Valentinus seems to have answered this by saying, as any Catholic Christian would have done at the time, that it was through the Divine Mission of Jesus. Yet this Jesus, according to Valentinus or the Valentinian author from whom Hippolytus draws his account, was neither Jesus the Joint Fruit of the Pleroma, who according to them remained with his spouse Sophia in the Heavenly Jerusalem, nor Christos who with his consort the Holy Spirit was safe within the Pleroma. He was in effect a third saviour brought into being especially for the salvation of all that is worth saving in this devil-ruled and material world, in the same way that Christos and his consort had saved the first Sophia after she had given birth to the monstrous Ectroma, and as Jesus the Joint Fruit had saved this Ectroma itself. It is very probable, as M. Amélineau has shown with great attention to detail, that every system, perhaps every universe, had according to Valentinus its own saviour, the whole arrangement being part of one vast scheme for the ordering and purifying of all things[[395]]. Hence Valentinus explains, as the Ophites had failed to do, that salvation spreads from above downwards and that the redemption of this world was not undertaken until that of the universe of the Demiurge had been effected[[396]]. The Demiurge—and the statement has peculiar significance if we consider him the God of the Jews—had been taught by Sophia Without that he was not the sole God, as he had imagined, and had been instructed and “initiated into the great mystery of the Father and the Aeons[[397]].” Although it is nowhere distinctly stated, it seems a natural inference that the same lot will fall to the psychic men who are, like the Demiurge, “soul” rather than “spirit,” and that they will receive further instruction in the Heaven of Sophia. Thus, he continues, the lapses[[398]] of the Demiurge had been set straight and it was necessary that those here below should go through the same process. Jesus was accordingly born of the Virgin Mary; He was entirely pneumatic, that is His body was endowed with a spiritual soul, for Sophia Without herself descended into Mary and the germ thus sown by her was formed into a visible shape by the operation of the Demiurge[[399]]. As for His Mission, it seems to have consisted in revealing to man the constitution of the worlds above him, the course to be pursued by him to attain immortality, and to sum up the whole matter in one word, the Gnosis or knowledge that was necessary to salvation[[400]].
Here the account of the teaching of Valentinus, which has been taken almost entirely from the Philosophumena or from quotations from his own words in trustworthy writers like Clement of Alexandria, abruptly ends, and we are left to conjecture. We cannot therefore say directly what Valentinus himself taught about the Crucifixion. Jesus, the historical Jesus born of the Virgin Mary, though purely pneumatic or spiritual at the outset, received according to one account some tincture of the nature of all the worlds through which He had descended, and must therefore, probably, have had to abandon successive parts of His nature, as He reascended[[401]]. Probably, therefore, Valentinus thought that the Spiritual or Divine part of Him left Him before the Passion, and that it was only His material body that suffered[[402]]. As we shall see later, this idea was much elaborated by the later Gnostics, who thought that all those redeemed from this world would in that respect have to imitate their Great Exemplar. If this be so, it is plain that it was only that part of the soul of Jesus which He had received from Sophia which returned to her, and was doubtless re-absorbed in her being. Yet there is nothing to make us believe that Valentinus did not accept the narrative of the Canonical Gospels in full[[403]], or to doubt that he taught that Jesus really suffered on the Cross, although he doubtless interpreted this in his usual fashion, by making it a symbol of the self-sacrifice of Jesus the Joint Fruit of the Pleroma, when He left that celestial abode to give form and salvation to the miserable Ectroma of Sophia[[404]]. Here again we can but gather Valentinus’ opinions from those of his followers, who may have altered them materially to fit them to the exigencies of a situation of which we can form no very precise idea.
