The "Epistle to Rheginus": Valentinianism in the Fourth Century

Author(s): M. J. Edwards
Source: Novum Testamentum, Vol. 37, Fasc. 1 (Jan., 1995), pp. 76-91
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THE EPISTLE TO RHEGINUS: VALENTINIANISM
IN THE FOURTH CENTURY
by
M.J.
EDWARDS
Oxford
Long
after their
discovery
and laborious
publication,
the
Nag
Hammadi Codices continue to
betray
the
hopes
of scholars.1
Almost
any
date is
arbitrary, any assignation
to a sect is unconvin-
cing.
The contents of the
Jung
Codex,2
for
example, may
remind
us ever more
strongly
of the heresies ascribed to
Valentinus;
but
how far can we use them to correct or to corroborate
patristic
testimonies? On the one
hand,
the evident
hostility
of the Fathers
must detract from their
authority;
on the
other,
the texts contained
in the
Nag
Hammadi Codices have suffered from translation into
Coptic,
and could have been
composed
at
any juncture
over a
period
of a hundred and
fifty years.
The fourth item in the
Jung
Codex is the Treatise on the Resurrec-
tion,
often called the
Epistle
to
Rheginus.3
Scholars have found much
trouble in
making
sense of
it,
and trouble also in
making
it consis-
tent with the
reports
of
heresiologists.
I
argue
in the first
part
of this
study
that a
dating
to the fourth
century
is
by
no means
inconceivable;
in the second I seek to show that the
Epistle
to
Rheginus
is not a
product
of
accretion,
but a coherent meditation on
Pauline
teaching;
in the third I treat it as a document of the third
century
or the
early fourth,
whose contents are in
keeping
with the
progress
of
philosophy
in this
period
and the witness of a near-
contemporary.
1
See
J. Doresse,
The Secret Books
of
the
Egyptian
Gnostics,
London
1960,
and the
introduction to
J.M.
Robinson
(ed.),
The
Nag
Hammadi
Library
in
English,
Leiden
1988.
2
Texts in facsimile with
translations,
edited
by
H.
Attridge
as
Nag
Hammadi
Codices
I,
Leiden 1985.
3
Translations: M.L.
Peel,
The
Epistle
to
Rheginus,
London
1969;
idem in
Attridge, Nag
Hammadi
Codices;
idem in
Robinson,
Nag
Hammadi
Library, pp. 52-7;
B.
Layton,
The Gnostic Treatise on the
Resurrectionfrom Nag
Hammadi,
Missoula
1979;
idem in B.
Layton,
The Gnostic
Scriptures,
New York
1987, pp. 316-24; J.
Menard,
Le traite sur la
resurrection,
Quebec
1983. All these contain notes or
commentary.
Novum Testamentum
XXXVII,
1 ?(
E.J.
Brill, Leiden,
1995
THE EPISTLE TO RHEGINUS
I
The
papyri
on which our codices are written
appear
to date from
about the middle of the fourth
century.4
While all or most
presup-
pose
a Greek
original,
there is no
presumption
that this would be
in
every
case an ancient one. Our
fragment
from an indolent
translation of the
Republic
is no more
typical
than the
long excerpt
from the
Asclepius,
which
may postdate
its
archetype by
a mere half-
century.5
Even when the
original
is
likely
to have been of some anti-
quity,
the
vagaries
of redaction and translation
may
have
produced
a work of
quite
a different
character;
as Raoul
Mortley
has
argued,
it would be rash to
equate
the document which we call the
Gospel
of
Truth with the Valentinian
blasphemy
which is mentioned under
that title in Irenaeus.6
If,
as he
maintains,
the
present Gospel
is a
polemic against
the
Arians,
we must date its
composition
to the
fourth
century;
no-one would maintain that the
Epistle
to
Rheginus
was directed
against
the
Arians,
but if its nearest
neighbour
were
so
recent,
a
second-century
date for this or
any
other treatise could
not
lightly
be assumed.
This caveat would
carry
still more
weight
if
Mortley's
thesis
could be extended to other contents of the
Nag
Hammadi
Library.
Conflict between the followers of the two
great
Alexandrian
heresiarchs was
scarcely
to be
avoided,
since Valentinian authors
were the first to
give theological
definition to the
adjective
homoousios,7
and built
upon
the triadic
pattern
of
Being,
Life and
Intellect which was used with elaboration
against
the Arians
by
Marius Victorinus.8 If the admonition
against
the Anomoeans at
VI.4.40.7 is
applying
the orthodox
sobriquet
to the
party
of
4
See
J.W. Barns,
G.M. Browne and
J.T. Shelton,
Greek and
Coptic Papyri
from
the
Cartonnage of
the
Covers,
Leiden 1981.
5
See
Robinson,
Nag
Hammadi
Library, p.
330-1 for introduction to VI.8
(Asclepius 221-29).
Editors of the Latin
Asclepius
(Scott, Nock-Festugiere,
Copenhavn)
cite Lactantius as the first witness to the Greek.
6
R.
Mortley,
"The Name of the Father is the
Son",
in R. Wallis and
J.
Bregman (eds), Neoplatonism
and
Gnosticism,
Albany 1992, pp.
239-52.
7
See. G.C.
Stead,
Divine
Substance,
Oxford
1977, pp.
