Beyond Gnosticism

Myth, Lifestyle, and Society in the School of Valentinus

Ismo O. Dunderberg

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN:
  9780231512596
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Valentinus was a popular, influential, and controversial early Christian teacher. His school flourished in the second and third centuries C.E. Yet because his followers ascribed the creation of the visible world not to a supreme God but to an inferior and ignorant Creator-God, they were from early on accused of heresy, and rumors were spread of their immorality and sorcery.

Beyond Gnosticism suggests that scholars approach Valentinians as an early Christian group rather than as a representative of ancient "Gnosticism"-a term notoriously difficult to define. The study shows that Valentinian myths of origin are filled with references to lifestyle (such as the control of emotions), the Christian community, and society, providing students with ethical instruction and new insights into their position in the world. While scholars have mapped the religio-historical and philosophical backgrounds of Valentinian myth, they have yet to address the significance of these mythmaking practices or emphasize the practical consequences of Valentinians' theological views. In this groundbreaking study, Ismo Dunderberg provides a comprehensive portrait of a group hounded by other Christians after Christianity gained a privileged position in the Roman Empire.

Valentinians displayed a keen interest in mythmaking and the interpretation of myths, spinning complex tales about the origin of humans and the world. As this book argues, however, Valentinian Christians did not teach "myth for myth's sake." Rather, myth and practice were closely intertwined. After a brief introduction to the members of the school of Valentinus and the texts they left behind, Dunderberg focuses on Valentinus's interpretation of the biblical creation myth, in which the theologian affirmed humankind's original immortality as a present, not lost quality and placed a special emphasis on the "frank speech" afforded to Adam by the supreme God. Much like ancient philosophers, Valentinus believed that the divine Spirit sustained the entire cosmic chain and saw evil as originating from conspicuous "matter."

Dunderberg then turns to other instances of Valentinian mythmaking dominated by ethical concerns. For example, the analysis and therapy of emotions occupy a prominent place in different versions of the myth of Wisdom's fall, proving that Valentinians, like other educated early Christians, saw Christ as the healer of emotions. Dunderberg also discusses the Tripartite Tractate, the most extensive account to date of Valentinian theology, and shows how Valentinians used cosmic myth to symbolize the persecution of the church in the Roman Empire and to create a separate Christian identity in opposition to the Greeks and the Jews.

1

THE SCHOOL OF VALENTINUS AFTER GNOSTICISM

IN THIS chapter, I outline my approach to the Valentinian myth. First, I bid farewell to the discourse of orthodoxy and heresy, which can be seen in the ways scholars have used the term “Gnosticism.” In my view, the criticism leveled at the use of this term by Karen King and Michael Williams has not been mere quibbling over a problematic G-word that could be replaced with some less problematic not-G-word. Rather, this discussion has dramatically changed our understanding of what we are after in examining the materials traditionally classified as Gnostic.

Second, I draw a distinction between an intellectualist-doctrinal mode of explanation, which has dominated much of the scholarship done on the school of Valentinus, and the more pragmatist approach that I have adopted. This latter approach does not neglect the intellectual background of Valentinian teaching but builds upon the insight that in ancient schools of thought theoretical reflection and moral instruction went hand in hand. Teachers in these schools were first and foremost concerned with the moral advancement of their students; the theoretical philosophical discourse was only one way of “doing philosophy.” If Valentinian teachers shared this concern, as I believe they did, hints at lifestyle issues in their mythic discourse must be taken more seriously than they have been. This part of my argument goes together with my attempt to move from an essentialist approach to myth (“what myth is”) to paying more attention to what is done with myth.

GNOSTICISM, ORTHODOXY, AND HERESY

One of the most hotly debated issues in present scholarship on Valentinianism is Valentinus’s relationship to Gnosticism. The basic alternatives are(1) that he was not a Gnostic (Christoph Markschies),¹ (2) that he was a Gnostic (e.g., Jens Holzhausen, Paul Schüngel, Gilles Quispel),² and (3) that he was not a Gnostic in the proper sense but “a Christian reformer of the classic Gnostic tradition” (Bentley Layton).³

The discussion about whether Valentinus was a Gnostic is largely self-generating, since assessments about this issue are entirely dependent on how the scholars define “Gnosticism.” Once you have a definition, you have the answer to the question of whether Valentinus was or was not a Gnostic. Markschies compared the teaching in the fragments of Valentinus to a definition of Gnosticism that was made in the concluding statement of a congress of specialists held in Messina in 1966, and he showed that Valentinus’s teaching does not fit in with this definition. Rather, Markschies argued, Valentinus was a biblical theologian who represents “an intellectual intermediate stage between Philo and Clement of Alexandria.”⁴

The Messina definition of Gnosticism, which Markschies discussed in his work, is very specific: it basically presupposes a cosmogonic myth in which Wisdom’s fall is mentioned.⁵ The Valentinian myth no doubt was taken into account in creating this definition and thus fits well with it. However, it is not only the fragments of Valentinus that do not offer a perfect fit with this definition. There are a number of Valentinian texts in which Wisdom’s fall is not mentioned: Ptolemaeus’s Letter to Flora, the fragments of Heracleon, the Gospel of Truth (which mentions a primordial “error” but offers a very vague picture of how the visible world emerged from it), the Treatise on the Resurrection, the Valentinian Letter of Instruction (“Lehrbrief”),⁶ and the account of Valentinian theology in Methodius’s On Free Will.⁷ It is possible that authors of some of these texts presuppose a myth of Wisdom’s fall, but this story does not seem as essential to their teaching as the Messina definition implies.

