The Apostles Paul and Peter confront Simon Magus before Nero, as painted by Filippino Lippi.
According to radical critic Hermann Detering, Simon Magus may be a proxy for Paul of Tarsus,[18] with Paul originally been detested by the church, and the name changed when Paul was rehabilitated by virtue of forged Epistles correcting the genuine ones.[19]
Notably, Simon Magus is sometimes described in apocryphal legends in terms that would fit Paul, most significantly in the previously mentioned Clementine Recognitions and Homilies. It is contended that the common source of these documents may be as early as the 1st century, and must have consisted in a polemic against Paul, emanating from the Jewish side of
Christianity. Paul being thus identified with Simon, it was argued that Simon's visit to Rome had no other basis than Paul's presence there, and, further, that the tradition of Peter's residence in Rome rests on the assumed necessity of his resisting the arch-enemy of Judaism there as elsewhere. Thus, the idea of Peter at Rome really originated with the Ebionites, but it was afterwards taken up by the Catholic Church, and then Paul was associated with Peter in opposition to Simon, who had originally been himself.
The enmity between Peter and Simon is clearly shown. Simon's magical powers are juxtaposed with Peter's powers in order to express Peter's authority over Simon through the power of prayer;[20] and in the 17th Homily, the identification of Paul with Simon Magus is effected. Simon is there made to maintain that he has a better knowledge of the mind of Jesus than the disciples, who had seen and conversed with Him in person. His reason for this strange assertion is that visions are superior to waking reality, as divine is superior to human.[21] Peter has much to say in reply to this, but the passage which mainly concerns us is as follows:
But can any one be educated for teaching by vision? And if you shall say, "It is possible," why did the Teacher remain and converse with waking men for a whole year? And how can we believe you even as to the fact that he appeared to you? And how can he have appeared to you seeing that your sentiments are opposed to his teaching? But if you were seen and taught by him for a single hour, and so became an apostle, then preach his words, expound his meaning, love his apostles, fight not with me who had converse with him. For it is against a solid rock, the foundation-stone of the Church, that you have opposed yourself in opposing me. If you were not an adversary, you would not be slandering me and reviling the preaching that is given through me, in order that, as I heard myself in person from the Lord, when I speak I may not be believed, as though forsooth it were I who was condemned and I who was reprobate. Or, if you call me condemned, you are accusing God who revealed the Christ to me, and are inveighing against Him who called me blessed on the ground of the revelation. But if indeed you truly wish to work along with the truth, learn first from us what we learnt from Him, and when you have become a disciple of truth, become our fellow-workman.
Here we have the advantage, rare in ecclesiastical history, of hearing the other side. The above is unmistakably the voice of those early Christians who hated Paul, or at all events an echo of that voice. But how late an echo it would be hazardous to decide.
Simon Magus 71
There are other features in the portrait which remind us strongly of Marcion. For the first thing which we learn from the Homilies about Simon's opinions is that he denied that God was just.[22] By "God" he meant the Creator. But he undertakes to prove from Scripture that there is a higher God, who really possesses the perfections which are falsely ascribed to the lower.[23] On these grounds Peter complains that, when he was setting out for the Gentiles to convert them from their worship of many gods upon earth, the Evil Power had sent Simon before him to make them believe that there were many gods in heaven.[24]
The Catholic Encyclopedia, on the other hand, argues for a very late date to be assigned to the Clementines.[25] The great pagan antagonist of the 3rd century was the Neo-Platonic philosopher, Porphyry, and his disciple Iamblichus was the chief restorer and defender of the old gods. The doctrines and practices repelled are the theurgy and magic, astrology and mantic, miracles and claims to union with the Divinity, which characterized the Neo-Platonism of 320-330. Consequently, Simon and his disciples may represent not Paul or Marcion, but Iamblichus.
References
[1] Catholic Encyclopedia article on Simon Magus (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13797b.htm) [2] Catholic Encyclopedia article on St. Justin Martyr (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08580c.htm) [3] Dictionary of Christian Biography, Vol. 4, p. 682
[4] Hastings' Dictionary of the Apostolic Church, Vol 2, p. 496
[5] Sometimes with Mug Ruith. MacKillop, James (1998). Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. London: Oxford. ISBN 0-19-860967-1.
[6] "Surely few admirers of Marlowe's and Goethe's plays have an inkling that their hero is the descendant of a gnostic sectary, and that the beautiful Helen called up by his art was once the fallen Thought of God through whose raising mankind was to be saved." Jonas, Hans (1958).
The Gnostic Religion. p. 111. See also: Palmer, Philip Mason; Robert Pattison More (1936). The Sources of the Faust Tradition: From Simon Magus to Lessing.
