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Concept
Valentinus (Gnostic)
Summary
Valentinus (Greek: Οὐαλεντῖνος), also spelled Valentinius; AD 100 – 180, was the best known and, for a time, most successful early Christian Gnostic theologian. He founded his school in Rome. According to Tertullian, Valentinus was a candidate for bishop but started his own group when another was chosen.
Valentinus produced a variety of writings, of which for the most part only fragments quoted by his opponents survive. However, it has recently been argued that
Valentinus's lost letter to Agathapous, quoted by Clement of Alexandria, is in fact Letter 366 of Pseudo-Basil. Some have also argued that the Gospel of Truth, a work preserved in the Nag Hammadi library, is also from the pen of Valentinus. Otherwise, his doctrine is known only in the developed and modified form given to it by his disciples, the Valentinians.
Valentinus 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.
Valentinus had a large following, the Valentinians. It later divided into an Eastern and a Western, or Italian, branch. The Marcosians belonged to the Western branch.
Epiphanius wrote (390) that he learned through word of mouth (although he acknowledged that it was a disputed point) that Valentinus was "born a Phrebonite" in the coastal region of Egypt, and received his Greek education in Alexandria, an important and metropolitan early center of Christianity. The word "Phrebonite" is otherwise unknown, but probably refers to the ancient town of Phragonis, near present-day Tidah. In Alexandria, Valentinus may have heard the Gnostic philosopher Basilides and certainly became conversant with Hellenistic Middle Platonism and the culture of Hellenized Jews like the great Alexandrian Jewish allegorist and philosopher Philo.
Official source
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Related concepts (19)
Valentinianism
Valentinianism was one of the major Gnostic Christian movements. Founded by Valentinus in the 2nd century AD, its influence spread widely, not just within Rome but also from Northwest Africa to Egypt through to Asia Minor and Syria in the East. Later in the movement's history it broke into an Eastern and a Western school. Disciples of Valentinus continued to be active into the 4th century AD, after the Roman Emperor Theodosius I issued the Edict of Thessalonica (380 AD), which declared Nicene Christianity as the State church of the Roman Empire.
Early Christianity
Early Christianity, or Paleochristianity, describes the historical era of the Christian religion up to the First Council of Nicaea in 325. Christianity spread from the Levant, across the Roman Empire, and beyond. Originally, this progression was closely connected to already established Jewish centers in the Holy Land and the Jewish diaspora. The first followers of Christianity were Jews who had converted to the faith, i.e. Jewish Christians. Early Christianity contains the Apostolic age and is followed by, and substantially overlaps with, the Patristic era.
Pleroma
Pleroma (πλήρωμα, literally "fullness") generally refers to the totality of divine powers. It is used in Christian theological contexts, especially in Gnosticism. The term also appears in the Epistle to the Colossians, which is traditionally attributed to Paul the Apostle. The word is used 17 times in the New Testament. The word literally means "fullness", from the verb (πληρόω, "to fill"), from (πλήρης, "full"). The word itself is a relative term, capable of many shades of meaning, according to the subject with which it is joined and the antithesis to which it is contrasted.