190-202.
8
See Contra Arianos and P.
Hadot,
Porphyre
et
Victorinus,
Paris 1969. The
Nag
Hammadi Texts in which this triad
appears
are the Zostrianus
(VIII. 1)
and
Allogenes
(XI.3),
whose
originals
were
already
known to
Porphyry (Vita
Plotini
16).
For
criticism of the view that the
Neoplatonists
derived this triad from the
Gnostics,
see
my "Porphyry
and the
Intelligible Triad',
Journal ofHellenic
Studies 110
(1990),
esp. p.
25.
77
M.J.
EDWARDS
Eunomius,9
a
dating
to the fourth
century
is
indisputable;
and the
Emperor Julian's punishment
of the ascendant Arian
party
in
Edessa for an assault on the
Valentinians,'?
suggests
that these
polemics
were keen
enough
to excite
revenge.
I offer these
conjectures
in
support
of
Mortley's
thesis,
not in
order to
plead
that the
Epistle
to
Rheginus
is an anti-Arian
writing,
but because
they imply
that in the fourth
century
Valentinians
might
make common cause with the
greater
Church. If it were
accepted
that some
Nag
Hammadi treatises were
grounded
in
disputations
of the fourth
century,
there is
nothing
to
preclude
the
composition
of other treatises in the
light
of a Church consensus of
that time.
We
have,
after
all,
no reason to
suppose
that Valentinian
theology
was at
any
time a conscious deviation from an established
rule of faith. I have
proposed
elsewhere that the
very
Platonism of
its founder
yielded
tenets more
compatible
with those of Irenaeus
and the
apologists
than were those of the
groups
called Gnostic in
that
period.11
The Platonism of Marius Victorinus was the
spur
for
Augustine's flight
from Manichaeism to
orthodoxy;12
if Valentinus
followed such a
path,
as I have
argued,
it would not be
strange
if
epigoni
should continue to assimilate the victorious strain of
teaching
in the Church.
The treatise which
immediately
follows the
Epistle
to
Rheginus
in
the
Jung
Codex is an
example
of this
convergence
with the
orthodox.13 Most of the aeons
disappear;
the author of creation is
not
Sophia,
but the
Logos;
the
pleroma
is the
Church,
not
only
in
heaven but on earth. The work is
clearly
a florid
exposition
of the
prevailing
creed,
and had the Valentinians written thus from the
beginning, they might
not have been
rejected by
the Church which
turned Methodius and
Gregory
of
Nyssa
into saints.
9
See F. Wisse and F.E.
Williams,
Nag
Hammadi Codices
VI,
Leiden
1979, pp.
304-5.
10
See C.N.
Cochrane, Christianity
and Classical
Culture,
New York
1957, p.
284.
Edessa had been
regarded
as a fortress of Valentinian
teaching
since the
days
of
Tatian and Bardesanes.
"
M.J. Edwards,
"Gnostics and Valentinians in the Church
Fathers", Journal
of Theological
Studies 40
(1989), pp.
26-47.
12
See
esp. Confessions VIII.3,
and
Hadot,
Porphyre
et Victorinus.
13
Usually
called The
Tripartite
Tractate. The editors in
Attridge's Nag
Hammadi
Codices
I(H.W. Attridge
and E.
Pagels) suggest (p. 178)
that it is
"late",
a "revi-
sion" and "a
response
to orthodox criticism"
78
THE EPISTLE TO RHEGINUS
II
How orthodox
(in
the
retrospective
sense that we confer on such
a
term)
is the
Epistle
to
Rheginus?
Need it be more heretical than
those
writings
of the ninth
codex,
which
Birger
Pearson finds to be
more zealous than
Ignatius
in their
advocacy
of the human flesh
and
suffering
of Christ?14
The translation used in the
following
discussion will be that of
Malcolm
Peel,15 which,
since it
appears
in Robinson's edition of
the
Nag
Hammadi
Codices, may
be said to constitute the
authorised version. Peel understands the treatise to be
maintaining
the
persistence
of a refined and luminous
body
in the "aeon" which
succeeds the
present
life.
By
contrast,
Bentley Layton
has con-
cluded that it
promises
no more than the
immortality
of the soul.
They
differ,
for the most
part,
not about the lexical
equivalent
of
a term but about the
meaning
of a
paragraph,
and therefore it will
rarely
be
necessary
to adduce a second
rendering
of the text.
I shall
argue
here that the
language
of the
Epistle
is in most
respects
consistent with the
teaching
of Paul about the resurrection.
The task of Paul's
interpreters
is to make his
thought
consistent,
and I shall likewise follow Peel and
Layton
in
assuming
the
integrity
of the
Epistle
to
Rheginus.
Since the text does not
prescribe
its own
interpretation,
I shall take it as an axiom that
any
word or
image
drawn from Paul
may
be made to bear a Pauline sense. If
Paul
employed
a
metaphor,
our author
may
have borrowed it as a
metaphor;
and if as a result his treatise shares Paul's
superficial
inconsistencies,
it
may thereby
have embraced the
complications
of
his
thought.
Paul's
usage may
be
brought
to bear
against
the view of
Layton
in a number of those
passages
which he cites from the
Epistle
to
prove
his case. I shall comment on these in the order of their
appearance
in the text.
