and the invisible. Hilgenfeld (l.c. pp. 302 seq.) supposes the Valentinus of this fragment to be the Gnostic, while others take him to have been the Apollinarian. But we have no other instance of any Gnostic giving to Catholic Christians (as did the emperor Julian later) the epithet “Galilean.” Further, although Tertullian (adv. Prax. 29) and Origen (de Princip. i. 2, 1) may have spoken of two natures or two substances in Christ, we can hardly imagine Valentinus pronouncing a doctrine ridiculous, and yet it finding acceptance in his school. For we find the Occidental Valentinians actually teaching in very similar terms, that Soter, the common product of the whole Pleroma, united himself with the Christus of the Demiurge the Man Jesus. Could we otherwise assume that the fragment is genuine, it would serve to prove that the doctrine of the Oriental school concerning the pneumatic body of Christ was in fact the original teaching of Valentinus. How Valentinus thought concerning the origin of matter and of evil cannot be made out from existing fragments. When, however, we find him designating the Demiurge as author of death, we can hardly suppose that he derived the transitory nature and other imperfections of the terrestrial universe from an originally evil material substance. The view, moreover, which underlies the psalm of Valentinus, of which the Philosophumena have preserved a fragment (Philos. vi. 37, pp. 197 seq.) is decidedly monastic. He there sees in the spirit how “all things are hanging (kremamena) and are upborne (ocoumena), the flesh hanging on the soul, the soul upborne by the air, the air hanging on the aether, from Bythos fruits produced and from the womb the child.” An interpretation of these sayings current in the Valentinian school is appended. According to this interpretation, flesh is the ulh which depends upon the soul (the psychical nature) of the Demiurge. Again the Demiurge hangs from the spirit which is outside the Pleroma, i.e. the Sophia in the kingdom of the Midst, the Sophia from Horus and from the Pleroma, and finally the world of Aeons in the Pleroma from the abyss, i.e. their Father. If this interpretation be, as we may assume, correct, Valentinus must have conceived the whole universe as forming a grand scale of being, beginning with the abysmal ground of all spiritual life, and thence descending lower and lower down to matter. The whole scale then is a descent from the perfect to ever more and more imperfect images; according to the principle expressly laid down by Valentinus, that the cosmos is as inferior to the living Aeon as the image is inferior to the living countenance (ap. Clem. Strom. iv. 13, 92). This view of the nature of the universe exhibits a much nearer relationship to Platonic philosophy than to the Oriental dualism which underlay the older Gnostic systems; and Hippolytus is therefore completely right, when dealing with the psalm of Valentinus, to speak of Platonising Gnostics (Philos. vi. 37, p. 197).
The fragments do not give us any detailed acquaintance with the doctrine of Valentinus concerning the Aeons. The Pathr or BuqoV stands at their head; but what place in the Valentinian Pleroma was assigned to the ‘AnqropoV prowm in whose name Adam was created, is difficult to determine.
Of a two-fold Sophia, a higher and a lower, we read nothing. Sophia is the artist (zwgrafoV) who forms the world after the archetype of the living Aeon, in order to be honoured by his name. The world as formed obtains credit and stability through the invisible nature of God (Strom. iv. 13, 92).
To what authority Valentinus made appeal as the source of his doctrine cannot be made out from the fragments. From the Homily to the Friends Clemens Alexandrinus has preserved a sentence which defines “many of the things written in the public books” (dhmosioiV biblioV: he means doubtless the writings of the O.T.) as “found written in the church of God”–“for,” he adds, “those things which are common” (i.e. not merely found in books–read, with Heinrici koina instead of kena) “are words from the heart”; and proceeds, “The law written in the heart is the People of the Beloved One, both loved and loving” (Grabe was wrong in proposing to emend laoV into logoV). The meaning is that this “People” is in virtue of the inward revelation of the Logos a law unto itself (cf. Rom. ii. 14). But this inward revelation has reference only to “that which is common” (ta koina), i.e. to the universal ethical truths written in the heart which “the church of God” needs not first to learn from “the public books.” But this passage tells us nothing about the sources whence Valentinus derived his Gnosis. For these we must go back to the statement of Clemens (Strom. vii. 17, 106), according to which the Valentinians spoke of their leader as having learned of a certain Theodas, a disciple of St. Paul. But the actual statement of Irenaeus is more to be depended on, that Valentinus was the first who transformed the old doctrines of “the Gnostics” into a system of his own (Haer. i. 11, 1; cf. Tert. adv. Valentinian. 4.). The fragments, moreover, give a series of points of contact with the opinions of these older “Gnostics.” We may therefore regard as an axiom to be adhered to in our investigations that of any two Valentinian doctrines, that is the older and more original which approaches more closely to the older and vulgar Gnosis (Iren. i. 30). Yet the system of Valentinus had a peculiar character of its own. He was the first to breathe a really philosophic spirit into the old vulgar Gnosis, by making use of Plato’s world of thought to infuse a deeper meaning into the old Gnostic myths. Baur, therefore, was quite right in emphasizing the Platonism of Valentinus (Christliche Gnosis, pp 124 seq.), to which the Philosophumena had already called attention (Philos. vi. 21 sqq.).
