Valentinus -
Gnostic teacher, poet.
Probably born in or about Carthage, c 100AD. Educated in Alexandria,
teacher and leader in the highly educated and diverse Alexandrian Christian
community later prominent in Roman Christian community (135 - 160 AD).
"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)" (Mead)
"direct, personal and absolute knowledge of the authentic
truths of existence is accessible to human beings"
"When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside
and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make
the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the
female female; and when you fashion eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in
place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a
likeness; then will you enter the kingdom." (Jesus - Gospel of Thomas)
Nearly succeeded in giving Christianity a gnostic spin. But orthodoxy
won the day and gnosticism became a heresy.
1. The cosmogony of Valentinus:
No personal or collective guilt. Redemptive potential is wihin the soul
of every human being. The God is as a human made mythology. The human
mind has lost self-knowledge and therefore lives in a illusionary world,
created by the ego. The 'god idea' is a flawed creation of the flawed
human mind. Echoes of Buddhism here.
Valentinus called Jehovah a demiurge (lesser power) which didn't
make him popular with the orthodox.
2. Valentinus' "pneumatic equation" :
Insight into the true nature of reality brings about spiritual (pneumatic)
redeption. Concepts such as sin, guilt, shame, salvation via a saviour
are useless illusions. Spiritual self-knowledge alone counts.
Valentinus' Jesus View:
Similar to the Buddha's view, Valentinus sees ignorance as the
source of the sick human condition. Ideas, concepts and material things
lead to worship of matter (hyleticism) and worship of the mind-emotional
soul (psychism). Jesus (among others) is facilitator bringing
wholeness and knowledge of the spirit (pneuma). This spirit, in
the gnostic view, is essential in healing the sickness of human nature.
It's ineffable and unfathomable nature brings spiritual freedom.
The 'Bridal Chamber' sacrament
'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.' (Thomas)
Gnostic teaching and practice are rooted in the psychological rather
than the theological. The bridal chamber ritual alludes to a unification
in nature in spirit rather than a 'marriage' which represents a unification
of the physical within society.
The final act: 'Restoration' (apokatastasis):
Complete liberation from the world of desire, illusion and matter.
The Nature of God:
Incomprehensible und unknowable. Infinite, all encompassing. God is androgynous
and frequently depicted him as a male-female dyad (Two individuals or
units regarded as a pair: the mother-daughter dyad. ). The feminine aspect
of the deity is called Silence, Grace and Thought. Silence is God's primordial
state of tranquillity and self-awareness She is also the active creative
Thought that makes all subsequent states of being (or "Aeons") substantial.
The masculine aspect of God is Depth, also called Ineffable and First
Father. Depth is the profoundly incomprehensible, all-encompassing aspect
of the deity. He is essentially passive, yet when moved to action by
his feminine Thought, he gives the universe form.
The Son
The origin of the universe is described as a process of emanation from
the Godhead. The male and female aspects of the Father, acting in conjunction,
manifested themselves in the Son. The Son is also often depicted by Valentinians
as a male-female dyad. The Son manifests himself in twenty-six spiritual
entities or Aeons arranged into male-female pairs. They represent the
energies immanent within Son and were seen as part of his personality.
Together they constitute the Fullness (pleroma) of the Godhead.
The Fall
The Aeons who are manifested by the Son are conceived as having some
degree of psychological independence. They lie within God but are separated
from him by a Limit or boundary. As a result, they do not know the one
who brought them into being. The Aeons sensed that they were incomplete
and longed to know their origin.
This longing passed to Sophia (Wisdom), the youngest of the Aoens. On
behalf of the whole Fullness, she took up the quest to know the supreme
Parent. She attempted to know him by thinking alone, something that is
impossible. As a result, she became separated from her consort and fell
into a state of deficiency and suffering. Through the power of Limit,
Sophia was divided in two. Her higher part was returned to her consort
but her lower part was separated from the Fullness into a lower realm
along with the deficiency and suffering. This lower realm is identical
with the physical world.
Valentinians envisioned the universe as a series of concentric spheres.
The innermost sphere is the world or deficiency where the lower Sophia
was exiled. Enclosing this is the Fullness (pleroma) where the Aeons
are. The Aeons are enclosed within the Son. The outermost sphere which
encompasses the Son is where the Father (Depth and Silence) is. There
is a boundary or Limit between God and the Fullness. There is a second
boundary or Limit between the Fullness and the deficiency. Just as the
Fullness is a product of the Godhead and lies within it, so also the
realm of deficiency is a product of the Fullness and lies within it.
The deficiency arose as result of ignorance and it will be dissolved
through knowledge (gnosis).
Through the mediation of the Son, the Aeons within the Fullness were
given knowledge (gnosis) of God and received rest. All of the Aeons then
joined together in celebration and became completely integrated into
the personality of the Son. The reintegrated Son is also called the Savior.
He is destined to be the male partner or bridegroom of the fallen Sophia.
He is surrounded by a retinue of angels who were brought forth in honor
of the Aeons.
The lower Sophia, trapped in the realm of deficiency, continued to suffer
the emotional torments of grief, fear and confusion. As a result of her
ignorance, she was trapped in a state of illusion and was unable to distinguish
what was real and what unreal. She underwent a conversion when she thought
of the light and she began to plead for assistance. In response, her
bridegroom, the Savior, and his retinue of angels descended through the
Limit to her. Through knowledge (gnosis) of the eternal realm she was
freed of illusion and suffering.
