Chapter XI.—The opinions of Valentinus, with those of his disciples and others.
1. Let us now look at the inconsistent opinions of those heretics (for there are some
two or three of them), how they do not agree in treating the same points, but alike, in things
and names, set forth opinions mutually discordant. The first151 of them, Valentinus, who
adapted the principles of the heresy called “Gnostic” to the peculiar character of his own
school, taught as follows: He maintained that there is a certain Dyad (twofold being), who
is inexpressible by any name, of whom one part should be called Arrhetus (unspeakable),
and the other Sige (silence). But of this Dyad a second was produced, one part of whom he
names Pater, and the other Aletheia. From this Tetrad, again, arose Logos and Zoe, Anthropos
and Ecclesia. These constitute the primary Ogdoad. He next states that from Logos and Zoe
ten powers were produced, as we have before mentioned. But from Anthropos and Ecclesia
proceeded twelve, one of which separating from the rest, and falling from its original condi-
tion, produced the rest152 of the universe. He also supposed two beings of the name of
Horos, the one of whom has his place between Bythus and the rest of the Pleroma, and divides
the created Æons from the uncreated Father, while the other separates their mother from
the Pleroma. Christ also was not produced from the Æons within the Pleroma, but was
brought forth by the mother who had been excluded from it, in virtue of her remembrance
of better things, but not without a kind of shadow. He, indeed, as being masculine, having
severed the shadow from himself, returned to the Pleroma; but his mother being left with
the shadow, and deprived of her spiritual substance, brought forth another son, namely, the
Demiurge, whom he also styles the supreme ruler of all those things which are subject to
him. He also asserts that, along with the Demiurge, there was produced a left-hand power,
in which particular he agrees with those falsely called Gnostics, of whom to we have yet to
speak. Sometimes, again, he maintains that Jesus was produced from him who was separated
from their mother, and united to the rest, that is, from Theletus, sometimes as springing
from him who returned into the Pleroma, that is, from Christ; and at other times still as
derived from Anthropos and Ecclesia. And he declares that the Holy Spirit was produced
by Aletheia153 for the inspection and fructification of the Æons, by entering invisibly into
them, and that, in this way, the Æons brought forth the plants of truth.
2. Secundus again affirms that the primary Ogdoad consists of a right hand and a left
hand Tetrad, and teaches that the one of these is called light, and the other darkness. But
he maintains that the power which separated from the rest, and fell away, did not proceed
directly from the thirty Æons, but from their fruits.
151 That is, the first of the two or three here referred to, not the first of the Gnostic teachers, as some have
imagined. [The Gnosticism of one age may be essentially the same in spirit as the Agnosticism of another.]
152 Viz., all outside of the Pleroma.
153 Corrected from Ecclesia in the text.
Chapter XI.—The opinions of Valentinus, with those of his disciples and others.
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Chapter XI.—The opinions of Valentinus, with those of his disciples and…