Irenaeus completes the information afforded by the fragments concerning Valentinus’s doctrine of the Aeons. At the head of them stands a duaV anonomastoV, the ‘ArrhtoV (called also BuqoV and Pater agennhtoV) and his suzugoV the Sigh. From this Dyad proceeds a second Dyad, Pathr and ‘Alhqeia, which with the first Dyad forms the highest Tetrad. From this Tetrad a second Tetrad proceeds–LogoV and Zwh, ‘AnqrwpoV and ‘Ekklhsia, and these complete the First Ogdoad. From LogoV and Zwh proceed a Decad, from AnqrwpoV and ‘Ekklhsia a Dodecad of Aeons. In this the number 30 of Aeons forming the Pleroma is completed. The names of the Aeons composing the Decad and the Dodecad are not given. We may, however, venture to assume that the names elsewhere given by Irenaeus (i. 1, 2), and literally repeated by Pseud-Origenes (Philos. vi. 30), and then again by Epiphanius (xxxi. 6) with some differences of detail, in his much later account, did really originate from Valentinus himself. They are as follows: From LogoV and Zwh proceed BuqioV and MixiV, ‘AghratoV and ‘EnwsiV, AutofnhV and ‘Hdonh, ‘AkinhtoV and Sugkrasis, MonogenhV and Makaria. From ‘AnqrwpoV and ‘Ekklhsia proceed: ParaklhtoV and PistiV, PatrikoV and ‘ElpiV, MhtrikoV and ‘Agape, ‘AeinouV and SunesiV, ‘EkklhsiastikoV and MakariothV, QelhtoV and Sofia. However arbitrary this name-giving may seem, it is evident that the first four masculine Aeons repeat the notion of the First Principle, and the first four feminine the notion of his syzygy, in various forms of expression. The names MonogenhV and NouV (here ‘AeinouV) meet us again among the Valentinians of Irenaeus as expressions for the secend Masculine Principle, and ParaklhtoV as that for the common product of all the Aeons–the Soter. PatrikoV, MhtrikoV, ‘EkklhsiastikoV are names simply expressing that the Aeons which bear them are derived from the higher powers within the Pleroma. The feminine names Makaria, PistiV, ‘ElpiV, ‘Agaph, SunesiV, Sofia, describe generally the perfection of the Pleroma by means of Predicates borrowed from the characteristics of the perfect Pneumaticos. So that all these inferior Aeon names are but a further and more detailed expression of the thought contained in the names of the first and second Tetrad. The first Tetrad expresses the essence of the Upper Pleroma in itself, the second Tetrad divided into two pairs of Aeons expresses its revelation to the Pneumatici and the Pneumatic World.
The last of the 30 Aeons, the Sophia or Mhthr, falls out of the Pleroma. In her remembrance of the better world she gives birth to Christus with a shadow (meta skiaV tinoV), Christus being of masculine nature, cuts away the shadow from himself and hastens back into the Pleroma. The mother, on the other hand, being left behind and alone with the shadow, and emptied of the pneumatic substance, gives birth to another Son the Demiurge, called also Pantokratwr, and at the same time with him a sinistrous archon (the Kosmokratwr). So then from these two elements, “the right and the left,” the psychical and the hylical, proceeds this lower world. This the original doctrine of Valentinus appears to have had in common with that of the Ophites (Iren. i. 30), that both doctrines knew of only one Sophia, and that for the Ophites also Christus leaves the Sophia behind and escapes himself into the upper realm of light.
