Valentinus: The Gnostic Who Almost Became Bishop of Rome

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:04]There is arguably no period in history more fascinating in the study of religious syncretism >> [music] >> and Western esotericism than those centuries between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE to 529 CE when Emperor Justinian closed the Platonic Academy and legally banned the practice of Hellenism and paganism in the Roman Empire.

[00:00:32]Many religions of the known world had crossed paths in more ancient times through mediums such as Mediterranean trade that extended beyond the Straits of Gibraltar to the western shores of India and through the expansion of nations >> [music] >> or the conquering of neighboring lands.

[00:00:52]But the city of Alexandria reached a more monumental phase of religious and cultural blending along with other major cities of the Eastern Mediterranean Alexandria served as a nexus for the long-time influences of Egyptian, Persian, Greek and Mesopotamian religions to the more nascent developments of doctrinal Judaism, Neoplatonism, Hermeticism, Mithraism Stoicism and the enigmatic Therapeutae sketched by Philo Judaeus the ascetic Indian gymnosophists, the cults of Isis and Serapis. [music] And of course in the later decades of the first century and throughout the second century, a colorful variety of Christianities ranging from the proto-orthodox sects to those major branches of Gnostic Christianity >> [music] >> and their numerous cousins.

[00:01:51]Illustrative of the second century mixture in Alexandria is an alleged passage by Emperor Hadrian around 134 CE who said, "They are those who worship Serapis are in fact Christians and those who call themselves bishops of Christ are in fact devotees of Serapis. There is no chief of the Jewish synagogue, no Samaritan, no Christian presbyter who is not an astrologer, a soothsayer, or an anointer."

[00:02:20]Christian orthodoxy took nearly 400 years to aspire to a definite and inflexible shape, becoming concretized into such statements as the Nicene Creed finalized in 381.

[00:02:34]And in the pre-canonical text lists such as that given in Athanasius' 39th Festal Letter, which would later represent a definitive canon of the New Testament.

[00:02:47]This Nicene role of Jesus and the Trinity and his theological status as God, Son of God, became the accepted view of one of the world's largest empires adopted as Rome's state religion around 381 with the Edict of Thessalonica and carried forward by the Roman Catholic Church whose administrative structure had formed in definite terms by the late 6th century.

[00:03:16]Prior to the First Council of Nicaea 325 CE, there were a few and then up to 200 house churches or small Christian communities in the empire, many of which referred to their own peculiar scriptures and beliefs with their own views on scriptural authority and theology.

[00:03:37]Uniform accusations of heresy had not yet taken shape or received any semblance of unanimous agreement.

[00:03:44]Rather, a series of early Christian writers called heresiologists marked the early stages of the process of defining which Christian sects could be tolerated as the religion developed and which were simply too problematic, too controversial, absurd, or eclectic to warrant positive reception.

[00:04:04]In hindsight, this gradual development from mystical variety and spiritual allegorization to a major dogmatic creed with imperial leverage has been forced [music] to fit neatly into the oversimplified grand narratives of Western history.

[00:04:22]This sterility was a hard-won victory for some, whereas for others it took the form of tragedy and plainly left a gaping hole in the history of early Christianity.

[00:04:34]In order for a single Christian approach to temporarily win the day, a great many needed to be stamped out, driven off, persecuted, accused of heinous acts, or simply ignored. A process of erasure that gained serious momentum after Constantine's bans in the 4th century.

[00:04:54]And so, to learn anything of the early Christian sects [music] that have since been deemed heretical, up until the monumental discovery of the Nag Hammadi codices in Egypt in 1945, we had recourse primarily to the heresiographical texts of their attackers.

[00:05:12]Though even through the writings of those who were no friends to the Ophites, Naassenes, and other Gnostics, a few fragments slipped through in concise quotations and various pseudepigrapha and apocrypha survived to help scholars address the great enigma of early Christianity.

[00:05:33]In light of the Nag Hammadi codices, however, communities comprising the first serious Christian theologians may teach us what they believed in their own words.

