THE HERETICS OF THE SECOND CENTURY

CERDON

 

Cerdon, a Gnostic teacher of the first half of the 2nd cent., principally known as the predecessor of MARCION. Epiphanius and Philaster assert him to have been a native of Syria, and Irenaeus states that he came to Rome in the episcopate of Hyginus. This episcopate lasted four years, and Lipsius places its termination A.D. 139–141. Bearing in mind the investigations of M. Waddington concerning the year of Polycarp’s martyrdom, we prefer the earlier date, if not a still earlier one, and would put Cerdo's arrival at Rome as early as A.D. 135.

According to the account of Irenaeus, Cerdo had not the intention of founding a sect apart from the church. He describes him as more than once coming to the church and making public confession, and so going on, now teaching his doctrine in secret, now again making public confession, now convicted in respect of his evil teaching, and removed, or, as some think, voluntarily withdrawing himself, from the communion of the brethren. Epiphanius seems inaccurate in giving a heading to a sect of Cerdonians. Preceding writers speak only of Cerdo, not of Cerdonians; and probably his followers were early merged in the school of Marcion, who is said to have joined himself to Cerdo soon after his arrival in Rome.

Apparently Cerdo left no writings, nor is there evidence that those who report his doctrine had any knowledge of it independent of the form it took in the teaching of his Marcionite successors. Consequently we can not now determine with certainty how much of the teaching of Marcion had been anticipated by Cerdo, or what points of disagreement there were between the teaching of the two. Hippolytus, in his Refutation, makes no attempt to discriminate between their doctrines. Tertullian, in his work against Marcion, mentions Cerdo four times, but only as Marcion's predecessor. Irenaeus says that Cerdo taught that the God preached by the law and the prophets was not the Father of our Lord; for that the former was known, the latter unknown; the former was just, the latter good. Pseudo-Tertullian's account may be regarded as representing that in the earlier treatise of Hippolytus, which was also used by Philaster and Epiphanius. Thus we learn that Cerdo introduced two first principles and two gods, the one good, the other evil, the latter the creator of the world. It is an important difference that to the good god is opposed in the account of Irenaeus a just one; in that of Hippolytus, an evil one. In the later work of Hippolytus already cited, Cerdo is said to have taught three principles of the universe. Ps.-Tertullian goes on to say that Cerdo rejected the law and the prophets, and renounced the Creator, teaching that Christ was the son of the higher good deity, and that He came not in the substance of flesh but in appearance only, and had not really died or really been born of a virgin; and that Cerdo only acknowledged a resurrection of the soul, denying that of the body. He adds, but without support from the other authorities, that Cerdo received only the Gospel of St. Luke, and that in a mutilated form; that he rejected some of Paul's epistles and portions of others, and completely rejected the Acts and the Apocalypse. There is every appearance that here transferred to Cerdo what in his authority was stated of Marcion.

 

MARCION

 

Marcion, a noted and permanently influential heretic of the 2nd cent. Life.—Justin Martyr mentions Simon and Menander as having been instigated by demons to introduce heresy into the church, and goes on to speak of Marcion as still living, evidently regarding him as the most formidable heretic of the day. He states that he was a native of Pontus who had made many disciples out of every nation, and refers for a more detailed refutation to a separate treatise of his own, one sentence of which has been preserved by Irenaeus. This work seems to have been extant in the time of Photius. Irenaeus also states that Marcion came from Pontus. He adds that thence he came to Rome, where he became an adherent, and afterwards the successor, of Cerdo, a Syrian teacher who, though he made public confession and was reconciled, privately continued teaching heretical doctrine, was betrayed by some of his hearers, and again separated.

Irenaeus places the coming of Cerdo to Rome in the episcopate of Hyginus, which lasted four years, ending, according, to Lipsius, 139, 140, or 141. Irenaeus places the activity of Marcion at Rome under Anicetus , whose episcopate of 12 years began in 154. He says that Marcion meeting Polycarp at Rome (probably 154 or 155) claimed recognition, on which Polycarp answered, "I recognize thee as the firstborn of Satan." Irenaeus contemplated a separate treatise against Marcion. There is no direct evidence of his having carried out this design, but as its proposed method is stated to have been the confutation of Marcion by means of his own gospel, and as this is precisely the method followed by Tertullian, who is elsewhere largely indebted to Irenaeus, the work of Irenaeus may have been then written and known to Tertullian. It has been stated under HIPPOLYTUS how the contents of the lost Syntagma of Hippolytus are inferred. It appears to have named Sinope as Marcion's native city, of which his father was bishop; and to have stated that he was obliged to leave home because he seduced a virgin and was excommunicated by his father .

Epiphanius tells, apparently on the same authority, that Marcion, his frequent entreaties for absolution having failed, went to Rome, where he arrived after the death of Hyginus, that he begged restoration from the presbyters there, but they declared themselves unable to act contrary to the decision of his venerated father. The mention of presbyters as then the ruling power in the church of Rome, and their professed inability to reverse the decision of a provincial bishop, indicate a date earlier than that of Epiphanius; but Epiphanius further states that Marcion's quarrel with the presbyters was not only because they did not restore him to church communion, but also because they did not make him bishop. This has been generally understood to mean bp. of Rome, and possibly Epiphanius intended this, but he does not say so. It is absurd that an excommunicated foreigner should dream of being made bishop of a church from which he was asking in vain for absolution. Epiphanius must have misunderstood some expression he found in his authority, or Marcion must have been already a bishop (possibly one of his father's suffragans), been deposed, and was seeking at Rome both restoration to communion and recognition of his episcopal dignity. Optatus alone directly countenances the latter view, speaking of Marcion as "ex episcopo factus apostata." But there is indirect confirmation in the fact which we learn from Adamantius that Marcion was afterwards recognized as bishop by his own followers and was the head of a succession of Marcionite bishops continuing down to the writer's own day. The Marcionites appear to have had no difference with the orthodox as to the forms of church organization.

We may conclude that episcopacy was the settled constitution of the church before the time of the Marcionite schism, else Marcion would not have adopted it in his new sect, and it seems more likely that Marcion had been consecrated to the office before the schism than that he obtained consecration afterwards, or by his own authority took the office to himself and appointed others to it, a thing unexampled in the church, of which we should surely have heard if Marcion had done it.

Many critics have believed that the statement as to the cause of Marcion's excommunication arose from the misunderstanding of a common figurative expression, and that it meant that Marcion by heresy had corrupted the pure virgin church. We are inclined to adopt this view, not on account of the confessed austerity of Marcion's subsequent life and doctrines, which are not inconsistent with his having fallen into sins of the flesh in his youth, but because the story goes on to tell of Scripture difficulties propounded by Marcion to the Roman presbyters and of his rejection of their solutions. If the question had been whether pardon were to be given for an offence against morality, neither party would have been likely to enter into theological controversy, whereas such discussion would naturally arise if the cause of excommunication had been heresy.

The story proceeds to say that he asked the Roman presbyters to explain the texts, "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit," and "No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment," texts from which he himself deduced that works in which evil is to be found could not proceed from the good God, and that the Christian dispensation could have nothing in common with the Jewish. Rejecting the explanation offered him by the presbyters, he broke off the interview with a threat to make a schism in their church. The beginning of Marcionism was so early that the church writers of the end of the 2nd cent., who are our best authorities, do not themselves seem able to tell with certainty the story of its commencement. But we know that the heresy of Marcion spread itself widely over many countries. Epiphanius names as infected by it in his time, Rome and Italy, Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, Syria, Cyprus, and even Persia. Its diffusion in the latter half of the 2nd cent. is proved by its antagonists in numerous countries: Dionysius in Corinth writing to Nicomedia, Philip in Crete, Theophilus in Antioch, besides Modestus, Justin, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria, Rhodo, and Tertullian. Bardesanes wrote in Syriac against the heresy, as did Ephrem Syrus later.

