Part 5

Of Valentinus’ own teaching we know very little directly because the Fathers who denounced him as the heresiarch who had attracted the largest number of followers, have yet given us the doctrines of his successors rather than of himself. Thus, Irenæus, who wrote at least a generation after Valentinus, records the teaching of Valentinus’ immediate successor, Ptolemy; Hippolytus, half a century after Irenæus, the teaching probably of Axionicus,[89] while Tertullian and Epiphanius merely copy the statements of the two earlier heresiologists, and Origen quotes from the writings of Ptolemy’s contemporary Heracleon. Only Clement of Alexandria, Valentinus’ fellow countryman, who must have been born about the time when Valentinus was endeavouring to convert the Church of Rome to his views, quotes directly from Valentinus’ own words; and from these, it appears that Valentinus’ theology differed little in outward appearance from that of the Catholic Church of his time.[90] That this must have been so is indeed manifest when we read in Tertullian that Valentinus came to Rome expecting to be made bishop,[91] as one might now say, Pope, because of his genius and eloquence. Hippolytus, who probably drew his account from Axionicus, says that he declared the Supreme God to be “all Love” who created subsequent things that He might have something to love.[92] According to his opponents, Valentinus also taught that the Supreme God’s first and greatest creation was Nous or Mind, called also Monogenes or the Only One, or the Father, who was “like and equal to Himself,”[93] and from whom came Logos or the Word, from whom came Anthropos or Man. Yet none of these three last-named Powers produced offspring without female assistance, being, according to one account, themselves both male and female, or, according to another, having spouses called respectively Aletheia or Truth, Zoe or Life, and Ecclesia or the Church. It was even said that the Supreme God or Abyss, who was the source of all being, had in like manner a spouse named Sige “Silence,” or Charis “Grace,” although the Fathers admit that the followers of Valentinus, whose tenets they denounce, held various opinions as to this. They are, however, agreed that from these three syzygies or pairs, making with the Supreme God a Hebdomad or Ogdoad as the case may be, come forth at separate removes a Decad and a Dodecad or two groups of five and six syzygies respectively; and that this collection of Divine beings made up the Pleroma or Fulness of the Godhead. The same writers agree that all Valentinians also taught that the lowest member of the Pleroma fell away from the Godhead from ambition or some similar cause, strayed outside the Pleroma and necessitated the creation of another Divine syzygy called Christ and the Holy Spirit to restore her to her place, and of a solitary Power called Horos or Stauros the “Limit” or the “Cross” to preserve the Pleroma from further contact with the Kenoma or the Void outside it. Before returning to the Pleroma, moreover, Sophia had given birth without male assistance to a being expressly compared to the “earth without form and void” of Genesis, which the last Divine Syzygy of Christ and the Holy Spirit before returning to the Godhead fashioned into an Æon as perfect as those within it.[94] On finding herself alone, however, this Sophia Without, as she was called, suffered several “passions” or emotions:—fear, grief, perplexity, and supplication—and she prayed to the Syzygy which had given her form for deliverance from them. In answer to her prayers, yet another Divine Emanation came forth from the Godhead. This was “Jesus, the Great High Priest,” to whose formation every one of its members had contributed whatever was best and brightest in the nature of each. Jesus in His emanation went immediately to the consolation of Sophia Without, stripped her of her passions and remained with her as her spouse in what is called the Heavenly Jerusalem to reign with her over all that is without the Godhead. As for her passions, since they could not be destroyed, they were made, say the Valentinians quoted by Hippolytus, into different substances or essences—her fear into the essence of the soul, her grief into that of matter, and her perplexity into that of demons, while of her supplication He made “a path for repentance.” The essence of the soul, which is called by several names suggesting the God of Moses, became the Architect of the Cosmos or ordered world, and rules, without being aware of the existence of the Powers superior to himself, in the Heavenly Jerusalem or Ogdoad, over the Seven Heavens. The more material Cosmos or ordered world of matter is, according to the same writer, ruled by a Power called Diabolos, perhaps the Accuser or Adversary, and the Chaos, which is below all, by Beelzebub the prince of the devils.[95]

