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A page of the Gospel of Truth, most likely one of Valentinius’ works.
Valentinus was a Christian Gnostic theologian, perhaps the most (in)famous of all the ancient Gnostic theologians and teachers. Valentinus taught in Alexandria and Rome, where he, according to Tertullian, would have become Priest had he not turned to heresy. Few of Valentinus’ writings remain and most of what does remain comes from his detractors, such as Irenaeus of Lyons, Tertullian, and Epiphanius of Salamis. These Church Fathers of late antiquity denounced what Irenaeus labelled ‘Gnosticism’, usually a dualist philosophy claiming that the ‘Hebrew God’ (or the God of the Bible) is a false God. He is a Demiurge, a craftsman, that has enslaved the human soul to a life in materiality and suffering.
Valentinus’ school of thought differed somewhat from this interpretation, as his focus is more monistic, arguing that all existence emanates from one Divine Source instead of a material world that is not created by it. The further the emanations are from the Source, the more imperfections occur. But it is crucial to note that the concept of ‘Gnosticism’ is one that has both been constructed by scholars as a tool for analysis, and a label devised by Church Fathers like Irenaeus to denounce heretical sects. And Gnostic thought was inherently diverse, with many variations in details, plot, practices, etc.
Valentinus wrote a tremendous number of Gnostic texts that (to some extent) survive to this day, the most famous of which are The Gospel of Truth (GTh) and Summer Harvest. Especially GTh describes in significant detail — at least considering the Gnostic tendency of ambiguity — the process of “salvation through gnōsis (acquaintance) of the savior, the self, and God.”
Bibliography
Brakke, David. The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2010).
Layton, Bentley (David Brakke ed.). The Gnostic Scriptures (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021).
Riley, Mark Timothy. Q.S. Fl. Tertulliani Adversus Valentinianos (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971).