Now, Marcion would seem to have travelled much and probably used his journeys to propagate his doctrines. Ephrem Syrus speaks of him as wandering like Cain, but possibly only refers to his leaving his country for Rome. Tertullian constantly describes him as "nauclerus". His travels seem more likely to have preceded than to have followed his settling in Rome under Anicetus. Unless, therefore, the story of the interview with the Roman presbyters is to be rejected altogether, we think it must be taken date and all. The interview must be placed immediately after the death of Hyginus and we must suppose Marcion then to have left Rome on his travels and only to have settled there permanently some years later, first as a member of Cerdo's school and afterwards as his successor.

The authorities as to the chronology of his life are very conflicting. The statement on which we can most rely is that he taught in Rome during the episcopate of Anicetus. We have no good warrant to extend his activity later, for we can give no credit to Tertullian when he names Eleutherus in connexion with the excommunication of Marcion. If Marcion did not survive Anicetus he may have been born c. 100. The Chronicle of Edessa names 138 for the beginning of Marcionism, and with this agrees the first year of Antoninus given by the Fihrist (Flügel's Mani, p. 85). This date is not improbable, if we suppose an Oriental preaching of the heresy to have preceded its establishment at Rome; A.D. 150 is a not unlikely date for Justin Martyr's Apology, and 12 years' growth is not too much for Marcionism to attain the formidable dimensions that work indicates. If Justin Martyr's work is dated earlier, the date of Marcionism will be similarly affected.

The time of Marcion's death is unknown, but he probably did not survive Anicetus. The only works he is known to have left are his recensions of the Gospel and Pauline Epistles; his Antitheses, in which by comparing different passages he tried to shew that the O.T. contradicted the New, and also itself; and Tertullian refers to a letter of his, then extant, as proving that he had originally belonged to the Catholic church. We learn from Rhodo that after his death his followers broke up into sects, among the leaders of which he names Apelles, who only acknowledged one first principle; Potitus and Basilicus, who counted two; and Syneros, who counted three. Other Marcionite teachers mentioned are Prepo, an Assyrian, by Hippolytus, Lucanus by Tertullian; Pitho and Blastus (the latter probably erroneously) by Theodoret. Epiphanius says that Theodotion, the translator of O.T., had been a Marcionite before his apostasy to Judaism, and Jerome states that Ambrosius was one before his conversion by Origen. These sectaries were formidable to the church, both from their numbers and the strictness of their life. They were very severe ascetics, refusing flesh meat, wine, and the married life. Unlike some Gnostics who taught that it was no sin to escape persecution by disguising their faith, the Marcionites vied with the orthodox in producing martyrs. Eusebius tells that the same letter of the church of Smyrna from which he drew his account of the martyrdom of Polycarp, told also of the martyrdom of a Marcionite presbyter, Metrodorus, who, like Polycarp, suffered at Smyrna by fire, and in the same persecution. When, later, the Montanists appealed in proof of their orthodoxy to the number of their martyrs, they were reminded that this could be equally pleaded for the Marcionites. Other Marcionite martyrs mentioned by Eusebius are a woman who suffered under Valerian at Caesarea in Palestine, and a Marcionite bp. Asclepius, who in the Diocletian persecution was burned alive at Caesarea on the same pyre as the orthodox Apselamus.

The strictness of the Marcionite discipline is proved by the unfriendly testimony of Tertullian, who tries by their practice to convict of falsity the Marcionite theory, that a good God could not be the object of fear: "If so, why do you not take your fill of the enjoyments of this life? Why do you not frequent the circus, the arena, and the theatre? Why do you not boil over with every kind of lust? When the censer is handed you, and you are asked to offer a few grains of incense, why not deny your faith? 'God forbid!' you cry—'God forbid!'"

At the end of the Diocletian persecution the Marcionites had a short interval of freedom of worship. An inscription has been found over the doorway of a house in a Syrian village bearing a Syrian date corresponding to the year commencing Oct. 1, 318. This is more ancient than any dated inscription belonging to a Catholic church. With the complete triumph of Christianity, Marcionite freedom of worship was lost. Constantine absolutely forbade their meeting for worship in public or private buildings. Their churches were to be given to the Catholics; any private houses used for schismatical worship to be confiscated. But the dying out of Marcionism was probably less the result of imperial legislation than of the absorption of the older heresy by the new wave of Oriental dualism which in Manicheism passed over the church. The Theodosian Code contains a solitary mention of Marcionites. They were not extinct in the fifth cent., for Theodoret, writing to pope Leo (Epistle 113, p. 1190), boasts that he had himself converted more than a thousand Marcionites. In Ep. 145 the number of converts rises to ten thousand; in Ep. 81 they are said to be the inhabitants of eight villages. In his Church History Theodoret tells of an unsuccessful effort made by Chrysostom for their conversion. Probably this survival of Marcionism was but a local peculiarity. But as late as 692 the council in Trullo thought it worth while to make provision for the reconciliation of Marcionites, and there is other evidence of lingering remains so late as the 10th cent.

Doctrine.—There is a striking difference of character between the teaching of Marcion and of others commonly classed with him as Gnostics. The systems of the latter often contain so many elements derived from heathenism, or drawn from the fancy of the speculators, that we feel as if we had scarcely any common ground with them; but with Marcion Christianity is plainly the starting-point, and the character of his system harmonizes with his being the son of a Christian bishop and brought up as a Christian. But he has been perplexed by the question of the origin of evil, and is disposed to accept the solution, much prevalent in the East then, that evil is inextricably mixed up with matter, which therefore could not be the creation of the Supreme. He tries to fit in this solution with his Christian creed and with the Scriptures; but naturally only by a mutilation of both can he force an agreement. Indeed, he sometimes has even to alter the text, e.g. "I am not come to destroy the law, but to fulfil," into "I am not come to fulfil the law, but to destroy." Still, the arbitrary criticism of Marcion has more points of contact with modern thought than the baseless assumptions of other Gnostics. A modern divine would turn away from the dreams of Valentinianism in silent contempt; but he could not refuse to discuss the question raised by Marcion, whether there is such opposition between different parts of what he regards as the word of God, that all cannot come from the same author.

The fundamental point of difference between Marcion and the church was concerning the unity of the first principle. Marcion plainly asserted the existence of two Gods, a good one and a just one. What he meant to convey by these words Beausobre well illustrates by a passage of Bardesanes, preserved by Eusebius. He says that animals are of three kinds: some, like serpents and scorpions, will hurt those who have given them no provocation; some, like sheep, will not attempt to return evil for evil; others will hurt those only that hurt them. These three may be called evil, good, and just respectively. Marcion then thought the infliction of punishment inconsistent with perfect goodness, and would only concede the title of just to the God of O.T., who had distinctly threatened to punish the wicked. The God, he said, whose law was "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," was a just God, but not the same as that good God whose command was, "If any smite thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other also." The command, "Thou shalt love him that loveth thee and hate thine enemy" was that of a just God; "Love thine enemy" was the law of the good God. Further, the God of O.T. had said of Himself, "I create evil"; but since from a good tree evil fruit cannot spring, it follows that He who created evil cannot Himself be good. He could not be the Supreme, for He was of limited intelligence, not being able to find Adam when he hid himself, and obliged to ask, "Where are thou?", and also obliged to come down to see before He could know whether Sodom had done according to its cry. Marcion's theory was that the visible creation was the work of the just God; the good God, whose abode he places in the third or highest heaven and whom apparently he acknowledged as the creator of a high immaterial universe, neither concerned Himself with mankind nor was known by them, until, taking compassion on the misery to which they had been brought by disobedience to their Creator who was casting them into his hell, He interfered for their redemption.