It may, of course, be thought that by putting forth ideas so much opposed to our modern ideas of Christianity, Valentinus was irreconcilably cutting himself off from the Catholic Church. But is it certain that the Fathers, who report the doctrine of his successors, really understood Valentinus in this respect? The idea of allegory in an Oriental mind is not exactly the same as in our own, and with the Egyptian especially, it is always difficult to tell whether he is not taking what we see at once to be metaphor as the narration of actual fact. Thus, the rise of the Nile is, as every ancient Egyptian very well knew, caused by the sudden influx of water coming down after the seasonal rains from the Abyssinian highlands. Yet the way in which he chose to describe it was that the goddess Isis let drop a tear into the river which went on swelling in volume until it reached the sea. Nor is the reverse process unknown. In the Coptic text known as the _Book of Resurrection_, Judas Iscariot when in Amente has his mouth filled with thirty snakes “so that they might devour him,” and if this statement stood by itself, we might believe that it was actual snakes which were meant. But the writer (supposed to be St. Bartholomew the Apostle) goes on to say that the name of the first snake is “Remoteness from God,” of the seventh “Haughtiness of Heart,” of the twelfth “Hypocrisy,” of the eighteenth “Treachery” and so on.[96] Irenæus and Tertullian are agreed that certain Valentinians explained the names of their Supreme Ogdoad as a mere figure of speech showing the steps by which the Divine Nature became appreciable by man. When, they said, God _thought_ of producing offspring He acquired the name of Father; and because His offspring was _true_, the name of Truth; and because he wished to appear in human form, he was called Man; and because He assembled His attributes in His mind and _chose_ from them those best fitted for His purpose, they were called the _Church_.[97] I have shown elsewhere that all the names of the male and female members of the Decad and Dodecad attributed to Valentinus can in like manner be read so as to make a connected sentence;[98] and the way in which the Fathers deceived themselves in such matters has lately been shown by the brilliant discovery of an American scholar that thirty words of apparent gibberish which Epiphanius gives as the names of the thirty Æons of Valentinus’ Pleroma, are really the fragments of a Valentinian hymn describing how the Celestial Light came to be in every Place and restored tranquillity to the worlds.[99] There is therefore considerable reason to think that the statements of Irenæus and the other heresiologists on Valentinus’ division of the Godhead need not be taken as literally and exactly accurate; and it is noticeable that while the number of beings within the Pleroma is sometimes represented by them as thirty, it is sometimes twenty-eight and sometimes thirty-three. The same discrepancies are marked in the old Egyptian religion from which, if I am right, Valentinus drew his phraseology. All that we can say, therefore, with certainty as to Valentinus’ views regarding the Godhead is that he believed it manifested itself in three successive stages of emanation. The most convincing proof that this was the fundamental point of his teaching can perhaps be found in the manner in which Hippolytus, at the end of his account of it, drags in the second epistle of Plato about the Good Source of All and its secondary and tertiary developments as evidence of Valentinus’ Platonizing.[100]

The other great and distinguishing feature of Valentinus’ teaching was the story of Sophia. This is found in no other heresy but the Ophite, where it takes a form so much grosser and coarser than that of Valentinus as to betray its connection with the myths current in Western Asia long before our Era; and I have before suggested that it was probably from Ophite sources that Valentinus constructed his story. In doing so, he refined it, and instead of making Sophia’s fall from the Godhead a mere accident, he portrayed it as the result of disobedience and emulation, while her eventual return thereto was the result of her repentance. That the Demiurge or Architect of the Universe was brought into being by her, and that Matter is his creation, while the Divine spark in man comes from Sophia Without, who in her turn depends upon the Sophia within the Pleroma, appears plainly from a “psalm” by Valentinus himself quoted by Hippolytus.[101] We see, then, that the fundamental points of Valentinus’ teaching were the manifestation of the Godhead in three successive stages, the story of Sophia’s Fall through error and her restoration by repentance, and the dependence of the lower and more material parts of the Universe upon the higher ones. We shall see later that these are also the foundations of the system disclosed in the earlier documents of the _Pistis Sophia_.