Of these followers we know rather more than in the case of any other of the early heresiarchs. According to Tertullian, Valentinus was brought up as a Christian, and expected to become a bishop of the Catholic Church, “because he was an able man both in genius and eloquence[[405]].” Finding, Tertullian goes on to say, that a confessor[[406]] was preferred to him, he broke with the Church and “finding the track of a certain old opinion” (doubtless, the Ophite) “marked out a path for himself.” The same accusation of disappointed ambition was levelled against nearly every other heresiarch at the time, and may serve to show how greatly the place of bishop was coveted; but we have no means of judging its truth in this particular instance, and it is repeated neither by Irenaeus, Hippolytus, nor Clement of Alexandria who was in an exceptionally good position for knowing the truth of the case. Irenaeus, however, says that Valentinus came to Rome during the papacy of Hyginus, flourished (ἤκμασε) under that of Pius, and dwelt there until that of Anicetus; and this is confirmed by Eusebius, who connects Valentinus’ stay in Rome with the reign of Hadrian’s successor, Antoninus Pius[[407]]. Tertullian further declares that Valentinus did not separate from the Church until the papacy of Eleutherus[[408]], which did not commence until A.D. 174, and M. Amélineau seems therefore well-founded in his inference that Valentinus elaborated his system in Egypt while yet in the Church, and that he went to Rome in order to impose it upon the rest of the faithful[[409]]. If this be so, it would abundantly account for its far closer approximation to the orthodox faith than that of the Ophites, from which it appears to have been derived. Epiphanius tells us further that after quitting Rome, Valentinus died in Cyprus, where he made “a last shipwreck of his faith[[410]].” Could we place implicit faith in Epiphanius’ highly-coloured statements, we might gather from this that Valentinus gave a fresh turn to his doctrines after finding himself away from the great cities in which he had hitherto spent his life.
However that may be, the time which, on the shortest computation, Valentinus passed in Rome was quite sufficient for him to set up a school there, and we are not surprised to hear that thereafter there was a body of Valentinians in the West, which was called the “Italic school.” Innovating, as Tertullian said all heretics did, upon the system of their founder, they taught, as before mentioned, that Sige or Silence was a real spouse to the Ineffable Bythos or the Supreme Being and existed side by side with Him from eternity[[411]]. They further said that the Dodecad or group of twelve aeons, of whom Sophia was the last, emanated not from Logos and Zoe, but from the third syzygy of Anthropos and Ecclesia[[412]]; and that the body of the historical Jesus was not material but psychic or from the world of the Demiurge[[413]], which seems to include the view held by other Gnostics that it was a phantasm which only appeared to suffer on the Cross, but did not do so in reality. We know the names of several of the leaders of this Italic school, among whom were Ptolemy, Secundus, and Heracleon. It was the doctrine of the first of these apparently flourishing in Gaul in his time, which spurred on Irenaeus to write against them[[414]]; while Heracleon was called by Clement of Alexandria the most distinguished of the school of Valentinus and taught in the last-named city[[415]]. Ptolemy’s doctrine as described by Irenaeus seems to have materially differed from that of his master only in the particulars just given; while Secundus is said by the same heresiologist to have divided the First Ogdoad into two tetrads, a right hand and a left, one of which he called light and the other darkness[[416]]. Over against this, we hear from Hippolytus of an Eastern school (Διδασκαλία ἀνατολικὴ), which M. Amélineau shows satisfactorily to have most closely represented the teaching of Valentinus himself[[417]], and which was carried on after his death by Axionicus and Bardesanes[[418]]. Of these, Axionicus is said to have taught in his native city of Antioch; while Bardesanes was evidently the same as the person called by the Syrians Bar Daisan of Edessa, whose name was still great in the time of Albiruni[[419]]. Theodotus, whose writings are quoted at some length by Clement of Alexandria, and Alexander, whose arguments as to the body of Jesus are rebutted by Tertullian, probably continued their teaching[[420]].
The life of Bar Daisan, of which some particulars have been preserved for us by Bar Hebraeus and other Eastern historians of the Church, throws considerable light upon the attitude towards Christianity of Valentinus and that Anatolic School which best represented his teachings. Bar Daisan was born some fifty years after Valentinus of rich and noble parents in the town of Edessa in Mesopotamia, where he seems to have been educated in the company of the future king of the country, Abgar Bar Manu[[421]]. He was probably a Christian from his infancy, early became a Christian teacher, and withstood Apollonius, a Pagan Sophist who visited Edessa in the train of the Emperor Caracalla, making avowal of his readiness to suffer martyrdom for the faith. According to Eusebius, he had the greatest abhorrence of the dualistic doctrine of Marcion and wrote books against him in his native Syriac which were afterwards translated into Greek[[422]]. He, or perhaps his son Harmonius[[423]], also composed a great number of hymns which were sung in the Catholic Churches of Mesopotamia and Syria; and it was not until a century and a half after his death that Ephrem Syrus, a doctor of the now triumphant and persecuting Church, found that these abounded in the errors of Valentinus, and deemed it necessary to substitute for them hymns of his own composition[[424]]. Valentinus seems in like manner to have lived in Rome as a Christian teacher, as we have seen, for at least sixteen years, and to have composed many psalms, some of which are quoted by Clement of Alexandria. If Tertullian is to be believed, he was qualified for the episcopate, which he must have had some chance of obtaining; and his want of orthodoxy cannot, therefore, have been manifest at the time or considered an objection to his candidature[[425]]. Moreover, Irenaeus says that Valentinus was the first who converted the so-called Gnostic heresy into the peculiar characteristics of his own school[[426]]; which agrees with Tertullian’s statement that Valentinus was “at first a believer in the teaching of the Catholic Church in the Church of Rome under the episcopate of the Blessed Eleutherus[[427]].” It is evident, therefore, that long after his peculiar teaching was developed, he remained a member of the Church, and that it was not by his own wish that he left it, if indeed he ever did so.