In consequence, if the lack of references to the Wisdom myth show that Valentinus was no “Gnostic,” the same can be said of many of his followers. Therefore, I find problematic the dramatic gap Markschies postulates between Valentinus and his followers, who “plunged into the mythological heresy of the Valentinian gnosis.”⁸ The clear division Markschies draws between non-Gnostic Valentinus and his “Gnostic” followers is of limited value if our goal is a better understanding of the school of Valentinus in its historical context.⁹ What Markschies managed to show was that Valentinus was no Gnostic (while some of his followers were)—if we understand Gnosticism the way the scholars in Messina defined it. As soon as the definition changes, the estimation as to whether Valentinus and/or his followers were Gnostics or not changes also.

The highly circular reasoning inherent in all such attempts can be further illustrated with Bentley Layton’s designation of Valentinus as a “reformer” of “classic Gnosticism.” This view derives from Layton’s suggestion that the term “Gnosticism” should be reserved for a relatively small group of early Christians who called themselves “Gnostics.” According to Layton, Irenaeus describes such Christians in Against Heresies 1.29–30.¹⁰ Since teachings similar to theirs can be found in the Sethian texts of the Nag Hammadi Library, Layton expands the category “Gnosticism” to apply to these texts as well. Hence Layton coins the term “classic Gnostic” to denote what most other scholars would designate as “Sethian.”¹¹ The consequence of this definition as regards the Valentinian Christians is a matter of course: if Gnosticism is Sethianism, and if Valentinus and his followers were not Sethians, they were obviously not Gnostics,¹² at least not in the proper sense of the word. This conclusion is no less a truism than Markschies’s view of non-Gnostic Valentinus and his Gnostic followers.

The problems with the term “Gnosticism” itself are now well known. It does not appear in ancient sources at all, unlike “Judaism” (ioudaismos) or “Christianity” (christianismos). The term “Gnosticism” was coined in the seventeenth century by Henry More, who used it for the theological position denounced in the Book of Revelation!¹³ Although there were probably some early Christians who used the term “Gnostic” as a self-designation, as Layton suggests,¹⁴ their number seems to have been very limited. Notably, this self-definition is not attested in the Sethian texts Layton includes in his corpus of “classic Gnostic” texts. This absence considerably weakens his case for a more historical definition of Gnosticism.

Despite these caveats, the emphasis on salvific knowledge in a number of early Christian texts usually called “Gnostic” could lend some historical warrant for labeling these texts and the people behind them as representing a movement that could be called “Gnosticism.”¹⁵ However, Michael Williams’s and Karen King’s critical reviews highlight the ill-grounded images scholars have created by using the term “Gnosticism.” This raises the question of how useful this category is for analytical purposes in the first place.

Williams shows in detail that none of the characteristics by means of which “Gnosticism” has been identified as a distinct movement or even as a religion of its own¹⁶ holds true for all of the relevant evidence. All traits that have been portrayed as distinct signs of Gnostic thought and practice, such as rejection of the world, determinism, elitism, hatred of the body, and moral extremism (either in the form of asceticism or of libertinism), prove to be sweeping generalizations. They may find some support in some parts of the evidence but fail to do justice to the variety of positions expressed in it.¹⁷ Thus Gnosticism as a category creates a misleading impression of a relatively unitarian movement. Although it may be unrealistic to hope that scholars will be ready to drop entirely the problematic term “Gnosticism,” as Williams suggests, his study shows that this term is much less helpful as an analytical tool than is usually assumed.

Karen King’s critique is not so much related to scholars’ views about what ancient Gnosticism is as it is related to the question of what scholars do with their definitions of Gnosticism. King maintains that the use of the term Gnosticism is basically apologetic; it presupposes and perpetuates the discourse of orthodoxy and heresy: “the problem of defining Gnosticism has been primarily concerned with the normative identity of Christianity. . . . Indeed, it is largely apologetic concerns to defend normative Christianity that make Gnosticism intelligible as a category at all.” King goes on to argue that scholars have constantly portrayed “Gnosticism” as the “other” of true Christianity: “Gnosticism has been classified as a marginal, sectarian, esoteric, mythical, syncretistic, parasitic, and Oriental religion, in contrast to mainstream, authentic, ethnic, rational, or universal religions, such as orthodox Christianity.”¹⁸ Moreover, King demonstrates that the apologetic and marginalizing tendency inherent in using the term “Gnosticism” pervades the scholarly literature from von Harnack to Jonas and from Baur to Rudolph. In fact, Markschies’ division between Valentinus, who was not a Gnostic, and his followers, who became Gnostic heretics, has the same bias. What differentiates Markschies from previous scholars is his attempt to rehabilitate Valentinus’s reputation, but this happens at the cost of other Valentinians, who are depicted as representatives of a “mythological heresy.”