[00:05:44]It may come as a surprise to find that they were far from believing everything [music] the same.

[00:05:51]The premier exponent of early Christianity, who of course knew nothing of this complex history, proclaimed an immediate apostolic lineage from Paul through Theodas, wrote numerous treatises, letters, hymns, homilies, and a gospel of sorts, and warrants not only particular consideration today, but achieved renown in his time.

[00:06:14]This teacher would not have fit into the category of heretic that was so vociferously stitched together in later decades.

[00:06:23]In fact, judging by the statement of Tertullian, an enemy at that, he nearly became the bishop of Rome.

[00:06:36]His name was Valentinus, born in Phrebonis, Egypt, around or just before 100 CE.

[00:06:44]The 4th-century Christian bishop of Salamis, Epiphanius, suggested Valentinus's Egyptian upbringing.

[00:06:51]From what can be pieced together, Valentinus, quote, received the Greek education in Alexandria, and moved to Rome around 136 CE.

[00:07:02]Valentinus presumably came into contact with Theodas, an old disciple of the Apostle Paul, and was baptized.

[00:07:10]In Alexandria, Valentinus founded a school or a Christian community, possibly after having a vision of Christ.

[00:07:18]Earlier than Epiphanius, and arguably the first Christian to oppose alleged heresies, aside from Agrippa Castor, Justin Martyr mentioned a slew of Christians who did not worship Jesus the same way he did, quote, "And they say that they are Christians, and some of them are called Marcionites, and some Valentinians, and some Basilideans, and some Saturnilians, and others by other names, each being named from the originator of the opinion.

[00:07:48]Let us emphasize that these schools called themselves Christians and no doubt believed it, but earned their respective titles from their Christian enemies.

[00:07:59]It should be mentioned that the first known commentary on the Gospel of John was written by one of Valentinus' students, Heracleon, who interpreted the text in a highly allegorical manner.

[00:08:11]Indeed, Valentinus enjoyed many followers who Tertullian described as, quote, "a very large body of heretics."

[00:08:20]It is clear Valentinus worked hard to interpret the Gospels and make sense of Jesus' place in a highly cosmological and mythical worldview, being one of our earliest examples of one who attempted this.

[00:08:34]Though so little of his actual writings survived destruction, Valentinus became the most influential Gnostic teacher.

[00:08:42]As the scholar David Litwa has taken pains to emphasize, other notable Christians in 2nd century Alexandria represent mostly ignored and terribly unknown interpretive Christianities, namely Basilides, Carpocrates, the woman Marcelina, Prodicus, Julius Cassianus, Apelles, and the Naassene preacher.

[00:09:05]In Rome, Valentinus takes on the important pupils Ptolemy and Secundus.

[00:09:11]Aside from a few fragments from Valentinus preserved by Clement of Alexandria, the extensive letter by Ptolemy to a woman Flora and the fragments of one pupil Theodotus represented some of the few first-hand accounts of Valentinian Christianity that was known prior to the Nag Hammadi discovery, which in the grand scheme of things is still brand new in the larger scale of Christian history.

[00:09:39]Valentinus' direct influence in Rome lasted some 25 years and apparently, quote, "on account of his intellectual force and eloquence, he was considered for the bishop of Rome, but a certain confessor was selected instead."

[00:09:55]As the propaganda goes, Valentinus broke from the church at this point and may have left Rome for Cyprus or Egypt or remained in Rome, dying possibly around 160 or as late as 175 CE.

[00:10:11]However, the man probably did not apostatize in the manner his enemies relished the chance to claim.

[00:10:19]Let us briefly examine a few of Valentinus' antagonists, make some sense of his surviving fragments and other Valentinian works, and finally proceed to the major text in the Nag Hammadi library that represents our best chance at understanding the man's views.

[00:10:37]Tertullian further attacked the Valentinians with descriptions that may prove to offer an insight into their teacher.

[00:10:45]The Valentinians apparently guarded their doctrines with secrecy and they had mysteries which Tertullian compares to the Eleusinian.

