THE IRENAEUS - VALENTINUS CONTROVERSY (Part II)
Brief review: Valentinus, leader of the gnostic Christian movement. Irenaeus, who represents the orthodox Christian Church, had opposed Valentinus and his followers on the issue of Christian maturity. Valentinus had characterized Irenaeus' group as "ecclesiastic" or "psychic" Christian, those who function on the level of psyche, which means the gnosis of Irenaeus, and the rest of the orthodox Christian churches, are not deep enough, or mature enough.(p.168)
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Within a generation of Valentinus's teaching in Rome, the movement had won a considerable following throughout the Christian world, especially among the more educated members of the church. Tertullian, complains that more often it is "the most faithful, the most prudent, and the most experienced" church members "who have gone over the other side.(69) Irenaeus, to his dismay, found Valentinian teachers active among members of his own congregation in Lyons, inviting believers to attend secret meetings, to raise questions about the faith and discuss its "deeper meaning."(70) In such meetings, unauthorized by the bishop, these Valentinians taught what Irenaeus regarded as blasphemy. They taught, for example, that the creator God described in Genesis is not the only God, as most Christians believe - nor is he the malevolent, degraded chief of the fallen angels, as the radicals imagine. According to Valentinus, he is an anthropomorphic image of the true divine Source underlying all being, the ineffable, indescribable source Valentinus calls "the depth," or "the abyss." When Valentinus does evoke images for that Source, he describes it as essentially dynamic and dyadic, the divine "Father of all" and "Mother of all."(71) Those who attended such meetings might also hear the bishop - Irenaeus himself- although a good man, was a person of limited understanding who had not progressed beyond faith to gnosis.
"Valentinus think of themselves as people who are reforming the church and raising its level of spiritual understanding, but, he says, nothing good they accomplish could possibly compensate for the harm they inflict by "dividing in pieces the great and glorious body of Christ,"(72) the Church. . . ." "Their presence as an insidious inner group threatened the fragile structures of organizational and moral consensus through which leaders like Irenaeus were attempting to unify Christian groups throughout the world." (This is one of the major concerns of church hierarchies today, especially among mainline churches. For the last few years, there have been attempts to introduce post-modern theological reformulation of church doctrines. Church hierarchies are aware of them but, according to Bishop John Spong, they choose to avoid it, for the "unity of the church" or the denomination. The fear of church leaders to open the debate on church doctrines "will gut the church" or the denomination).
While Valentinian Christians agreed that the bishops' moral instructions was necessary, for psychic Christians, they tended to regard themselves as exempt, free to make their own decisions about acts that the bishops prohibited. Some Valentinian Christians, Irenaeus says, attend pagan festivals along with their families and friends, convinced that doing so cannot pollute them; others, he charges, go to gladiator shows, and are guilty of what he describes as flagrant sexual transgressions.(73) As an example, Irenaeus cites Marcus, a Valentinian teacher active "in our own district in the Rhone Valley." Irenaeus calls him a seducer who concocts special aphrodisiacs to entice the many women who have been "defiled by him, and were filled with passion for him" including "the wife of one of our deacons. . . a woman of remarkable beauty,"(74) who actually left home to travel with Marcus's group.
But when Irenaeus gets down to describing Marcus's actual techniques, we can see that he is speaking metaphorically. What concerns the bishop, among other things, is the enormous appeal that Valentinian teaching had for women believers, who were increasingly excluded during the second century from active participation in Irenaeus's church. Marcus, Irenaeus says, "seduces women" by inviting them to participate in celebrating the Eucharist, and by casting the eucharistic prayers on such "seductive words" as prayers to Grace, the divine Mother, along with the divine Father.(75) Worse, Marcus "lays hands" upon women to invoke the holy spirit to come down upon them, and then encourages them to speak in prophecy(76). When Irenaeus accuses Marcus's followers of adultery, he is invoking a traditional biblical image for participating in "illicit" religious practices. The prophets Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, for example, often used the metaphors of adultery and prostitution to indict those they accused of being "unfaithful" to God's covenant.(77)
Several Valentinian works discovered at Nag Hammadi, including the Gospel of Truth and the Gospel of Philip(both gospels were excluded by the bishops as part of the NT Canon), offer correctives to charges that the Valentinians were immoral. In one of the few remaining fragments of his teachings, Valentinus himself, commenting on Jesus' saying that "God alone is good," says that apart from God's grace, the human heart is a "dwelling place for many demons. But when the Father, who alone is good, looks upon it, he purifies and illuminates it with his light; thus the one who has such a heart is blessed, because he sees God.(78). The Gospel of Truth, which may also have been written by Valentinus offers the following ethical instruction to gnostic Christians:
Speak of the truth with those who seek for it, and of gnosis to those who have committed sins in
their error. Secure the feet of those who have stumbled, and stretch out your hands to those who
are ill. Feed those who are hungry, and give rest to those who are weary. . . .For you are the
understanding which is drawn forth. If strength acts thus, it becomes even stronger. . . .Do not
become a dwelling place for the devil, for you have already destroyed them.(79)
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Intending to transpose Christian moral discipline into a new key, the author of Philip takes the story of the tree of knowledge of good and evil as a parable that shows the futility of the traditional approach to morality. According to Philip, "the law was the tree"; the law, like the tree of knowledge, claims to give "knowledge of good and evil," but it cannot accomplish any moral transformation. Instead, it "created death for those who ate of it. For when it said, 'Eat this, do not eat that,' it became the beginning of death."(82)
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While rejecting the ordinary dichotomy between good and evil, this author does not neglect ethical questions, much less imply that they are not important. For him the question is not whether a certain act is "good" or "evil" but how to reconcile the freedom gnosis conveys with the Christian's responsibility to love others. Here the author has in mind a saying from the gospel of John("You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free") and the Apostle Paul's discussion of love and gnosis in 1 Corinthians, chapters 8 and 9. There Paul says that he considers himself, because of his own gnosis, free to eat and drink whatever he likes, free to travel with a Christian sister as a wife, and free to live as an evangelist at community expense. Yet, Paul says, "since not everyone has this gnosis" (1 Cor. 8:7-13), he willingly relinguishes his freedom for the sake of love, inorder not to offend potential converts or immature Christians.