Before considering this, however, it will be well to see if our text was so entirely unknown to the Fathers as has been generally assumed. We know from Eusebius that it was the policy of the triumphant Church after the pact with Constantine to destroy all the writings of the heretics, and that this policy was continuous is shown by the advice given by St. Augustine to burn, without regard for their volume or beauty, all the manuscripts of the Manichæans. Hence we can hardly expect quotations to be as direct and as accurate as those which the Fathers made, as I have said elsewhere, from the different summaries of heathen philosophers then current, and could not have been suppressed by them had they tried to do so. But there are many allusions to phrases and words peculiar to our MS. which seem to support the view that it was used in some form or other by the early heresiologists and especially by Tertullian, who both as a lawyer striving to prove his case at all hazards and as a rebel (as he finally proved to be) against ecclesiastical discipline, would be less likely to be cautious in such matters than high officers of the Church like Irenæus and Hippolytus. We find Tertullian in his attack on the Valentinians quoting a remark about those who seek God in simplicity of heart from “the Sophia not of Valentinus, but of Solomon.” The quotation is of course from the extra-Canonical _Book of Wisdom_ to be found in the Apocrypha of the Thirty-nine Articles; and it is, as Amélineau has well said, most natural that a book should be compared to a book. But it would be contrary to the whole tenour of Valentinian ideas as they have come down to us, that the “æon” or emanation or goddess Sophia should be supposed to write books, and it results that Tertullian must have been referring to a book by Valentinus bearing the title of _Sophia_.[102] We may fairly look, then, on the hypothesis just stated, in our MS. for expressions attributed by Tertullian to Valentinus, and of these we find a fair number. Thus in the same book _Adversus Valentinianos_ (c. 27), Tertullian says that the Valentinians spoke of Christ coming upon Jesus “in the form of a dove,” which are the very words which the opening of our Second Document puts into the mouth of St. John. Later, he speaks of the Pneumatici or Spiritual Ones “despoiling” themselves by putting off their earthly souls, which is the expression used _ad nauseam_ in the same Second Document for the process used by the higher Powers and by Jesus Himself with regard to these heavenly natures. So, again, in the treatise _de Resurrectione Carnis_ (c. 32), Tertullian speaks of the flesh of man being created _ex faecibus terrae_ “from the dregs of the earth,” which is the explanation made by Jesus to St. Andrew in the last words of the same Document; and the parallel is more close because one or other of the many Sophias in the Valentinian system was always identified with the earth. Again, in the treatise _de Scorpiace_ (c. 4), he speaks of the hidden sacraments of the heretics—by which phrase the ante-Nicene Fathers nearly always mean the Valentinians—and the answers which the soul must make when arraigned before the _veras potestates et veros homines_, “powers and men of Truth,” the “Teleti and Abascanti and Akineti of Valentinus,” of which names some are to be found in the long catalogue of transcendental Powers inhabiting the heaven of Truth in the Second Document. So, too, in the _Adversus Valentinianos_ (c. 35), he speaks of many Powers distinguished by prefixes like _Prae_ and _An_ which according to him occupied a very high place in the Valentinian Pantheon, and which correspond fairly to the Proachoreti, the Protripneumata, and the Hypertripneumata in the last-mentioned catalogue. Nor is Tertullian here entirely alone among the Fathers of the period. Irenæus, cautious as he is not to quote the name of powers reverenced by the heretics, says (II. xlvii. p. 368 H.) that there is no Pleroma of thirty Æons ... _nec lumen virginale, nec Æon innominabilis_, under cover of which general expressions it is plain that he is referring to the Virgin of Light and the “Great Unseen Forefather” of our First Document. So, too, Hippolytus (_Philosophumena_, VI. 30, p. 283, Cr.), by a sort of slip of the pen, calls Sophia “the youngest of all the twenty-four” (not thirty or twenty-eight or thirty-three) Æons which she is indeed said to be in our First Document. Finally, Origen writing long after Valentinus and his immediate successors had passed away, speaks of the heretical stories of “doors opening of their own accord,” an episode which occurs nowhere else, so far as I know, than in Jesus’ account of His upward journey in the same Document.[103]

We see, then, that there are adequate grounds for supposing that the main documents of our MS. or perhaps those upon which, according to the German commentators,[104] they are themselves based, are by Valentinus, and that in any case the Greek original from which the Coptic translation was made, must be earlier than A.D. 170. This, however, does not apply to the Interpolated Fragment, which in its present form it is impossible to date, although, as I have before said, I should myself be inclined to guess that it once formed part of the story of Jesus’ upward flight. To continue this until it described the Saviour’s entry into the realms of the Ineffable One would hardly have seemed too daring to a writer acquainted, as ours evidently was, with the literature that passes under the name of Enoch, and the author of the part of the _Bruce Papyrus_ which Dr. Schmidt calls “_Unbekanntes altgnostiche Werk_,” plunges into a description of the Source of All Being which leaves nothing to be desired on the ground of temerity. But this last is, on the face of it, a much later document than the history of Pistis Sophia, and on the whole it is better to say nothing further as to the authorship or date of the Fragment.

