5

VALENTINUS THE CHRISTIAN MYSTIC

SALVATION THROUGH KNOWLEDGE IN THE GOSPEL OF TRUTH AND VALENTINIAN TEXTS

ACCORDING TO IRENAEUS OF LYON, “Valentinus adapted the fundamental principles of the so-called gnostic school of thought—that is, the Barbelognostics or Sethians—to his own kind of system.”¹ The gnostic system of Valentinus and the Valentinians resembles the Sethian school of thought to a considerable extent, but Valentinian thought has its own distinctive features. Valentinian gnosis is specifically Christian, and Valentinian Christians were thoroughly involved in the life of the church. Very likely they did not refer to themselves as Valentinians, but rather as devoted Christians. In their way of understanding people, Valentinians employed a threefold division of humankind: they thought of themselves as uncommon Christians and spiritual people—“the spiritual” (pneumatikoi) or “the perfect” (teleioi); they considered ordinary Christians psychical people (people with a soul, psychikoi); and unbelievers were judged to be material people (hylikoi, or people of flesh, sarkikoi). Typically, Valentinian Christians seem to have attended worship services with other Christians, read the Christian scriptures, and participated in the sacraments. Valentinian scholars studied the writings of the apostles John and Paul, and they produced their own letters, commentaries, sermons, and other learned and pious Christian works. Among these works are Ptolemy’s Letter to Flora, Heracleon’s Commentary on the Gospel of John, and a number of texts preserved in the Nag Hammadi library, including the sermon entitled the Gospel of Truth.²

Valentinians also convened their own meetings in addition to the services of the churches they attended, and at their meetings they carried their Christian thought and practice beyond those of the great church to a deeper knowledge and a more mystical form of piety. Valentinian spirituality included an understanding of mystical sacraments, called “mysteries” in the Gospel of Philip. With the heightened concern for a clear differentiation between orthodox and heretical Christians from the fourth century on, however, Valentinian Christians eventually were subjected to a series of edicts and attacks, and late in the fourth century a mob of angry Christians burned down a Valentinian chapel on the banks of the Euphrates River. Nonetheless, the mystical Christianity of Valentinus and his followers made an impact upon the church and the world during these early centuries and beyond, and Valentinians produced some of the most beautiful Christian mystical literature of any era of church history.

VALENTINUS AND THE GOSPEL OF TRUTH

Valentinus was an African church leader born in Egypt, in a city in the Delta not far from Alexandria, around the beginning of the second century, and he lived to be about seventy-five years old.³ Destined to become one of the most brilliant and eloquent Christian leaders of the second century, Valentinus received a sound Hellenistic education in Alexandria, where he must have become acquainted with the work of leading philosophers and religious thinkers. He learned about Platonic philosophy, and Bentley Layton speculates that he may have been familiar with the great Jewish thinker Philo of Alexandria, the Christian gnostic Basilides, and perhaps even the Gospel of Thomas, which was available in Egypt during the second century, as the Greek fragments from Oxyrhynchus prove.⁴ Some early writers suggest that Valentinus may have been taught by a person named Theudas, who, it was claimed, had been a student of Paul, which may have allowed Valentinus to be granted Pauline or apostolic authority. A decade or so before the middle of the century, Valentinus moved to Rome, and there he became a well-known man about town and leader in the Roman church. According to Tertullian, he was considered for the position of bishop of Rome—the ancient equivalent of the pope—but he lost out in his quest for that position.⁵ Had he been appointed bishop of Rome, the subsequent history of the church might have been altogether different. Valentinus, and perhaps all of us, lost on that day.

Valentinus continued to work as a Christian teacher and leader, and some of his literary achievements have survived, most in fragmentary form. Short selections from Valentinus are preserved as quotations in the church fathers, in Clement of Alexandria and elsewhere, and a passage from Valentinus cited in Hippolytus of Rome shows his poetic gifts:

Through spirit I see that all are suspended,

through spirit I know that all are conveyed,

flesh suspended from soul,

soul depending on air,

air suspended from atmosphere.

From the depth come crops,

from the womb comes a child.⁶

This poem by Valentinus deals with cosmological themes reminiscent of Sethian formulations regarding the plrma of the divine. For Valentinus and his followers, the fullness of the divine is based in the depth of God, and all the emanations, or “crops,” come from the depth, including the first emanation, the womb or mother, and the child. For Valentinus, the child may have been understood to be the word, the logos or Christ. The aeons or eternal realms are suspended, set in the fullness of the divine, and the constituent parts of this world too—flesh, soul, air, atmosphere—are set in their proper order. This vision of the universe, Valentinus says, he sees and knows “through spirit.” It is quite possible that the poem was entitled “Summer Harvest,” an allusion to the spiritual harvest of the cosmos.

