Who was Valentinus? What was Valentinianism?

Now he does not accept the doctrine of a sin-bearing life shut out from the favour of God; but, because he does not agree as to this with the school of the "Journal of Prophecy," is this a reason for charging him with what he formally condemns, and the contrary of which he diligently teaches? I must leave the reader to compare the extracts I have given with the accusations of the article. I will state from Gieseler and Mosheim what the Valentinian heresy is, and readers will judge how applicable it is.

"From the great original (according to him, depth, first father, first cause) with whom is the consciousness of himself ([inward] thought, silence) emanate in succession male and female Aeons (mind or firstborn and truth, word and life, man and church, &c. So that thirty Aeons together, divided into the octoad, decad, and dodecad, form the pleroma — fulness). From the passionate striving of the last Aeon, Sophia (wisdom), to unite itself with 'depth' itself, arises an untimely being, Achamoth, which, wandering about outside the Pleroma, communicates the germ of life to matter, and forms the Demiurge (creator) of psychical material (matter having the life of a living soul), who immediately creates the world. In the meantime two new Aeons had arisen, Christ and the Holy Ghost. Then there emanated from all the Aeons Jesus the Saviour, who, as the future associate (σύξυγος) of Achamoth, was to lead her and the spiritual nature into the Pleroma. The Saviour united Himself at His baptism with the psychical Messiah (having a living soul) promised by Demiurge." For the Old Testament came from the creator of the world, not from God. Hence Hyle, or matter, being from the bad god, or itself eternal and bad and put in order by him, they held it to be bad. Some or all of them held that when Christ was crucified the Aeon flew away, and indeed the Aeon only to have taken an apparent, or rather an ethereal, body, and hence never to have really suffered.

34 "The misery Achamoth was in, outside the Pleroma, led her to look for Jesus, the Aeon produced by the Aeons to help her, which was granted, and creation went on between her, Demiurge, and Jesus, spiritual, animal life, and matter being separated; only Achamoth put a little spiritual, unknown to Demiurge, into man. This last must go back to God; matter could not (there was no resurrection); and the living soul might or might not. Demiurge was the God of the Jews, and author of the Old Testament. Men becoming corrupt, Christ came to save them. He took human nature, spiritual, animal, and corporeal; but this last (that He might not be leavened, so to speak, with matter) was ethereal, heavenly in its nature, and only passed through the Virgin Mary. At John's baptism, Jesus descended on him as a dove. When he was going to be crucified, the Aeon Jesus and his spiritual soul left, and only his animal soul and ethereal body were crucified."

The Gnostics, who in later years so much harassed the assembly, used this word "fulness" in a mystical and peculiar sense for the sum and source (and yet after all, in the sense of a locality; for it had limits which separated it from everything else) of divinity which developed itself in four pairs of beings — syzygies — Christ being only one of a pair. It is not necessary to go further into their reveries, except to observe that, with different shades of thought, they attribute creation to a god either inferior or evil, who also was the author of the Old Testament. Matter, they said, did not proceed from the supreme God. They did not eat meat; they did not marry; at the same time they gave themselves up to all sorts of horrors and dissoluteness; and, strange to say, associated themselves with Judaism, worshipped angels, etc.

An early system of philosophy professedly Christian. One of their theories was that the Lord was an Æon and not really a man. Apparently to refute this the apostle insists on Christ having come 'in flesh.' 1 John 4:2-3; 2 John 7. The same may be alluded to in Col. 2:9, "in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily," in opposition to their mysticism. See GENEALOGIES.

The idolatrous character of the Gnostic infidelity may be accounted for — at least in part. For Oriental philosophy, which influenced the West, taught as a fundamental principle that the Universe was an intelligent being, of which matter was the body and God the soul. This Pantheistic notion of God (which as a form of infidelity seems anterior to the purely Atheistic form) was the prolific source from which were educed the wildest theories — so wild that even heathen mythology might be called wisdom compared to them. Mixed with the truth the amalgam is more abhorrent than Atheism. Professors of Christianity could not of course adopt the gods of Paganism, nor Brahm's development and sudden expansion into numerous deities. These monopolisers of "true knowledge" attempted a compromise. In place of gods they had "emanations" from the "Original Unity," the "monad" of Eastern philosophy. Each prominent Gnostic had his peculiar theory to which he wickedly but vainly attempted to bend the word of God. Evil as well as good was personified as emanations or "aeons" from God. Thus making God the source of evil as well as of good. Christ was an "aeon," by some accounted the highest and sent into the world to correct the mischief wrought by others. Some maintained that He was by title the Son of God, but inferior to the Father. They denied His humanity because matter was essentially evil. His body was only the appearance of matter. It follows necessarily that there was no real suffering, no real death: it was all illusion. Where are the foundations of Christianity, and of truth? What becomes of the character of God as a Just Governor? Where is the love of God in giving His Son, or the truth of the declaration of John 3:16, if there was no reality in the cross? Without the cross all would be confusion and contradiction, the book of nature and the book of revelation alike unintelligible. The cross is the central point in the whole universe of God. It declares God's righteousness for the past or present, and is the proof of His love, upon which His highest glories hang. If the cross be an illusion, so is exaltation in millennial glory; and our glory with Christ a myth.