The Marcionite denial of the unity of the first principle was variously modified. Some counted three first principles instead of two: a good Being who rules over the Christians, a just one over the Jews, a wicked one over the heathen. Others, since the world was supposed to be made out of previously existent matter, held that matter was a fourth self-originated principle. Marcion himself only counted two principles, but used the word in the sense of ruling powers, for it does not appear that he regarded matter as the creation either of his good or his just God, and therefore it should rightly have been reckoned as an independent principle. Tertullian, indeed, argues that Marcion, to be consistent, should count as many as nine gods. In all these systems the good Being was acknowledged to be superior to the others, so it was not a violent change to assume that from this principle the others were derived; and Apelles and his school drew near the orthodox and taught that there was but one self-originated principle. The ascription of creation and redemption to different beings enabled the church writers to convict the Marcionite deity of unwarrantable interference with what did not belong to him. This interference was the more startling from its suddenness, for Marcion's rejection of O.T. obliged him to deny that there had been any intimation of the coming redemption, or any sign that it had been contemplated beforehand. His God then suddenly wakes up to trouble himself about this earth; stoops down from his third heaven into a world about which, for thousands of years, he had given himself no concern; there kidnaps the sons and servants of another, and teaches them to hate and despise their father and their king, on whose gifts they must still depend for sustenance, and who furnishes the very ground on which this new God's worshippers are to kneel, the heaven to which they are to stretch out their hands, the water in which they are baptized, the very eucharistic food for which a God must be thanked to whom it had never belonged.

Marcion's rejection of O.T. prophecy did not involve a denial that the prophets had foretold the coming of a Christ; but the Christ of the prophets could not be our Christ. The former was to come for the deliverance of the Jewish people; the latter for that of the whole human race. The former was to be a warrior—Christ was a man of peace; Christ suffered on the cross—the law pronounced accursed him that hangeth on a tree; the Christ of the prophets is to rule the nations with a rod of iron, kings are to set themselves against Him, He is to have the heathen for His inheritance and to set up a kingdom that shall not be destroyed. Jesus did none of these things, therefore the Christ of the prophets is still to come. Tertullian successfully shows that if Jesus was not the Christ of the prophets, He must have wished to personate Him, coming as He did at the time and in the place which the prophets had foretold, and fulfilling so many of the indications they had given.

What Marcion supposed his own Christ to be has been disputed. Some have supposed that he did not distinguish him from his good God, for Marcion's Gospel was said to have commenced: "In the 15th year of Tiberius God came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and taught on the Sabbath days"; but we believe the true reading here is "eum," not "deum," and that Marcion held his Christ to be a saving Spirit, but did not confound him with the Supreme.

Marcion's Gospel told nothing of the birth of Christ, and Marcion's "came down" has a very different meaning from what it has in the original passage (Luke vi. 31), in Marcion's use meaning "came down from heaven." In fact, the story of Christ's birth would represent Him as a born subject of the Demiurge, deriving from his bounty the very body in which He came; so it was preferred to tell the improbable tale of a divine teacher unheard-of before making a sudden appearance in the synagogue. That Christ had a real earthly body Marcion of course could not admit.

It was an obvious argument against the Docetic theory that if our Lord's body were not real we could have no faith that His miracles were real, nor in the reality of His sufferings and death, which Marcion was willing to regard as an exhibition of redeeming love; nor in the reality of His resurrection. Marcion, like the orthodox, taught that the death of our Lord was followed by a "descent into hell"; but Irenaeus tells us that he taught that there Cain, the people of Sodom, and others condemned in O.T. as wicked, received Christ's preaching and were taken up by Him into His kingdom; but that Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, the prophets, and other righteous men imagined that the Demiurge was tempting them as on other occasions, and so, being afraid to join themselves to Christ and accept deliverance from Him, were left in the underworld. Christ's salvation, according to Marcion, affected the soul only, and did not affect the body, of which he held there would be no resurrection. Indeed, none of those who regarded matter as essentially evil could believe that evil would be made eternal by a material resurrection. Tertullian points out that sin originates with the soul, not the body, and pronounces it unfair that the sinful soul should be redeemed and the less guilty body punished. On unredeemed souls no punishment would be inflicted by Marcion's good God—he would merely abandon them to the vengeance of the Demiurge; but Tertullian showed that if direct punishment were inconsistent with perfect goodness, such abandonment must be equally so. The Marcionite system as described by Esnig has more of a mythic than of a rationalistic character, and if we accept this as the original form of Marcionism, Marcion owed more to the older Gnostics than we should otherwise have supposed.

Marcion is said by Esnig to have taught that there were three heavens: in the highest dwelt the good God, in the second the God of the Law, in the lowest His angels; beneath lay Hyle, or matter, having an independent existence of its own. By the help of Hyle, which played the part of a female principle, the God of the Law made this world, after which he retired to his heaven; and each ruled in his own domain, he in heaven and Hyle on earth. Afterwards the God of the Law, beholding how goodly this earth was, desired to make man to inhabit it, and for this purpose requested the co-operation of Hyle. She supplied the dust from which man's body was made, and he breathed in his spirit, and made him live. He named him Adam, gave him a wife, and placed him in Paradise. There they lived, honouring and obeying their Maker, in joy and childlike innocence, for as yet they had no children. Then the Lord of Creation, seeing that Adam was worthy to serve Him, devised how he might withdraw him from Hyle and unite him to himself. He took him aside, and said, "Adam, I am God, and beside me there is no other; if thou worshippest any other God thou shalt die the death." When Adam heard of death he was afraid, and gradually withdrew himself from Hyle. When Hyle came after her wont to serve him, Adam did not listen to her, but withdrew himself. Then Hyle, recognizing that the Lord of Creation had supplanted her, said, "Seeing that he hates me and keeps not his compact with me, I will make a number of gods and fill the world with them, so that they who seek the true God shall not be able to find him." Thus she filled the world with idolatry; men ceased to adore the Lord of Creation, for Hyle had drawn them all to herself. Then was the Creator full of wrath; and as men died he cast them into hell, both Adam, on account of the tree, and the rest. There they remained 29 centuries.

At length the good God looked down from the highest heaven and beheld what misery men suffered from Hyle and the Creator. He took compassion on those plagued and tortured in the fire of hell, and he sent his son to deliver them. "Go down," he said, "take on thee the form of a servant, and make thyself like the sons of the law. Heal their wounds, give sight to their blind, bring their dead to life, perform without reward the greatest miracles of healing; then will the God of the Law be jealous, and will instigate his servants to crucify thee. Then go down to hell, which will open her mouth to receive thee, supposing thee to be one of the dead. Then liberate the captives whom thou shalt find there, and bring them up to me."

This was done. Hell was deceived and admitted Jesus, who emptied it of all the spirits therein and carried them up to his Father. When the God of the Law saw this he was enraged, rent his clothes, tore the curtain of his palace, darkened his sun, and veiled his world in darkness. After that, Jesus came down a second time, but now in the glory of his divinity, to plead with the God of the Law. When the Creator saw Jesus thus appear, he was obliged to own that he had been wrong in thinking that there was no other god but himself.