The Gospel of Truth from the Nag Hammadi library is often also attributed to Valentinus.⁷ The Gospel of Truth is the third tractate in Nag Hammadi Codex I (fragments of the Gospel of Truth are also known from Codex XII), and although no separate title is given, the text is named the Gospel of Truth in the incipit. The title is also mentioned by Irenaeus of Lyon, who states that a text called the Gospel of Truth was read by Valentinian Christians. No author is named for the Gospel of Truth, but a good argument can be made for attributing the authorship to Valentinus. In The Gnostic Scriptures, Bentley Layton gives three reasons to support the likelihood that Valentinus composed the Gospel of Truth: (1) the style of the Gospel of Truth resembles the style of the fragments of Valentinus; (2) the eloquent and poetic Valentinus would have been the sort of person who would have been able to author a eloquent gospel like the Gospel of Truth; and (3) features of the Gospel of Truth suggest an early date of composition, before the development of the later complexities of Valentinian thought.⁸

The Gospel of Truth is written in the form of a Christian sermon on salvation through knowledge of God. The progression of thought through the sermon is poetic, with image after image arising as the preacher addresses what it means to know God and to be loved by God. The basic message of the sermon is given in the opening lines:

The gospel of truth is joy for people who have received grace from the father of truth, that they might know him through the power of the word. The word has come from the fullness in the father’s thought and mind. The word is called “savior,” a term that refers to the work he is to do to redeem those who had not known the father. And the term “gospel” refers to the revelation of hope, since it is the means of discovery for those who seek him. (16–17)

Since this is a Christian text, Jesus figures prominently throughout, and he is shown to be a guide and teacher of wisdom who shows the way to God:

Jesus became a guide, a person of rest who was busy in places of instruction. He came forward and spoke the word as a teacher. Those wise in their own eyes came to test him, but he refuted them, for they were foolish, and they hated him because they were not really wise.

After them came the little children, who have knowledge of the father. When they gained strength and learned about the expressions of the father, they knew, they were known, they were glorified, they gave glory. (19)

The cross of Jesus is proclaimed in the sermon, but it is interpreted metaphorically as a source of life and a revelation of incorruptibility. Error, which comes from ignorance, persecutes Jesus and has him crucified, yet the outcome is not death but life, in mystical union with Jesus:

For this reason error was angry with him and persecuted him, but she was restrained by him and made powerless. He was nailed to a tree, and he became fruit of the knowledge of the father. This fruit of the tree, however, did not bring destruction when it was eaten, but rather it caused those who ate of it to come into being. They were joyful in this discovery, and he found them within himself and they found him within themselves. (18)

This is Jesus, called “Jesus of infinite sweetness” (24) in the sermon, who as the word of the father and the name of the father announces the mind and will of the father.

Within the Gospel of Truth the preacher employs parables and figures of speech to proclaim the points being made. The transformation from deficiency to completeness and from multiplicity to unity is illustrated by means of the parable of the broken jars:

This is like people who moved from one house to another. They had jars around that were not good, and they broke, but the owner suffered no loss. Rather, the owner was glad because instead of these defective jars there were full jars that were perfect.

This is the judgment that has come from above and has judged every person, a drawn two-edged sword cutting on this side and that, since the word that is in the heart of those who speak the word appeared. It is not merely a sound but it was embodied.

A great disturbance occurred among the jars, for some were empty and others were filled, some were ample and others were depleted, some were purified and others were broken.