[7] Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews xx. 7, § 2
[8] Hilgenfeld, Ketzergeschichte, p. 170; Albert, Die Ersten Fünfzehn Jahre der Christlichen Kirche, p. 114, Münster, 1900; Waitz, in Zeitschrift für Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, v. 128
[9] ANF07. Fathers of the Third and Fourth Centuries: Lactantius, Venantius, Asterius, Victorinus, Dionysius, Apostolic Teaching and Constitutions, Homily | Christian Classics Ethereal Library (http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-07/anf07-46.htm#P6492_2246960) [10] Clementine Homilies, ii. 23
[11] Clementine Recognitions, ii. 11 [12] Epiphanius, Panarion, 58 A [13] Epiphanius, Panarion, 56 C, D
[14] Hippolytus (http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050106.htm), Refutation of all Heresies, 6, 19 [15] The Acts of Peter (http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/actspeter.html)
[16] CHURCH FATHERS: The Acts of Peter and Paul (http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0815.htm) [17] Hippolytus (http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050106.htm), Refutation of all Heresies, 6, 15
[18] Hermann Detering, The Dutch Radical Approach to the Pauline Epistles (http://depts.drew.edu/jhc/detering.html)
[19] See also: F C Baur, A. Hilgenfeld, Hermann Detering, "The Falsified Paul: Early Christianity in the Twilight" - 1995 (translated into English in 2003), and J.R.Porter, The Lost Bible, pg 230.
[20] http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf08.vi.iii.v.xl.html [21] xvii. 5, 14
[22] ii. 14 [23] iii. so, 38 [24] e.g. iii. 3, 9, 59
[25] Chapman, John. "Clementines." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 4. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908. (http://www.newadvent.
org/cathen/04039b.htm)
Simon Magus 72
Sources
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911).
Encyclopædia Britannica (Eleventh ed.). Cambridge University Press.
• Jewish Encyclopedia: Simon Magus (http://jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=798&letter=S)
• Catholic Encyclopedia: Simon Magus (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13797b.htm)
• Simon Magus (http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Simon_Magus) in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
• David R. Cartlidge, The Fall and Rise of Simon Magus, Bible Review, Vol 21, No. 4, Fall 2005, Pages 24–36.
• Francis Legge, Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity, From 330 B.C. to 330 A.D. (1914), reprinted in two volumes bound as one, University Books New York, 1964. LC Catalog 64-24125.
• G. R. S. Mead, Simon Magus (http://www.gnosis.org/library/grs-mead/grsm_simon_magus.htm)
• Ported, J.R., The Lost Bible
• Detering, H., The Falsified Paul (1995/2003)
Valentinus (Gnostic)
Valentinus (also spelled Valentinius) (c.100 - c.160) was the best known and for a time most successful early Christian gnostic theologian. He founded his school in Rome. According to Tertullian, Valentinus was a candidate for bishop but started his own group when another was chosen.[1]
Valentinus produced a variety of writings, but only fragments survive, largely those embedded in refuted quotations in the works of his opponents, not enough to reconstruct his system except in broad outline.[2] His doctrine is known to us only in the developed and modified form given to it by his disciples.[2] He taught that there were three kinds of people, the spiritual, psychical, and material; and that only those of a spiritual nature (his own followers) received the gnosis (knowledge) that allowed them to return to the divine Pleroma, while those of a psychic nature (ordinary Christians) would attain a lesser form of salvation, and that those of a material nature (pagans and Jews) were doomed to perish.[2][3]
Valentinus had a large following, the Valentinians.[2] It later divided into an Eastern and a Western or Italian branch.[2] The Marcosians belonged to the Western branch.[2]
Biography
Valentinus was born in Phrebonis in the Nile delta and educated in Alexandria, an important and metropolitan early Christian centre. There he may have heard the Christian philosopher Basilides and certainly became conversant with Hellenistic Middle Platonic philosophy and the culture of Hellenized Jews like the great Alexandrian Jewish allegorist and philosopher Philo Judaeus. Clement of Alexandria records that his followers said that Valentinus was a follower of Theudas and that Theudas in turn was a follower of St. Paul of Tarsus.[4] Valentinus said that Theudas imparted to him the secret wisdom that Paul had taught privately to his inner circle, which Paul publicly referred to in connection with his visionary encounter with the risen Christ (Romans 16:25; Corinthians 1 2:7;
Corinthians 2 12:2-4; Acts 9:9-10), when he received the secret teaching from him. Such esoteric teachings were becoming downplayed in Rome after the mid-2nd century.[5]
Valentinus taught first in Alexandria and went to Rome about 136 AD, during the pontificate of Pope Hyginus, and remained until the pontificate of Pope Anicetus. In Adversus Valentinianos [6], iv, Tertullian says:
Valentinus had expected to become a bishop, because he was an able man both in genius and eloquence. Being indignant, however, that another obtained the dignity by reason of a claim which confessorship had given him, he broke with the church of the true faith. Just like those (restless) spirits which, when roused by ambition, are usually inflamed with the desire of revenge, he applied himself with all his might to exterminate the truth; and finding the clue of a certain old opinion, he marked out a path for himself with the subtlety of a serpent.