Then Jesus said, "I have a controversy with thee, but I will take no other judge between us than thine own law. Is it not written in thy law that whoso killeth another shall himself be killed; that whoso sheddeth innocent blood shall have his own blood shed? Let me, then, kill thee and shed thy blood, for I was innocent and thou hast shed my blood." Then he recounted what benefits he had bestowed on the Creator's children, and in return had been crucified; and the Creator could make no defence, seeing himself condemned by his own law, and he said: "I was ignorant; I thought thee but a man, and did not know thee to be a God; take the revenge which is thy due." Then Jesus left him and betook himself to Paul, and revealed to him the way in which we should go. All who believe in Christ will give themselves to this good and righteous man. Men must withdraw themselves from the dominion of Hyle; but all do not know how this is to be done.

Though this mythical story differs much in complexion from other ancient accounts of Marcionite doctrine, we cannot absolutely reject it; for there is nothing in it inconsistent with Marcion's known doctrines or such as a Gnostic of his age might have taught. It is, indeed, such a system as he might have learned from the Syriac Gnostic Cerdo. But Marcion must have given the mythic element
little prominence, or it would not have so disappeared from the other accounts.

Discipline and Worship.—In rites Marcion followed the church model. Thus he had baptism with water, anointing with oil, a mixture of milk and honey was given to the newly baptized, and sacramental bread represented the Saviour's Body. Wine was absent from his Eucharist, for his principles entirely forbade wine or flesh meat. [ENCRATITES.] Fish, however, he permitted. He commanded his disciples to fast on Saturday, to mark his hostility to the God of the Jews, who had made that His day of rest. Marriage he condemned. A married man was received as a catechumen, but not admitted to baptism until he had agreed to separate from his wife. This probably explains the statement of Epiphanius that the Marcionites celebrated the mysteries in the presence of unbaptized persons. The sect could not have flourished if it discouraged married persons from joining it; and if it admitted them only as catechumens, that class would naturally be granted larger privileges than in the Catholic church. Nor need we disbelieve the statement of Epiphanius that a second or a third baptism was permitted. If a member married, or one who had put away his wife took her back, it is not incredible that on repentance a second baptism was necessary before restoration to full privileges of membership. Again, since the baptism of a married person was only permitted in articulo mortis, it would sometimes happen that catechumens were surprised by death before baptism, and it is not incredible that in such cases the device of a vicarious baptism may have been resorted to, as Chrysostom tells in speaking on the females to baptize.

The Marcionite baptism was not recognized by the church. Theodoret tells that he baptized those whom be converted. He tells also that he had met an aged Marcionite who, in his hostility to the Creator, refused to use his works, a principle which could not possibly be carried out consistently.

Canon of Scripture.—Marcion's rejection of the O.T. involved the rejection of great part of the New, which bears witness to the Old. He only retained the Gospel of St. Luke (and that in a mutilated form), and ten Epp. of St. Paul, omitting the pastoral epistles. In defence of his rejection of other apostolic writings, he appealed to the statements of St. Paul in Galatians, that some of the older apostles had not walked uprightly after the truth of the gospel, and that certain false apostles had perverted the gospel of Christ. Marcion's Gospel, though substantially identical, as far as it went, with our St. Luke's, did not bear that Evangelist's name. That it was, however, an abridgment of St. Luke was asserted by all the Fathers from Irenaeus and not doubted until modern times. Then it was noticed that in some cases where Marcion is accused by Epiphanius or Tertullian of having corrupted the text, his readings are witnessed by other ancient authorities.

 

DOCETISM

 

Docetism, the very early heresy that our blessed Lord had a body like ours, only in appearance, not in reality. St. Jerome scarcely exaggerates when he says (adv. Lucif. 23): "While the apostles were still surviving, while Christ's blood was still fresh in Judea, the Lord's body was asserted to be but a phantasm." Apart from N.T. passages, e.g. Eph. ii. 9, Heb. ii. 14, which confute this assertion, but do not bear clear marks of having been written with a controversial purpose, it appears from I. John iv. 2, II. John 7, that when these epistles were written there were teachers, stigmatised by the writer as prompted by the spirit of Antichrist, who denied that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh, a form of expression implying a Docetic theory. Those who held that evil resulted from the inherent fault of matter found it impossible to believe that the Saviour could be Himself under the dominion of that evil from which He came to deliver men, and they therefore rejected the Church's doctrine of a real union of the divine and human natures in the person of our Lord, but our Lord's pre-existence and superhuman nature was regarded as so essential a part of Christianity that with two exceptions, or perhaps even only one (i.e. JUSTINUS and perhaps CARPOCRATES), all the sects known as Gnostic ascribed to the Saviour a superhuman nature, some however separating the personality of that nature from His human personality, others reducing our Lord's earthly part to mere appearance. It is even doubtful whether we are not to understand in a technical sense the statement that he taught that "power" from the Father had descended on our Lord; that is to say, whether it was not his doctrine that one of the heavenly powers had united itself to the man Jesus.

Teaching of this kind is unequivocally attributed to CERINTHUS, whose other doctrines, as reported by Irenaeus, have great resemblance to those of Carpocrates. It is in opposition to the theory which makes our Lord's claim to be Christ date, not from his birth, but from some later period, that Irenaeus uses the argument, shewing his belief in the inspiration of the gospels, that Matthew might have said, "the birth of Jesus was in this wise," but that the Holy Spirit, foreseeing and guarding against the depravation of the truth, said by Matthew "the birth of Christ was on this wise." Baur makes Docetism common to all the Gnostics, holding that the theory which has just been described is in a certain sense Docetic; inasmuch as while holding Jesus to be a real man, visibly active in the work of redemption, it teaches that this is but deceptive appearance, the work being actually performed by a distinct personality, Christ. But it is more usual and more natural to use the word Docetism only with reference to those other theories which refuse to acknowledge the true manhood of the Redeemer. For example, we are told that, according to the system of Simon, the Redeemer (who, however, is not Jesus, but Simon himself) "had appeared among men as man, though he was not a man, and was thought to have suffered in Judea, though he did not suffer." According to the system of SATURNINUS, the Saviour was without birth, without body, and without figure, and appeared a man in phantasm, not in truth.

According to BASILIDES, as reported by Irenaeus, Christ or Nous is not distinguished from Jesus, but is said to be an incorporeal power, who transfigured Himself as He willed; that He appeared on earth as man and worked miracles, but that He did not suffer; that it was Simon of Cyrene, who, being transfigured into the form of Jesus, was crucified, while Jesus Himself, in the form of Simon standing by, laughed at His persecutors, and then, incapable of being held by them, ascended up to Him Who had sent Him, invisible to them all. The Docetism here described is strenuously combated in the Ignatian Epistles in their Greek form, esp. in ad Trall. 9, 10, and ad Smyrn. 2. In these the writer emphasises the statements that our Lord was truly born, did eat and drink, was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified, and truly rose from the dead; and he expressly declares that these statements were made in contradiction of the doctrine of certain unbelievers, or rather atheists, who asserted His sufferings to be but seeming. This polemic is absent from the Syriac Ignatius, and an argument has hence been derived against the genuineness of the Greek form. But in order to make the argument valid, there ought to be proof that the rise of Docetism was probably later than the age of Ignatius, whereas the probability seems to be quite the other way. Saturninus holds such a place in all heretical lists, that he must be referred to the very beginning of the 2nd cent., and, as he taught in Antioch, may very possibly have been encountered by Ignatius. Polycarp also (Ep. 7) uses the words of I. John iv. 3 in such a way as to shew that Docetism was in his time troublesome.