[00:10:54]Certainly, there are aspects to the Valentinian teachings that we cannot get our hands on.

[00:11:00]According to this not entirely trustworthy account, they required a long period of initiation, certain restraints of the tongue, and developed a highly allegorical exegesis, and gave certain inquirers a kind of roundabout into ambiguities when questions were posed.

[00:11:18]And yet, they never pretended to be non-Christians. Rather, it seems they were at home addressing the mysteries of Jesus and the Gospels on their own terms, according to their own rather obscure and complicated method which inevitably branched out into different versions that do not align with one another on certain particulars.

[00:11:39]Valentinus, for his part, likely attempted his own effort of unification.

[00:11:44]For the purposes of this essay, we set aside as much of the cosmology as possible and deal with the instructions of action and the pursuit of gnosis that underlies Valentinian salvation and life and has always represented the common virtue of the Gnostics.

[00:12:03]Although Gnosticism as a term has been criticized on many grounds and these Gnostics called themselves Christians, gnosis itself, knowledge or even direct knowledge of divinity, represents a special middle ground that connects these schools of thought and differentiates them from the rather faith-based and bureaucratic Christianity that wrote, destroyed, dogmatized, persuaded, and at times killed its way to later dominance.

[00:12:35]As far as we know, Valentinus's effort was one of synchrony and the unification of different Christianities operating under diverse influences whose sources are ultimately unknown.

[00:12:48]This may also be suggested through fragment six of Valentinus who wrote, quote, "Much of what is written in the public books is found in the writings of God's church. For the things in common are the words from the heart, the law that is written in the heart. These are the people of the beloved who are beloved and love him."

[00:13:10]As the great G.R.S. Mead pointed out in his wonderful Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, quote, "In this we know was the task that Valentinus set before him as his goal. He determined to synthesize the gnosis, every phase of which was already in some sort a synthesis. But in so doing, Valentinus did not propose to attack or abandon the general faith or to estrange the popular evolution of Christianity, which has since been called the Catholic Church.

[00:13:41]If one might take a machete through the jungle of Valentinian details and offer at least one chancy glimpse of the kind of gnosis an initiated Valentinian pneumatic would bring with them after death, the foremost heresiologist, Irenaeus, who lived in Gaul and quite far from this particular subject, reported that, {quote} "They instruct them on their reaching the principalities and powers to make use of these words. I am a son from the Father, the Father who had a pre-existence and a son in him who is pre-existent. I've come to behold all things, both those which belong to myself and others.

[00:14:25]Although, strictly speaking, they do not belong to others, but to Achamoth, who is female in nature and made these things for herself.

[00:14:34]For I derive being from him who is pre-existent, and I come again to my own place whence I went forth.

[00:14:41]And they affirm that by saying these things, he escapes from the powers. He then advances to the companions of the demiurge and thus addresses them.

[00:14:51]I am a vessel more precious than the female who formed you. If your mother is ignorant of her own descent, I know myself and am aware whence I am.

[00:15:00]And I call upon the incorruptible Sophia, who is in the Father and is the mother of your mother, who has no father nor any male consort. But a female springing from a female formed you while ignorant of her own mother and imagining that she alone existed, but I call upon her mother.

[00:15:20]And they declare that when the companions of the Demiurge hear these words, they are greatly agitated and upbraid their origin and the race of their mother.

[00:15:30]But he goes on into his own place having thrown off his chain, that is, his animal nature. These then are the particulars which have reached us respecting redemption. But since they differ so widely among themselves both as respects doctrine and tradition and since those of them who are recognized as being most modern make it their effort daily to invent some new opinion and to bring about what no one ever before thought of, it is a difficult matter to describe all their opinions.

[00:16:03]As it is no secret among students of Gnosticism, the cosmos we inhabit, at least the particular world of humanity, exists in defect.

[00:16:13]Something terrible, as it were, happened which directly [music] affects us all.

[00:16:18]This terrible thing can be jouked out by the skillful Gnostic who understands, perhaps through a direct experience, that his or her spiritual nature is superior to the appetites and the fleshly wants of the body and the material world it temporarily inhabits.