All the realms were shaken and disturbed, for they had no order or stability. Error was agitated, and she did not know what to do. She was troubled, she lamented, she attacked herself, because she knew nothing. For knowledge, which leads to the destruction of error and all her expressions, approached. Error is empty; there is nothing within her. (25–26)

Ignorance in life is like a nightmare in sleep, filled with the terror and confusion of flight and falling and killing and being killed:

So it is with those who cast off ignorance from themselves like sleep. They do not consider it to be anything, nor do they regard its features as real, but they put them aside like a dream in the night and understand the father’s knowledge to be the dawn. This is how each person acts while in ignorance, as if asleep, and this is how a person comes to knowledge, as if awakened. Good for one who comes to himself and awakens. And blessings on one who has opened the eyes of the blind. (29–30)⁹

And once again, the savior is like the shepherd in search of the single lost sheep:

He is the shepherd who left behind the ninety-nine sheep that had not strayed and went in search of the one that was lost. He rejoiced when he found it.¹⁰ For ninety-nine is a number expressed with the left hand, but when another one is found, the numerical sum is transferred to the right hand. In this way what needs one more—that is, the whole right hand—attracts what it needs, takes it from the left and brings it to the right, and so the number becomes one hundred. This is the meaning of the pronunciation of these numbers.

The father is like that. He labored even on the sabbath for the sheep that he found fallen into the pit. He saved the life of the sheep and brought it up from the pit. (31–32)

After recounting this set of parables of sheep, the preacher offers an allegorical understanding of the parables. Such use of allegorical interpretation was common among Valentinians, and in this instance the preacher discloses an “inner meaning” of the stories:

Understand the inner meaning, for you are children of inner meaning. What is the sabbath? It is a day on which salvation should not be idle. Speak of the heavenly day that has no night and of the light that does not set because it is perfect. Speak from the heart, for you are the perfect day and within you dwells the light that does not fail. Speak of truth with those who seek it and of knowledge with those who have sinned in their error. (32)¹¹

The sermon closes with tender and intimate images of mystical union with God. Those who recognize that they are from God and possess something of God within come to rest in the divine fullness, and they embrace God:

They embrace his head, which is rest for them, and they hold him close so that, in a manner of speaking, they have caressed his face with kisses. But they do not make this obvious. For they neither exalt themselves nor diminish the father’s glory. And they do not think of the father as insignificant or bitter or angry, but as free of evil, unperturbed, sweet, knowing all the heavenly places before they came into being, and having no need of instruction. (41–42)

They are one with the father, rooted in the divine:

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 preacher concludes, “Children like this the father loves.”

The sermon in the Gospel of Truth incorporates many of the technical terms known from Valentinian discussions of the plrma of the divine, and it employs these terms in a creative manner. Valentinian cosmological presentations typically affirm that everything in the universe comes from the divine depth, bathos or bythos, and the fullness of divinity emanates from depth and is organized as fifteen (or more) pairs of aeons, or divine couples, for a total of thirty (or more) aeons, or eternal realms. Valentinus’s poem “Summer Harvest” alludes to these pleromatic emanations. Most important among the aeons are the first two groups of four (called tetrads), which together constitute a realm of eight (called an ogdoad). According to Irenaeus of Lyon, the Valentinian ogdoad consists of these divine couples: depth and thought (or grace or silence); mind (or only child) and truth; word and life; human being and church.¹²

In Valentinian discussion, Sophia, or wisdom, falls through ignorance and error, causing a disturbance in the divine order, so that two other aeons, Christ and holy spirit, come forth to quiet the disturbance. Christ assists with the restoration of Sophia, but her desire is thrown out of the divine realm of fullness, and it becomes Achamoth, a lower wisdom, from whose passions our world here below is created. Jesus the savior, here distinguished from Christ, emerges as the fruit of the fullness, and he comes to the aid of wisdom and the world. Through it all, Jesus Christ and wisdom are brought together in a number of significant ways. Heresiological sources, commenting on Valentinian thought, can reflect upon Christ as the son of Sophia, as in other Christian wisdom texts, and in another Valentinian formulation the sources can refer to Jesus being filled with the word, or logos, of Sophia at baptism. The Valentinian Exposition from the Nag Hammadi library also seems to suggest, according to Einar Thomassen, that Sophia’s perfect half was separated off and became her son Christ.¹³ The Valentinian Exposition ends with a vision of the resolution of the cosmic drama and the final restoration of Sophia and of all:

When Sophia, then, receives her partner, and Jesus receives Christ, and the seeds are united with the angels, then the fullness will receive Sophia in joy, and all will be joined together and restored. For then the eternal realms will have received their abundance, for they will have understood that even if they change, they remain unchanging. (39)

The Gospel of Truth does not engage in such cosmological discussion, but it does use some of the same terms. The preacher of the Gospel of Truth—probably Valentinus—also refers to fullness, depth, thought, grace, mind, truth, word, life, wisdom, fruit, and error, but the preacher incorporates these terms into a sermon that invites people to come to experience the knowledge and love of God. Terms with metaphysical possibilities are brought into the lives of Valentinian Christians, and the glory of God’s fullness is proclaimed to be within them.