The case is different when we come to our Third Document to which the Fragment has somehow been prefixed. While the first two Documents are, as has been said, probably by Valentinus, it is perfectly certain that this cannot be the case with the Third. Valentinus was, as his opponents admitted, a man of genius who for a time must have held a leading position in the Christian world, and had he been made Pope, might possibly have introduced a syncretistic religion like that of Manes two centuries later, and have attempted to fit into the Gospel narrative elements borrowed from the Egyptian, the Persian, and the Buddhist religions. But of these, the Egyptian, which Valentinus was naturally most anxious to amalgamate with Christianity, had long since sunk into what has been called “a systematised sorcery,” and the result of his attempt to pour new wine into old bottles was not long in showing itself. Between the times of Valentinus and of Irenæus a Jewish magician named Marcus produced a system which anticipates many of the childish processes of the Mediæval Cabala, and attempted to turn Valentinus’ account of the Pleroma into a senseless juggling with the numerical value of the Greek letters.[105] Such foolishness seems to have been popular in Egypt, Catholic writers themselves not being entirely free from it,[106] and to this Marcus added according to Irenæus, sacraments with invocations in some Hebrew jargon assisted by tricks which caused the consecrated wine to change colour and to overflow the cup. Our Third Document, though not going so far in this respect as the Fourth, tends manifestly in this direction, and although it resembles the story of Pistis Sophia in being in the form of a dialogue between Jesus and His disciples, it has very little in common with it. The constitution of the Universe, which it rather assumes than describes, is indeed the same, and the First Mystery and the Ineffable One are still mentioned with reverence as being “merciful and compassionate and forgiving sins alway.” Save for this, however, there is nothing to connect it with Valentinus’ more sublime ideas, and the whole purport of the questions asked by the disciples and the answers of the Saviour is how the “mysteries” which Jesus has brought with Him are to be used to enable their recipients to avoid the consequences of their sins and thus to go after death to “inherit the Kingdom of Light.” All this is reminiscent throughout of the _Book of the Dead_ and the other Egyptian funerary texts, and the likeness is increased when, as before said, we read in it of “mysteries” which, when spoken into the ears of the dying or repeated over the dead, or even the knowledge gained during life of the names of certain Powers set over punishments, will afford the dwellers in Amente and the other hells deliverance from their tortures and will finally admit them into the Kingdom. These have already been sufficiently dealt with in the last part of the Introduction to make further reference to them unnecessary, and the conclusion there come to, that the whole of this Document is magical rather than religious must only be repeated. That the four-fold division of man’s incorporeal part comes from the belief of Pagan Egypt hardly needs demonstration when we see how closely the Spirit Counterfeit of our text corresponds to the _Ka_ or double, while the Fate which leads every man to his appointed death is a familiar personage in Egyptian folk-lore. If in the description of the cup of oblivion, the author for once seems to borrow from Plato, it is by no means certain whence Plato drew his fable, if not from Egypt itself.[107]

One must see, then, I think, in the Third Document the work of a Valentinian, but of one of late date, who had slipped back, as the whole sect probably did, into the systematised sorcery of his ancestor’s faith, and whose Christianity mainly consisted in putting the account of the semi-magical “mysteries” or secrets by which he hoped to escape the horrors of hell, into the mouth of its Founder. But there are also many other signs that this must have been later in date than the two first Documents. The author shows a much greater acquaintance with the letter of the New Testament than his predecessors, and while those quote almost entirely from Matthew, the quotations in the Third Document are taken largely from Luke. The author goes so far in one place as to quote from the Epistle to the Romans as having been written by “our brother Paul,”[108] which some writers think did not appear until well on in the second century. The author, too, frequently refers to the persecutions and the “torments which are in the law” as something imminent and pressing on all Christians alike, and this can hardly be said of any measures taken before the reign of Septimius Severus (A.D. 193-211), when Valentinus had long been dead. The story of the woman who “came to repent” and the subsequent command to St. Peter to “perform the mystery which will cut off this soul from the Kingdom of Light,” together with the many mysteries enumerated as exercising a magical effect on the living and the dead, argue an established and regulated ritual which can hardly have been organised in the lifetime of Valentinus or of his immediate successors, Ptolemy and Heracleon.[109]

Lastly, Dr. Schmidt, following therein Prof. Harnack, attributes the curious argument in this Third Document as to “a King of to-day” who gives gifts to a man equal to himself, clothes him with “the vestures of a King,” and pardons him for the most heinous crimes, to an episode in the reign of Philip the Arabian recounted in the Augustan History.[110] There seems the more reason in this contention that the argument—bad though it may be ethically—comparing the Emperor’s proceeding to the pardon extended by the Highest Powers to the worst of sinners, is dragged in, as it were, by the neck and heels. But if it be this episode which is really hinted at in our Third Document, this last cannot be put earlier than A.D. 244 or 250, the dates of Philip’s accession—and death.