1. "The Saviour swallowed
up death-(of this) you
are not
reckoned as
being ignorant-for
he
put
aside the
world,
which is
perishing,
and transformed
[himselfl
into an
imperishable
Aeon,
14
B.A.
Pearson, Gnosticism, Judaism
and
Egyptian Christianity, Minneapolis 1990,
pp.
183-193.
15
As in
Robinson,
Nag
Hammadi
Library, pp.
52-7. On the
topics
discussed
here, Menard,
Le traite sur la
resurrection,
pp. 22-4,
seems to be in
agreement
with
Peel.
79
M.J.
EDWARDS
and raised himself
up, having
swallowed the visible
by
the invisible
(45.14-21)
... This is the
spiritual
resurrection,
which swallows
up
the
psychic
in the same
way
as the
fleshly" (45.39-46.2).
If
Rheginus
is "not
ignorant"
of the first
claim,
it will no doubt
be because it was made canonical
by
Paul when he
proclaimed
to
the Corinthians that death is now "swallowed
up
in
victory" (1
Cor.
15:54).
From the same
correspondence
he would learn to con-
trast the
people
of the
spirit
with the
psychici,
whose nature was still
corrupted by
the Fall
(1
Cor. 15:45
etc.),
and to
reject
that carnal
knowledge,
whether of Christ or of the
Scriptures,
which ensnared
the
ignorant
in the toils of death
(2
Cor.
3:6).
He would also
learn,
of
course,
that the
things
which are eternal are
invisible,
that the
"corruptible body"
which is sown in the earth
by
burial would be
raised
again
as a
"spiritual body" (1
Cor.
15:42-44,
54
etc.),
and
that the wickedness of the
psychic
man is native to his "flesh"
(15:50;
cf. Rom. 7:18
etc.).
Editors
explain
that "swallows
up"
in the second sentence means
"annihilates" or
"destroys". Perhaps
it
signifies
that the
perfect
theory
swallows
up
the
imperfect
ones that
imagine only
a carnal
resurrection
(the
error,
as Paul himself had
said,
of fools: 1 Cor.
15:36
f);
or
perhaps
that resurrection in the "aeon" swallows
up
the
insipid
foretastes which are marred
by
the interference of our
bodily
and
worldly appetites.
The author takes
up
clear
ground
on
a
highly disputed question by affirming
that the resurrection
follows
immediately
on our
departure
from the world and does not
await the Second
Coming.
Paul had
preferred
to
speak
of a
"sleep
in
Jesus", (1
Thess.
4:14),
but as the
delay
was
lengthened specula-
tion became
permissible,'6
and indeed he himself had
spoken,
when
in
prison,
as
though
he
hoped
to
join
his Saviour at the moment of
release
(Phil. 1:23). Nothing
in this
passage,
then,
excludes the
possibility
that the final resurrection will be
experienced
"in the
flesh".
2. "now if we are manifest in this world
wearing
him,
we are that
one's
beams,
and we are embraced
by
him until our
setting,
that
is to
say,
until our death in this life"
(45.29-35).
Layton,
who
opines
that the author is under the
spell
of
16
On
early
Christian
eschatology
see now C.
Hill,
Regnum Caelorum,
Oxford
1992. I have
expressed
some reservations in a
review,
forthcoming
in Hermathena
1994.
80
THE EPISTLE TO RHEGINUS
Platonism,17
notes that this
philosophy
made
frequent
use of similes
drawn from costume. Yet
they
are
equally
common in
Scripture,
which declares that earth and heaven will wax old like a
garment
(Isaiah
50:9,
51:6),
and that after the fall our ancestors were clothed
in "coats of skins"
(Gen. 3:21).
These were often taken to
repre-
sent,
if not the
flesh,
at least its
weaknesses,
and it is this
corruptible
flesh
that,
in the words of the
Apostle,
is to
"put
on"
immortality
(1
Cor.
15:53).
If readers of Isaiah could
expect
a resurrection of
the
body,
if Paul could
say
that the
certainty
of faith consists in this
(1
Cor.
15:17),
then the author of the
Epistle
to
Rheginus may
have
held the same belief.
3. "But there are also some
(who)
wish to
understand,
in the
enquiry
about those
things they
are
looking
into,
whether he who
is
saved,
if he leaves his
body
behind,
will be saved
immediately.
Let no-one doubt
concerning
this ... Indeed the visible members
which are dead shall not be
saved,
for
(only)
the
living [members]
which exist within them would arise"
(47.32-48.2).
That those without Christ are dead in the
present
world is a
Pauline
commonplace (Eph.
2:1,
Col.
2:13),
and
many early
readers held that Paul was
speaking
even of
present
Christian
experience
when he exclaimed "Who will release me from the
body
of this death?" Of course Paul's
teaching
is that the
corruption
of
the
body,
not the
body
itself,
is
evil;
but while our author
merely
repeats
him,
how can it be shown that he
thought
otherwise? To
say
that the inner man and not the outer is immortal is
perhaps
to
say
no more than that
"though
our outer man
perish
our inner man
is renewed
day by day" (2
Cor.
4:16).