THE GOSPEL OF PHILIP

The Gospel of Philip is a Valentinian anthology of meditations on a variety of gnostic themes.¹⁴ Philip is referred to by name once in the text, and that may be the reason the text is attributed to him. The arrangement of meditations in the Gospel of Philip seems to be more or less random, though it is possible that sometimes they may be connected to one another by catchwords or the sequence of similar themes. We do not know where these meditations originated, but presumably they come from different sources. Layton guesses, “It is possible that some of the excerpts are by Valentinus himself.”¹⁵

The Gospel of Philip is preserved as the third tractate in Nag Hammadi Codex II, where it is located immediately after the Gospel of Thomas. The text opens, somewhat abruptly, with a meditation on Hebrews and proselytes: “A Hebrew makes a Hebrew, and such a person is called a convert. A convert does not make a convert. [Some people] are as they [are] and make others [like them], while others simply are” (51–52). Many of the meditations in the Gospel of Philip recall themes in the Gospel of Truth, but the style of presentation is quite different. The Gospel of Philip is as abrupt throughout as it is at the beginning, and the overall impact of the individual meditations of the Gospel of Philip is not unlike that of the individual sayings of the Gospel of Thomas. Some scholars assign numbers to the meditations of the Gospel of Philip comparable to the numbers assigned to the sayings of the Gospel of Thomas, although these scholars cannot seem to agree on a numbering system. Layton refers to the individual meditations of the Gospel of Philip as excerpts. Still, through the juxtaposition of ideas and the repetition of themes, this anthology of meditations is able to communicate a Valentinian message of mystical oneness and sacramental joy.

Jesus is explicitly described as the one presenting several of the meditations in the Gospel of Philip, and his presence is sensed throughout the text, sometimes in the company of Mary of Magdala. The text ridicules a conventional view of the virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, becoming pregnant by the holy spirit by asking, rhetorically, “When did a woman—Mary—ever get pregnant by a woman—the holy spirit?” (55). Philip the apostle narrates a tale about Joseph, the father of Jesus:

Joseph the carpenter planted a garden, for he needed wood for his trade. He is the one who made the cross from the trees he planted, and his own offspring hung on what he planted. His offspring was Jesus and what he planted was the cross. (73)

The text describes how Jesus went into the dye works of Levi and threw seventy-two colored cloths into a vat, and when he took them out, they all were white. Jesus then says, “So the child of humankind has come as a dyer” (63). One of the most memorable meditations in the Gospel of Philip is a saying of Jesus that compares well with Gospel of Thomas 19. In the Gospel of Philip Jesus says, “Blessings on one who is before coming into being. For whoever is, was and will be” (64).

Mary of Magdala, or Mary Magdalene, is described as the companion of the savior in the Gospel of Philip. The text states, “The [savior loved] her more than [all] the disciples, [and he] kissed her often on her [mouth]” (63). (The word restored as “mouth” is in a lacuna in the manuscript, and other restorations might suggest additional options for the precise place on Mary where Jesus, according to the Gospel of Philip, chooses to plant his kisses.) This special love between Jesus and Mary of Magdala, which inspired Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code, is also attested in the Gospel of Mary, to be discussed in the next chapter.

In the Gospel of Philip the crucifixion is mentioned in a meditation that quotes a form of the traditional words of Jesus on the cross—“My God, my God, why, lord, have you forsaken me?”—and then observes, “He spoke these words on the cross, for he had left that place” (68).¹⁶ The meditation suggests that the divine person within Jesus of Nazareth left the crucified body behind and escaped death.

Just before the meditation on Mary of Magdala and Jesus, the Gospel of Philip mentions wisdom. The text reads, “Wisdom—Sophia—who is called barren, is the mother of the angels” (63). Elsewhere in the Gospel of Philip wisdom also comes up for discussion, and a distinction is made, typical of Valentinian texts, between two figures of wisdom, including a form of wisdom named Echamoth (cf. Achamoth), from the Hebrew hokhmah. The text plays with two names of wisdom: “There is Echamoth and there is Echmoth. Echamoth is simply wisdom, but Echmoth is the wisdom of death—that is, the wisdom that knows death, that is called little wisdom”(60). Layton notes, Echmoth is from the Hebrew and Aramaic for “like death.”¹⁷