The notion of a fall of the last of the Aeons from the Pleroma, and the consequent formation of this lower world as the fruit of that fall, is new and peculiar to Valentinus in his reconstruction of the older Gnosticism. He set his Platonic Monism in the place of the Oriental Dualism. The Platonic thought of the soul’s fall and longing after the lost world of light he combined with the other Platonic thought of the things of this lower world being types and images of heavenly Archetypes, and so obtained a new solution of the old problems of the world’s creation and the origin of evil.
The statements of Irenaeus concerning his teaching are, alas! too fragmentary and too uncertain to supply a complete view of the system of Valentinus. But the excerpts in Clemens Alex. taken from Theodotos and the anatolic school contain a doctrine in §§ 1-42, which at any rate stands much nearer to the views of Valentinus than the detailed account of Ptolemaic doctrines which Irenaeus gives in i. 1-8. We have in these excerpts a somewhat complete whole, differing in some important respects from the doctrinal system of the Italic school, and agreeing with that of Valentinus in that it knows of only one Sophia, whose offspring Christus, leaving his mother, enters the Pleroma, and sends down Jesus for the redemption of the forsaken One.
The doctrine of the Aeons stands as much behind the anthropological and ethical problems in these excerpts as it does in the fragments. We find something about the Pleroma in an interpretation of the prologue of St. John’s Gospel (Excerpt. §§ 6, 7). By the arch of St. John i. 1, in which the Logos “was,” we must understand the MonogenhV “Who is also called God” (the reading o monogenhV qeoV John i. 18 being followed). “The Logos was en arch” means that He was in the Monogenes, in the NouV and the ‘Alhqeia–the reference being to the syzygy of LogoV and Zwh which is said to have proceeded from NouV and ‘alhqeia. The Logos is called God because He is in God, in the NouV. But when it is said o gegonen en autv zwh hn, the reference is to the Zwh as suzugoV of the Logos. The Unknown Father (pathr agnwstoV) willed to be known to the Aeons. On knowing Himself through His own ‘EnqumhsiV, which was indeed the spirit of knowledge (pneuma gnwsewV), He, by knowledge, made to emanate the Monogenes. The Monogenes having emanated from the Gnosis, i.e. the Enthymesis of the Father, is in Himself Gnosis, i.e. Son, for it is through the Son that the Father is known. The pneuma agaphV mingles itself with the pneuma gnwsewV as the Father with the Son (i.e. the Monogenes or NouV) and the Enthymesis with ‘Alhqeia, proceeding from the Aletheia as the Gnosis proceeds from the Enthymesis. The monogenhV nioV, Who abides in the bosom of the Father, emanates from the Father’s bosom and thereby declares (exhgeitai) the Enthymesis through Gnosis to the Aeons. Having become visible on earth, He is no longer called by the apostle Monogenes (simply), but wV monogenhV. For though remaining in Himself one and the same, He is in the creation called prwtokotoV, and in the Pleroma MonogenhV, and appears in each locality as He can be comprehended there.
The preceding survey shews that in the first 42 paragraphs or sections of Clemens’s fragments from Theodotus we really have a well-connected and consistent doctrinal system. The scattered notices in §§ 1-28 fit tolerably well into the dogmatic whole, and doubtless we have here an account of the so-called anatolic school, and in substance the oldest form of the Valentinian system.
The historical development of the Valentinian doctrine can be traced with only approximate certainty and imperfectly. The roots of the system are to be found in the old vulgar Gnosis. For even if the original dualistic foundation is repressed and concealed by a Platonizing pantheism, it still gives evident tokens of its continued existence in the background. The ulh and “dark waters” into which the Ophitic Sophia sinks down (Iren. i. 30, 3) are here changed into the kenwma or usterhma, which in antithesis to the plhrwma is simply an equivalent for the Platonic mh on.
The notion of a psychical Christus who passes through Mary as water through a conduit (Iren. vii. 2) is to be found everywhere in the Italic school (Philos. vi. 35, pp. 194 seq.).
The centre of gravity of the whole system lies undoubtedly in its speculative interests. The names alone of the 30 Aeons are a proof of this. It deserves notice that the designations NouV and MonogenhV applied to the first masculine principle emanating from the supreme Father do not seem to have been used by Valentinus himself. It was called simply Pathr or ‘AnqrwpoV (nioV anqrwpou). It is a genuinely speculative feature that the knowledge of the Father through the Son is derived from a union of the Spirit of Love with the Spirit of Knowledge.