[00:16:37]That these material concerns should not disturb the soul now or upon its ascent is a simplified approach to getting at what Valentinus taught behind all of the unknowns and obscurities.

[00:16:51]But for Valentinus, it was not that humanity was to blame for the defect and the ignorance. Not that we should forever be bound to an original sin and go on lamenting about how foul and terrible everything is, but, and perhaps allegorically designed, considering the Demiurge created a material cosmos, there may have been an inevitability to the ignorance of humanity as a result.

[00:17:17]As Theodotus, an important [music] pupil of Valentinus, said, quote, "That of soul being possessed of free will has an inclination towards faith and towards incorruptibility, but also towards unbelief and destruction according to [music] its own choice."

[00:17:36]The Valentinians taught a tripartite and not a dualistic cosmos containing the components of spirit pneuma, soul psyche, and matter hyle, which likewise apply to every human being.

[00:17:51]The individual soul then, should they have liberated themselves from material concerns, has the opportunity to choose a destiny more befitting salvation outside of the bonds of corruptible matter.

[00:18:04]A destiny that may all the more be reached once the soul acquires a gnosis worthy of such an ascent.

[00:18:12]A gnosis that redeems the inner man and not the corruptible body.

[00:18:18]As the surviving fragment four from Valentinus states, provided by Clement of Alexandria, who lived closer to this movement than the opponents mentioned previously and was the least hostile to them, quote, "From the beginning, you are immortal and you are children of eternal life.

[00:18:37]You wanted to divide death within you so that you might consume and destroy it and so that death might die in you and through [music] you.

[00:18:46]For when you destroy the world, you yourselves are not destroyed. You rule over creation and all corruption."

[00:18:55]This destruction of the world is, of course, no external destruction of the globe, but an internal prevailing over that world within and a full embrace of immortality that thus acquires the kind of control needed to liberate the soul from another rather tragic, corruptible descent.

[00:19:15]As for what may prevent the soul from the desired end, fragment two offers the explanation of many evil spirits inhabiting the heart, spirits that must be driven out for purity, similar to the avenging daimons in the Hermetic Corpus.

[00:19:32]Quote, "For the many spirits inhabiting the heart do not allow it to be pure.

[00:19:36]Instead, each of them accomplishes its own works, in many ways inflicting it with inappropriate desires. And it seems to me that the heart suffers something like what occurs in a motel, where it is trashed and dug up and frequently filled with the feces of wanton visitors, showing little regard for the place, since they live elsewhere.

[00:19:59]It is the same way with the heart. Until it is shown care, it is impure, inhabited by many demons.

[00:20:07]But when the only good one, the Father, oversees it, he makes it holy and illuminates it. And in this way, one who has such a heart is blessed, since that person will see God."

[00:20:28]>> [music] >> who invisibly placed a seed of superior substance within him and who spoke with boldness.

[00:21:11]For as one molded in the name of a human, Adam brought about fear of the preexistent human since that very one stood within him and they were terrified and immediately hid their work.

[00:21:25]There was a great deal of additional commentary to consider about these angels and >> [music] >> the Mesopotamian roots of this story conveyed nonetheless through Jewish scribes from a different perspective as can be seen in the Book of Enoch.

[00:21:41]But relating to the Valentinian gnosis particularly as Theodotus explains, this hiding was Adam's sleep which resulted in the forgetfulness of the soul.

[00:21:53]But Adam retained that spark of the luminous logos sown into him by Sophia, wisdom, which the savior in the form of Jesus kindled through his coming.

[00:22:05]In the letter to Flora written by Valentinus' student Ptolemy in the 2nd century, we find a kind of middle ground between certain extremes Ptolemy had identified related to questions about the status [music] of Moses' law now that the savior had come and related to certain teachings of Christ about marriage, chastity, fasting, and more.

[00:22:28][music] This text is brimming with key details related to the overall subject, but once more it is to the gnosis in particular that we must focus and so we pass it by with little treatment. Nevertheless, Ptolemy offers alongside literal fasting, {quote} within reason, a spiritual fasting, {quote} in which there is distance from all things trivial.