Several meditations in the Gospel of Philip proclaim the ultimate value of oneness, especially mystical oneness, and sometimes the themes of separation and union are traced back to the story of Adam and Eve. Like many other texts, including gnostic texts, that interpret the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis, the Gospel of Philip understands that originally humankind—Adam—was created as an androgyne, both male and female together in one body, and a removal of a side from Adam, as recounted in Genesis 2:21–24, entailed the division of humankind into separate male and female genders. The Gospel of Philip thus maintains that the original androgynous union of Adam and Eve in paradise was violated by the separation into male and female, and from this separation death came. “Christ came,” the meditation continues, “to heal the separation that was from the beginning and reunite the two, in order to give life to those who died through separation and unite them.” Such union happens in the bridal chamber, understood not only as the place of sexual union, but also as a sacrament for salvific union. The text states, “A woman is united with her husband in the bridal chamber, and those united in the bridal chamber will not be separated again” (70).

Throughout the Gospel of Philip sacraments play a major role, and five sacraments, or “mysteries,” are enumerated: baptism, chrism, eucharist, redemption, and bridal chamber. By participating in the sacraments, people are brought closer to God and an understanding of God. The sacrament of the bridal chamber is emphasized in the Gospel of Philip, and although the bridal chamber is mentioned elsewhere in Nag Hammadi literature—in the Gospel of Thomas, for instance—in the Gospel of Philip it has special sacramental value. The bridal chamber in this world is considered to be a mystery, but the pure sacramental bridal chamber is thought to be even greater. In April D. DeConick’s interpretation, the importance of sexual intercourse is presupposed in Valentinian sources, and sex assisted in the passing on of the seed—the semen of light—of the spirit. She writes, “Sexual intercourse between Valentinian spouses was to continue until the last spiritual seed was embodied and harvested.”¹⁸ At the same time, the Gospel of Philip maintains that the sacramental bridal chamber is not of the flesh and desire but of the will, and the union that is realized in the sacramental bridal chamber restores the unity and oneness of humankind. The sacramental bridal chamber has a transcendent dimension, and through participation in the bridal chamber one is raised to a higher level of understanding. Ultimately the sacrament of the bridal chamber may unite a person with the divine, so that we, as images of the divine, may be joined with angels, heavenly beings who are our divine alter egos. A prayerful meditation in the Gospel of Philip states,

You who have united perfect light with holy spirit,

unite the angels also with us, as images. (58)

In a way that is somewhat comparable to tenets of other religious traditions, for example, Tantric Buddhism, Valentinian gnosis thus can employ sexual themes and understand sexual practices in such a way as to proclaim the reunion of male and female and the attainment of the oneness of salvation.

The mystical union thus achieved through sacrament and knowledge, the Gospel of Philip states, entails oneness with Christ and finally oneness with God the father. For the Gospel of Philip it is not enough to follow Christ and be a Christian. A person must become Christ and even become God the father. The text announces,

In the realm of truth,

you have seen things there and have become those things,

you have seen the spirit and have become spirit,

you have seen Christ and have become Christ,

you have seen the [father] and will become father. (61)

The sacraments are discussed elsewhere in Valentinian literature, and in Nag Hammadi Codex XI five liturgical readings for the Valentinian sacraments of chrism, baptism, and the eucharist are appended to the Valentinian Exposition.¹⁹ It may be that the Valentinian Exposition was meant to give instruction in Valentinian cosmology and theology in preparation for participation in the sacraments. In the liturgical reading for the sacrament of chrism, or anointing, the text cites Luke 10:19 (cf. also Mark 16:18, the longer ending of Mark) as it gives glory to God for the knowledge and power that come through the anointing of Jesus Christ:

It is fitting [for you] now

to send your son Jesus Christ

to anoint us,

that we may be able

to trample on [snakes]

and [ward off] scorpions

and [all] the power of the devil,

[through] the [supreme] shepherd

Jesus Christ.

Through him have we known you,

and we glorify you.

Glory be to you,

father in the [eternal realm],

[father] in the son,

father in the holy church

and among the holy [angels].

From [the beginning]

he abides [forever],

[in the] harmony of the eternal realms,

[from] eternity,

to the boundless eternity

of the eternal realms.