In the forms of Docetism thus far described there is no evidence that there was involved any more subtle theory than that the senses of the spectators of our Lord's earthly life were deceived. The Docetism of VALENTINUS was exhibited in a more artificial theory, which is fully set forth in our art. s.v. It appears that Valentinus was only partly docetic. He conceded to Jesus the possession of a real body capable of really affecting the senses, but held that that body was made of a different substance from ours and was peculiar as regards its sustenance by earthly nutriment. Irenaeus, however, insists that the Valentinian doctrine did not practically differ from pure Docetism; for that if our Lord had not taken substance of flesh in the womb of the Virgin He could not have been the real man Who suffered hunger and thirst and weariness, Who wept at the grave of Lazarus, Who sweat drops of blood, from Whose wounded side came forth blood and water.

The Docetism of MARCION differed from that of preceding Gnostics. With them the great stumbling-block had been the sufferings of Christ, and accordingly it is the reality of Christ's passion and death that their antagonists sought to establish. Marcion, on the contrary, was quite willing to acknowledge the proof of our Lord's love exhibited in His sufferings and death, but it was repulsive to him to own His human birth, which according to his view would have made our Lord the debtor and the subject of the Creator of the world. Accordingly, while Basilides had admitted a real birth of the man Jesus, Valentinus at least a seeming birth in which the body elsewhere prepared was ushered into the world, Marcion would own no birth at all, and began his gospel with the sudden announcement that in the 15th year of Tiberius Christ came down (by which we are to understand came down from heaven) to Capernaum, a city of Galilee. Marcion's disciple Apelles so far modified his master's doctrine that he was willing to own that Jesus had a solid body, but denied that there had been a birth in which He had assumed it; and he held that of this body our Lord made only a temporary use, and that when He had shewn it to His disciples after His resurrection He gave it back to the elements from which He had received it.

Something of this kind seems to have been also the view of the sect known as Docetae. The fourth book of the dialogue against the Marcionites contains a polemic against Docetism which is represented as defended by Marinus the disciple of Bardesanes, who adopts the Valentinian notion and who maintains that His earthly body was only such as the angels had temporarily assumed who ate and drank with Abraham. One argument on the orthodox side is used by several Fathers, and the form of words in which each has expressed himself has been much discussed in modern controversy. It occurs here in the form "If Christ were without flesh and blood, of what sort of flesh and blood are the bread and wine, the images with which He commanded that the memorial of Him should be made?".

Of later heretics, the most considerable who maintained a Docetic theory are the Manicheans. In the controversy with them the orthodox had exactly the same points to establish as in the controversy with Marcion, viz. that Christ had come into the world, not merely as sent by the Father, but as really born of the Virgin; that He was truly incarnate, and did not assume the form of a body merely as did the angels whose appearances have been recorded; that He was circumcised, baptized, tempted; that His death was a real one, as was necessary in order that His resurrection also should be real (see in particular the disputation between Augustine and Faustus). With regard to the disputes in the 6th cent. concerning our Lord's body, see JULIANUS of Halicarnassus. It is well known that Mahommed also adopted the Docetic account of our Lord's crucifixion.

Besides formal heresies which have been tainted with Docetism, the same imputation has been cast on more than one of the Fathers. It is very strongly brought by Photius against the hypotyposes of CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. This book has not survived, but there is no doubt from his extant writings that Clement ascribed to our Lord a real body. In a fragment probably from the lost Hypotyposes preserved in a Latin trans. (p. 1009), he quotes from "the traditions" that when St. John handled the body of our Lord the flesh offered no resistance, but yielded place to the disciple's hand. Redepenning's conclusion is that Clement's doctrine deviated from that subsequently recognised as orthodox, not in respect of our Lord's body, the reality of which he acknowledged, but in holding that His body was directly united to the Divine Logos without the intervention of a human soul capable of feeling pain or suffering.

The traditions referred to by Clement have been identified with the contents of a work of Leucius Charinus, purporting to relate travels of the apostles, of which an account is given by Photius, and from which extracts are also quoted in the Acts of the second council of Nicaea. In this work, which Grabe seems to have correctly regarded as Marcionite, it was taught that the Son was not man, but only seemed to be so; that He showed Himself to His disciples sometimes young, sometimes old; sometimes a child, sometimes an old man; sometimes great, sometimes small; sometimes so great as to touch the heavens with His head; that His footsteps left no trace; and that He was not really crucified, but, according to Photius, another person in His place. The account given in the Nicene extracts of a vision seen by St. John on the mount of Olives, at the time of the crucifixion, teaches that the form crucified was not really our Lord, but does not suggest that it was any other person.

 

CARPOCRATES

 

Carpocrates, a Platonic philosopher who taught at Alexandria early in the 2nd cent., and who, incorporating Christian elements into his system, became the founder of a heretical sect mentioned in one of our earliest catalogues of heresies, the list of Hegesippus, preserved by Eusebius. These heretics are the first of whom Irenaeus expressly mentions that they called themselves Gnostics; Hippolytus first speaks of the name as assumed by the Naassenes or Ophites. Of all the systems called Gnostic, that of Carpocrates is the one in which the Hellenic element is the most strongly marked, and which contains the least of what is necessarily Jewish or Oriental. He is described as teaching with prominence the doctrine of a single first principle: the name Monatheist Gnosis given by Clement of Alexandria (Strom. III 2) to the doctrine of the school which he founded, is made by Neander to furnish the key to the whole Carpocratian system; but possibly is only intended to contrast with the doctrine of the Valentinian teachers, who thought it necessary to provide the first Being with a consort, in order that emanations from Him might be conceivable.

Carpocrates taught that from the one unknown unspeakable God different angels and powers had emanated, and that of these the lowest in the series, far below the unbegotten Father, had been the makers of the world. The privilege of the higher souls was to escape the rule of those who had made the world; even by
magical arts to exercise dominion over them, and ultimately, on leaving the world, to pass completely free from them to God Who is above them.

Jesus he held to be a mere man naturally born of human parents, having no prerogatives beyond the reach of others to attain. His superiority to ordinary men consisted in this, that His soul, being steadfast and pure, remembered those things which it had seen in the revolution in which it had been carried round with the unbegotten God, and therefore power [or a "power"] had been sent from God enabling Him to escape the makers of the world. Though brought up in Jewish customs, He had despised them, and therefore had received powers enabling Him to destroy the passions which are given to men as a punishment.

But in this there was nothing special: others might be the equals or the superiors not only of Peter or Paul, but of our Lord Himself. Their souls, too, might remember the truths they had witnessed; if they despised the rulers of the world as much as Jesus did, they would be given the same privileges as He, and higher if they despised them more. Thus the Carpocratians gave honour, but not an exclusive honour, to Christ. They had pictures of Him, derived, it was said, from a likeness taken by Pilate's order; and images, which they crowned and treated with other marks of respect; but this they did also in the cases of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and other philosophers.

In the opening statement concerning the making of the world, the doctrine ascribed to Carpocrates is almost identical with that ascribed to Saturninus; but in the next paragraph the language is distinctly taken from the myth in Plato's Phaedrus, in which human knowledge is made to be but a recollection of what the soul had seen when carried round with the gods in their revolution, and permitted to see the eternal forms of things.

The doctrine of the duty of despising the rulers of the world received among the Carpocratians an interpretation which enabled them to practise immorality without scruple. Things in themselves were indifferent; nothing was in its own nature good or evil, and was only made so by human opinion. The true Gnostic might practise everything—nay, it was his duty to have experience of all.

