The first Gnostic generation was content to consider God as ineffable and inexpressible. But at least they believed in him firmly. Their successors went even further, and certain of their expressions often remind one of the Brahman of the Upanishads,who can only be defined by “not not.” “(Time) was, says (Basilides), when there was nothing. Not even, however, did that nothing constitute anything of existent things; but, to express myself undisguisedly and candidly, without any quibbling, it is altogether nothing. But when, he says, I employ the expression ‘was,’ I do not say that it was; but (I speak this way) in order to signify the meaning of what I wish to elucidate.”26 And again: “He who speaks the word
- Philosophumena I, VII, p. 20 [sic]: “Ce Dieu, dit le pseudo-Basilide, était lorsque le rien était, mais ce rien n’était pas quelqu’une des choses qui existent maintenant, et, pour parler ouvertement, simplement et sans subtilité, seul le rien existait. Or, quand je dis qu’il existait, je ne veux pas dire qu’il a réellement existé, je veux seulement montrer ma pensée.”
[Hippolytus, The Refutation of All Heresies, 7.8, trans. MacMahon, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 5:103. The reader should note that in MacMahon’s translation, the subject of this passage is Time, and not God, as it is in Camus’ French text.—Trans.]
. . . was non-existent; nor was that existent which was being produced.
The seed of the cosmical system was generated . . . from nonentities; (and I mean by the seed,) the word which was spoken, ‘Let there be light.’ And this . . . is that which has been stated in the Gospels: ‘He was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.’”27 Hippolytus summarizes these remarks as follows: “In this way, ‘nonexistent’ God made the world out of nonentities, casting and depositing some one Seed that contained in itself a conglomeration of the germs of the world.”28But one must take into account Hippolytus’s sentiments and realize that this excessive subtlety is not the rule with the Gnostics. On the contrary, it seems that Valentinus had had a very keen sense of the divine nature. It is only in the doctrine of intermediaries that he gave free reign to his imagination.
d) Valentinus is the Gnostic whose work we know the best.29 On the other hand, about his life we have no information, to such an extent that some have cast doubt on his very existence. His very coherent system can be divided into a theology, a cosmology, and a morality. It is the most curious example of this incarnation of mythology of which we spoke earlier. To tell the truth, the pleroma that Valentinus places between God and the earth is a Christian Olympus. At least it is Christian in intention, but in form and imagination it is Greek. Valentinus’s philosophy is a metaphysics in action, a tremendous tragedy that is played out in heaven and earth, and in the infinity of Time, a struggle of problems and symbols, something like the Roman de la Rose of Gnostic thought.
- Philosophumena, 340, lines 12–15 [sic]: “Celui qui parlait n’existait pas, et ce qui fut ensuite créé n’était pas davantage; donc de ce qui n’était pas fut fait le germe du monde, c’est-à-dire cette parole qui fut prononcée par le Dieu néant: Que la lumière soit; et c’est ce qui est écrit dans l’Évangile. Il est la lumière illuminant tout homme venant en ce monde.”
[Hippolytus, The Refutation of All Heresies, 7.10, ibid., 104.—Trans.] - Philosophumena, VII, 22 [sic]: “Ainsi Dieu non existant a afit un cosmos non existant d’éléments non existants en émettant un germe unique qui contenait tous les germes du cosmos.”
[Hippolytus, The Refutation of All Heresies, 7.9, ibid.—Trans.] - Philosophumena and Stromates, XIII.
1) Valentinus’s God30 is uncreated and timeless. But solitary and perfect, he superabounds as a result of his perfection. By thus superabounding he created a Dyad, one of Spirit and Truth. This pair in its turn generates Word and Life, which produce Anthropos and Ecclesia. From these six principles now arise the pleroma intact, which is composed of two groups of angels, or æons, the one containing a dozen, the other containing ten, that is to say, in Gnostic terms, the decade and the dodecade.31 Spirit and Truth, wanting to glorify the divinity, create a chorus of ten æons whose mission is to render homage to God. They are created in the following order: the Abyss, the Mixed, the One who is ageless, Unity, the One who is of his own nature, Pleasure, the One who is motionless, the Mixture, the only Son, and Happiness. Word and Life in their turn—but this time with the goal of glorifying the active Spirit— create the dodecade. The dodecade is composed of the dozen eons prepared in syzygies, that is to say, in pairs of male and female. They are: the Paraclete and Faith, the Father and Hope, the Mother and Love, Prudence and Intelligence, the Ecclesiastic and the Very Happy, the Volunteer and Wisdom. Together these æons form the pleroma, midway between God and the world. But what the world is and its relation to this theology and æonology Valentinus is going to teach us.