Amen. (40)

In the liturgical readings for baptism, two understandings of baptism are distinguished, that of a first baptism for the forgiveness of sins—like the ordinary baptism of the great church—and an additional spiritual understanding of baptism for the transformation and perfection of the spirit. The liturgical reading for this extraordinary spiritual understanding of baptism is fragmentary, but the meaning remains clear. We are transformed, the text declares,

[from the] world [to the Jordan],

from [the things] of the world to [the sight] of God,

from [the carnal] to the spiritual,

from the physical to the angelic,

from [creation] to fullness,

from the world to the eternal realm,

from [enslavements] to sonship,

from entanglements to virtue,

from [wayfaring] to our home,

from [cold] to warmth,

….….

This is how we were brought

from seminal [bodies] into a perfect form.

The cleansing is the symbol

through which Christ has saved us

through the [gift] of his spirit.

He delivered us who are [in him].

From this time forth

souls will become perfect spirits. (42)

Portions of two additional liturgical readings for the eucharist remain, and the sense of the sacramental celebration is captured by the conclusion of the second reading:

You, lord,

when you die in purity,

you will be pure,

so everyone who receives

food and [drink] from this

[will live].

Glory be to you

forever.

Amen. (44)

THE TREATISE ON RESURRECTION

The Valentinian Treatise on Resurrection is the fourth tractate of Nag Hammadi Codex I.²⁰ Most if not all of the other texts in Codex I are also Valentinian—the Prayer of the Apostle Paul, the Gospel of Truth, the Tripartite Tractate—and the only text in the codex that may or may not be Valentinian—the Secret Book of James—may contain Valentinian elements, so that Nag Hammadi Codex I has sometimes been considered to be a Valentinian book. The Treatise on Resurrection is written as a letter to a person named Rheginos, and in the body of the letter the author discusses the true meaning of the resurrection. The text vigorously affirms the reality of the resurrection, but the author insists that the true resurrection is spiritual resurrection and the spiritual resurrection has already taken place within the lives of people. The text uses the same threefold Valentinian division into spirit, soul, and flesh noted above when it states, “This is the resurrection of the spirit, which swallows the resurrection of the soul and the resurrection of the flesh” (45–46). This Valentinian affirmation that the resurrection has already happened with the transformation to new spiritual life recalls the position of Hymenaeus and Philetus according to 2 Timothy 2:16–18, where the Paulinist, in heresiological fashion, attacks these two Christian thinkers for having, in his estimation, “strayed from the truth by claiming that the resurrection already happened.” 2 Timothy was likely written in the second century, a generation or so after Paul, so that the text addresses a position much like what we encounter in the Treatise on Resurrection. For the Paulinist this position was unpalatable—it does not have the eschatological flavor of a future event—but for the author of the Treatise on Resurrection it affirms the reality of the new life in Christ here and now.

The author of the Treatise on Resurrection begins his argument with the resurrection of Christ himself. Making use of imagery used elsewhere in the text, the author maintains that Christ, as death’s destroyer, “swallowed death.” “You must know this,” Rheginos is told. “When he laid aside the perishable world, he exchanged it for an incorruptible eternal realm. He arose and swallowed the visible through the invisible, and thus he granted us the way to our immortality” (45). As a result, the author continues, we too experience the resurrection of “the living parts that are within”—the spirit, and possibly, some scholars suggest, even a body of spiritual flesh. This resurrection, with all its transforming power, has already occurred and is already a reality for us. The author refers to the accounts of the transfiguration in the New Testament gospels and states,

What is the resurrection? It is always the disclosure of those who have arisen. If you remember reading in the gospel that Elijah and Moses appeared with Jesus, do not think that the resurrection is an illusion. It is no illusion. It is truth. It is more appropriate to say that the world is illusion, rather than the resurrection that came into being through our lord and savior Jesus Christ. (48)

Overwhelmed by the present bliss and the glorious fullness of the experience of resurrection, the author of the Treatise on Resurrection adds lines with a more poetic flair to proclaim the life-changing significance of the resurrection:

What am I telling you?

All at once the living die.

How do they live in illusion?

The rich become poor,

kings are overthrown,

everything changes.

The world is illusion.

Let me not speak so negatively.

The resurrection is different.

It is real,

it stands firm.

It is revelation of what is,

a transformation of things,

a transition into newness.

Incorruptibility [flows] over corruption,

light flows over darkness, swallowing it,

fullness fills what it lacks.

These are symbols and images of resurrection.