A doctrine concerning the transmigration of souls which was taught by other Gnostic sects, and which harmonized well with Platonic teaching, was adopted by the Carpocratians in the form that a soul which had had its complete experience passed at once out of the dominion of the rulers of the world, and was received up to society with the God above them: those which had not were sent back to finish in other bodies that which was lacking to them; but all ultimately would be saved. But as was also taught by the Basilidians of Irenaeus and by the Ophites, salvation belonged to the soul alone; there would be no resurrection of the body. In conformity with this theory was interpreted the text from the Sermon on the Mount, "Agree with thine adversary quickly." The "adversary" (whom, Epiphanius tells us, they named Abolus, a corruption, doubtless, from the Diabolus of Irenaeus) was one of the world-making angels, whose office it was to conduct the soul to the principal of these angels, "the judge." If he found that there were acts left undone, he delivered it to another angel, "the officer," to shut it up "in prison"—i.e. in a body—until it had paid the last farthing. The doctrine that we ought to imitate the freedom with which our Lord despised the rulers of the world raises the question, Did Carpocrates intend to impute immorality to Him? On this point Carpocrates was misunderstood either by Hippolytus or by his own disciples. According to Hippolytus, Carpocrates taught that Jesus surpassed other men in justice and integrity, and no doubt our Lord's example might have been cited only in reference to freedom from Jewish ceremonial obligations; yet the version of Irenaeus seems more trustworthy, which does not suggest that the superiority of Jesus consisted in anything but the clearer apprehension of eternal truths which His intellect retained. Carpocrates claimed to be in possession of the true teaching of Christ spoken secretly by Him to His apostles, and communicated by them in tradition to the worthy and faithful; and the apostolic doctrine that men are to be saved by faith and love was used by him to justify an antinomian view of the complete indifference of works.

EPIPHANES, the son of Carpocrates by a Cephallenian woman, maintained a licentious theory of communism in all things, women included. The Carpocratians and the Cainites have often been coupled together as the two most immoral of the Gnostic sects, and in practical effects their doctrines may not have been very different; but the Carpocratian theory of the indifference of human actions fell short of the inversion of good and evil which is ascribed to the Cainites. Whereas the latter represented the God of the Jews and Maker of the world as an evil Being who ought to be resisted, the former only spoke of the makers of the world as inferior beings whose restrictions it is true enlightenment to despise; and the arguments of Epiphanes, derived from the equality that reigns in nature, assume that the creation is so far conformed to the will of God that from the laws which pervade it we may infer what is pleasing to the supreme power.

Whether immorality were directly taught by Carpocrates himself or not, his followers became proverbial for deliberate licentiousness of life. The Christians thought it likely that the stories current among the heathen of scenes of shameless debauchery in the Christian lovefeasts had a real foundation in what took place among the Carpocratians. Philaster, who, apparently through oversight, enumerates the Carpocratians twice, the second time giving them the alternative names of Floriani and Milites, directly asserts this. His predecessors had suggested it as probable. Irenaeus counts Carpocratian doctrines and practices as means employed by Satan to discredit the Christian name among the heathen.

A more trifling heathen belief about the Christians generally seems to have been true of the Carpocratians, viz. that they knew each other, by secret bodily marks; for the Carpocratians marked their disciples by cauterizing them in the back of the lobe of the right ear. It appears from Heracleon that this was a baptismal ceremony, intended to represent the "baptism with fire," predicted of our Lord by the Baptist. This confirms the evidence as to the use of at least St. Matthew's Gospel by the Carpocratians furnished by Epiphanius and by the use made of the Sermon on the Mount.

Mention has already been made of the cultivation of magic by the Carpocratians, and their pretension to equal the miraculous powers of our Lord. Hippolytus, in the fourth book of the Refutation, gives us several specimens of wonders exhibited by magicians, not very unlike feats performed by professional conjurors today. It was easy for Irenaeus to show how very unlike these transient wonders were to be permanent miracles of healing effected by our Lord, and which, as he claimed, continued in the church.

According to Neander, the Carpocratian system sees in the world's history one struggle between the principles of unity and of multiplicity. From one eternal Monad all existence has flowed, and to this it strives to return. But the finite spirits who rule over several portions of the world counteract this universal striving after unity. From them the different popular religions, and in particular the Jewish, have proceeded. Perfection is attained by those souls who, led on by reminiscences of their former condition, soar above all limitation and diversity to the contemplation of the higher unity.

They despise the restrictions imposed by the mundane spirits; they regard externals as of no importance, and faith and love as the only essentials; meaning by faith, mystical brooding of the mind absorbed in the original unity. In this way they escape the dominion of the finite mundane spirits; their souls are freed from imprisonment in matter, and they obtain a state of perfect repose (corresponding to the Buddhist Nirvana) when they have completely ascended above the world of appearance.

We cannot assign an exact date to Carpocrates; but there are affinities between his system and those of Saturninus and Basilides, which suggest one a little later than Basilides, from whom he may have derived his knowledge of Christianity. Eusebius is probably right in placing him in the reign of Hadrian (d. A.D. 138). It suffices merely to mention the invention of the writer known as Praedestinatus that the Carpocratians were condemned in Cyprus by the apostle Barnabas. Matter, in his history of Gnosticism, gives an account of certain supposed Carpocratian inscriptions, since found to be spurious .

 

VALENTINUS

 

Valentinus, founder of one of the Gnostic sects which originated in the first
half of 2nd cent.

I. Biography.—According to the tradition of the Valentinian school witnessed to by Clemens Alexandrinus, Valentinus had been a disciple of Theodas, who himself, it is very improbably said, knew St. Paul. Valentinus cannot have begun to disseminate his Gnostic doctrines till towards the end of the reign of Hadrian (117–138). Before this he is said to have been a Catholic Christian. It must have been, therefore, at most only shortly before his appearance as the head of a Gnostic sect that Valentinus became a hearer of Theodas and received, as he said, his doctrines from him. The Gnostics were fond of claiming for their secret doctrines apostolic tradition and tracing them back to disciples of the apostles. To this otherwise unknown Theodas the Valentinians appealed as an authority in much the same way as Basilides was said to have been a disciple of Glaucias, and he, in turn, an "interpreter of Peter."

Irenaeus speaks of Valentinus as the first who transformed the doctrines of the Gnostic "Heresy" to a peculiar doctrinal system of his own. By the expression Gnostikí we understand a party which called themselves "Gnostics," whom we may recognize in the so-called Ophites, described by Irenaeus, when he remarks that the Valentinian school originated from those unnamed heretics as from the many-headed Lernean Hydra. Concerning the home and locality of these so-called "Gnostics" Irenaeus tells us nothing. But we know from other sources that those Ophite parties to whom he refers had their homes both in Egypt and Syria.

Concerning the fatherland of Valentinus himself Epiphanius is the first to give accurate information, which, however, he derived simply, it appears, from oral tradition. According to this his native home was on the coast of Egypt, and he received instruction in Greek literature and science at Alexandria. Epiphanius, who makes him begin to teach in Egypt, relates further that he also went to Rome, and appeared as a religious teacher there, but that, both in Egypt and at Rome, he was regarded as orthodox, and first made shipwreck of faith in Cyprus and began to disseminate heretical opinions. But this statement rests merely on a combination of different accounts. According to Irenaeus, Valentinus "flourished" at Rome in the times of Pius and Anicetus. Epiphanius, on the other hand, read in the Sintagma of Hippolytus, that Valentinus stood once in the communion of the church, but being drawn by overweening pride into apostasy had, during his residence in Cyprus, propounded his heretical doctrine. But we cannot doubt that when Irenaeus speaks of Valentinus's flourishing at Rome during the times of Pius and Anicetus, he refers to the fact that his chief activity as a religious teacher was then displayed, and that under Anicetus he stood at the head of his own Gnostic school. With this there is no difficulty in reconciling Tertullian's statement, that Valentinus no more than Marcion separated himself from the Church on his arrival at Rome. For the Gnostics, for the very sake of disseminating their doctrines the more freely, made a great point of remaining in the Catholic church, and made use for that end of a twofold mode of teaching, one exoteric for the simpler sort of believers, the other esoteric for the initiated, as is shewn in the fragments which have come down to us, the most part of which purposely keep the peculiarly Gnostic doctrines in the background.

