Irenaeus reports that "Valentinus adapted the fundamental principles ciples of the so-called Gnostic school of thought to his own kind of system."
8 We are right to be suspicious of this claim because it is Irenaeus's strategy to denigrate Christians whose views he rejects by portraying traying them as the intellectual successors of other false Christians. Still, an exhaustive study of Valentinus's surviving works by Anne McGuire confirms Irenaeus's report.'
9 Valentinus was not a Gnostic, and it appears that he took some pains to distinguish his views from Gnostic teachings, which were only one among many sources of his own thought. But he did not simply reject those teachings; rather
, he created a new myth that was less elaborate and more centered on Christ. In addition, he eschewed the pseudonymous apocalyptic mode of Gnostic writing and instead claimed his own visionary insight and philosophical authority.
10
Valentinus taught in Rome from the late 130s until the 160s, nearly thirty years. According to a much later account (by Epiphanius of Salamis in the fourth century), Valentinus was born in Egypt and educated in Alexandria. Although we cannot be certain of this claim, there are several reasons that it is likely to be true, among them that it is Clement of Alexandria who has preserved many of the excerpts from otherwise lost writings of Valentinus.
11 From these writings it is clear that Valentinus received a very good education and was well read in Platonic, biblical, Jewish, and Christian literature. In Rome Valentinus emerged as a prominent Christian teacher. Several of his students became important tant Christian theologians in their own right, most prominently Ptolemy of Rome, and a Valentinian school of Christian thought (with two distinct branches) continued well into the fourth century ... Rival Christian teachers criticized Valentinus and his students sharply, but there is no evidence that Valentinus himself was ever formally condemned by any organized Christian group with power to enforce force its judgement.
12 After the mid-160s Valentinus disappears into the fog of history, and we have no information about his later life and death.
Discovering what Valentinus taught is a formidable task, and scholars disagree about many important points. Unlike in Marcion's case, where nothing of what he wrote appears to survive, we have some fragmentary quotations from Valentinus's lost works and an entire (if short) poem. It seems almost certain that the anonymous sermon
The Gospel of Truth can be attributed to Valentinus, and a portion of Methodius of Olympus's
On Free Will may represent his views.
13 Irenaeus provides an extremely brief summary of the myth that Valentinus taught: because Valentinus adapted the teachings of the Gnostics and because
Irenaeus's real targets are the students of Valentinus, he seems concerned to present only highlights of Valentinus's doctrines, rather than the complete myth (if there was one). With so little to work with, scholars debate how much they can use the teachings of Valentinus's followers, especially Ptolemy, to reconstruct his thought.
For example, did Valentinus's myth include a single divine figure of Wisdom ("the Mother"), as the Gnostic myth did and Irenaeus's summary suggests, or two manifestations of Wisdom (a "higher" and a "lower" Wisdom), as his student Ptolemy taught? However these questions are answered, we can see the ways in which Valentinus responded to Gnostic teachings by transforming them, rather than by rejecting them outright. For example, Valentinus took from the Gnostics the idea that the created material world is the result of some sort of mistake or error by a feminine figure. He did not, however, portray this world in unrelentingly negative terms, but stressed its dependence on God and its ultimate meaninglessness, even unreality.
According to Irenaeus, Valentinus agreed with the Gnostics that the ultimate God unfolds himself into a series of emanations, one of which "revolted" or "turned away" and "became lacking," resulting in the generation of the material world. In
The Gospel of Truth, this turning away from knowledge of the ultimate God is personified as 'Error', the feminine origin of materiality. Valentinus's 'Error' combines and adapts the figures of 'Wisdom' and 'Ialdabaoth' in Gnostic myth.
14
Because the material world has its origin in error or ignorance, it is ultimately not real, for the only true reality is God, and other beings are real only to the extent that they participate in God through knowledge edge of him. God, then, underlies and is present in and with all things that truly are. Valentinus's poem or hymn "Summer Harvest" evokes the dependence on God of everything that exists:
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.15
Valentinus's strong emphasis on the immanence of God differentiates him from the Gnostics and supplements the Platonist distinction between tween spirit and matter with a kind of Stoic pantheism (although the Stoics were materialists and would not accept that matter is not ultimately mately real).
16
Two fragments show Valentinus in dialogue with Gnostic accounts of the creation of Adam.
17 In one passage, Valentinus considers how it is that statues, paintings, and other artifacts become representations of gods and thus "objects of awe" for the human beings that made them. He adduces as a parallel example the creation of Adam by angels: Adam's speech terrified the angels because it indicated the presence of a seed of higher essence deposited in him by the Word of God. Adam represented the divine archetypal human being in a powerful way, so that the angels were amazed and frightened.