2) It is remarkable that thus far God alone has created without the helpof a female principle. He alone is perfect. He alone superabounds. It is through their union that Spirit and Truth or Word and Life succeeded in generating, respectively, the decade and the dodecade. Now the last born of the eons, Sophia, or Wisdom, from the bottom of the ladder of principles, turned around and wanted to see God.32In this manner, she knew that God alone had created. Through pride and envy, she attempted to create on her own. But she succeeds in creating only one formless being, of which it is said in Genesis: “The earth was without form and void.”33 Sophia then recognized with great sorrow her ignorance and, full of fear, was moved to despair. These four passions constitute the four elements of the world. And Sophia lives forever joined to this formless fetus she
- De Faye, [Gnostiques et Gnosticisme,] I, 2. Amelineau, [Essai sur le Gnosticisme égyptien,] III, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
- The dodecade is devoted to the active Spirit; the decade, a perfect number according to the Pythagoreans, is devoted to a perfect God.
- De Faye, [Gnostiques et Gnosticisme,] ch. II.
- Genesis 1:2.
had created. But God took pity on her and again created a special principle, the principle of Horos,34 or Limit. Limit, coming to the aid of Sophia, will restore her to her original nature and cast the world out of the pleroma, thus reestablishing the original harmony. At this moment a demiurge intervenes, and arranging matter, makes from it the cosmos. Utilizing Sophia’s passion, he created men. These men are divided into three categories according to the level of consciousness of their origin:35 the spiritual, who aspire to God; the materialists, who have no memory and therefore no concern for their origins; and between the two, the psychics, the indecisive, who run from the vulgar life of the senses to the most elevated anxieties without knowing which to hold on to. But they all bear the mark of their birth: they have been born of fear, ignorance, and sorrow. Hence the need for Redemption. But it is the Spirit this time who, transforming himself into Christ, came to deliver man from his illfated seed. Things are further complicated when we learn that the Redeemer was not Jesus. Jesus is born of the acknowledgment of the eons regarding the God who had reestablished order. They therefore gather their virtues and offer to God in thanksgiving the being thus formed. Redemption, on the contrary, is a work of the Holy Spirit who has revealed to men their divine part and who has brought about in them the death of their sinful part. This is without doubt the meaning of that enigmatic text of the Stromateis:“‘Ye are originally mortal, and children of eternal life, and ye would have death distributed to you, that ye may spend and lavish it, and that death may die in you and by you; for when we dissolve the world, and are not yourselves dissolved, ye have dominion over all creation and all corruption.’”36
3) Valentinus’s ethic is closely tied to his cosmology. For all that, his cosmology is only a solution adapted to a problem that obsessed him, the problem of evil. “I came to believe in the reality that tragedies represented, I am persuaded that they only place the truth before our eyes.
- Cf. De Faye, [Gnostiques et Gnosticisme,] p. 238.
- Cf. Amelineau, [Essai sur le Gnosticisme égyptien,] p. 219. De Faye, [Gnostiques et Gnosticisme,] p. 45.
- Stromates, XIII, 85, according to De Faye, [Clément d’Alexandrie,] p. 42: “Vous êtes immortels depuis le commencement; vous êtes enfants de la vie éternelle et vous voulez partager la mort afin que vous la dépensiez et l’épuisiez et que la mort meure en vous et par vous. Car lorsque vous désagrégez le monde et que vous-mêmes n’êtes pas désagrégés, vous êtes maîtres de la création et de la corruption tout entière.”
[Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 13, trans. Alexander, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 2:425.—Trans.].
I believe in Oenomaüs’ desire during his intoxication, I do not regard as an unbelievable thing that two brothers may have been able to fight one another. And I could not find the strength within me to say that God was the author and creator of all