The
Epistle
to the Colossians
exhorts us to
"put
on the new
man,
which is renewed in
knowledge
after the
image
of him that created him"
(3:10);
it
thus,
at least in
metaphor, equates
our future life with both the inner man and the
spiritual body.
The
exaggeration
of the
spatial metaphor
in the
Epistle
to
Rheginus
does not suffice to
prove
that the author took the
phrase
more
literally
than Paul.
The Gnostics in Plotinus
spoke
of mele or limbs of
Wisdom,
which
are
perhaps
to be contrasted with the material ones assumed when
the soul descends
(Enn.
II.9.10.22);
but,
as will be observed
below,
17
Layton,
Gnostic
Scriptures, p. 321,
but
adding
references to Rom.
13:12, Eph.
4:22. For
patristic parallels
see
Layton,
Gnostic
Treatise,
pp. 61-2,
and see further
ibid.,
pp.
81-4.
81
M.J.
EDWARDS
the doctrines of a Platonic school were
subject
to revision. For
Origen
the inner
man,
created before the Fall with both his own
senses and his own
members,
is identical with the
soul;
yet
this is
not the whole
creature,
for there are few who would now
uphold
the
ancient
charge
that he conceived the naked soul as the first and final
state of man.18
The
Epistle
to
Rheginus
is
entirely
at one with Paul if it affirms that
we have an inner
man,
the seat of faith and
virtue,
who is at war
with our
corrupted
natural
body;
and that when he is released
by
the dissolution of this
enemy,
the inner man will
enjoy
eternal
blessedness,
with the
body
which is
proper
to that state.
4. "Indeed it is more
fitting
to
say
that the world is an illusion
rather than the resurrection which has come into
being through
our
Lord the Saviour
Jesus
Christ"
(48.14-19).
The author here contests the view that the Saviour's resurrection
was
illusory-the teaching
often
imputed
to Valentinus.
Only by
comparison
is the
present
world declared to be
illusory-and
how
could
anyone
doubt this who believed that all that is visible is
perishing,
and would soon
disappear
to make
way
for an
everlasting kingdom?
Is it more heretical to
say
that the
present age
is an illusion when contrasted with
eternity
than to
predict
the
dissolution of our
"earthly
tabernacle" and our entrance into a
house "not made with hands"
(2
Cor.
5:1-4)?
Paul,
although
he
allows that our eternal
destiny
is
yet
invisible
(2
Cor.
4:18),
exclaims in this same
passage
that the
neophyte
who has
"put
on
Christ" is
already
"a new
creature",
that he knows "no man after
the flesh" and that "the old
things"
are
already passed away (2
Cor.
5:16-17).
5. "Therefore do not think in
part,
O
Rheginos,
nor live in confor-
mity
with this flesh for the sake of
unanimity,
but flee from the divi-
sion and the fetters, and
already you
have the resurrection"
(49.8-18).
"We know in
part
and we
prophesy
in
part" (1
Cor.
13:9);
"be
not conformed to this
world,
but be transformed
by
the
renewing
of
your
minds"
(Rom. 12:2).
It is far from
being
the
case,
as a
recent
supporter
of
Layton argues,19
that the echoes of Pauline
18
See H.S.
Schibli, "Origen, Didymus
and the Vehicle of the
Soul", Origeniana
Quinta (1992), pp.
381-91 for discussion and
bibliography.
19
M.J. Olson, Irenaeus,
the Valentinian Gnostics and the
Kingdom of God,
Lewiston
NY
1992, pp.
21 f.
82
THE EPISTLE TO RHEGINUS
language
are occasional or extrinsic.
Nothing
is more certain than
that the author of this treatise was
attempting
to think like Paul.
Should we
infer,
because the resurrection can be
enjoyed
in the
present
life,
that there is
nothing
to be added in the next?
Perhaps
so,
if we knew that the
Epistle expounded
the doctrine of
Philetas,
Alexander and
Hymenaeus,
who affirmed that "the resurrection is
past already".20
Our author
implies,
indeed,
that we can
anticipate
that
perfect understanding
which the
Apostle only hopes
to receive
in heaven
(1
Cor.
13:12); yet
the doctrine of a
present
resurrection
is not
only
orthodox,
but fundamental to
orthodoxy.
It is Paul who
tells us that to be a Christian is to die with Christ in
baptism,
to
be raised with him in service
(Rom. 6:4)
and to
join
with him in
seeking things
above
(Col. 3:2).
If it is
only
after death that a man
receives his
spiritual body,
he can even now be a member of
Christ's
body
in the world.
Nothing
in these
quotations
can be shown to contradict the views
of
Peel,
and in his favour he could cite the author's use of the term
"resurrection"
(the
Greek
anastasis),
which
ought
to describe an
entity
that is
capable
of
standing
and has
undergone
a fall. Hence
it is that Platonists never use it to describe the soul's
perseverance
in its natural
immortality,
and Paul is driven from the
Areopagus
when he
predicates
this miracle of
Jesus (Acts
17:18,
32). Why,
if
the
Epistle
means to discountenance a
bodily resurrection,
does it
make so
many
references to that
chapter
where Paul enumerates
the witnesses to the
rising
of the Saviour and declares that without
this trust our faith is vain
(1
Cor.
15:2)?
Two
passages
which
might appear
to state the whole case for Peel
have been
interpreted by Layton
in his own
favour,
and in the
second case it is
necessary
to
reproduce
both versions for com-
parison.