We may, then, conclude that Valentinus, towards the end of Hadrian's reign (c. 130), appeared as a teacher in Egypt and in Cyprus, and early in the reign of Antoninus Pius he came to Rome, and during the long reign of Antoninus was a teacher there. He had probably developed and secretly prepared his theological system before he came to Rome, whither he doubtless removed for the same motive as led other leaders of sects, e.g. Cerdon and Marcion, to go to Rome—the hope to find a wider field for his activity as a teacher. From a similar motive he attached himself at first to the communion of the Catholic church.

II. History of the Sect.—Valentinus had numerous adherents. They divided themselves, we are told, into two schools—the anatolic or oriental, and the Italian school. The former of these schools was spread through Egypt and Syria, the latter in Rome, Italy, and South Gaul. Among his disciples, Secundus appears to have been one of the earliest. Tertullian and the epitomators of Hippolytus mention him after Ptolemaeus; the older work, on the other hand, excerpted by Irenaeus is apparently correct in naming him first as Valentinus's earliest disciple. Then follows, in the same original work as quoted by Irenaeus, another illustrious teacher, of whom a misunderstanding of later heresiologists has made a Valentinian leader, named Epiphanes; who this illustrious teacher was is matter of dispute. The more probable conjecture is with Neander and Salmon to suppose it was MARCUS, whose first Tetrad exactly corresponds to that of this unnamed teacher. Marcus himself will, in any case, be among the earliest of Valentinus's disciples. His labours in Asia were probably contemporaneous with Valentinus's residence and activity at Rome, and there a "godly elder and herald of the truth," whom Irenaeus quotes from as an older authority, made him the subject of metrical objurgation as the "forerunner of anti-Christian malice.

PTOLEMAEUS, on the other hand, was a contemporary of Irenaeus himself, and one of the leaders of the Italian school, whom Hippolytus in the Syntagma, and probably on the basis of an arbitrary combination of Iren. i. 8, 5 with 11, 2, puts at the head of all other disciples of Valentinus. HERACLEON was still younger than Ptolemaeus, and the second head of the Italian school. His doctrinal system appears to be that mainly kept in view in the Philosophumena . Irenaeus names him as it were in passing, while Tertullian designates his relation to his predecessors with the words, Valentinus showed the way, Ptolemaeus walked along it, Heracleon struck out some side paths. He makes also the like remark concerning Secundus and Marcus. Clemens speaks of Heracleon (c. 193) as the most distinguished among the disciples of Valentinus, meaning, of course, among those of his own time. Origen's statement, therefore, that he had a personal acquaintance with Valentinus is to be received with caution. In part contemporaneously with him appear to have worked the heads of the anatolic (oriental) school Axionikos and Bardesanes, who both lived into the first decennia of cent. III.

Axionikos was still working at Antioch when Tertullian composed his book against the Valentinians, therefore c. 218. We cannot here discuss how far the celebrated Edessene Gnostic BARDESANES (ob. 223) is rightly accounted a Valentinian. Tertullian indicates Axionikos as the only one who in his day still represented the original teaching of Valentinus. Theotimus, therefore, who is previously mentioned by Tertullian, and seems to have occupied himself much with the "Figures of the Law," was, it appears, an older teacher. The same was also probably the case with Alexander, the Valentinian whose syllogisms Tertullian had in his hands.

Concerning the later history of the Valentinian sect we have but meagre information. Tertullian, writing c. 218, speaks of the Valentinians in his book against them as the "frequentissimum collegium inter haereticos." This is confirmed by what is told us of the local extension of the sect. From Egypt it seems to have spread to Syria, Asia Minor, and to Rome. Its division into an oriental and an Italian school shows that it had adherents even after the death of its founder, in both the East (Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia) and West (specially at Rome). In Asia Minor the doctrine appears to have been mainly disseminated by Marcus, who was so vigorously attacked (c. 150) by the "godly elder," quoted by Irenaeus. Disciples of Marcus were found by Irenaeus in the Rhone districts, where also he appears to have met with adherents of Ptolemaeus. In Rome, c. 223, an important work of the Italian school came into the hands of the writer of the Philosophumena, who speaks of both schools as being in existence in his time. Tertullian also mentions the duae scholae and duae cathedrae of the party in his time . Remains of the sect were still found in Egypt in the time of Epiphanius. Theodoret, on the other hand, can only speak of the Valentinians as of other Gnostic sects (whom he deals with in his first book) as belonging to the past, of whom he possesses a mere historical knowledge.

III. The System.—A review of the accounts given by the Fathers confirms the judgment that, with the means at our command, it is very difficult to distinguish between the original doctrine of Valentinus and the later developments made by his disciples. A description of his system must start from the Fragments, the authenticity of which is unquestioned. But from the nature of these fragments we cannot expect to reconstruct the whole system out of them. Moreover, the kinds of literature to which these fragments belong—letters, homilies, hymns—show us only the outer side of the system, while its secret Gnostic doctrine is passed over and concealed, or only indicated in the obscurest manner. The modes of expression in these fragments are brought as near as possible to those in ordinary church use. We see therein the evident desire and effort of Valentinus to remain in the fellowship of the Catholic church. Of specific Gnostic doctrines two only appear in their genuine undisguised shape, that of the celestial origin of the spiritual man (the Pneumaticos), and that of the Demiurge; for the docetic Christology was not then, as is clear from Clemens Alexandrinus, exclusively peculiar to the Gnostics. All the more emphatically is the anthropological and ethical side of the system insisted on in these fragments.

As the world is an image of the living Aeon, so is man an image of the First Man. Valentinus, according to Clemens Alexandrinus, spoke of the Sophia as an artist making this visible lower world a picture of the glorious Archetype, but the hearer or reader would as readily understand the heavenly Wisdom of the Book of Proverbs to be meant by this Sophia as the 12th and fallen Aeon. Under her (according to Valentinus) stand the world-creative angels, whose head is the Demiurge. Her formation is Adam created in the name of the First Man. In him thus made a higher power puts the seed of the heavenly pneumatic essence. Thus furnished with higher insight, Adam excites the fears of the angels; they are seized with fear of the images made by their own hands to bear the name of God, i.e. the idols, so these angels cause the images they have made to disappear. The pneumatic seed nevertheless remains in the world, as a race by nature capable of being saved, and which has come down from a higher sphere in order to put an end to the reign of death.

Death originates from the Demiurge, to whom the word refers that no one can see the face of God without dying. The members of the pneumatic church are from the first immortal, and children of eternal life. They have only assumed mortality in order to overcome death in themselves and by themselves. They shall dissolve the world without themselves suffering dissolution, and be lords over the creation and over all transitory things. But without the help of the only good Father the heart even of the spiritual man (the pneumaticos) cannot be cleansed from the many evil spirits which make their abode in him, and each accomplishes his own desire. But when the only good Father visits the soul, it is hallowed and enlightened, and is called blessed because one day it shall see God. This cleansing and illumination is a consequence of the revelation of the Son.

We learn from the fragments only that Jesus, by steadfastness and abstinence, earned for Himself Deity, and by virtue of His abstinence did not even suffer to be corrupted the food which He received (i.e. it did not undergo the natural process of digestion), because He Himself was not subject to corruption. It must remain undetermined how Valentinus defined the relation of Jesus to God. If the text of the passage quoted above be sound, Jesus put Himself in possession of Godhead by His own abstinence, a notion we should expect in Ebionite rather than in Gnostic circles. But the true will be that by an extraordinary asceticism Jesus avoided every kind of material pollution, and so became Himself the image of the incorruptible and imperishable Godhead. At any rate, this fragment does not tell us whether, according to the teaching of Valentinus, the body of Jesus was pneumatic or psychical.

