GNOSTICISM Is the "Acute," Catholicism the "Chronic" Christianization of Greek Philosophy and Oriental Mysticism on the Basis of the Gospel

VALENTINIAN GNOSIS AND THE APOCRYPHON OF JOHN

GILLES QUISPEL

GNOSTICISM is the "acute," catholicism the "chronic" christianization of Greek philosophy and Oriental mysticism on the basis of the Gospel. There is a way which leads from the Apocryphon of John to Valentinus, and from Valentinus to Heracleon, and from Heracleon to Origen. This is the basic view which underlies the edition and commentary of the writings of the Jung Codex: I) the Apocryphon of James reflects a shade of Egyptian Christianity in which Valentinian Gnosis was grafted on a Jewish Christian tree; 2) the Gospel of Truth reflects the christocentric docetism of the Oriental school of Valentinianism and of Valentinus himself; 3) according to the letter to Rheginos On Resurrection only the pneumatic body of Christ (and so of the Gnostics) is saved-this in accordance with the Oriental school and the Founding Father himself; 4) the stress on the importance of the "psychic" element, the sympathy for the Demiurge and the personal features of God in the Tripartite Tractate are characteristic of the Western school, more specifically of Heracleon, and prelude the theology of Origen; 5) all these writings presuppose an already existing Oriental Gnosis evidenced by Irenaeus, Haer. 1.29. I, and the four different versions of the Apocryphon of John found in recent times. Moreover, in this perspective the great heretics of the second cen tury, Basilides, Marcion, and Valentinus, are discerned in their true and authentic originality: 1) Basilides was the first Christian to express the concept of creatio ex nihilo; 2) Marcion, though certainly in fluenced by Cerdo or another Gnostic., was so impressed by John's and Paul's concept of God's unmotivated, free love of man that he even eliminated the underlying idea of man's spiritual affinity with the Godhead; 3) for Valentinus the Christ-event had a central mea ning, which is completely absent from the Apocryphon of John. All this could have been discovered before Nag Hammadi, because GNOSIS AND THE APOCRYPHON OF JOHN 119 the text of the Apocryphon of John was already known in its outline, as well as Irenaeus, Haer. l.29.l. But scholarship was so much domi nated by the view that "vulgar Gnosis" was an offshoot of "learned Gnosis" that even those scholars who defended the primacy of myth did not dare to say more than that the system oflrenaeus, Haer. l.29.l, came near to Valentinianism: they did not even mention that the Apocryphon of John had been discovered long before their time. I am not aware that there is anybody involved in the growth industry of Gnostic studies who contests the validity of the outline sketched above. There is only a quarrel about "firstmanship." There are, however, details which are still uncertain. In the first place they relate to the problem of the name of the sect from which the Apocryphon of John stems and to the original context of this writing. Tertullian on several occasions mentions the "Gnostics" and the Valentinians together. The "Gnostics" are a specific sect, allied with the Valentinians but not identical with them. When writing his Scorpiace (± 213), he says that in the times of persecutions the Grios tics and the Valentinians dissuade people from martyrdom. He de scribes them as being present in Carthage: "tune Gnostici erumpunt, tune Valentiniani proserpunt" (1). One of their leaders is obviously a certain Prodicus (15). He is also mentioned in Adversus Praxean (3); together with Valentinus he introduces "more than one god." Clement of Alexandria also says that the followers of Prodicus call themselves "Gnostics" (Str. 3.4.30; Stiihlin 2. 209.29-31). It would seem that Prodicus was a teacher of Alexandrian sectarians who styled them selves "Gnostics" and had spread from one seaport to another; we need not suppose that they came to Carthage from Rome in the wake of the catholic church. They could have been there long before the arrival of orthodoxy, because Tertullian was, after all, the first known catholic of Africa. Irenaeus says in so many words, "The first of them, who took his start from the principles of the so-called 'Gnostic' heresy and adapted them to his own brand of teaching, was Valentinus" (Haer. 1.11.1). Further on he tells us that according to Valentinus the Mother Sophia brought forth the demiurge, "and that a left-hand ruler was also brought forth together with him in the same way as the falsely-so called 'Gnostics' whom we are going to discuss in the following." This can only mean that according to Valentinus, just as to his pupils, Sophia suffered passions which were transformed into substance from which the Demiurge and the devil arose. "And first of all, they say,