1. "For if
you
remember
reading
in the
Gospel
that
Elijah
appeared
and Moses with
him,
do not think that the resurrection
is an illusion"
(48.8-11 Peel).
Layton glosses
that as "do not
suppose
that resurrection is
existence in a
ghostly body
of flesh'".21 But Peel has
justly
observed
that this turns the
passage
on its
head,22
for in
evoking
Mark's
20
See 1 Tim.
1:20,
2 Tim. 2:18.
21
Layton,
Gnostic
Scriptures, p.
323.
22
Peel in
Robinson, Nag
Hammadi
Library, pp.
52-3.
83
M.J.
EDWARDS
account of the
Transfiguration,
the author has
encouraged
us to
suppose
that the flesh of Moses and
Elijah
was as real as that of
Christ.
2. "So never doubt
concerning
the
resurrection,
my
son
Rheginos!
For if
you
were not
existing
in
flesh, you
received flesh when
you
entered this world.
Why
will
you
not receive flesh when
you
ascend
into the Aeon? That which is better than the flesh is that which is
for it the cause of life. That which came into
being
on
your account,
is it not
yours?
Does not that which is
yours
exist with
you?
Yet
while
you
are in the
world,
what is it that
you
lack? This is what
you
have been
making every
effort to learn. The afterbirth of the
body
is old
age,
and
you
exist in
corruption.
You have absence as
a
gain" (47.2-20 Peel).
"Now
(you
might wrongly suppose), granted
that
you
did not
pre-
exist in
flesh,
indeed
you
took flesh on
you
when
you
entered the
world-why
will
you
not take
your
flesh with
you
when
you
return
to the realm of
eternity?
It is the element
superior
to the flesh that
imparts vitality
to
it; (furthermore, you might suppose)
does not
whatever comes into
being
for
your
sake
(that
is,
theflesh) belong
to
you?
So
may
we not conclude that whatever is
yours
will remain with
you?
Nay
rather,
while
you
are
here,
what is it that
you
are alienated
from? Is that what
you
have endeavoured to learn about: the
bodily
envelope-that
is old
age?
And are
you (the
real
you)
mere cor-
ruption?
You can count absence-or
(in
another sense of the Greek
word)
shortage-as your profit"
(ibid.,
Layton).
Layton
is more
periphrastic,
and I have italicised his additions
to the text. The
punctuation
and
ordering
of
paragraphs
are
largely
at the discretion of the editor in
any
ancient text. For the
rest,
it
is clear that the translators seldom differ
(at
least until the
closing
sentences)
in their
construing
of the words.
Layton
has inserted
qualifications
which he believes to be demanded
by
the main
body
of the
treatise,
and even his
supporters
will admit that Peel's
translation has the virtue of
economy.
Since we have now no reason
to
suppose
that the surface
meaning
of these
passages
is in conflict
with the remainder of the
Epistle,
we must treat such
ingenuities
with reserve.
Nevertheless,
one need not be a
partisan
to side with
Layton
over
84
THE EPISTLE TO RHEGINUS
the second
passage,
since the
meaning
of Peel's literal translation
is obscure. What is
proved by alluding
to "that which is better than
flesh",
if not that its survival renders otiose a
fleshly
resurrection?
What,
if not the
departure
from the
body,
is connoted
by
the state-
ment that we "have absence as a
gain"?
The second
question
we have
already
answered. Paul too
longed
to
quit
his tabernacle
(2
Cor.
5:4),
to
"depart
and be with Christ"
(Phil. 1:23),
to claim that life that is "hid with Christ in God"
(Col.
3:3).
Even on
earth,
he
says,
our "conversation is in heaven"
(Phil. 3:20);
we
yearn
and
hope
for that absence from the
body
which is to be at home with God
(2
Cor.
5:8).
In one sense we are
absent from the
body
even
now;
on another we are absent from our
own selves in the
body.
Even the second absence has the
advantage
that it makes us walk
by
faith and not
by sight (2
Cor.
5:7;
cf. Rom.
8:24),
and so two
meanings may
be offered for this
phrase
without
denying
the consummation of our
hope
in a future life.
As for that "which is better than the
flesh",
the
argument may
be
that,
since its function is to
impart
life to a
subject,
it will
always
require
that
subject,
and its
permanence
will thus
imply
the sur-
vival of the flesh.23 In
any
case,
this sentence offers
difficulty
to both
editors,
and we cannot allow the whole debate to turn
upon
a
passage
which is
agreed
to be more than
usually corrupt.
We should not be inclined to
exaggerate
the author's
heterodoxy
when we encounter
phrases
borrowed from the New
Testament,
but worked into a different idiom:
'Strong
is the
system
of the
Pleroma;
small is that which broke loose
(and)
became
(the)
world'
(46.35-6).
This is an allusion to the Valentinian
story
that the world came
into
being through
the
transgression
of
Sophia,
the weakest aeon of
the
pleroma.
So stated that is of course a monstrous
heresy,
but it
lends itself to more orthodox
exegesis.
Pleroma is one of
many
terms
in Valentinian
writing
which,
since
they
are more
intelligible
in
Paul and less remote from their common
meaning, may
be
presumed
to have
originated
with him.24 For him
pleroma signifies
23
See
Menard,
Le traite sur la
resurrection, p.