Valentinus inherited from the Gnostics the ideas that Adam was created by lower divine beings, that the higher divine power placed within him a seed of divinity without the knowledge of the lower creators, and that Adam's speech or upright stature displayed played his superiority to his creators. But Valentinus's creating angels are not as demonic and hostile as are Ialdabaoth and the rulers of Gnostic myth, and Valentinus emphasizes the divine presence that makes up for the imperfection of the material creation. Moreover, it appears that the divine agent who transmits divine essence to humanity is not Wisdom or Forethought, but the Son or Word of God, whom Valentinus refers to also as God's "name.'' The lower angels may have failed to reproduce produce the eternal form of divine humanity in creating the material Adam, "yet the name completed the lack within the act of modelling."
Although he accepted Gnostic ideas that the material creation is highly imperfect and the work of lower beings, Valentinus reduced the antagonism between humanity and its creators, and he stressed the work of God's Word to complete or fill the imperfection of materiality.
In comparison to the Gnostics, Valentinus placed Jesus Christ much more at the center of his thought. The Word of God is a prominent aeon in the divine fullness as Valentinus envisioned it, and according to one ancient source, Valentinus saw a vision in which the Word appeared to him in the form of an infant.
18 He had such a strong sense of the divinity of Jesus that he considered the possibility that Jesus' body did not digest foods in the same manner as did ordinary human bodies.
19 The sermon
The Gospel of Truth includes an extensive meditation on the relationship ship between the Son and the Father. As the name of the Father, the Son reveals the Father to created beings. Jesus' crucifixion is the climactic moment of divine self-revelation:
"He was nailed to a tree and became fruit of the Father's acquaintance. Yet it did not cause ruin because it was eaten. Rather, to those who ate of it, it gave the possibility that whoever he discovered within himself might be joyful in the discovery of him. And as for him, they discovered him within them-the inconceivable, uncontained, the Father, who is perfect, who created the entirety."20
Here the crucifixion, as the moment in which 'gnosis of God' becomes possible, looks backward to the Fall in Eden and forward to the Christian Eucharist. By eating the body of Christ, Christians participate in the crucifixion of Christ and gain knowledge of God and of themselves, for God is within them as the inconceivable origin of all that truly is. In contrast to the Eden story, this knowledge brings joy and life, not regret and ruin. The Gnostic author of
The Gospel of Judas mocked the Eucharist as ignorant worship of a false God, but Valentinus celebrated it as the means of joyous discovery of God and self.
Valentinus differed from the Gnostics as well in how he presented his teaching as authoritative. The Gnostics, we have seen, attributed their literary works to authoritative figures of the past, whether very distant (Adam, Zoroaster) or more recent (John the Apostle), and these works were mostly revelations from divine beings. Even though it must have been the Gnostic authors themselves who received the visionary insights that they sought to communicate in their literature, they did not claim these insights for themselves, but presented their works as wisdom from above or from antiquity. Valentinus, however, invoked his own mystical experience as the basis for his teachings. As we have seen, he reportedly had a visionary experience in which the Word of God appeared to him as an infant.
21
In
The Gospel of Truth, he announced, "I have been in the place of repose"; true children of God, he said, "speak of the light that is perfect and full of the Father's seed."
22
For Valentinus, the Christians who have gained acquaintance of God have discovered themselves, for they are in God and God is in them: such Christians can speak the wisdom that all God-inspired philosophy teaches, which is "the utterances that come from the heart, the law that is written in the heart."
23 They are themselves "texts of truth, which speak and know only themselves."
24 The visionary insight that Valentinus claimed was available to any who follow the path of knowledge that Jesus has made available.
According to Clement of Alexandria, Valentinus's students promoted his authority in another way. They asserted that he had been a student of Theudas, who had been a disciple of Paul.
[25; Strom. 7.17] If this report is true, then Valentinus presented himself not only as the recipient of an extraordinary level of the insight that Christianity makes accessible to all, but also as a trained philosopher. An ancient teacher often legitimated his or her teaching by producing an intellectual pedigree that traced his or her academic tradition through a succession of brilliant teachers back to a founder whom many others admired, such as Plato or Zeno or, for Christians, Paul or Jesus himself. This succession was sometimes the conduit for a secret oral tradition that contained doctrines more advanced than those found in available written texts of the school.
26
Rival teachers competed with one another, often through personal attacks on another's lifestyle and academic pedigree; this kind of polemic is not surprising, given the personal nature of the teacher's authority.
27 The teacher's authority could continue after death through the dissemination of his or her philosophical treatises and scriptural commentaries and the publication of idealizing biographies by his or her students. In Valentinus's case, his disciples and their communities seem to have conducted worship using hymns that Valentinus had composed, and to have drawn from and commented on his writings.
28 In distinction, then, to the Gnostics and in competition with rival versions of Christianity, Judaism, and philosophy in general, Valentinus cloaked himself in a highly personal type of authority, combining visionary insight and an impressive academic lineage.
Although we know that Valentinus and his teachings aroused opposition from some other Christian leaders, Valentinus himself evinced an optimistic openness, even missionary zeal, toward others, whether they were Christians outside his immediate community of followers or not Christians at all.