Now I do not know whether the reader will be edified with this short account of the old Valentinian heresy; but at any rate he will be able to judge whether Mr. Mackintosh maintains it. Our journal selects the part merely as to the ethereal body to prove him guilty: whether he is, any one has only to read Mr. Mackintosh's remarks on the second chapter of Leviticus, and he can easily judge. The one expression, "The conception of Christ's humanity by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary," would suffice to shew the character of the accusation. Indeed the full declaration of the deity of Christ found in Mr. Mackintosh's statements equally sets aside the Valentinian notions, as to the precise nature of which there is some confusion, but the folly of which, to our sober western minds, is almost incomprehensible. In the Valentinian theory Jesus came down only at John's baptism. Now, I ask, how can I think that the writer believes his own accusation? But this is a serious thought.

48 As I am not defending myself, I feel at liberty to express myself thus freely. But I am bound to prove the charge made against Mr. M. to be unfounded and unrighteous. The charge made against him was denying the true humanity of the Lord Jesus as truly born of the Virgin Mary. Dr. Bonar charged him with the renewal of the Valentinian heresy, which taught that He had only the appearance of flesh, and was really a spiritual Aeon come down from heaven, which might pass through the womb of the Virgin, but no more; there was no being really born of her, so as to have the human nature. Dr. C. says, If (as to His humanity) He was the Lord from heaven, He could not by any possibility in the world be of the substance of the Virgin. "If His humanity be heavenly, it cannot in any sense be of the substance of the Virgin; if it was gent from heaven, it was not formed on earth."

The last verse (15) appears to be a parenthesis, however full of instruction. But the direct line of truth runs, "full of grace and truth … and of His fulness all we received, and grace for grace" (verse 16). An astonishing truth! He is the gift and the giver — full of grace and truth; and of His fulness did we all receive. Such is the portion of the least believer. The strongest is only the stronger, because he better appreciates Him. For there is no blessing outside Him, and consequently no lack for the soul that possesses Jesus. If the Colossian saints, if any others, seek to add any other thing to the Lord, it is a real loss, not gain. It is but to add what detracts from Him. For Christ is all ( τὰ π.), and in all. Before our apostle died Gnosticism was sowing its baneful seeds, it would seem even before St. Paul's death. Early in the second century we know that Basileides had developed the system so far as to separate Jesus from Christ, the latter an emanation ["Æon"] from God united to Jesus at His baptism, and returning to the Fulness on high before His death on the cross.23 Thus the Incarnation was annulled no less than the Atonement. But even Christ in this impious reverie was not the true God, but only an emanation, sent to make known the good God, and expose the Demiurge [Jehovah], who made the world, with all its evils, inseparable from matter. One readily sees how the doctrine of the apostles cuts off by anticipation this irreverent and destructive falsehood by stating the simple truth of Christ's Person and work, though only the germs may have then appeared.

It was a strange compound — oriental philosophy and divine truth. It would seem as if the philosopher of that day sought to enlarge the range of his view by borrowing from truth, but perverting what he found, to make it fit into his own system. But he was no nearer the truth; he was a worse man; for he had heard the truth, and loved not but made merchandise of it. How much greater the guilt, and the evil consequences, of teaching as truth of God the vain speculations of men! This was done in the first ages of the church; and they who did it pretended to be the only ones who had knowledge and true understanding of the word. Hence their name — Gnostics. Under this, as a general term, very many different parties arose; but they all united in this, they denied the Son. Infidelity was the true name of their philosophy. The leading idea, that is the starting point (which is very like that of Brahminism), is "absolute unity," a something which was both spirit and matter: from this unity was evolved the whole universe of manifold beings. Matter became separate from spirit, and so in consequence the principle of evil. The spiritual beings emanating from the original monad became imperfect through contact with matter, and were held in thrall by it. Does it not occur to us that the inventor of this fable had seen the Mosaic account of Creation and of the Fall, but had so distorted the facts that the truth was lost?

The successors of Simon, such as Cerinthus and Valentinus so systematised his theories as to become the founders of that form of gnosticism with which the church had to contend in the second century. The name implies pretensions to some superior knowledge. It is generally thought that St. Paul refers to this meaning of the word when warning his son Timothy against "science," or knowledge, "falsely so called."

In the second chapter we come to the key of the whole matter. The Valentinian heretics against whom he wrote (who held it was a bad God that made the world and gave the Old Testament), finding they could not prove their doctrines by scripture, pretended there were other doctrines which the apostles taught and had not written, appealing, that is, as Romanists do — for it is the old heretical story — to the unwritten word known by tradition. "For when," he says, "they are convicted out of the scriptures, they turn to accusations against the scriptures themselves, as if they were not right, nor of authority, and because things are variously said there, and because the truth cannot be found out from them by those who are ignorant of tradition, for that was not delivered in writing, but viva voce." Thus, what Dr. Milner insists on is exactly what these horrible heretics insisted on, and Irenaeus' language is. The Fathers had no such tradition, but believed in one supreme God. The heretics appealed to unwritten tradition, because the scriptures were not clear, nor could be understood without tradition, and that there were things taught by tradition besides the scriptures.