The lower Sophia rejoiced at the sight of the Savior and his retinue
of angels, and brought forth spiritual seeds in their image. These seeds
are the spiritual element present in every Christian. For this reason
the seeds are referred to as the spiritual Church. Just as the Savior
is the bridegroom of the lower Sophia, so also the angels will be the
bridegrooms of the spiritual seeds at the end of time.
Three states of being or "substances" came into being from Sophia as
a result of her quest to know God. First the illusion which characterizes
material existence came from ignorance and suffering; it is personified
as the Devil. Second came soul which comes from conversion as an intermediate
stage between ignorance and knowledge. It is personified as the Craftsman
(demiurge) who forms the material world. Last the spiritual seed came
from her knowledge (gnosis) and is personified in the lower Sophia herself.
Despite the fact that the lower Sophia was no longer ignorant, the ignorance
was not fully dissipated. The spiritual seeds were immature and needed
training. For this purpose, the creation of the material world was necessary.
The lower Sophia and the Savior secretly influenced the Craftsman to
create the material world in the image of the Fullness. The Craftsman
is ignorant of his mother and thinks that he acts alone, but he unconsciously
acts as her agent.
Human Beings
Human beings were created by the Craftsman. In addition to a physical
body, Valentinians believed that people were composed of three non-corporeal
elements: a demonic part (chous), a rational soul (psyche), and a spiritual
seed (pneuma). Human beings were divided into three types depending on
which of the three natures is dominant within them. That is why Adam
and Eve are described as having had three children who they named Cain,
Abel and Seth. They are the prototypes of carnal (choic), animate (psychic)
and spiritual (pneumatic) human beings respectively.
Jesus
The decisive event in the history of the world was the ministry of Jesus.
He is the physical manifestation of the Son or Savior. Prior to his coming,
the true God was unknown. Jesus came to bring knowledge (gnosis) to a
suffering humanity that was desperately seeking God. By knowledge, the
two elements which had been separated (i.e. the seeds and the angels)
are joined.
The Valentinian tradition draws a sharp distinction between the human
Jesus and the divine Jesus. The human Jesus was born the true son of
Mary and Joseph. By a special dispensation, his body is consubstantial
with Sophia and her spiritual seed. When he was thirty years old, he
went to John the Baptist to be baptized. As soon as he went down into
the water, the divine Savior, referred to as the "Spirit of the Thought
of the Father", descended on him in the form of a dove. This is the true "virgin
birth" and resurrection from the dead, for he was reborn of the virgin
Spirit.
Jesus taught publicly in parables and riddles, but to his closest disciples
he revealed the whole truth about the fall of Sophia and the coming restoration
of the Fullness. According to Valentinian tradition, Mary Magdalene was
an important member of this inner circle. She is seen as an image of
the lower Sophia and is described as Jesus' consort in the Gospel of
Philip.
The divine Jesus experienced all of the emotions of human being including
grief, fear and confusion in the Garden of Gethsemene. However, only
the human Jesus suffered pain and died on the cross. His divine aspect
transcends physical suffering and death. When his physical body died,
his non-corporeal spiritual body rose up from it.
Following the crucifixion, Valentinians believed that Jesus continued
to appear to his disciples for eighteen months, not the forty days reported
in the Acts of the Apostles. During this period he instructed the disciples "plainly
about the Father." Even after his ascension, he continued to appear to
people in visions, most notably Saint Paul and Valentinus.
Redemption
According to the Valentinians, people manifest their true nature by their
response to the message of Jesus. Using the parable of the sower (Matthew
13:1-8), they explain that through Jesus, Sophia sows the spiritual seed
in all who hear the message. In some people the seed "falls on the path" and
they do not respond at all. Such people are carnal by nature. In others
the seed is choked by the thorns which are worldly concerns. They are
hesitant and are unable to go beyond the level of rational explanations.
Such people are dominated by their rational element or soul. In others,
the seed was planted "in good earth" and they bear spiritual fruit. Such
people are Gnostic or spiritual Christians.
People bear fruit spiritually by attaining a state of mystical knowledge
(gnosis) in which they are joined with their angel who accompanies the
Saviour. Awakened from the drunken stupor of ignorance, and freed of
suffering, they recognize their true spiritual nature. This is the true
resurrection from the dead, that is, from the death of ignorance. This
resurrection does not take place in the afterlife. It must be experienced
in the here and now.
Valentinians describe the process of union with the divine in terms of
a general eschatology that can be realized in the individual here and
now. First the person spiritually ascends above the Craftsman and the
lower powers to join Sophia, the Savior and their angel. Rejoicing with
all of the saved, the person is joined with their angel and enters the
Fullness. Such a person is "in the world but not of it." They have already
attained a spiritual existence such that, for them, the world has become
the Fullness.
Ethics
Despite the untruths spread by their enemies, Valentinians insisted on
the highest possible ethical standard from members of their school. They
believed that it was possible to lead a sinless existence through perfect
knowledge (gnosis) of God's will. Sin was seen as an expression of ignorance.
As it says in the Gospel of Philip, "The one who has knowledge is a free
person. But the free person does not sin, for the one who sins is a slave
of sin " (Gospel of Philip 77:15-18).
The Sermon on the Mount was seen as a guide to leading an ethical life.
According to the teacher Ptolemy, the law of love taught by Jesus abolished
unjust laws, tranformed other laws to a spiritual sense and fulfilled
the true divine law (Letter to Flora). While they did reject wealth and
temporal authority, Valentinians never rejected marriage and raising
children. According to the Alexandrian teacher Theodotus, marriage was
necessary so that those with the spiritual seed might be born. Despite
his advice, some members of the school practiced celibacy.