Since the doctrine of Valentinus concerning the Aeons originated in the cosmogonic and astral powers of the old Syrian Gnosis, one cannot doubt that the Aeons were originally thought of as mythological personages and not as personified notions, although Tertullian (adv. Valentin. 4) would refer the former view to Ptolemaeus, and not Valentinus, as its first author.
A yet more widely different conception of the Valentinian doctrine of Aeons is found in the fragment given by Epiphanius (xxxi. 5-6). Here, too, the speculative interest is manifest in the endeavour to follow up in detail the process of the emanation of individual Aeons within the Pleroma from the Autopatwr. But the whole description, bathed as it is in sensuous warmth, with its peculiar plays with numbers and its barbarous names for individual Aeons, appears to be merely a degenerate Marcosian form of Gnosis.
Finally, we have a quite peculiar transformation of the Valentinian system in the doctrine of the so-called Docetae, as preserved in the Philosophumena (viii. 8-11). From the prvtoV qeoV, who is small as the seed of a fig-tree but infinite in power, proceed first of all three Aeons, which by the perfect number ten enlarge themselves to thirty Aeons; from these proceed innumerable other bisexual Aeons, and from these an infinite multiplicity of Ideas, of which those of the third Aeon are expressed and shapen in the lower world of darkness as fwteinai carakthreV.
The Platonic foundation of the Valentinian system is very perceptible in this its last offshoot, though mixed up in a peculiar way with Oriental Dualism. At the same time these Docetae endeavour to reduce the metaphysical distinctions which they maintain to merely gradual ones. No part of Christendom therefore is entirely excluded from the knowledge of the Redeemer, and participation in His Redemption: all, even those of the lower grades of the spirit-world, participate at least ek merouV in the Truth. The way in which all, and each according to his measure, attain knowledge of the truth, is, as in the doctrine of the church, Faith. Since the Redeemer’s advent–so we read expressly–“Faith is announced for the forgiveness of sins.”
Beside working out philosophical problems, the disciples of Valentinus were much occupied with seeking traces of their Master’s doctrine in Holy Scripture. The excerpts of Clemens and abundant notices in Irenaeus tell of an allegorical method of scriptural exposition pursued with great zeal in the Valentinian schools, not limited to the Gospels or the Pauline Epistles, but extending to the O.T., and attaching special significance to the history of creation in Genesis. Valentinian expositors shew a special preference for St. John’s Gospel, and above all for its prologue. Some allegorical expositions have been preserved belonging to the anatolic school (Exc. ex Theod. §§ 6, 7) and others derived from Ptolemaeus (Iren. i. 8, 5). But before all we must make mention of the labours of Heracleon, of which Origen has preserved numerous specimens. From Heracleon proceeded the first known commentary on St. John’s Gospel.
VI. Literature.–Valentinus occupies a distinguished place in all works on Gnosticism, e.g. in Neander, Baur, Matter, Lipsius, Möhler (Geschichte der Kosmologie in der Christlichen Kirche), Mansel (The Gnostic Heresies of the First and Second Centuries–a posthumous work, ed. by Bp. Lightfoot), and in the Prolegomena of Harvey’s ed. of Irenaeus. The best monograph is by Heinrici (Die Valentinianische Gnosis und die Heilige Schrift, Berlin, 1851), with which cf. the review by Lipsius (Protestantische Kirchenzeitung, 1873, pp. 174-186). [HERACLEON; MARCUS (17).]
Valentinus’s Myth according to Irenaeus
The following text is excerpted from Bentley Layton in The Gnostic Scriptures (Doubleday 1987), pp. 225-227. The text comes from Irenaeus’ Adv. Haer. 1.11.1 and is quoted by Epiphanius in his Against Heresies 31.32.2-9. Please refer to Layton for background, bibliography, and notes.
Relation to gnostic myth (a)
Valentinus adapted the fundamental principles of the so-called gnostic school of thought to his own kind of system. Here is what he laid down.
The ineffable and silence (b)
There was a duality, of which one member is called the ineffable and the other is called silence.
Production of the other aeons (c)
Then from this duality a second duality was emitted, of which one member he calls the parent and the other he calls truth.
The quartet yielded:
the Word;
life;
the human being;
the church.
This is the first octet.
And—he says—from the Word and life ten powers were emitted, as I already said. And from the human being and the church twelve powers were emitted.