Valentinus (Gnostic) 73
Commonly unaccepted, we cannot know the accuracy of this statement, since it is delivered by his orthodox adversary Tertullian, but according to a tradition reported in the late fourth century by Epiphanius, he withdrew to Cyprus, where he continued to teach and draw adherents. He died probably about 160 or 161 AD.
While Valentinus was alive he made many disciples, and his system was the most widely diffused of all the forms of Gnosticism, although, as Tertullian remarked, it developed into several different versions, not all of which acknowledged their dependence on him ("they affect to disavow their name"). Among the more prominent disciples of Valentinus were Bardasanes, invariably linked to Valentinus in later references, as well as Heracleon, Ptolemy and Marcus. Many of the writings of these Gnostics, and a large number of excerpts from the writings of Valentinus, existed only in quotes displayed by their orthodox detractors, until 1945, when the cache of writings at Nag Hammadi revealed a Coptic version of the Gospel of Truth, which is the title of a text that, according to Irenaeus, was the same as the Gospel of Valentinus mentioned by Tertullian in his Against All Heresies[7] .
The Christian heresiologists also wrote details about the life of Valentinus, often scurrilous. As mentioned above, Tertullian claimed that Valentinus was a candidate for bishop, after which he turned to heresy in a fit of pique.
Epiphanius wrote that Valentinus gave up the true faith after he had suffered a shipwreck in Cyprus and became insane. These descriptions can be reconciled, and are not impossible; but few scholars cite these accounts as other than rhetorical insults.
Valentinianism
"Valentinianism" is the name for the school of gnostic philosophy tracing back to Valentinus. It was one of the major gnostic movements, having widespread following throughout the Roman Empire and provoking voluminous writings by Christian heresiologists. Notable Valentinians included Heracleon, Ptolemy, Florinus, Marcus and Axionicus.
Valentinus professed to have derived his ideas from Theodas or Theudas, a disciple of St. Paul. Valentinus drew freely on some books of the New Testament. Unlike a great number of other gnostic systems, which are expressly dualist, Valentinus developed a system that was more monistic, albeit expressed in dualistic terms.[8]
Cosmology
Valentinian literature described the Primal Being or Bythos as the beginning of all things who, after ages of silence and contemplation, gave rise to other beings by a process of emanation. The first series of beings, the aeons, were thirty in number, representing fifteen syzygies or pairs sexually complementary. Through the error of Sophia, one of the lowest aeons, and the ignorance of Sakla, the lower world with its subjection to matter is brought into existence.
Man, the highest being in the lower world, participates in both the psychic and the hylic (material) nature, and the work of redemption consists in freeing the higher, the spiritual, from its servitude to the lower. This was the word and mission of Christ and the Holy Spirit. Valentinus' Christology may have posited the existence of three redeeming beings, but Jesus while on Earth had a supernatural body which, for instance, "did not experience corruption" by defecating, according to Clement:[9] there is also no mention of the account of Jesus's suffering in 1 Peter, nor of any other, in any Valentinian text. The Valentinian system was comprehensive, and was worked out to cover all phases of thought and action.
Valentinus was among the early Christians who attempted to align Christianity with Platonism, drawing dualist conceptions from the Platonic world of ideal forms (pleroma) and the lower world of phenomena (kenoma). Of the mid-2nd century thinkers and preachers who were declared heretical by Irenaeus and later mainstream Christians, only Marcion is as outstanding as a personality. The contemporary orthodox counter to Valentinus was Justin Martyr.
Valentinus (Gnostic) 74
Trinity
In the fourth-century, Marcellus of Ancyra declared that the idea of the Godhead existing as three hypostases (hidden spiritual realities) came from Plato through the teachings of Valentinus,[10] who is quoted as teaching that God is three hypostases and three prosopa (persons) called the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit:
"Now with the heresy of the Ariomaniacs, which has corrupted the Church of God... These then teach three hypostases, just as Valentinus the heresiarch first invented in the book entitled by him 'On the Three Natures'.
For he was the first to invent three hypostases and three persons of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he is discovered to have filched this from Hermes and Plato." [11]
Since Valentinus had used the term hypostases, his name came up in the Arian disputes in the fourth century.
Marcellus of Ancyra, who was a staunch opponent of Arianism but also denounced the belief in God existing in three hypostases as heretical (and was later condemned for his views), attacked his opponents (On the Holy Church, 9) by linking them to Valentinus:
"Valentinus, the leader of a sect, was the first to devise the notion of three subsistent entities (hypostases), in a work that he entitled On the Three Natures. For, he devised the notion of three subsistent entities and three persons — father, son, and holy spirit."[12]
It should be noted that the Nag Hammadi library Sethian text Trimorphic Protennoia identifies Gnosticism as professing Father, Son and feminine wisdom Sophia or as Professor John D Turner denotes, God the Father, Sophia the Mother, and Logos the Son.