17: "c'est une benediction
pour
la
partie corruptible
de
l'homme,
car ses traits
personnels apparaitront
dans la
nouvelle chair".
24
The thesis of S.
Petrement,
Le Dieu
Sipare,
Paris
1984,
translated into
English
as A
Separate God,
London 1991.
85
M.J.
EDWARDS
the
perfection
of the Christian
life,
the fulness of God's
nature,
the
completion
of his Church and the time set
apart
for the
completion
of his
purpose.25
The
hysterema,
its
complement,26
is that which
yet
remains to be
perfected;
Paul
aspires
in his
body
to "fill
up
that
which remains of the
sufferings
of Christ"
(Col. 1:24).
We cannot be sure that Pauline terms do not bear their Pauline
meanings,
even when
they participate
in the fabulous
cosmogonies
by
which heresies were
initially
defined. As
they
became more
ardent in their
allegorical readings
of the ancient
masters,
thinkers
in late
antiquity
came to
adopt
a more elusive mode of
writing.
The
language
of Numenius and Plotinus is more
mythical
than
Plato's,
and nowhere more than when
they
are
purporting
to
explain
him.
Orthodox
Christianity
allowed itself less licence in
creating,
but at
least as much in
finding allegories;
even at his most literal
Augustine
will construe the six
days
of Genesis as a
symbol
of the
soul's
increasing knowledge.27
Could not Valentinian authors at
times have used a
private
lexicon to
express
conventional beliefs?
There is no doubt that
Sophia,
the
erring
aeon of the
mythological system,
is
equated
with the soul in one of the
Nag
Hammadi
codices,
entitled the
Exegesis
on the Soul. Elsewhere in the
Epistle
to
Rheginus
it is the individual soul that is in need of the
Pleroma:
'For
imperishability depends upon
the
imperishable;
the
light
flows down
upon
the
darkness, swallowing
it
up;
and the Pleroma fills
up
the
deficiency' (48.39-49.7).
The
pleroma
and the
deficiency
are reified
abstractions,
like the
darkness and the
light.
The author shares with Paul a faith that
"this
corruption
will
put
on
incorruption",
that we who were once
darkness are now
light,
that "death is swallowed
up
in
victory".
Pleroma is
now,
as in Paul or in
Gregory
of
Nyssa,28
the
antonym
25
See
Eph.
1:23, 3:19, 4:13;
Rom.
13:10;
Gal. 4:4
etc;
and the excursus
ofJ.B.
Lightfoot
in his Colossians and
Philemon,
London
1875,
pp.
323-9. The uses of the
word
pleroma
in texts from
Nag
Hammadi are collected
by
V.
MacDermot,
"The
Concept
of Pleroma in Gnosticism" in M. Krause
(ed.)
Gnosis and
Gnosticism,
Leiden
1981,
pp.
76-81.
26
See Col. 1:24. At 1 Cor. 16:17 and Phil. 2:30 the term means
simply
"absence". There
may
be a connexion between this word and the occasional
designation
of the
Demiurge
as a womb in Gnostic
literature,
on which see P.
Fredriksen, "Hysterema
and the Gnostic
Myth
of
Creation", Vigiliae
Christianae 33
(1979), pp.
287-90.
27
See De Genesi ad Litteram
IV.40,
49 etc.
28
See
Gregory,
Oratio VI.3.8 In Canticum
Canticorum;
Oratio II in
Ecclesiastem,
pp.
304-5
Jaeger.
86
THE EPISTLE TO RHEGINUS
of
hysterema;
it would be
perfectly
in
keeping
with the
usage
of the
period
if the
cosmology
alluded to at 46.35 were an
anthropology
writ
large,29
with the
pleroma
as the fulness of
divinity,
the
"system"
as man's
gradual approach
to
this,
and the
hysterema
as fulness
unachieved.
Nowhere in Paul's
writings,
not even in his
Epistles
to the Corin-
thians,
can one cull so
many expressions
of
estrangement
from the
body; yet
nowhere are their
prototypes
more
easily
discovered than
in Paul. The
Epistle
does not
represent
the whole of
him,
but neither
does it
represent
a faith
opposed
to his. Paul too held that the inner
man is fettered
by
the
outer,
that the flesh holds us in
bondage
to
corruption;
he too declared that the
present
world is
vanishing,
that
the flesh must vanish with it or before
it,
and that
only
in a
spiritual
body
can we taste eternal life.
III
The earliest
Valentinians,
though they
affirmed that Christ took
a
body
for his
ministry,
were uncertain as to its
nature,30 and,
since
they
never
spoke
of a
resurrection,
seemed to entertain no
prospect
for believers of
rising
either in a
psychic
or in a
spiritual body.
The
Epistle
to
Rheginus,
on the
contrary,
while it
promises
an immediate
translation to
eternity,
insists that this is not without the flesh.
Our
manuscript
was
copied during
the life of
Epiphanius, Bishop
of
Salamis,
who in 376 included Valentinus and his followers in the
Panarion,
his
magisterial library
of heresies. Much of his account
is a
transcription
from
Irenaeus,
but he
prefaces
the
excerpt
with
his own
summary
of their doctrine. One
shocking
tenet is that:
'They deny
the resurrection of the
body, asserting something
fabulous and
silly-
that this is not the one that
rises,
but another from it
(ex
autou)
which
they
call
spiritual' (Panarion 31.7).