[00:22:53]Toward the end of this letter, he proclaims other teachings must be saved for later should Flora be deemed worthy of {quote} the apostolic tradition which we also have received by succession, and we too are able to guarantee the authority of all our words by the teaching of our savior.

[00:23:13]The Gospel of Truth is the third text in Nag Hammadi Codex 1 and was for the modern world unknown prior to its discovery in 1945, making it one among 40 such previously unknown texts that were discovered with the total 46 separate works, not counting duplicates. Its first English translation came some 10 years later.

[00:23:39]The text owes its name from its first words, not an explicit title.

[00:23:44]It was not uncommon for first words or incipits to serve [music] as titles for texts in antiquity or become the basis for a subsequent title.

[00:23:54]The author, like the authors of all the texts in this group, is unknown, but was probably among [music] Valentinus' disciples and may have been Valentinus himself.

[00:24:04]Not only does this homily contain unique traces of early Valentinian provenance, but it has represented the enticing possibility of being Valentinus' sole surviving work.

[00:24:18]For two major reasons, this scholarly stance is not extreme, although its authorship will remain contested. One, Irenaeus and Tertullian referenced a gospel among the Valentinians titled the Gospel of Truth.

[00:24:32]And in their general descriptions, there is nothing that immediately disqualifies this Gospel of Truth from being the same.

[00:24:41]And two, there are multiple portions of the text that match the apparent idiolect of Valentinus, [music] gleaned no less by a scant quantity of fragments, and there are definite similarities between Valentinus' [music] fragments and portions of the Gospel of Truth.

[00:24:59]The early date and the text alignment with Valentinus allows us to consider it in an overall study of the man himself.

[00:25:07]The Gospel of Truth is quite visionary, symbolic, and written by a faithful devotee to the mysteries of Jesus as son of the Father and the Savior.

[00:25:17]There is a somewhat wandering or sojourning quality to the text [music] and insider language probably more welcoming for those who were within the Valentinian circle.

[00:25:28]If we might take some liberty for simplicity sake, it appears the author is engaging in a free-flowing development upon the common Gnostic prototypes of an epic error that led to a suffering material embodiment and an ignorance of profound consequence.

[00:25:47]An ignorance that must be righted through a gnosis and a return to fullness. The author deals with concepts like entirety, frenzy, truth, error, and the Holy Spirit as if they can both be divine characteristics in a cosmic myth and allegorical references to spiritual and psychological aspects of ourselves.

[00:26:09]In the beginning, ignorance of the Father, who is the incomprehensible one, resulted in a frenzy and the Father was hidden from the sight of the entirety.

[00:26:20]As a result, error gained power and brought forth forms without awareness of the truth so that her creations were forgetful and afraid >> [music] >> and led to those who come to them into a prison.

[00:26:33]And so the knowledge or gnosis of the Father that was lost is what must be remembered so that forgetfulness and ignorance may cease.

[00:26:42]And it was for this reason that the Savior came.

[00:26:46]For Jesus the Christ, quote, enlightened them and gave them a path. The path is the truth that he explained to them.

[00:26:54]And thus error being angry with the word of the Father caused him to be nailed to a tree, and Jesus was the fruit of knowledge to the Father and became as a book himself. A living book to be manifest in the hearts of the wise, quote, "One written in the thought and mind of the Father, which prior to the foundation of the entirety was within his incomprehensibility."

[00:27:18]And the author makes clear that Jesus' coming was required for salvation.

[00:27:24]The logic aligning with the idea that those who remain in complete ignorance of the Father and of the true nature of themselves will have nothing worth keeping beyond death. Since the purely material must remain with the purely material.

[00:27:40]Gnosis, on the other hand, realigns the person to the truth that results in the fullness that never truly lacked, but could be forgotten.

[00:27:50]And thus the gnosis in question for the student of this text is described as follows, quote, "Therefore, when the Father comes to be known, the deficiency will cease to exist from that time on.