According to another fragment attributed to Valentinus, and preserved by Eulogius of Alexandria, he appears to have treated with ridicule the opinion of the "Galileans" that Christ had two natures, and to have maintained that He had but one nature composed of the visible and the invisible. Hilgenfeld supposes the Valentinus of this fragment to be the Gnostic, while others take him to have been the Apollinarian. But we have no other instance of any Gnostic giving to Catholic Christians (as did the emperor Julian later) the epithet "Galilean." Further, although Tertullian and Origen may have spoken of two natures or two substances in Christ, we can hardly imagine Valentinus pronouncing a doctrine ridiculous, and yet it finding acceptance in his school. For we find the Occidental Valentinians actually teaching in very similar terms, that Soter, the common product of the whole Pleroma, united himself with the Christus of the Demiurge the Man Jesus. Could we otherwise assume that the fragment is genuine, it would serve to prove that the doctrine of the Oriental school concerning the pneumatic body of Christ was in fact the original teaching of Valentinus. How Valentinus thought concerning the origin of matter and of evil cannot be made out from existing fragments. When, however, we find him designating the Demiurge as author of death, we can hardly suppose that he derived the transitory nature and other imperfections of the terrestrial universe from an originally evil material substance.

The view, moreover, which underlies the psalm of Valentinus, of which the Philosophumena have preserved a fragment is decidedly monastic. He there sees in the spirit how "all things are hanging and are upborne, the flesh hanging on the soul, the soul upborne by the air, the air hanging on the aether, from Bythos fruits produced and from the womb the child." Again the Demiurge hangs from the spirit which is outside the Pleroma, i.e. the Sophia in the kingdom of the Midst, the Sophia from Horus and from the Pleroma, and finally the world of Aeons in the Pleroma from the abyss, i.e. their Father. If this interpretation be, as we may assume, correct, Valentinus must have conceived the whole universe as forming a grand scale of being, beginning with the abysmal ground of all spiritual life, and thence descending lower and lower down to matter. The whole scale then is a descent from the perfect to ever more and more imperfect images; according to the principle expressly laid down by Valentinus, that the cosmos is as inferior to the living Aeon as the image is inferior to the living countenance. This view of the nature of the universe exhibits a much nearer relationship to Platonic philosophy than to the Oriental dualism which underlay the older Gnostic systems; and Hippolytus is therefore completely right, when dealing with the psalm of Valentinus, to speak of Platonizing Gnostics.

To what authority Valentinus made appeal as the source of his doctrine cannot be made out from the fragments. From the Homily to the Friends Clemens Alexandrinus has preserved a sentence which defines "many of the things written in the public books" as "found written in the church of God"—"for," he adds, "those things which are common are words from the heart"; and proceeds, "The law written in the heart is the People of the Beloved One, both loved and loving". The meaning is that this "People" is in virtue of the inward revelation of the Logos a law unto itself . But this inward revelation has reference only to "that which is common", i.e. to the universal ethical truths written in the heart which "the church of God" needs not first to learn from "the public books." But this passage tells us nothing about the sources whence Valentinus derived his Gnosis. For these we must go back to the statement of Clemens, according to which the Valentinians spoke of their leader as having learned of a certain Theodas, a disciple of St. Paul. But the actual statement of Irenaeus is more to be depended on, that Valentinus was the first who transformed the old doctrines of "the Gnostics" into a system of his own.

The fragments, moreover, give a series of points of contact with the opinions of these older "Gnostics." We may therefore regard as an axiom to be adhered to in our investigations that of any two Valentinian doctrines, that is the older and more original which approaches more closely to the older and vulgar Gnosis. Yet the system of Valentinus had a peculiar character of its own. He was the first to breathe a really philosophic spirit into the old vulgar Gnosis, by making use of Plato's world of thought to infuse a deeper meaning into the old Gnostic myths. Baur, therefore, was quite right in emphasizing the Platonism of Valentinus, to which the Philosophumena had already called attention.

Irenaeus completes the information afforded by the fragments concerning Valentinus's doctrine of the Aeons. At the head of them stands a Dyad. From this Dyad proceeds a second Dyad, which with the first Dyad forms the highest Tetrad. From this Tetrad a second Tetrad proceeds, and these complete the First Ogdoad. From Logos and God proceed a Decad, from Man and Church a Dodecad of Aeons. In this the number 30 of Aeons forming the Pleroma is completed. The names of the Aeons composing the Decad and the Dodecad are not given. We may, however, venture to assume that the names elsewhere given by Irenaeus, and literally repeated by Pseud-Origenes, and then again by Epiphanius with some differences of detail, in his much later account, did really originate from Valentinus himself. However arbitrary this name-giving may seem, it is evident that the first four masculine Aeons repeat the notion of the First Principle, and the first four feminine the notion of his syzygy, in various forms of expression. The names Monogenis and Nous meet us again among the Valentinians of Irenaeus as expressions for the secend Masculine Principle, and Paraklitos as that for the common product of all the Aeons—the Soter. Patrikos, Matrikis, Eklesiastikos, are names simply expressing that the Aeons which bear them are derived from the higher powers within the Pleroma. The feminine names Makaria, Pistis, Elpis, Agapi, Synesis, Sophia, describe generally the perfection of the Pleroma by means of Predicates borrowed from the characteristics of the perfect Pneumaticos. So that all these inferior Aeon names are but a further and more detailed expression of the thought contained in the names of the first and second Tetrad. The first Tetrad expresses the essence of the Upper Pleroma in itself, the second Tetrad divided into two pairs of Aeons expresses its revelation to the Pneumatici and the Pneumatic World.

The last of the 30 Aeons, the Sophia or Mater, falls out of the Pleroma. In her remembrance of the better world she gives birth to Christus with a shadow, Christus being of masculine nature, cuts away the shadow from himself and hastens back into the Pleroma. The mother, on the other hand, being left behind and alone with the shadow, and emptied of the pneumatic substance, gives birth to another Son the Demiurge, and at the same time with him a sinistrous archon. So then from these two elements, "the right and the left," the psychical and the hylical, proceeds this lower world. This the original doctrine of Valentinus appears to have had in common with that of the Ophites, that both doctrines knew of only one Sophia, and that for the Ophites also Christus leaves the Sophia behind and escapes himself into the upper realm of light.

The notion of a fall of the last of the Aeons from the Pleroma, and the consequent formation of this lower world as the fruit of that fall, is new and peculiar to Valentinus in his reconstruction of the older Gnosticism. He set his Platonic Monism in the place of the Oriental Dualism. The Platonic thought of the soul's fall and longing after the lost world of light he combined with the other Platonic thought of the things of this lower world being types and images of heavenly Archetypes, and so obtained a new solution of the old problems of the world's creation and the origin of evil.

The statements of Irenaeus concerning his teaching are, alas! too fragmentary and too uncertain to supply a complete view of the system of Valentinus. But the excerpts in Clemens Alex. taken from Theodotos and the anatolic school contain a doctrine in §§ 1–42, which at any rate stands much nearer to the views of Valentinus than the detailed account of Ptolemaic doctrines which Irenaeus gives in i. 1–8. We have in these excerpts a somewhat complete whole, differing in some important respects from the doctrinal system of the Italic school, and agreeing with that of Valentinus in that it knows of only one Sophia, whose offspring Christus, leaving his mother, enters the Pleroma, and sends down Jesus for the redemption of the forsaken One.