The new
body,
which "comes out of the
present
one",
can
only
be the inner
man;
it is a
body
none the less. This is
precisely
the
teaching
that is attributed
by
Peel to the
Epistle
to
Rheginus,
and we
29
Thus cf.
Plotinus,
Enneads III.9.3 with Numenius Fr. 13 Des Places and the
Valentinian
myth
at
Irenaeus,
Adv. Haer. 1.2.1.
Augustine,
De Genesi contra
Manichaeos 11.5 ff takes the
watering
of Eden as a
metaphor
for the
spiritual irriga-
tion of the soul.
30
See
Hippolytus, Refutatio
VI.35.6,
the westerns
attributing
to Christ a
psychic body,
the easterns a
spiritual
one.
87
M.J.
EDWARDS
have seen no cause to
disagree
with him. It
is, however,
at odds
with the
reports
of Irenaeus and
Tertullian,
which
imply
that the
Valentinians did not countenance the survival of the
body
in
any
form.
Epiphanius' testimony
is never above
suspicion,
since he is not
so erudite as he
pretends
to
be,
and
rarely
makes a
pretence
of
criticism.
Though,
for
example,
he claims at times the mantle of
Hippolytus (Pan. 31.33),
he shows no
sign
in his work of
having
seen the
Refutation of
all
Heresies;
and
though
he knows that ebion is
a Hebrew word for
"poor" (Pan. 30.17),
he is careful to
preserve
the account of Ebion the
supposed
heresiarch. The Panarion is
nevertheless a
treasury
of lost
documents,
and remains our
only
source for one Valentinian
cosmogony (30.2-7)
and the Letter of
Ptolemaeus
(33.3-7).
It is therefore not
improbable
that Valenti-
nian works on the resurrection would be known to him at first
hand.
We can at least be certain that he would not have tried to
mitigate
the errors of a Valentinian
writing. Throughout
his
long
career he was a vehement foe of
Origen,31
whose
decipherment
of
a
spiritual meaning
in the
Scriptures
seemed to him to leave no
room for an
earthly paradise
or survival in a
body.
Harsh to the
point
of caricature with
Origen,
he would not ascribe belief in a
resurrection of
any
kind to the Valentinians if this were not the
reading
forced
upon
him
by
his source.
The accounts of Irenaeus and
Epiphanius
need not be
incompati-
ble. In the
intervening
centuries the
party
of Irenaeus had won such
a
superiority,
in
power
if not in
argument,
as would almost force
the Valentinians into accommodation. This would be no
betrayal
of
Valentinus,
who had been a reluctant
heretic;
in
any
case the
adjective "Valentinian",
like
"Origenist",
no doubt connotes a
field of influence rather than a sect. Since
Origen
had not
yet
been
condemned,
a Valentinian could
aspire
to reconcile himself with
orthodoxy by postulating
a
spiritual body
after death.
It
may
be observed in
support
of this
hypothesis: (1)
that the
most eminent
philosophy
of that
age
would have
promoted
such an
evolution of Valentinian
doctrine;
and
(2)
that in at least one other
31
See
Ancoratus;
Panarion
64; J.F. Dechow,
Dogma
and
Mysticism
in Earliest Chris-
tianity,
Leuven
1988;
and E.
Clark,
The
Origenist Controversy,
Princeton
1992, esp.
ch. 2.
88
THE EPISTLE TO RHEGINUS
point
the Valentinians are shown
by Epiphanius
to have
sought
respectability through change.
1. For Plato the soul is
strictly incorporeal,
but in his later followers
it is never without some
vehicle,
even if this be
only
the astral
body
which
provides
a tenuous
lodging
on its allocated star. It seems that
without some instrument of this kind
they
could not conceive of
individuation,
and Proclus
(in
Rem Pub. II.165
Kroll)
notes that
even Plato assumes the soul's retention of a visible
identity
after
death.
Though Porphyry thought
the vehicle
temporary,
it
becomes immortal in Hierocles and Iamblichus. Proclus reconciles
them
by distinguishing
a mortal
one,
which dissolves with the lower
faculties,
from another that survives with the
imperishable
soul.32
Matter, says
Plotinus,
is the
principle
of
otherness,
and
Origen
perhaps
shows his
acquaintance
with this tenet when he asks
how,
if not
by matter,
the host of
spirits
can be differentiated from the
incorporeal
Godhead
(De
Princ.
1.6.4).
Hostile witnesses tell us that
he names the soul as a state of the
degraded
intellect,
and even in
its
purest
form this intellect retains the matter that God first
gave
to Adam.33
Didymus
is indebted both to
Origen
and to the Platonic
Phaedrus when he
speaks
of the refined and luminous chariot of the
soul in
paradise.34
In relics and
reports
of the
early
heresies we find the sediment of
all
pagan teachings.
