According to Basilides, the various passions of the soul were no original parts of the soul, but appendages to the soul. “They were in essence certain spirits attached to the rational soul, through some original perturbation and confusion; and that again, other bastard and heterogeneous natures of spirits grow onto them, like that of the wolf, the ape, the lion, and the goat, whose properties, showing themselves around the soul, they say, assimilate the lusts of the soul to the likeness of these animals.” See the whole passage immediately preceding the following fragment. The fragment can best be understood by reference [pg 091] to the presentation of the system by W. Bousset in Encyc. Brit., eleventh ed., art. “Basilides.”
Valentinus, too, in a letter to certain people, writes in these very words respecting the appendages: “There is One good, by whose presence is the manifestation, which is by the Son, and by Him alone can the heart become pure, by the expulsion of every evil spirit from the heart; for the multitude of spirits dwelling in it do not suffer it to be pure; but each of them performs his own deeds, insulting it oft with unseemly lusts. And the heart seems to be treated somewhat like a caravansary. For the latter has holes and ruts made in it, and is often filled with filthy dung; men living filthily in it, and taking no care for the place as belonging to others. So fares it with the heart as long as there is no thought taken for it, being unclean and the abode of demons many. But when the only good Father visits it, it is sanctified and gleams with light. And he who possesses such a heart is so blessed that he shall see God.”
(c) Clement of Alexandria, Strom., II. 8. (MSG, 8:972.)
The teaching in the following passage attaches itself to the text, “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom” (cf. Prov. 1:7). Compare with it Irenæus, Adv. Hær., I, 30:6.
Here the followers of Basilides, interpreting this expression [Prov. 1:7] say that “the Archon, having heard the speech of the Spirit, who was being ministered to, was struck with amazement both with the voice and the vision, having had glad tidings beyond his hopes announced to him; and that his amazement was called fear, which became the origin of wisdom, which distinguishes classes, and discriminates, and perfects, and restores. For not the world alone, but also the election, He that is over all has set apart and sent forth.”
And Valentinus appears also in an epistle to have adopted such views. For he writes in these very words: “And as terror fell on the angels at this creature, because he uttered things greater than proceeds from his formation, by reason [pg 092] of the being in him who had invisibly communicated a germ of the supernal essence, and who spoke with free utterance; so, also, among the tribes of men in the world the works of men became terrors to those who made them—as, for example, images and statues. And the hands of all fashion things to bear the image of God; for Adam, formed into the name of man, inspired the dread attaching to the pre-existing man, as having his being in him; and they were terror-stricken and speedily marred the work.”
(d) Clement of Alexandria, Strom., III, 7. (MSG, 8:1151.)
The Docetism of Valentinus comes out in the following. It is to be noted that Clement not only does not controvert the position taken by the Gnostic as to the reality of the bodily functions of Jesus, but in his own person makes almost the same assertions (cf. Strom., VI, 9). He might indeed call himself, as he does in this latter passage, a Gnostic in the sense of the true or Christian Gnostic, but he comes very close to the position of the non-Christian Gnostic.
Valentinus in an epistle to Agathopous says: “Since He endured all things, and was continent [i.e., self-controlled], Jesus, accordingly, obtained for Himself divinity. He ate and drank in a peculiar manner, not giving forth His food. Such was the power of His continence [self-control] that the food was not corrupted in Him, because He himself was without corruption.”