Valentinus (Gnostic)

Epiphanius wrote (c. 390) that he learned through word of mouth (although he acknowledged that it was a disputed point) that Valentinus was "born a Phrebonite" in the coastal region of Egypt, and received his Greek education in Alexandria, an important and metropolitan early center of Christianity.[7][8] The word "Phrebonite" is otherwise unknown,[9] but probably refers to the ancient town of Phragonis,[10][11] near present-day Tidah.[12] In Alexandria, Valentinus may have heard the Gnostic philosopher Basilides and certainly became conversant with Hellenistic Middle Platonism and the culture of Hellenized Jews like the great Alexandrian Jewish allegorist and philosopher Philo.

Clement of Alexandria records that his followers said that Valentinus was a follower of Theudas, and that Theudas in turn was a follower of Paul the Apostle.[13] Valentinus said that Theudas imparted to him the secret wisdom that Paul had taught privately to his inner circle, which Paul publicly referred to in connection with his visionary encounter with the risen Christ (Romans 16:25; 1 Corinthians 2:7; 2 Corinthians 12:2–4; Acts 9:9–10), when he received the secret teaching from him. Such esoteric teachings were downplayed in Rome after the mid-2nd century.[14]

Valentinus apparently taught first in Alexandria and went to Rome about 136, during the pontificate of Pope Hyginus, and remained until the pontificate of Pope Anicetus, dying probably about 180. The Christian heresiologists wrote details about the life of Valentinus, often scurrilous.

In Adversus Valentinianos, iv, Tertullian says Valentinus was a candidate for bishop, after which he turned to heresy in a fit of pique. He did this apparently along with Marcion, who was also active in Rome at the same time.[15] Commonly unaccepted, we cannot know the accuracy of this statement, since it is delivered by his orthodox adversary and might not be other than a rhetorical insult.

Valentinus had expected to become a bishop, because he was an able man both in genius and eloquence. Being indignant, however, that another obtained the dignity by reason of a claim which confessorship had given him, he broke with the church of the true faith. Just like those (restless) spirits which, when roused by ambition, are usually inflamed with the desire of revenge, he applied himself with all his might to exterminate the truth; and finding the clue of a certain old opinion, he marked out a path for himself with the subtlety of a serpent.

Epiphanius of Salamis wrote that Valentinus taught with piety in Rome, but gave up the true faith after he had suffered a shipwreck in Cyprus and became insane. Epiphanius might have been influenced to believe this by the presence of Valentinian communities in Cyprus.[16]

Valentinian literature described the primal being, called Bythos, as the beginning of all things. After ages of silence and contemplation, Bythos gave rise to other beings by a process of emanation. The first series of beings, the aeons, were thirty in number, representing fifteen syzygies or pairs sexually complementary. Through the error of Sophia, one of the lowest aeons, and the ignorance of Sakla, the lower world with its subjection to matter is brought into existence. Man, the highest being in the lower world, participates in both the psychic and the hylic (material) nature, and the work of redemption consists in freeing the higher, the spiritual, from its servitude to the lower. This was the word and mission of Jesus and the holy spirit. Valentinius' Christology may have posited the existence of three redeeming beings, but Jesus while on Earth had a supernatural body which, for instance, "did not experience corruption" by defecating, according to Clement:[19] there is also no mention of the account of Jesus's suffering in First Epistle of Peter, nor of any other, in any Valentinian text. The Valentinian system was comprehensive, and was worked out to cover all phases of thought and action.

Valentinius was among the early Christians who attempted to align Christianity with Platonism, drawing dualist conceptions from the Platonic world of ideal forms (pleroma) and the lower world of phenomena (kenoma). Of the mid-2nd century thinkers and preachers who were declared heretical by Irenaeus and later mainstream Christians, only Marcion of Sinope is as outstanding as a personality. The contemporary orthodox counter to Valentinius was Justin Martyr, though it was Irenaeus of Lyons who presented the most vigorous challenge to the Valentinians.

Valentinus's name came up in the Arian disputes in the fourth century when Marcellus of Ancyra, a staunch opponent of Arianism, denounced the belief in God existing in three hypostases as heretical. Marcellus, who believed Father and Son to be one and the same, attacked his opponents by attempting to link them to Valentinus: In the fourth century, Marcellus of Ancyra declared that the idea of the Godhead existing as three hypostases (hidden spiritual realities) came from Plato through the teachings of Valentinus,[20] who is quoted as teaching that God is three hypostases and three prosopa (persons) called the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit:

Now with the heresy of the Ariomaniacs, which has corrupted the Church of God... These then teach three hypostases, just as Valentinus the heresiarch first invented in the book entitled by him 'On the Three Natures'. For he was the first to invent three hypostases and three persons of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he is discovered to have filched this from Hermes and Plato.[21]

While this accusation is often sourced in stating Valentinus believed in a Triune Godhead, there is in fact no corroborating evidence that Valentinus ever taught these things. Irenaeus makes no mention of this in any of his five books against heresies, even though he deals with Valentinianism extensively in them. Rather, he indicates that Valentinus believed in the pre-existent Aeon known as Proarche, Propator, and Bythus who existed alongside Ennœa, and they together begot Monogenes and Aletheia: and these constituted the first-begotten Pythagorean Tetrad, from whom thirty Aeons were produced.[22] Likewise, in the work cited by Marcellus, the three natures are said to have been the three natures of man,[23] concerning which Irenaeus writes: "They conceive, then, of three kinds of men, spiritual, material, and animal, represented by Cain, Abel, and Seth. These three natures are no longer found in one person, but constitute various kinds [of men]. The material goes, as a matter of course, into corruption."[24] According to Eusebius, Marcellus had a habit of mercilessly launching unsubstantiated attacks against his opponents, even those who had done him no wrong.[25]

Encyclopedias

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Valentinus and The Valentinians".

Primary sources

Modern scholarship