This brings goodness. (48–49)

THE VALENTINIAN WORLD OUTSIDE AND WITHIN

As with the Sethians, Valentinian thinkers also are enthusiastic in their speculation about the world of the pleroma of God. For Valentinians, the primal divine being is depth, and depth functions as the unknown God. God’s universe above, beyond our world below, is populated with divine couples, and together they make up the glory of God. Sophia plays a key role in the fullness of God, and the Valentinians address issues of theodicy by positing two levels for the drama that ensues. Some things happen inside the divine fullness, some things happen outside, and a boundary—also called the cross—keeps these realms apart. As events unfold, Sophia, the higher wisdom, is restored to the fullness above, but her desire becomes Achamoth, or perhaps Echmoth, lower wisdom. The demiurge is the creator of this world below, but in general Valentinian texts are not as hard on the demiurge as Sethian texts. At times Jesus and wisdom are said to be responsible for the creation of this world, and the demiurge just does the manual labor.

The complexities of the cosmological passages in Sethian and Valentinian texts may present challenges to us, as modern readers whose view of the cosmos is not quite the same as that of those in the world of antiquity and late antiquity. These complexities may be the sort of thing the Paulinist had in mind in referring, in a critical way, to the speculative “myths and endless genealogies” of some people, according to 1 Timothy 1:4. These cosmological and mythological passages reflect ancient and late antique metaphysics and astronomy; they describe the origin, nature, and extent of the cosmos and explain the place of human beings in the whole scheme of things. Among the features of the world outside us and high above us, as portrayed in the texts, are the seven planetary spheres (for the sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn), the twelve signs of the zodiac, the world of the stars, and powers that correspond to the seven days of the week and the three hundred sixty-five days of the solar year. There are angels and demons without number, and our world is an extremely complex place with countless powers and authorities. Spheres beyond the seven planetary spheres are suggested for the demiurge and his mother, Sophia, and the infinite God is beyond that—hence the eighth, ninth, and at times (as in the Revelation of Paul) even the tenth level of being. Names, often forms of traditional divine names or nicknames or fantastic names, identify the characters in the mythic accounts and add to the exotic mood of the narratives.

These cosmological and mythological passages, I submit, with all their complexities and difficulties, are not fundamentally different from our own contemporary metaphysical and astronomical reflections upon the stars, the universe, and the ultimate limit or limitlessness of things. After the Hubble telescope, the probes to the edge of the universe, and the discovery of cyberspace, we can appreciate more fully the expressions of the Sethian and Valentinian cosmological texts. And as we wonder about finitude and infinity, about big bangs and subatomic particles and the very nature of existence, we can identify with those who have struggled to articulate thoughts and create texts, like the texts in the Nag Hammadi library, in which they write about nonexistent being, the unknown God, and its emanations and manifestations.

Although these gnostic texts are interested in the world outside us, they are also concerned with what is within us, and how what is outside may also be within. In the Gospel of Thomas Jesus says that the kingdom is inside and outside, and in Sethian texts like the Secret Book of John the emanations of the divine One are mental characteristics and capabilities applicable to the world of human psychology. But it is in Valentinian texts in particular that we recognize a deeply mystical interest in focusing upon the inner contemplative life. Thus we have observed that the Gospel of Truth incorporates the terms of the aeons and powers of the universe into a sermon that speaks to the daily lives of Valentinian Christians.

A meditation in the Gospel of Philip on the outer and the inner addresses this issue directly. Based on a saying of Jesus very much like Gospel of Thomas 22, which has Jesus say that the inner is like the outer and the outer like the inner, the meditation in the Gospel of Philip suggests that it is more fitting to understand the world of God as what is within, what is innermost:

[For this reason] he—Jesus—said, “I have come to make [the lower] like the [upper and the] outer like the [inner, and to unite] them in that place.” [He spoke] here in symbols [and images].

Those who say [there is a heavenly person and] one that is higher are wrong, for they call the visible heavenly person “lower” and the one to whom the hidden realm belongs “higher.” It would be better for them to speak of the inner, the outer, and the outermost. For the lord called corruption “the outermost darkness,” and there is nothing outside it. He said, “My father who is in secret.” He said, “Go into your room, shut the door behind you, and pray to your father who is in secret”—that is, the one who is innermost. What is innermost is the fullness, and there is nothing further within. And this is what they call uppermost. (67–68)

The world of the plrma, the fullness of God, often thought to be the divine world above us and outside us, truly is within. For Valentinian mystics, God is not simply the father in heaven; God is within.