Valentinian Gnosticism: Valentinus, Sophia and the Bridal Chamber

Valentinian Gnosticism was a Christian movement founded by the teacher Valentinus, who was active in Rome from about 136 to 160 CE, and developed by his students Ptolemy, Heracleon, Theodotus and Marcus. Valentinians taught that the world arose from a crisis within the divine fullness, the passion of the aeon Sophia, and that Christ came to restore spiritual beings to that fullness through knowledge and sacraments such as the "bridal chamber". Unlike many other groups labelled Gnostic, Valentinians often worshipped within ordinary Christian congregations, which made them especially troubling to their critics.

Valentinus: Life of a Second-Century Christian Teacher§

What we know of Valentinus comes from hostile writers and a handful of fragments. According to later tradition he was born in Egypt and educated in Alexandria, perhaps hearing a disciple of Paul named Theudas. He moved to Rome during the episcopate of Hyginus (around 136–140) and remained until about the time of Anicetus (around 155–166). Tertullian reports that Valentinus expected to become bishop of Rome and broke with the church when another man was chosen; this may be polemic, but it suggests that he was a prominent and respected figure. Epiphanius later claims that he ended his life in Cyprus.

Only about ten short fragments of his own writing survive, quoted by Clement of Alexandria and Hippolytus. They include a fragment on Adam's creation, in which the angels are frightened by the higher power speaking through the man they made; a poem called "Harvest" describing a chain of being suspended from spirit; and a passage on the heart as an inn inhabited by demons until purified by the Father. These fragments are more poetic and less systematic than the later myths attributed to his school. Scholars such as Christoph Markschies have argued that Valentinus himself may not have taught the elaborate aeon system, which was developed by his students.

Ptolemy, Heracleon, Theodotus and the Valentinian Schools§

Hippolytus reports that the followers of Valentinus divided into two branches. The Italian school included Ptolemy and Heracleon; the Eastern school included Theodotus and Mark (Marcus). One of the disputes concerned the nature of Jesus's body: the Italians held that it was "soulish" (psychic) and that the Spirit descended on it at baptism, while the Easterners held that it was spiritual from birth.

• Ptolemy is best known for his Letter to Flora, preserved complete by Epiphanius. Writing to a Christian woman, he argues that the Law of Moses comes neither from the perfect God nor from the devil but from an intermediate, just creator, and he divides the Law into parts: commandments Jesus fulfilled, parts he abolished, and ritual parts to be understood symbolically. The letter is a sober piece of biblical interpretation, quite different from the stereotype of wild speculation.
• Heracleon wrote the earliest known commentary on a book of the New Testament, a commentary on the Gospel of John. Origen quotes some fifty fragments of it in his own commentary, often to disagree. Heracleon reads the Samaritan woman at the well, for instance, as a type of the spiritual nature that responds to Christ.
• Theodotus is known through the Excerpts from Theodotus, notes made by Clement of Alexandria. One famous passage defines gnosis as knowing who we were, what we have become, where we were, where we have been cast, where we are hastening, from what we are redeemed, what birth is and what rebirth is.
• Marcus, active in the Rhône valley, is described by Irenaeus as a ritual practitioner who used letter and number symbolism and prophetic ceremonies. Irenaeus's account of him is especially polemical.

The Ptolemaic Myth: Thirty Aeons and the Passion of Sophia§

The most detailed Valentinian myth is the system Irenaeus attributes to the followers of Ptolemy at the start of Against Heresies (around 180 CE). It describes a divine world, the pleroma, of thirty aeons arranged in pairs.

The Ogdoad, Decad and Dodecad§

At the head is the pre-existent Depth (Bythos), also called Forefather, with his partner Silence (Sigē) or Thought. From them come Mind (Nous, also called Only-Begotten) and Truth; from these, Word (Logos) and Life; and from these, Human and Church. These eight form the Ogdoad. Word and Life emit ten further aeons (the Decad), and Human and Church emit twelve (the Dodecad), for thirty in total. The structure appears to be an imaginative meditation on the prologue of the Gospel of John, in which Word, Life, Light and Truth appear together.

The Passion of Sophia§

Only Mind can know the Father. The thirtieth and youngest aeon, Sophia, longs to comprehend the Father directly, without her partner. Her passion nearly dissolves her into the infinite, but she is stopped by a boundary power called Horos (Limit), also called the Cross. Her desire and its resulting emotions, grief, fear, bewilderment and longing, are separated from her and expelled from the pleroma as a formless lower Wisdom called Achamoth (from the Hebrew word for wisdom).

To restore stability, Mind emits a new pair, Christ and the Holy Spirit, who teach the aeons the limits of their knowledge. Then all the aeons together produce Jesus, the Saviour, as the "fruit" of the pleroma. The Saviour goes out to Achamoth, gives her form and separates her passions from her. Those passions become the raw materials of the cosmos: from her grief and fear came the material elements; from her turning back toward the light (conversion) came the soulish substance; and from her joy at seeing the Saviour's angels she conceived spiritual seeds.

A Demiurge Who Is Ignorant but Not Evil§

From the soulish substance Achamoth forms the demiurge, who creates the seven heavens and the material world without knowing that he is guided from above. Compared with the arrogant Yaldabaoth of Sethian Gnosticism, the Valentinian creator is a milder figure: ignorant rather than malicious, and capable of learning and salvation. Ptolemy's Letter to Flora calls him "just". The evolution of this figure is traced in our article on the demiurge.

The Three Kinds of Humans: Spiritual, Soulish and Material§

Valentinian anthropology distinguishes three substances: spiritual (pneumatic), soulish (psychic) and material (hylic). The demiurge forms a material and a soulish human; Achamoth secretly plants the spiritual seed in some. Irenaeus presents this as three fixed classes of people: the spiritual Valentinians, who are saved by nature; ordinary Christians, who are psychics and can be saved through faith and good works; and the material, who perish.