The apologetic concern is not restricted to theologians or historians of religions, whose opinions King discusses in detail, but it also becomes visible in the assessments by historians of philosophy. John Dillon, a leading authority on ancient philosophy, presents Valentinianism as one of the “loose ends” of Middle Platonism (together with Hermetic and Chaldean traditions) and as belonging to the “Platonic underground.”¹⁹ He also speaks of “the Alice-in-Wonderland world of the Gnostics,” and considers “the Gnostics . . . the magpies of the intellectual world of the second century, garnering features that take their fancy both from the Jewish and Christian scriptures, and from the metaphysics of contemporary Platonism. . . . “²⁰ These designations are not merely amusing metaphors; they are used to demarcate a clear line between orthodoxy and heresy. It is striking that Dillon does not use the same metaphors for other early Christians (like Clement and Origen) who, in a similar fashion, selectively picked pieces from scripture and ancient philosophy. In fact, Dillon shows great admiration for “mainstream Christianity,” which evolved “as a masterly combination of monism and pluralism.”²¹ The discourse of orthodoxy and heresy seems so self-evident that Dillon does not even bother to detail which aspects in the teachings of Clement and Origen, to whom he largely attributes the “masterly combination,” made them seem less “magpies” than the Gnostics. At face value, the theologies of Clement and Origen were building upon the very same elements and, to some degree, similar “magpie” methods of interpretation as those by which Dillon characterizes his “Gnostics.”

King also points out that terms, even if carefully defined, are not neutral but create meanings. As soon as we talk about Gnosticism, we talk about something that is not part of our religious and cultural tradition, but something alien to it. Therefore, it indeed makes a difference whether we approach Valentinian or other similar texts as bearing witness to Christianity—which is related to us and our cultural heritage—or as bearing witness to “Gnosticism”—which is alien to us and not part of our heritage. This point is well captured in King’s suggestion that instead of identifying certain traditions as Gnostic (and thus making them alien) we could simply call them Christian: “Might we just as well regard Valentinianism, Thomas Christianity, or some of the Sethian works as subcategories of Christianity as of Gnosticism?”²² I have experimented with this suggestion here and there in writing this study by replacing the term “Gnostic,” which I used in earlier versions of my texts, with the word “Christian.” I was surprised to see how much difference this little technical detail made as to what I as an interpreter take these sources to be: I no longer primarily approached them as witnesses to a distant theological battle between orthodoxy and heresy, but as having a place as part of the Christian tradition.

The essentialist approach to Gnosticism (“what Gnosticism is”), which has dominated the field until recently, has directed scholarly attention to those features that have been considered distinctive of Gnostic thought. What is held to be “distinctive,” in turn, is based upon views about how Gnostic thought differs from what is regarded as more “ordinary,” or normative, Christian theology. Thus Gnosticism has been defined in terms of what makes it different from “orthodox” Christianity. This perspective leads to a view of Gnosticism that not only perpetuates the heresiological approach of Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and others but also steers our attention away from many issues that loom large in the evidence itself but are not considered essential to Gnosticism.²³

Finally, it needs to be emphasized that the problems outlined above cannot be resolved by switching to other terms that are ostensibly less loaded with theological meaning, such as replacing “orthodoxy” with “mainstream Christianity” and “heresy” with terms like “sect,”²⁴ “splinter group,” or something similar. These designations may create the impression of greater neutrality and scholastic precision, but in fact they carry with themselves the same basic idea that makes the traditional discourse of orthodoxy and heresy problematic. “Mainstream” in the new jargon means pretty much the same thing as “orthodoxy” in the older one, that is, the form of Christianity that assumed a normative position in the Roman Empire at the beginning of the fourth century. Like “orthodoxy,” “mainstream” denotes the form of Christianity that seems more familiar to us, whereas the forms that are a...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents 
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. The School of Valentinus After Gnosticism
• Part I: Myth, Lifestyle, and the World in the Fragments of Valentinus
• Part II: Valentinian Cosmogony, Lifestyle, and Other Christians
• Part III: Myth, Society, and Non-Christians
• Conclusion
• Appendix: Remarks on the Sources of Irenaeus’s and Hippolytus’s Accounts of Valentinian Theology
• List of Abbreviations
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index of Modern Authors
• Index of Ancient Sources
• Index of Subjects