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The central theme of the Gospel of Philip is the transforming power of love: that what one becomes depends upon what one loves.(85) Whoever matures in love takes care not to cause distress to others: Blessed is the one who has not caused grief to anyone.(86) Jesus Christ is the paradigm of the one who does not offend or grieve anyone, but refreshes and blesses everyone he encounters, whether "great or small, believer or unbeliever."(87) The gnostic Christian, then, must always temper the freedom gnosis conveys with love for others. They author says, too, that he looks forward to the time when freedom and love will harmonize spontaneously, so that the spiritually mature person will be free to follow his or her own true desires without grieving anyone else. Instead of commanding one to "eat this, or do not eat that," as did the former "tree" of the law, the true tree of gnosis will convey perfect freedom:
In the place where I eat all things is the tree of knowledge. . . .That garden is the place where they
will say to me, "Eat this, or do not eat that, just as you wish."(88)
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The majority of Christians, by contrast, characterized spiritual formation as the Essenes had, as an internal contest between the forces of good and evil. The great Christian ascetic Anthony, who lived in Egypt in c.250-355 C.E. and became a pioneer among the desert fathers, taught his spiritual heirs in monastic tradition to picture Satan as the most intimate enemy of all - the enemy we call our own self. The Life of Anthony, written in the fourth century by Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, describes how Satan tempts Anthony by speaking through his inner thoughts and impulses, through imagination and desire. Philip, on the other hand, interprets the human inclination to sin without recourse to Satan. But this does not mean, as some orthodox Christians suspected, that Valentinian Christians naively believed that they had no need to engage in moral struggle because they were "beyond good and evil," essentially incapable of sin. On the contrary, Philip teaches that within each person lies hidden the "root of evil." This is Philip's interpretation of the traditional Jewish teaching of the yetzer 'hara, which the rabbis called the "evil impulse." So long as we remain unaware of the "root of evil" within us, Philip says, "it is powerful, but when it is recognized (or, as Walter Wink says, "named"), it is destroyed."
Some other major ideas we find in Elaine Pagels' treatment of the early gnostic Christian movement, she also mentioned one of the early church's controversial issues, which had continued to this day, is the Virgin birth.
Philip ridicules such belief:
Some said, "Mary conceived by the holy spirit." They are in error. They do not know what they
are saying; for when did a female ever conceive through a female?(92)
As Philip sees it, Jesus, born of Mary and Joseph as his human parents, was reborn of the holy spirit, the feminine element of the divine being (since the Hebrew term for spirit, Ruah, is feminine) and of the "Father in heaven," when Jesus urged his disciples to address in prayer (Our Father who art in heaven. . ."). Yet, the author adds, the very mention of a feminine spiritual power "is a great anathema to the Hebrews, who are the apostles, and apostolic people.(93)
Such people do see baptism as rebirth through the holy spirit, but they do not understand that they must be reborn from the heavenly Father as well. Thus, says Philip, "when we were Hebrews, we. . .had only our mother; but when we became Christians, we had both father and mother.(94)
Baptism, then, differs for different people. Some, the author says, "go down in the water (of baptism) and come up without receiving anything,(95) but nonetheless such a person says, "I am Christian." For such people, according to Philip, the name "Christian" is only a promise of what they may yet receive in the future. For others, however, baptism becomes a moment of transformation," thus it is when one experiences a mystery.(96) Whoever is reborn of the heavenly Father and heavenly Mother becomes a whole person again, receiving back a part of the human self that had been lost in the beginning of time - "the spirit, the partner of one's soul." Such a person becomes whole again and "holy, down to the very body."(97) One can hardly refer to such a person as a Christian, "for this person is no longer a Christian, but a Christ."(98)
Another important issue Elaine Pagels writes is Irenaeus's view of Valentinian theology. She says,
"Finally, Irenaeus denounces Valentinian theology as the devious result of Satan's own inspiration. Irenaeus concludes his five-volume work Against Heresies by speaking, in God's place, the words of divine judgment:
Let those persons, therefore, who blaspheme the creator, either by openly expressed disagreement.
. .or by distorting the meaning (of the Scriptures), like the Valentinians and all the falsely called
gnostics, be recognized as agents of Satan by all who worship God. Through their agency Satan
even now, and not earlier, has been seen to speak against God. . .the same God who has prepared
eternal fire for every kind of apostasy.(102)
Just as in the beginning of time Satan led humans beings astray by means of the serpent, "so now," Irenaeus declares, "do these people, filled with a Satanic spirit, seduce the people of God." Against "all heretics," Irenaeus helps construct for the Christian churches the structure that has sustained orthodox Christianity ever since, by claiming sole access to the "doctrines of the apostles, and the system of the church throughout the whole world, and the distinct manifestation of the body of Christ (that is, the church) according to the succession of bishops," together with "a very complete system of doctrine."(103)
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For a more thorough reading of some of the major controversies between Irenaeus and the gnostic Christian movement, read Elaine Pagels's book, "The Origin of Satan." Buy it online via Amazon.com.
Wish to join the conversation? Drop me some line: jnriingen@aol.com.
Prepared by "The Backyard Thinker"
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