It
was, however,
Valentinus who
quoted
the
Phaedrus,35 borrowed or
anticipated
the doctrine of
emanation,
and
was
distinguished by
the
epithet
Platonicus.36 The treatises that
accompany
the
Epistle
to
Rheginus
show that Plato retained a hold
upon
the heirs of
Valentinus;
how could it be otherwise when the
great philosopher
is echoed
freely
in the fourth
century by
authors
of
impeccable
and normative
orthodoxy?37
1 have
argued
elsewhere
32
For the most recent discussion and
bibliography,
see H.S.
Schibli,
"Hierocles and the Vehicle of the
Soul",
Hermes 121
(1993), pp.
109-117.
33
On the soul see De
Principiis
1.8.1 with fr. 15
Koetschau,
and De Princ.
III.6.6. The
Dialogue
with Heraclides
suggests
a creation of the immaterial
prior
to
the
material,
but cf. C.P.
Bammel,
"Adam in
Origen",
in R.D. Williams
(ed.)
The
Making of Orthodoxy, Cambridge
1989,
pp.
62-93.
34
See Schibli
"Origen, Didymus
etc."
35
See
Edwards,
"Gnostics and Valentinians".
36
See G.C.
Stead,
"In Search of
Valentinus",
in B.
Layton (ed.)
The
Rediscovery of
Gnosticism,
Vol.
I,
Leiden
1980, pp.
75-95.
37
See
e.g.
the
quotations
from Plato's
Symposium
in Methodius' work of that
title,
and the
frequency
of allusion to Theaetetus 176c in
Jaeger's
index to
Gregory
of
Nyssa, Opera
VI
(In
Canticum
Canticorum).
89
M.J.
EDWARDS
that authors or revisers of the
Nag
Hammadi Codices were familiar
with the most recent innovations of the schools.38
2. The
early
Fathers used the word "Gnostic"
sparingly,
and not
for defamation or abuse. It is
not,
for
example, applied
to Valen-
tinus
by
Irenaeus,
nor is he content to state that the Gnostics were
the teachers of Valentinus without some further
exposure
of their
errors. In
denouncing "gnosis falsely
so called"
(Adv.
Haer.
II.1),
the saint
implies
that he has
gnosis
of a better
quality.
Clement of
Alexandria is
proud
to be a
Gnostic,
though
he warns
against
false
claimants to the
epithet,
and
Hippolytus says,
of a
group
that took
the name for
itself,
that he
prefers
to call them Naassenes
(Refutatio
V.
10).
The term is therefore
commendatory
rather than
pejorative;
however it
originated,
the Fathers are
endeavouring,
not to exclude
it,
but to
keep
it within the Church.
Epiphanius,
then,
could
hardly
differ more from the ancient
testimonies when he writes that the Valentinians
"gave
themselves
the title Gnostic"
(Pan. 31.1), speaking
too of "his followers who
are called
Gnostic",
and this
despite
the fact that he
employs
this
term as the
proper
name of a different
sect,
not found in other
authors,
whom he claims to know from
personal acquaintance.
He
adds at Panarion 36.1 that the same abuse of terms is
practised by
the
Basilideans, Secundians,
Ptolemaeans and
Carpocratians;
he
does
not,
we
note,
profess
to be
exposing
the secret character of the
heresies
by labelling
them as
Gnostic,
but to be
deprecating
their
word for themselves. The Valentinians thus
repudiated any
name
that
might suggest
adherence to
any
faith but
Christianity; they
sought
instead to be welcomed as the intellectual leaven of the
Kingdom.
The
appellation
"Gnostic" cloaked the name of Valentinus in
the fourth
century;
the
Epistle
to
Rheginus
cloaks the naked soul of
early
Platonism with the new
(yet Pauline) concept
of a
spiritual
body.
The author could
agree
both with
Sallustius,
friend
ofJulian,
who
argued
that the soul would lose its function if it ceased to
possess
a
body,39
and with
Augustine,
who maintained that if the
38
Edwards,
"Porphyry
and the
Intelligible
Triad",
p.
25.
39
Sallustius,
De Mundo et Deis
20,
cited
by Layton,
Gnostic
Treatise, p. 80,
together
with
[Athenagoras],
De Resurrectione 12.
90
THE EPISTLE TO RHEGINUS
body
has been made
worthy
of
perpetuity
in
heaven,
it is because
the
incorporeal
soul has vivified the flesh.40
Thus,
while this
study upholds
Peel's
exegesis
of the
Epistle
to
Rheginus,
it tells
against
some
prefatory
remarks in the most recent
of his versions. He calls the work
"distinctively unorthodox";
it
may
be so in
style,
but has not
proved
to be so in
thought
or in
intention. He finds it "un-Platonic" in its
ascription
to the resur-
rection
body
of certain
"recognisable personal
characteristics";
but
it rather seems that the author has
commendably neglected
Plato's
literary corpus
for the
living
Platonism of his
time.4l
40
De Civitate Dei XXII.4. But of course the
spirital body
does not
possess
a dif-
ferent substance in
Augustine, being superior
in its detachment from the
appetites,
its
superior mobility
and its obedience to the
uncorrupted
will
(De
Civ.
Dei
XIII.18c,
20b
etc.).
41
I am
grateful
to R. Wilson and to the editors and referees of Novum Testamen-
tum for comments on an
early
draft of this
paper,
the research for which was
funded
by
a British
Academy post-doctoral Fellowship
held at New
College
in
1992-3.
91