One is therefore led to examine with some closeness the alleged differences between his teaching and that of the orthodox Christianity of his time; and these, although they may have been vitally important, seem to have been very few. With regard to his views as to the nature of the Godhead, as given above, they do indeed seem to differ toto coelo from those shadowed forth in the Canonical Gospels and Epistles, and afterwards defined and emphasized by the many Œcumenical and other Councils called to regulate the Church’s teaching on the matter. The long series of aeons constituting his Pleroma or Fulness of the Godhead seems at first sight to present the most marked contrast with the Trinity of Three Persons and One God in the Creeds which have come down to us from the early Church. But is there any reason to suppose that Valentinus regarded the members of these Tetrads, Decads, and Dodecads as possessing a separate and individual existence or as having any practical importance for the Christian? We can hardly suppose so, when we consider the attitude of his immediate followers with regard to them. Some, as we have seen, were said to have put as the origin of all things, not a single principle but two principles of different sexes or, as Irenaeus says, a “dyad,” thereby splitting the Supreme Being into two[[428]]. We can imagine the outcry that this would have caused two centuries later when the different parties within the Christian Church were at each other’s throats on the question whether the Son was of the same or only of like substance with the Father. Yet neither Valentinus, nor Ptolemy, nor Heracleon, nor any one of the Valentinian leaders seems to have borne the others any hostility on that account, to have dreamed of separating from them on such a pretext, or to have ceased to regard themselves both as Christians and followers of Valentinus. The only inference to be drawn from this is either that the account of their teaching has been grossly corrupted or that they considered such questions as matters of opinion merely, on which all might freely debate, but which were not to be taken as touchstones of the faith.
This view derives great support from the way in which Clement of Alexandria, Valentinus’ countryman and the one among the Fathers who seems best fitted to understand him, regarded similar questions. M. Courdaveaux has shown with great clearness that Clement sometimes confounded the Third Person of the Trinity with the Second, and sometimes made Him His inferior. He also considered the Son as a simple creature of the Father, and, therefore, necessarily, of lower rank[[429]]. It was for such “heresies,” as they were afterwards called, that Photius, who had Clement’s now lost book of the Hypotyposes under his eyes, condemned him as a heretic, although his judgment in the matter has never been adopted by the Church. M. Courdaveaux also shows that Tertullian, even before he left the Church, looked upon both the Son and the Holy Spirit as only “members” of the Father, whom he considered to contain within Himself the complete divine substance; and this was certainly none of the heresies for which his memory was arraigned[[430]]. It by no means follows that Valentinus’ teaching was the same as that of the Church in all its details; but it seems possible from these examples that he did not think it necessary to be more definite than the Church herself upon such points, and that he did not look upon them in any other light than as matters of opinion.
It should also be considered whether the language that Valentinus used regarding the nature and divisions of the Godhead is to be construed in the same sense and as implying the meaning that it would have done a few centuries later, when these points had been long discussed and the reasons for and against them marshalled and weighed. So far as can now be seen, he, like all Egyptians, never lost sight of allegory in dealing with matters transcending sense. Thus, when he speaks of the pretended union of Bythos and Sige, he is careful to say that there is nothing actually begotten, and that the whole story must be considered in a figurative sense:
“The Father [i.e. Bythos] alone,” he says, “was unbegotten, not subject to conditions of place, nor time, taking no counsel, nor having any other being that can be comprehended by any recognized trope: but he was alone, and, as it is said, solitary, and resting in solitary repose within himself. And when he became fruitful, it seemed to him good at a certain time to engender and bring forth the most beautiful and perfect thing which he had within him: for he did not love solitude. For he was all love, but love is not love unless there is something to be loved[[431]].”
Between this and such Canonical texts as “God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him[[432]],” there may be a difference of application indeed, but none of language.