Revolt of the mother (d)
One of these revolted and became lacking; this one was responsible for the rest of the affair.
Two boundaries (e)
He assumes the existence of two boundaries: one is between the deep and the rest of the fullness, bounding the engendered aeons away from the unengendered parent; the other bounds their mother apart from the fullness.
Production of the anointed (Christ) and “shadow” (f)
And furthermore, the anointed (Christ) was not emitted from the aeons within the fullness. Rather, he and a shadow were engendered by the mother, according to her memory of the superior realm, while she was outside (of the fullness). Since he was male he cut off the shadow, (removing it) from himself; and he hastened up into the fullness.
Loss of spirit by the mother. The craftsman. (g)
The mother was left behind with the shadow; and having been emptied of the spiritual substance, she emitted another child. This was the craftsman, whom he also calls the almighty of those that are subject to it.
The left-hand ruler (h)
Just like the gnostics—falsely so called!—of whom we shall speak further on, he holds that along with this (crafstman) was emitted also a ruler on the left.
The emanation of Jesus (i)
And furthermore, sometimes he says that Jesus emanated from that being who had drawn away from this mother of theirs and had merged with the entirety, i.e. the wished-for. At other times he says that he emanated from that being which had hastened up into the fullness, i.e. the anointed (Christ); at still other times, he says that he emanated from the human being and the church.
The holy spirit (j)
And the holy spirit, he says, was emitted by truth, for the scrutiny and yielding of the aeons, invisibly entering into them. Through it the aeons yielded the plants of truth.
Valentinus: The Divine Word Present in the Infant
The following text is excerpted from Bentley Layton in The Gnostic Scriptures (Doubleday 1987), p. 231. The text comes from Hippolytus’s Against Heresies 6.42.2. Please refer to Layton for background, bibliography, and notes.
Fragment A
For Valentinus says he saw a newborn babe, and questioned it to find out who it was. And the babe answered him saying that it was the Word. Thereupon, he adds to this a certain pompous tale, intending to derive from this his attempt at a sect.
Valentinus: The Three Natures
The following text is excerpted from Bentley Layton in The Gnostic Scriptures (Doubleday 1987), p. 233. The text comes from Marcellus of Ancyra, On the Holy Church, 9. Please refer to Layton for background, bibliography, and notes.
Fragment B
Valentinus, the leader of a sect, was the first to devise the notion of three subsistent entities (hypostases), in a work that he entitled On the Three Natures. For, he devised the notion of three subsistent entities and three persons—father, son, and holy spirit.
Valentinus: Adam’s Faculty of Speech
The following text is excerpted from Bentley Layton in The Gnostic Scriptures (Doubleday 1987), p. 235. The text comes from Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 2.36.2-4. Please refer to Layton for background, bibliography, and notes.
Fragment C
And even as awe overcame the angels in the presence of that modeled form because it uttered sounds superior to what its modeling justified, owing to the agent who had invisibly deposited in it a seed of higher essence and who spoke freely: so too in the races of worldly people, human artifacts become objects of awe for their creators—for example, statues and paintings and everything that (human) hands make as representing a god. For Adam, modeled as representing a human being, made them stand in awe of the preexistent human being; for precisely the latter stood in him. And they were stricken with terror and quickly concealed the work.
Valentinus: Adam’s Name
The following text is excerpted from Bentley Layton in The Gnostic Scriptures (Doubleday 1987), p. 237. The text comes from Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 4.89.6-4.90.1. Please refer to Layton for background, bibliography, and notes.
Fragment D
However much a portrait is inferior to an actual face, just so is the world worse than the living realm. Now, what is the cause of the (effectiveness of the) portrait? It is the majesty of the face that has furnished to the painter a prototype so that the portrait might be honored by his name. For the form was not reproduced with perfect fidelity, yet the name completed the lack within the act of modeling. And also god’s invisible cooperates with what has been modeled to lend it credence.
Valentinus: Jesus’ Digestive System: Epistle to Agathapous
The following text is excerpted from Bentley Layton in The Gnostic Scriptures (Doubleday 1987), p. 239. The text comes from Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 3.59.3. Please refer to Layton for background, bibliography, and notes.
Fragment E
He was continent, enduring all things. Jesus digested divinity; he ate and drank in a special way, without excreting his solids. He had such a great capacity for continence that the nourishment within him was not corrupted, for he did not experience corruption.
