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Valentinus (Greek: Ούαλεντίνος; c. 100 CE – c. 180) was the best known and, for a time, most successful early Christian Gnostic theologian.[1] He founded his school in Rome. According to Tertullian, Valentinus was a candidate for bishop but started his own group when another was chosen.[2]
Valentinus produced a variety of writings, but only fragments survive, largely those quoted in rebuttal arguments in the works of his opponents, not enough to reconstruct his system except in broad outline.[1] His doctrine is known only in the developed and modified form given to it by his disciples, the Valentinians.[1][3] He taught that there were three kinds of people, the spiritual, psychical, and material; and that only those of a spiritual nature received the gnosis (knowledge) that allowed them to return to the divine Pleroma, while those of a psychic nature (ordinary Christians) would attain a lesser or uncertain form of salvation, and that those of a material nature were doomed to perish. [1] [4] [5]
Valentinus had a large following, the Valentinians.[1][3] It later divided into an Eastern and a Western, or Italian, branch.[1] The Marcosians belonged to the Western branch.[1]
- ^ a b c d e f g Cross, F. L.; Livingstone, E. A., eds. (2005). "Valentinus". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd, Revised ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 1687–1688. ISBN 978-0-19-280290-3.
- ^ Adversus Valentinianos 4.
- ^ a b Dunn, James D. G. (2016). ""The Apostle of the Heretics": Paul, Valentinus, and Marcion". In Porter, Stanley E.; Yoon, David (eds.). Paul and Gnosis. Pauline Studies. Vol. 9. Leiden and Boston: Brill Publishers. pp. 105–118. doi:10.1163/9789004316690_008. ISBN 978-90-04-31668-3. LCCN 2016009435. S2CID 171394481.
- ^ The Tripartite Tractate, §14
- ^ Irenaeus, Adversus Haeresies i. 6