"Unto those who are weary give repose; and awaken those who wish to arise," he exhorted his followers. "For it is you who are unsheathed intelligence." On the other hand, he counseled neglect of those who had fallen away from the group: "Do not focus your attention upon others, that is, ones whom you have expelled."
[29; Gospel of Truth 33:5-15]
It is unlikely that Valentinus saw himself and his followers as a special or elite group within a wider Christian community; rather, he believed that he was teaching a message for all people, or as he might put it, for everyone whose name is written in the book of the living.
30 Indeed, unity and harmony are major themes of
The Gospel of Truth: the aeonic emanations of the Father enjoy a gracious unity with each other and with God, who is their completion; only ignorance of each other and of God disrupts this unity. The analogy with human beings (themselves emanations of the Father) is clear:
"For now their affairs are dispersed ... It is by acquaintance that all will purify themselves out of multiplicity into unity ... it is fitting for us to meditate upon the entirety, so that this house might be holy and quietly intent on unity." [31; Gospel of Truth 25:7-25.]
Valentinus then tells a parable about how the coming of the Word causes a great disturbance among a set of jars in a house: some break, some are found to be empty, some are full. Einar Thomassen has plausibly suggested that this parable can be read as an allegory for how Christians groups responded in diverse verse ways to the stirring message of saving
gnosis that Valentinus offered.
32
Valentinus's near election as a bishop (if true) indicates that at least some Roman Christians outside his own school acknowledged him as a gifted Christian teacher, even if others condemned his views. We shall see in Chapter 5 that the later school of Christian thought that was indebted to him would have a subtle and complex relationship to other Christian groups, but Valentinus's vision was one of unity. He himself was never condemned for his teachings both because many Christians found them acceptable and because at the time there was no central Christian authority that could have issued and enforced such a condemnation. Recall that no central authority condemned Marcion, either. Rather, he and other Christians discontinued fellowship after a meeting that he initiated.
Valentinus illustrates another possible response to the Gnostic school of thought - adaptation and inclusion. He drew insights from the Gnostic myth, adapted it to his own views, and articulated a visionary method of unity that sought to include all Christians. His own personal authority of insight and learning gave his message its persuasive power.
David Brakke,
The Gnostics (Kindle Locations 1429-1512).
8. Irenaeus, Against the Heresies 1.11.1.
9. Ibid.; Anne McGuire, "Valentinus and the Gnostike Hairesis: An Investigation gation of Valentinus's Place in the History of Gnosticism" (Ph.D. dirs., Yale University, 1983).
10. For an excellent treatment of Valentinus's thought, see Dawson, D,, Allegorical Readers & Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1992), 127-182.
11. Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures: A New Translation with Annotations and Introductions (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1987), 217.
12. Thomassen, "Orthodoxy and Heresy," 241-246.
13. Gospel of Truth: Beniot Standaert, 'L'evangile de verite': Critique et lecture,' New Testament Studies 22 (1976), 243-275; On Free Will: Ismo Dunderberg, Beyond Gnosticism: Myth, Lifestyle, and Society in the School of Valentinus (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 2008), 67-72.
14. Irenaeus, Against the Heresies 1.11.1; Gospel of Truth 17:4-18:11; Dawson, Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision, 145-147.
15. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 248.
16. Dunderberg, Beyond Gnosticism, 60-67; Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 222,250-251.
17. Fragments C and D, Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 2.36, 4.89-90, in Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 234-237. For discussions see Dawson, Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision, 136-143, and Dunderberg, Beyond Gnosticism, 46-59.
18. Fragment A, Hippolytus, Refutation 6.42.2, in Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, tures, 230-231.
19. Fragment E, Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 3.59.3, in Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 238-239.
20. Gospel of Truth 18:24-34.
21. Fragment A, in Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 231.
22. Gospel of Truth 43:1-15.
23. Fragment G, in Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 243.
24. Gospel of Truth 23:8-10.
25. Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 7.17.
26. Hans von Campenhausen, Ecclesiastical Authority & Spiritual Power in the Church of the First Three Centuries (London: Black, 1969), 157-160, 201; Elaine Pagels, "Visions, Appearances, & Apostolic Authority: Gnostic & Orthodox Traditions," in Barbara Aland, ed, Gnosis: Festschrift fur Hans Jonas (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978), 415-430, at 426.
27. Bentley Layton, "The Significance of Basilides in Ancient Christian Thought," Representations 28 (1989): 135-151, at 135-36.
28. Einar Thomassen, The Spiritual Seed: The Church of the "Valentinians," Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 60 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 492; Dunderberg, Beyond Gnosticism, 63.
29. Gospel of Truth 33:5-15.
30. Ibid., 19:34-23:17. 31. Ibid., 25:7-25.
32. Thomassen, "Orthodoxy and Heresy," 253-254.