Valentinus: Annihilation of the Realm of Death
The following text is excerpted from Bentley Layton in The Gnostic Scriptures (Doubleday 1987), p. 241. The text comes from Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 4.89.1-3. Please refer to Layton for background, bibliography, and notes.
Fragment F
From the beginning you (plur.) have been immortal, and you are children of eternal life. And you wanted death to be allocated to yourselves so that you might spend it and use it up, and that death might die in you and through you. For when you nullify the world and are not yourselves annihilated, you are lord over creation and all corruption.
Now, like Basilides, he supposes that there is a people that by its very nature is saved; that this race, indeed, has come down to us for the destruction of death; and that the origination of death is the work of the creator of the world. Accordingly, he understands the scriptural passage (Ex 33:20) “No one shall see the face of god and live” as though god were the cause of death.
Valentinus: The Source of Common Wisdom: On Friends
The following text is excerpted from Bentley Layton in The Gnostic Scriptures (Doubleday 1987), p. 243. The text comes from Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 6.52.3-4. Please refer to Layton for background, bibliography, and notes.
Fragment G
Many of the things written in publicly available books are found in the writings of god’s church. For this shared matter is the utterances that come from the heart, the law that is written in the heart. This is the people of the beloved, which is beloved and which loves him.
Valentinus: The Vision of God: Epistle on Attachments
The following text is excerpted from Bentley Layton in The Gnostic Scriptures (Doubleday 1987), p. 245. The text comes from Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 2.114.3-6. Please refer to Layton for background, bibliography, and notes.
Fragment H
And one there is who is good! His free act of speaking is the manifestation of the son. And through him alone can a heart become pure, when every evil spirit has been put out of the heart. For the many spirits dwelling in the heart do not permit it to become pure: rather, each of them performs its own acts, violating it in various ways with improper desires. And in my opinion the heart experiences something like what happens in a caravansary. For the latter is full of holes and dug up and often filled with dung, because while they are there, people live in an utterly vulgar way and take no forethought for the property since it belongs to someone else. Just so, a heart too is impure by being the habitation of many demons, until it experiences forethought. But when the father, who alone is good, visits the heart, he makes it holy and fills it with light. And so a person who has such a heart is called blessed, for that person will see god.
Valentinus: Summer Harvest
The following text is excerpted from Bentley Layton in The Gnostic Scriptures (Doubleday 1987), pp. 248-249. The text comes from Hippolytus of Rome, Against Heresies 6.37.7-8. This little ditty is not a fragment but rather a complete work of Valentinus. Please refer to Layton for background, bibliography, and notes.
Summer Harvest
I see in spirit that all are hung
I know in spirit that all are borne
Flesh hanging from soul
Soul clinging to air
Air hanging from upper atmosphere
Crops rushing forth from the deep
A babe rushing forth from the womb.
He means this: “flesh” according to them is matter which “hangs from” the “soul” of the craftsman. “Soul clings to air”: i.e. the craftsman (clings) to spirit of the outer fullness. And “air hangs from upper atmosphere,” i.e. the outer wisdom (hangs) from the inner boundary and the entire fullness. “Crops rush forth from the deep,” having become the complete emanation of the aeons from the parent.
Information on Valentinus
Bentley Layton writes (The Gnostic Scriptures, p. 217):
Valentinus (A.D. ca. 100-ca. 175) was born in the Egyptian Delta, at Phrenobis (see Map 4). He enjoyed the good fortune of a Greek education in the nearby metropolis of Alexandria, the world capital of Hellenistic culture. In Alexandria he probably met the Christian philosopher Basilides (see Part Five), who was teaching there, and may have been influenced by him. There, too, he must have made the acquiantance of Greek philosophy. Valentinus’s familiarity with Platonism may have come to him through study of Hellenistic Jewish interpretation of the bible, for in a passage of one of his sermons he seems to show knowledge of a work by the great Alexandrian Jewish allegorist and philosopher Philo Judaeus (ca. 30 B.C.-A.D. ca. 45). [GTr 36:35f may use the allegory of Gn 2:8 found in Philo Judaeus, “Questions and Anwswers on Genesis” 1.6.] Valentinus’s distinguished career as a teacher began in Alexandria, sometime between A.D. 117 and 138. Since most of the Fragments of his works (VFr) were preserved by a second-century Christian intellectual in Alexandria, Valentinus may have written and published in Alexandria while he was teaching there. If so, his considerable expertise in rhetorical composition, which is evident in these Fragments, must have been acquired while he was studying in Alexandria. Valentinus’s followers in Alexandria later reported that he had claimed a kind of apostolic sanction for his teaching by maintaining that he had received lessons in Christian religion from a certain Theudas, who—he said— had been a student of St. Paul. If there is any truth in this claim, his contact with Theudas and his reading of St. Paul may have occurred in Alexandria.