Recent scholarship has questioned this reading. Einar Thomassen and others note that the Valentinian sources describe the spiritual seed as needing formation, education and sacraments, and that psychics have a real choice. The Tripartite Tractate in the Nag Hammadi library presents the categories as responses to the Saviour's coming rather than predetermined natures. On this view the scheme described a spiritual journey and a way of relating to the wider church, rather than a closed elitism. The question remains disputed, partly because the evidence comes from texts of different dates and schools.

The Gospel of Truth and Other Valentinian Texts§

Before 1945 Valentinian teaching was known only from quotations. The Nag Hammadi codices added several original works generally attributed to the movement:

• The Gospel of Truth (NHC I and XII): a homily rather than a narrative gospel, describing how Error and Forgetfulness arose from ignorance of the Father and how Jesus, nailed to the tree, became the fruit of knowledge. Irenaeus mentions a Valentinian "Gospel of Truth", and many scholars, following W. C. van Unnik and Bentley Layton, think the text may be by Valentinus himself, though this cannot be proven.
• The Gospel of Philip (NHC II): an anthology of sayings and reflections, rich in sacramental language.
• The Tripartite Tractate (NHC I): a long, systematic theology in which the Logos, not Sophia, is the aeon whose error leads to creation.
• The Treatise on the Resurrection (NHC I), also called the Letter to Rheginos, which teaches that believers have already risen spiritually.
• The Interpretation of Knowledge and A Valentinian Exposition (NHC XI).

The Bridal Chamber and Valentinian Sacraments§

Valentinians placed great weight on ritual. The Gospel of Philip lists five sacraments, or "mysteries": baptism, chrism (anointing), eucharist, redemption and the bridal chamber. Their exact form is uncertain, and scholars disagree about whether these were five separate rites or stages of a single initiation.

The bridal chamber is the most discussed. In the Valentinian myth the aeons exist in male-female pairs, and Sophia's error came from acting without her partner. Human beings on earth are likewise incomplete: in the Gospel of Philip, the separation of Eve from Adam is the beginning of death, and Christ came to repair the separation and reunite them. The bridal chamber ritually enacted the union of the spiritual person with his or her angelic counterpart, anticipating the final wedding feast at the end of time, when Achamoth will be united with the Saviour and the spiritual seeds with the angels.

Irenaeus alleges that Marcus used sexual rites, but there is no good evidence that the bridal chamber was a physical act. Most scholars regard it as a symbolic and sacramental rite, perhaps involving anointing and prayer. Irenaeus also describes rites of "redemption" for the dying, including anointing with oil and water and formulas to be spoken to the heavenly powers during the soul's ascent.

Valentinians and the Church: Insiders or Heretics?§

Valentinians did not usually form a separate church. They attended the same worship as other Christians, read the same scriptures and confessed the same creedal language, while meeting privately for further teaching. Irenaeus complains precisely that they speak like the church while thinking differently, and that ordinary believers could not tell the difference. This made the boundary between "orthodox" and "heretic" difficult to police and helps explain the intensity of the polemic against them.

Their influence was considerable. Clement of Alexandria and Origen both engaged closely with Valentinian ideas, and Origen's commentary on John was written partly in response to Heracleon. Valentinian groups are attested into the fourth century; a Valentinian chapel is mentioned as being burned by Christian monks at Callinicum on the Euphrates in 388, an incident discussed in a letter of Ambrose of Milan. After that, the movement disappears from the record. Its themes, the soul as exiled divine image, the redemption of desire, the union of masculine and feminine, would later resurface in very different forms in Christian mysticism, from Pseudo-Dionysius to Jacob Boehme's teaching on Sophia, though historians caution against assuming direct transmission.

For the broader debate about whether Valentinians should be classed with other "Gnostics" at all, see our overview of Gnosticism.

Frequently asked questions§

Who was Valentinus?§

Valentinus was a Christian teacher born in Egypt and educated in Alexandria who taught in Rome from roughly 136 to 160 CE. Tertullian claims he hoped to become bishop. Only a few fragments of his writings survive, though some scholars attribute the Gospel of Truth to him.

What did Valentinians believe about the creator God?§

They held that the demiurge who made the visible world was a lower being formed from soulish substance, unaware of the spiritual realm above him. Unlike some other Gnostic myths, they generally described him as ignorant but just, and some texts suggest he too would be saved.

What is the bridal chamber in Valentinianism?§

The bridal chamber was a Valentinian sacrament, described especially in the Gospel of Philip, that symbolised the reunion of the spiritual self with its angelic counterpart and the healing of the separation between male and female. Its exact ritual form is unknown, and most scholars think it was symbolic rather than sexual.

Were Valentinians considered heretics?§

Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus and later church writers condemned them as heretics. Valentinians themselves, however, generally regarded themselves as Christians and took part in the life of ordinary congregations. Their relationship to the wider church is one of the main topics of current research.

Sources and further reading§

• Against Heresies, Book I — Irenaeus of Lyon, c. 180 CE
• Excerpts from Theodotus — Clement of Alexandria, late 2nd century
• Panarion 33 (containing Ptolemy's Letter to Flora) — Epiphanius of Salamis, c. 375 CE
• Commentary on the Gospel of John — Origen, 3rd century
• Valentinus Gnosticus? — Christoph Markschies, 1992
• The Spiritual Seed: The Church of the "Valentinians" — Einar Thomassen, 2006
• The Gnostic Scriptures — Bentley Layton, 1987
• The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis: Heracleon's Commentary on John — Elaine Pagels, 1973