Valentinian Gnosis
Valentinus is not the villain he has been made out to be
the concept of orthodoxy has a cruel history
Ireneus Polemic "Against Hereses' is chiefly against Valentinian Gnosticism.
Far from being considered fringe in the church in Rome in the middle of the Second Century , Valentinus, the most well known of the Gnostic Christians, was even a candidate for Bishop at one point!
Though until recently, it was only through quotes recorded by his enemies that we had any idea of who Valentinus was and what he believed.
Thanks to Nag Hammadi we now have the Gospel of Truth which many consider to have been written by Valentinus.
The Gospel of Truth gives us a good understanding of just how Valentinus understood Gnosticism.
First Hand Knowledge (Gnosis in the Greek) is a dominant theme of the Gospel of Truth, and this is not some esoteric mystical knowledge, it is clearly Knowledge of the Father.
Consider these quotes from the Gospel of Truth:
The gospel of truth is joy to those who have received from the Father of truth the gift of knowing Him by the power of the Word
He (Jesus) was nailed to a cross. He became a fruit of the knowledge of the Father.
He is the one who set the All in order and in whom the All existed and whom the All lacked. As one of whom some have no knowledge, he desires that they know him and that they love him. For what is it that the All lacked, if not the knowledge of the Father?
Until the moment when they who are passing through all these things - I mean they who have experienced all these confusions - awake, they see nothing because the dreams were nothing. It is thus that they who cast ignorance from them as sleep do not consider it to be anything, nor regard its properties to be something real, but they renounce them like a dream in the night and they consider the knowledge of the Father to be the dawn.
He (Jesus) was nailed to a cross. He became a fruit of the knowledge of the Father.
He is the one who set the All in order and in whom the All existed and whom the All lacked. As one of whom some have no knowledge, he desires that they know him and that they love him. For what is it that the All lacked, if not the knowledge of the Father?
Until the moment when they who are passing through all these things - I mean they who have experienced all these confusions - awake, they see nothing because the dreams were nothing. It is thus that they who cast ignorance from them as sleep do not consider it to be anything, nor regard its properties to be something real, but they renounce them like a dream in the night and they consider the knowledge of the Father to be the dawn.
Valentinus is also the first to formulate the Doctrine of the Christian God as the hypostases of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Trinity.
Even if modern Christians can't see the difference between Yahweh and the Trinity, at least the adherents of Judaism can!
What's Inside
- Orthodoxy and heresy
- Perception
- Seed and Soil - Christ and Bride
- The death of Christ
- The Word without - the Word within
- Redemption of fallen Sophia
- Coinherence and Eternity
- Eschatology
- Yahweh and the Trinity
- The Bible
- The mystery of the Kingdom
- The Missing Gospels
- The Apology of Aristides
A
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