[00:28:02]Just as it is with a person's ignorance, when he comes to know, his ignorance vanishes by himself, just as when darkness vanishes once light appears.

[00:28:12]So also deficiency vanishes in perfection."

[00:28:16]The idea is that the real fullness and unity of a being lies in their relation to an understanding of the Father, without which they are quite literally empty and cannot bring such emptiness into a greater realm where ignorance of the Father is not possible.

[00:28:34]This knowledge of the Father, it goes without saying, would result in the proper behavior of an individual, one who cultivates a sort of divinity within that cannot perish because of its intrinsic reality.

[00:28:48]For quote, "When the light shines on the fear that that person has endured, he knows that it is nothing."

[00:28:55]The author appears to make a crack against taking nightmares too seriously and advises one to let go of the happenings in sleep and dreams and leave them behind for the light of the Father.

[00:29:08]Jesus' coming became a path, it seems, specifically for those who had strayed, implying that there were many who had not strayed. Quote, "He is the shepherd who left behind the 99 sheep that had not strayed. He went and sought after the one that had strayed."

[00:29:28]Shortly afterward, the advisement is to be confident in the light within and the Father and speak the truth to those who seek, help all those who stumble but seek a footing, feed the hungry, wake the asleep, and give rest to the weary.

[00:29:44]As for the others who do not seek this truth, do not worry about them, for they will become obstacles for you as they continue to stumble [music] and seek no footing in truth at all.

[00:29:56]And in this way, they cannot be helped.

[00:30:00]The Father's wisdom is compared to a spiritual aroma that spreads itself far and wide and attracts all to the Father who smell it. This bringing back of one to the Father is considered an easy thing to be set right and is called the repentance. And forgiveness, it would seem, is the word that brings fullness to the last repentant deficiency.

[00:30:22]Thus, it is not without reason to conclude that repentance is necessary for the soul's gnosis and for its forgiveness.

[00:30:31]And for all the talk of the deficient or the empty being destroyed, the author nonetheless says the Father is quote, "The one to whom all who have come from him will return.

[00:30:43]The eternities that exist in an overarching manner are those roots to which the souls must return. Quote, "For the place where they send their thought, that place, their root, is that which lifts them up in all the heights to the Father."

[00:30:59]In another mention related to the existence for these souls after physical death, quote, "And they do not go down to Hades, nor do they have jealousy, nor deep sighing, nor death within them. But resting themselves in the one who rests, they are not troubled, nor are they entangled in the fence around the [music] truth."

[00:31:20]These souls, indeed, will come to the places of their respective roots and find their rest in the eternal goodness of the Father.

[00:31:30]In conclusion, the mystery of Valentinus represents a unique and early reception of Jesus's teachings, whose source cannot be determined, but should be considered by both modern Christians and students of ancient religion as a definite stream of genuine Christianity, much closer to Jesus than we could ever be.

[00:31:54]Valentinus taught that within us all lies the capacity to know and to be confident in the truth of our establishment in the eternal roots of the one God who is Father and Mother and Son and indeed the creator and life-giver of all that is.

[00:32:14]To close, we might benefit in noticing six common ideas shared by the various followers of Jesus in Alexandria, found in the writings of the Alexandrian Philo Judaeus, and persisting among those Hellenic Jews or diverse Christians in Alexandria during the time of Valentinus.

[00:32:34]These shared principles are identified by David Litwa as follows.

[00:32:40]There is a transcendent God of the universe.

[00:32:43]The world was created by a subordinate agent or entity distinct from the transcendent God.

[00:32:50]The transcendent God is manifested as a primal human, the Logos.

[00:32:55]The transmigration of souls, the rejection of corruptible flesh, the deification of the mind.

[00:33:04]For a scholarly overview of Gnosticism, I would recommend checking out the two-part series by my friend Ike Baker on the channel Arcanum, linked below. If you would like to support American Esoteric, please find links to my book, Patreon, and YouTube membership below.

[00:33:21]Thank you and be well.