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Updated: May 16, 2025
The array of witnesses examined runs thus: Clement of Rome, Barnabas, Hermas, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Hegesippus, Papias of Hierapolis, the Clementines, the Epistle to Diognetus, Basilides, Valentinus, Marcion, Tatian, Dionysius of Corinth, Melito of Sardis, Claudius Apollinaris, Athenagoras, Epistle of Vienne and Lyons, Ptolemaeus and Heracleon, Celsus and the Canon of Muratori.
It is, on the one hand, still clearer that the greater part of the evangelical references usually quoted are really from our present actual Gospels, but, on the other hand, there is a more distinct probability that these are to be assigned rather to the School of Valentinus than to Valentinus himself. The supposed allusion to St. John we shall pass over for the present.
Notwithstanding the apparent cloud of unfounded traditions that are associated with his name, there can be no doubt at all of the fact that Valentinus to give him the Latin name by which he is commonly designated in foreign literatures was one of the great geniuses, who, working in obscurity, make precious steps into the unknown that enable humanity after them to see things more clearly than ever before.
I said just now that the quotation could not with certainty be referred to Valentinus, but it is at least considerably earlier than the contemporaries of Hippolytus. It appears that there was a division in the Valentinian School upon the interpretation of this very passage.
The Alexandrian Gnosticism failed to excite in the minds of the holy monks of the East that aversion which we now feel for its tenets, inasmuch as it did not openly anathematize the Scriptures of the Old Law, nay, even preserved a certain outward respect for them, on account of the multitude of Jews living in Alexandria, and particularly because the open system of Dualism, which afterward came from Syria and in the hands of Manes established the existence of two equal and eternal principles of good and evil, found no place in the teachings of Valentinus and his school.
In "Philippians" especially, many expressions seem to verge upon Docetism, the extreme form of Gnosticism, according to which the human body of Jesus was only a phantom. Valentinus, who was contemporary with the Pauline writers of the second century, maintained that Jesus was not born of Mary by any process of conception, but merely passed through her, as light traverses a translucent substance.
Finally, in these latter days, there appeared, under human form, three celestial spirits Jesus of Galilee, Basilides, and Valentinus to whom it was given to pluck the finest fruits of that tree of knowledge, whose roots pass through all the earth, and whose top reaches to the highest heaven.
Both with this ancient heretic, as with Valentinus, it is impossible to distinguish what is ascribed to him from what is ascribed to his followers, and thus evidence drawn from either of them is weaker even than usual. Marcion, the greatest heretic of the second century, ought to prove a useful witness to the Christians if the present Gospels had been accepted in his time as canonical.
The case in regard to Valentinus, the next great Gnostic leader, who came forward about the year 140 A.D., is very similar to that of Basilides, though the balance of the argument is slightly altered.
DORION. If I understood you aright, Zenothemis, you said that three wonderful men Jesus, Basilides, and Valentinus had discovered secrets which had remained hidden from Pythagoras and Plato, and all the philosophers of Greece, and even from the divine Epicurus, who, however, has freed men from the dread of empty terrors.
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