Against the Valentinians

Contents

Reading pages: 1–19 · 20–39

1. 1The Valentinians, like the Eleusinian mysteries, hide their teaching behind silence and fine names, persuading before they teach, whereas truth persuades by teaching.
2. 2The Valentinians despise the church as simple, but Christ joined simplicity and wisdom, and the simple, like the dove, know God better than the cunning serpent.
3. 3Truth hides nothing; the Valentinian myth of Aeons and marriages is a nursery tale, the “endless genealogies” Paul condemned, and exposing it is already refuting it.
4. 4Valentinus, passed over for a bishopric, broke with the church; his followers Ptolemy, Heracleon, Secundus, Mark, and others each changed his system, calling their own inventions revelation.
5. 5Tertullian's account is not invented: Justin, Miltiades, Irenaeus, and Proculus had already exposed and refuted these heretics.
6. 6Tertullian explains that he will mostly keep the Greek names and will only narrate for now, with laughter where the subject deserves it.
7. 7Tertullian mocks the Valentinian heavens and recounts the first eight Aeons: Bythos and Sige, who produce Nus and Truth, who produce the Word and Life, who produce Man and Church.
8. 8Tertullian lists the ten and twelve further Aeons that make up the thirtyfold Pleroma and mocks their pompous names.
9. 9Only Nus knows the Father; Sophia, the youngest Aeon, rushes to search him out and nearly dissolves, until she meets Horos (Limit), who stops her.
10. 10In another version Sophia bears a formless daughter by herself; from her grief, terror, and ignorance matter begins; the Father sends Horos, who restores Sophia and casts her Enthymesis out of the Pleroma.
11. 11To steady the Pleroma, Nus emits Christ and the Holy Spirit, who teach the Aeons about their marriages and about how the Father can and cannot be known.
12. 12Made all alike, the Aeons sing to the Father and pool their best qualities to form Jesus, the Saviour, with angels as his escort; Tertullian compares him to a patchwork.
13. 13Tertullian sums up the first act of the Valentinian drama inside the Pleroma and turns to what happened outside it.
14. 14Sophia's cast-out Enthymesis, now called Achamoth, is given form by Christ, seeks his light, is stopped by Horos, and falls into grief, fear, bewilderment, ignorance, and a longing to turn back.
15. 15In the Valentinian myth the waters come from Achamoth's tears, the soul from her turning back, the elements from her fear, and light from her laughter; Tertullian mocks each.
16. 16The Saviour (Soter), sent with his angels, gives Achamoth form in knowledge and turns her passions into the two lower substances; this is the matter that Hermogenes also assumed.
17. 17Aroused by the sight of the Saviour's angels, Achamoth conceives and bears the spiritual kind, alongside the material and psychic kinds born of her passion and conversion.
18. 18Achamoth forms from the psychic substance the Demiurge, whom the Valentinians identify with the church's God, the Creator, and who works as her unknowing puppet.
19. 19The Valentinians make Achamoth, the Demiurge, and the archangels images of the higher Aeons, a set of likenesses so ill-matched that Tertullian laughs at the painter.
20. 20The Demiurge builds this world and seven heavens, called Sabbath after his seventh seat; the Valentinians even put Paradise with its trees above the third heaven.
21. 21The Valentinians give Sophia (Achamoth) many names, even Holy Spirit; and their Demiurge, knowing he had been made, absurdly claims to be the only God.
22. 22The Valentinians derive the devil and evil spirits from Achamoth's grief, call him the World-ruler, and rank him above the Creator in knowledge.
23. 23Tertullian sets out the Valentinian order of powers (Pleroma, Achamoth, Demiurge, devil) and mocks the idea that air and fire came from Sophia's sorrow and fever.
24. 24The Valentinian Demiurge makes man from fluid matter, which Tertullian says must be Sophia's mucus, and gives him an earthy “image”, a psychic “likeness”, and a covering of flesh.
25. 25Achamoth secretly passes spiritual seed through the Demiurge's breath into Adam; so the Valentinian man has four parts, spiritual, psychic, earthy, and fleshly.
26. 26The Valentinians teach that flesh perishes, the psychic may be saved, and the spiritual is saved by nature; their Saviour had no material body, which denies salvation to our flesh.
27. 27The Valentinian Christ passed through Mary without being born of her, received the Saviour at baptism, and lost him before the passion; so only a psychic Christ suffered.
28. 28In the Valentinian myth the Demiurge, who did not understand his own prophets, welcomes the Saviour like the centurion of the gospel and learns that he will take his mother's place.
29. 29The Valentinians divide mankind into three natures descended from Cain (earthy, lost), Abel (psychic, uncertain), and Seth (spiritual, saved by nature).
30. 30Believing themselves saved by nature, the Valentinians neglect discipline, explain away martyrdom, and make union with a woman a sacred mystery, while the church must work out its salvation.
31. 31At the end, the Valentinians say, Achamoth will enter the Pleroma as the Saviour's bride and the Demiurge will move up into her place.
32. 32In the Valentinian end, flesh perishes, psychic souls stay with the Demiurge, and the spiritual become brides of angels in the Pleroma; Tertullian prefers the Creator's promise, where there is no marrying.
33. 33Some of Ptolemy's followers gave Bythos two consorts, Thought and Will, from whom came Monogenes and Truth.
34. 34Some Valentinians make Bythos sexless, others both male and female.
35. 35Other Valentinians put an earlier Ogdoad of abstract Aeons before Bythos.
36. 36Some Valentinians derive the first eight Aeons all at once from the Forefather's acts of thinking and bringing forth.
37. 37Another Valentinian teacher begins with Solitude, Unity, Singularity, and Union, which Tertullian notes are all the same thing.
38. 38Secundus divides the first eight Aeons into a right and a left Tetrad, light and darkness, and derives the fallen power from their fruits.
39. 39The Valentinians disagree even about the origin of Jesus, and their doctrines have grown wild into the many sects of the Gnostics.