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T HE GOSPEL OF TRUTH is a Valentinian sermon on the saving knowledge of God. The text is named the Gospel of Truth in its incipit, and the title is also mentioned by Irenaeus of Lyon, who claims that Valentinian Christians read a Gospel of Truth. The Gospel of Truth is sometimes attributed to the great teacher and preacher Valentinus. Bentley Layton considers such attribution to be plausible, and he mentions three good reasons the Gospel of Truth may be thought to have come from Valentinus: 1) the style of the Gospel of Truth resembles the style of the fragments of Valentinus found mainly in Clement of Alexandria and Hippolytus of Rome; 2) Valentinus was thought to be eloquent, and he would be a good candidate to be author of such an eloquent gospel; and 3) prominent features of the Gospel of Truth suggest an early date of composition, prior to the development of more complex Valentinian systems of thought. 1

The sermon opens with the memorable line, “The gospel of truth is joy….” It is joy, the sermon continues, for those who come to know God through the word, which is said to originate, in a manner recalling the opening of the Gospel of John, from God, here specifically “from the fullness (pl

ma ) in the father’s thought and mind.” The word is the savior Jesus Christ. The problem the savior has come to address is forgetfulness and ignorance of God: because of forgetfulness and ignorance, people are haunted by terror and fear. The savior has brought people out of their forgetfulness and ignorance by giving light to those who were in darkness: “He enlightened them and showed the way, and that way is the truth he taught them” (18). Anger, personified and apparently also a psychological reality within people, persecutes Jesus by having him hanged on a tree. In his crucifixion, the text proclaims, Jesus is nailed to the tree, but anger proves to be impotent, and Jesus becomes “fruit of the knowledge of the father.” When this fruit, which is Jesus, is eaten, it brings life to those who have eaten of it. In the words of the gospel, “They were joyful in this discovery, and he found them within himself and they found him within themselves” (18).

The balance of the Gospel of Truth explains this vision of salvation through metaphor, parable, interpretation, and elaboration. Jesus is a guide, at rest yet busy in places of learning (19). He reveals the living book, which reflects God’s thought and mind, in the crucifixion, through which the knowledge of God is published (20). Those lost in ignorance are called by name, and thus they come to themselves and to knowledge of themselves (21–22). They are brought from deficiency to fullness and completeness (24–25). All of this is like having jars that are empty or full (25–26), or living in a nightmare and then awakening (28–30), or losing and finding sheep (31–32), or feeling cold water become warm (34). Those who come to knowledge come to the father:

They are truth. The father is in them and they are in the father, perfect, inseparable from him who is truly good. They lack nothing at all but are at rest, fresh in spirit. They will hearken to their root and be involved with concerns in which they may find their root and do no harm to their souls. (42)

The Gospel of Truth is preserved as the third tractate in Codex I of the Nag Hammadi library. A few fragments from Codex XII, tractate 2, also come from an edition of the Gospel of Truth. The sermon was composed in Greek but survives only in Coptic translation. The date of composition is most likely sometime in the second century, during the lifetime of Valentinus, who died around 175 CE. Where it was written is unknown, but Valentinus spent much of his life in Alexandria and Rome.

For further reading: Harold W. Attridge and George W. MacRae, “The Gospel of Truth” Kendrick Grobel, The Gospel of Truth; Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures, 250–64 ; Jacques-É. Ménard, L’Évangile de Vérité Hans-Martin Schenke, “Evangelium Veritatis” Hans-Martin Schenke, Die Herkunft des sogennanten Evangelium Veritatis .