Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [333]
The writings of Valentinus exhibit a lot of Hellenistic and Gnostic characteristics: an interest in Platonic thought, mystic ascent, and narrative use of myth, in this case, often in place of philosophical discourse. But he does not reflect the entire Gnostic myth in its most obvious form. Rather he uses Christian imagery in a Gnostic way. He also wrote one of the earliest Christian mystical documents, the Gospel of Truth. He believed that salvation comes through gnōsis, a saving knowledge of the true purpose of the savior, which is not available through the flesh, since Jesus is not of the flesh. So gnōsis is achieved by spiritual meditation, which was taught in his movement, as it was in Platonism and as Paul can easily be interpreted.
Valentinus surely understood salvation to occur in the “spiritual body” of which Paul spoke, but interpreted so that it meant a spiritual existence, not a fleshly one at all. For Valentinus, the elect were those in the spiritual life, called the pneumatikoi (spiritually realized) by later Gnostics, explicitly referring to Paul’s term soma pneumatikon. If Plato’s word psyche (soul) is antithetical to Christianity, no one could criticize the word pneuma (spirit), the very word that Paul used so effectively. Pneuma could carry the whole significance of the Platonic soul yet also contain the added quantity of God’s prophetic spirit. So it became a kind of augmented soul for Christians.
For Valentinus, no meaningful salvation could be gained through this fallen flesh, though he appears to admit that the lowest and most ignorant grades of Christians do preach this lesser enlightenment. If Irenaeus’ tendentious description of Valentinus is factually correct, most of this is expressed through an elaborate cosmological myth, explaining how we came into this fallen state and therefore, by implication, how salvation can be gained. It was characteristic of Gnostic and Platonic writings to discuss cosmology in detail, from which soteriology could be implied.
From the beginning, you (plural) have been immortal, and you are children of eternal life. And you wanted death to be allocated to yourselves so that you might spend it and use it up, and that death might die in you and through you. For when you nullify the world and are not yourselves annihilated, you are lord over creation and all corruption. (Frag. F)27
In his description of the beginning of the cosmos, we see the implicit soteriology, spelled out afterwards, of escaping from materiality to the immortal realm. Notice how he uses Biblical imagery and the language of Paul to express these truths. In a large sense, Valentinus can be seen as an extreme Hellenistic interpreter of Paul.28 But, however it is derived, his resurrection conception is thoroughly spiritualized.
Martyrdom and Resurrection: Basilides
IN DIFFERENT ways, Elaine Pagels and William Frend have reported on the orthodox claim that the Gnostics and Docetists, who refuted the physical resurrection, reasoned out a refusal of martyrdom.29 So far as the “orthodox” were concerned, the Gnostics did not see the point of sacrificing the material body in martyrdom and they did not care to be prominent in the ranks of the martyrs. The Gnostics further reject the whole theory of apostolic succession, which began in the narrative of resurrection appearances from Luke down to their own day. In some ways, the Gnostics parody it in their description of the evil archons, bishops in disguise. For the most part, the Gnostics suspect the literal view of the resurrection, some of them calling it “the faith of fools.”30 The “orthodox” fight this denigration of their faith with anything