imperishable Godhead. At any rate, this fragment does not tell us whether, according to the teaching of Valentinus, the body of Jesus was pneumatic or psychical. According to another fragment attributed to Valentinus, and preserved by Eulogius of Alexandria (ap. Photium, Bibl. Cod. 230), he appears to have treated with ridicule the opinion of the "Galileans" that Christ had two natures, and to have maintained that He had but one nature composed of the visible and the invisible. Hilgenfeld (l.c. pp. 302 seq.) supposes the Valentinus of this fragment to be the Gnostic, while others take him to have been the Apollinarian. But we have no other instance of any Gnostic giving to Catholic Christians (as did the emperor Julian later) the epithet "Galilean." Further, although Tertullian (adv. Prax. 29) and Origen (de Princip. i. 2, 1) may have spoken of two natures or two substances in Christ, we can hardly imagine Valentinus pronouncing a doctrine ridiculous, and yet it finding acceptance in his school. For we find the Occidental Valentinians actually teaching in very similar terms, that Soter, the common product of the whole Pleroma, united himself with the Christus of the Demiurge the Man Jesus. Could we otherwise assume that the fragment is genuine, it would serve to prove that the doctrine of the Oriental school concerning the pneumatic body of Christ was in fact the original teaching of Valentinus. How Valentinus thought concerning the origin of matter and of evil cannot be made out from existing fragments. When, however, we find him designating the Demiurge as author of death, we can hardly suppose that he derived the transitory nature and other imperfections of the terrestrial universe from an originally evil material substance. The view, moreover, which underlies the psalm of Valentinus, of which the Philosophumena have preserved a fragment (Philos. vi. 37, pp. 197 seq.) is decidedly monastic. He there sees in the spirit how "all things are hanging (κρεμάμενα) and are upborne (ὀχούμενα), the flesh hanging on the soul, the soul upborne by the air, the air hanging on the aether, from Bythos fruits produced and from the womb the child." An interpretation of these sayings current in the Valentinian school is appended. According to this interpretation, flesh is the ὕλη which depends upon the soul (the psychical nature) of the Demiurge. Again the Demiurge hangs from the spirit which is outside the Pleroma, i.e. the Sophia in the kingdom of the Midst, the Sophia from Horus and from the Pleroma, and finally the world of Aeons in the Pleroma from the abyss, i.e. their Father. If this interpretation be, as we may assume, correct, Valentinus must have conceived the whole universe as forming a grand scale of being, beginning with the abysmal ground of all spiritual life, and thence descending lower and lower down to matter. The whole scale then is a descent from the perfect to ever more and more imperfect images; according to the principle expressly laid down by Valentinus, that the cosmos is as inferior to the living Aeon as the image is inferior to the living countenance (ap. Clem. Strom. iv. 13, 92). This view of the nature of the universe exhibits a much nearer relationship to Platonic philosophy than to the Oriental dualism which underlay the older Gnostic systems; and Hippolytus is therefore completely right, when dealing with the psalm of Valentinus, to speak of Platonizing Gnostics (Philos. vi. 37, p. 197).
The fragments do not give us any detailed acquaintance with the doctrine of Valentinus concerning the Aeons. The Πατήρ or Βυθός stands at their head; but what place in the Valentinian Pleroma was assigned to the Ἄνθροπος προών in whose name Adam was created, is difficult to determine.
Of a two-fold Sophia, a higher and a lower, we read nothing. Sophia is the artist (ζωγράφος) who forms the world after the archetype of the living Aeon, in order to be honoured by his name. The world as formed obtains credit and stability through the invisible nature of God (Strom. iv. 13, 92).
To what authority Valentinus made appeal as the source of his doctrine cannot be made out from the fragments. From the Homily to the Friends Clemens Alexandrinus has preserved a sentence which defines "many of the things written in the public books" (δημοσίοις βίβλιος: he means doubtless the writings of the O.T.) as "found written in the church of God"—"for," he adds, "those things which are common" (i.e. not merely found in books—read, with Heinrici κοινά instead of κενά) "are words from the heart"; and proceeds, "The law written in the heart is the People of the Beloved One, both loved and loving" (Grabe was wrong in proposing to emend λαός into λόγος). The meaning is that this "People" is in virtue of the inward revelation of the Logos a law unto itself (cf. Rom. ii. 14). But this inward revelation has reference only to "that which is common" (τὰ κοινά), i.e. to the universal ethical truths written in the heart which "the church of God" needs not first to learn from "the public books." But this passage tells us nothing about the sources whence Valentinus derived his Gnosis. For these we must go back to the statement of Clemens (Strom. vii. 17, 106), according to which the Valentinians spoke of their leader as having learned of a certain Theodas, a disciple of St. Paul. But the actual statement of Irenaeus is more to be depended on, that Valentinus was the first who transformed the old doctrines of "the Gnostics" into a system of his own (Haer. i. 11, 1; cf. Tert. adv. Valentinian. 4.). The fragments, moreover, give a series of points of contact with the opinions of these older "Gnostics." We may therefore regard as an axiom to be adhered to in our investigations that of any two Valentinian doctrines, that is the older and more original which approaches more closely to the older and vulgar Gnosis (Iren. i. 30). Yet the system of Valentinus had a peculiar character of its own. He was the first to breathe a really philosophic spirit into the old vulgar Gnosis, by making use of Plato's world of thought to infuse a deeper meaning into the old Gnostic myths. Baur, therefore, was quite right in emphasizing the Platonism of Valentinus (Christliche Gnosis, pp 124 seq.), to which the Philosophumena had already called attention (Philos. vi. 21 sqq.).
Irenaeus completes the information afforded
