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There were also Gnostic martyrs, as there were Jewish and pagan martyrs, and there were some Gnostics, especially the Valentinians, who adopted the terminology of resurrection in their treatises but who believed in something rather closer to the immortality of the soul and called it resurrection.44 The Valentinians in general took a more spiritual perspective on resurrection. The classic Treatise on Resurrection (also known as the Epistle to Rheginus), to cite but the most obvious text, neither accepts the notion that the spirit is capable of death nor that the material body is able to withstand the forces of decay in our life:

So then, as the apostle said of him, we have suffered with him, and arisen with him, and ascended with him.

Now, since we are manifestly present in this world, the world is what we wear (like a garment). From him (the savior) we radiate like rays, and being held fast by him until our sunset-that is, until our death in the present life-we are drawn upward by him as rays are drawn by the sun, restrained by nothing. This is resurrection of the spirit which “swallows” resurrection of the soul along with resurrection of the flesh. (Treat. Res. 45.23-46.1)45

Rheginus tried to get to a truth beyond antinomies of flesh and spirit, bodily and spiritual. One might think that he was on the way to the modern view that body and soul both speak to the same unity. But, in the end, Rheginus’s perspective is an attempted synthesis of resurrection and immortality of the soul. He begins with the literal, saying that he has suffered and risen with Christ. But there are three stages of awareness, of which the resurrection of the flesh is the simplest and least interesting. Rheginus uses “resurrection” in a very allegorical way, seemingly to preserve the terminology of early Christianity but actually emphasizing the immortality of the soul or spirit. Resurrection of the soul is closer to the truth but the highest truth involves the resurrection of the spirit. Resurrection is really a symbolic process by which we ascend and, as much from the verb tenses, the ascension is coterminous with salvation in this life. At the end, we merely confirm the promise made in this life. Resurrection and salvation have already happened proleptically.

With this allegorical perspective, Gnostics could not have been uncritical Gospel readers. But even Paul was sometimes a difficulty for them. The famous passage in 1 Corinthians 15 allows for the interpretation that resurrection will be as “a life-giving spirit.” Elaine Pagels has pointed out that in Valentinianism, the strategy was to attribute the different, seemingly conflicting passages in the New Testament to different groups of Christians, ascending in order of election, so that the most spiritual statements of resurrection also designated the most Gnostic Christians. They divided Christians into three types: The hylics (hyle means “matter” in Greek), those who are only material Christians, could be expected to understand flesh literally because that was their material (hylic) nature; it is no wonder they were often called the sarkic (from Greek sarx or flesh) or the fleshly race in other Gnostic documents. An intermediate group, the psychics (the psychikoi, “the ensouled” from psyche, the soul), have evidently understood more about the true nature of salvation but only the pneumatics (the pneumatikoi, the “spiritual” people from pneuma spirit) are fully aware of the real meaning of the Gospel. The pneumatics are in full possession of the gnōsis or saving knowledge.46 Those who deny the fully spiritual interpretation of the Gospel are themselves denied the fullest rewards. The theme of the punishment fitting the crime runs throughout the arguments on resurrection. Whatever one believes, that is what one will get in the afterlife; for wrong believers, their beliefs will be the source of their punishment.

The exhortation to leave off the details for the sake of unity represents the most sophisticated Gnostic defense. It does not matter