J. Quasten writes (Patrology, v. 1, p. 260):
By far more important than Basilides and his son Isidore was their contemporary Valentinus. Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. 3,4,3) states of him: ‘Valentinus came to Rome in the time of Hyginus (ca. 136 to 140 A.D.), flourished under Pius (ca. 150 to 155) and remained until Anicetus’ (ca. 155 to 160). Epiphanius (Haer. 31,7 to 12) is the first who reports that he was born in Egypt, educated in Alexandria, and that he spread his doctrine in Egypt before he went to Rome. Epiphanius adds that he later left Rome for Cyprus. Clement of Alexandria has six fragments of his writings incorporated into his Stromata: two of them are from his letters, two from his homilies, and two of them do not give any indication from which of his writings they are taken.
Quasten also states: “Valentinus found many followers both in the East and in the West. Hippolytus speaks of two schools, an Oriental and an Italian.” (Patrology, v. 1, p. 261)
Bentley Layton expounds (The Gnostic Scriptures, pp. 221-222):
Three sides of Valentinus’ literary personality emerge in these remains. First, there is the mythmaker—continuing in the steps of the gnostics, but strikingly innovative so as to take account of the different brand of philosophy, a more profound acceptance of biblical and cross-centered Christianity, and a different structuring of the myth. A doctrinal résumé of Valentinus’s myth, by St. Irenaeus, survives (IrV): it is abbreviated and stops short, so no more than a hint of this side of Valentinus emerges. The myth is known in more detail in versions taught by Valentinus’s disciples. The version by Ptolemy is included in the present volume (IrPt); from it, a modern reader can get a better idea of what Valentinus’s own teaching muts have been like, though some details are doubtless due to Ptolemy’s own creativity.
Second, there is the Platonizing—or perhaps, better, gnosticizing—biblical theologian of the Fragments (VFrA-H). These eight Fragments, excerpted by ancient witnesses from Valentinus’s philosophical epistles, sermons, and treatises, show an intensity, an attention to detail, and a penchant for unexpected turns of thought that set them apart from most other literature of gnostic Christianity and Valentinianism. Despite their brevity and incompleteness, they are among the most striking remains of ancient Christian literature. Without more of the originals, it is hard to assess how far they resembled other material attributed to Valentinus. VFrA, VFrC, and VFrD relate to a mythic story of cosmic structure and creation like IrV, while VFrF and VFrH resemble more the content of GTr. However, there is very little in the Fragments that unambiguously resembles gnostic or postgnostic myth (except perhaps “the preexistent human being” in VFrC; cf. VFrD, “the form was not reproduced with perfect fidelity”).
Third, there is the mystic poet of Summer Harvest (VHr) and The Gospel of Truth (GTr). Both these works are personal and visionary. Summer Harvest is nothing less than a stylized evocation of the whole metaphysical and physical world, in seven line of verse that hover between philosophical cosmology and pure poetry. The Gospel of Truth also evokes the entire universe, but in a rhetoric that no longer bears any immediate relation to the linear, chainlike cosmology of gnostic myth or Summer Harvest. The world view of GTr is Stoic and pantheistic: that is, a universe in which all is enclosed by god, and ultimately all is god. Although it begins with formal rhetoric and continues with exhortation of the listeners, GTr ends in a purely visionary mode in which Valentinus confesses that he is already present in the “place” of repose and salvation.
Like Marcion, Valentinus held to a faith that did not fit into the orthodoxy of early Catholicism but that also does not strictly correspond to classical Gnosticism, as known from the Apocryphon of John and the bulk of the refutations of Irenaeus. Also like Marcion, Valentinus was active in Rome in the late 130s. Both Marcion and Valentinus provide us with a perspective on “Christianity as it could have been.” As it turned out, the Roman church developed doctrines that were more along the lines of apologist Justin Martyr, who arrived in Rome in 140 CE and may have had some responsibility for the fact that Valentinus never became a bishop in Rome.
mystiek & filosofie 