Part XI: Objections Answered

OBJECTION 1: THE TEXTS ARE TOO LATE #

THEY SAY: "The Nag Hammadi texts are too late. They're fourth-century copies, centuries after the real Gospels." ANSWER. The codices were copied in the fourth century. Yes. And here is why it doesn't matter: so were our oldest complete Bibles. Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus -- the backbone of every modern New Testament -- are fourth-century manuscripts too. Date the copy, and you must throw out the canon with it.

What counts is when the text was COMPOSED. Irenaeus, writing around 180, already knows a Valentinian book called "the Gospel of Truth" (Against Heresies 3.11.9). Valentinus taught in Rome around 136-160. Ptolemy, Heracleon and Theodotus wrote in the second century. The Valentinian works at Nag Hammadi are Coptic translations of Greek works from the second and third centuries -- the same era as Irenaeus himself, and older than the councils that condemned them.

OBJECTION 2: THE LOST BISHOP ELECTION #

THEY SAY: "Valentinus was a sore loser. He only turned heretic after he lost the election for bishop of Rome." ANSWER. This comes from one source: Tertullian, Against the Valentinians 4. Look at what it actually admits. Tertullian says Valentinus "had expected to become a bishop, because he was an able man both in genius and eloquence," and that another man was preferred because of his claim as a confessor (one who had suffered for the faith). So by his enemy's own report, Valentinus was a leading, gifted, respected teacher of the Roman church -- respected enough to be a candidate.

As for the motive -- "he broke off in anger" -- that is Tertullian's hostile interpretation, written decades later, from Carthage. Meanwhile Irenaeus (Against Heresies 3.4.3) places Valentinus in Rome teaching from Hyginus through Anicetus, roughly twenty years. Nobody teaches for twenty years in a church that thinks he is a heretic. The story proves the opposite of what it is used for: Valentinian teaching was at home in Rome until the institution decided otherwise.

OBJECTION 3: THEY HATED THE BODY #

THEY SAY: "Gnostics hated the body and the physical world." ANSWER. Some ancient groups leaned that way. The Valentinians did not hate the world -- they understood it. They saw it as born of Wisdom's grief and held in being by a just maker. The body is not evil; it is temporary.

And they taught the resurrection. The Valentinian Treatise on the Resurrection says: "Then, indeed, as the Apostle said, we suffered with him, and we arose with him, and we went to heaven with him" (NHC I,4 45:24-28, Robinson). Their view of the risen body is Paul's own: "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Corinthians 15:50); "it is raised a spiritual body" (15:44).

And notice who actually built a culture of bodily contempt: the medieval monastic tradition of self-flagellation, hair shirts and sexual shame grew up inside the very Church that called the Gnostics body-haters.

OBJECTION 4: ELITISM #

THEY SAY: "Gnosis is elitist. Only a spiritual few get saved." ANSWER. This is the most repeated charge, and it misreads the sources. In the Valentinian system as Irenaeus himself reports it, the psychic (soul-level) Christians -- ordinary believers -- ARE saved, by faith and good works, and come to rest in the place of the Demiurge (Against Heresies 1.6.1; 1.7.1, 1.7.5). The Tripartite Tractate (NHC I,5) likewise gives the psychic order a real path to salvation.

And the Valentinians did not lock the door. The Gospel of Truth commands the awakened to serve everyone: "Make firm the foot of those who have stumbled and stretch out your hands to those who are ill. Feed those who are hungry and give repose to those who are weary, and raise up those who wish to rise, and awaken those who sleep." (NHC I,3 33:1-8, Robinson)

Now compare: Pope Boniface VIII's bull "Unam Sanctam" (1302) declares that "it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff." Who exactly is the elitist?

OBJECTION 5: GNOSIS VERSUS GRACE #

THEY SAY: "Christianity is salvation by grace. Gnosis is salvation by knowledge -- self-salvation." ANSWER. False choice. In Valentinian teaching, gnosis is not something you achieve. It is something GIVEN. The Gospel of Truth opens: "The gospel of truth is joy for those who have received from the Father of truth the grace of knowing him" (NHC I,3 16:31-33, Robinson). Grace of knowing. Received from the Father. Through the Word who came from the Fullness.

Jesus himself says: "this is life eternal, that they might know thee" (John 17:3). Paul says "now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known" (1 Corinthians 13:12). Knowledge given by grace is the New Testament's own language.

OBJECTION 6: THE DEMIURGE INSULTS THE OT GOD #

THEY SAY: "The Demiurge insults the God of the Old Testament. Gnostics call him evil." ANSWER. Some Sethian texts do portray the world-maker harshly. The Valentinians mostly did not. The clearest proof is Ptolemy's Letter to Flora, preserved whole by Epiphanius (Panarion 33.3-7). Ptolemy rejects two errors at once: that the Law came from the perfect Father, and that it came from the devil. The maker and lawgiver, he says, is a just intermediate god -- neither the perfect God nor the adversary (PARAPHRASE of Panarion 33.3 and 33.7).

Now read the Old Testament honestly. A God who "repented" that he made man (Genesis 6:6). Who commands the destruction of whole peoples, "both man and woman, infant and suckling" (1 Samuel 15:3). Who hardens Pharaoh's heart and then punishes Egypt for it (Exodus 9:12). Christians have wrestled with these texts for two thousand years. The Valentinians offered an honest answer: the Lawgiver is real, just, and limited -- and Jesus revealed a Father beyond him. "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son... he hath declared him" (John 1:18).

That is not an insult. It is the only reading that lets Jesus' Father be pure love.

OBJECTION 7: DOCETISM #

THEY SAY: "Gnostics were docetists. They said Christ only SEEMED to suffer." ANSWER. Some early groups did. The Valentinian texts do not. Read the Gospel of Truth on the crucifixion:

"For this reason Jesus appeared; he put on that book; he was nailed to a tree; he published the edict of the Father on the cross. O such great teaching! He draws himself down to death though life eternal clothes him." -- NHC I,3 20:24-30 (Robinson)

And a few lines earlier: "he knows that his death is life for many" (NHC I,3 20:13-14). Nailed. Death. Life for many.

The Tripartite Tractate teaches that the Savior was truly conceived and born in body and soul and that he suffered, taking on the condition of those he came to save (NHC I,5 113-115, PARAPHRASE). Valentinians did distinguish the divine Savior from the vulnerable humanity he took on -- but so did the orthodox at Chalcedon in 451, which defined "two natures" in Christ. They are not docetists for asking the question Chalcedon spent four centuries answering.

OBJECTION 8: THE BIBLE CONDEMNS THEM #

THEY SAY: "The Bible itself condemns them: 1 John 4:1-3, 1 Timothy 6:20, Colossians 2:8." ANSWER. Look at each verse.

• 1 JOHN 4:2-3: "Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God." The Valentinians confessed exactly that -- "he was nailed to a tree" (NHC I,3 20:25). This verse targets those who denied Jesus came in the flesh. That is not us.
• 1 TIMOTHY 6:20: warns against "what is falsely called knowledge (gnosis)." Counterfeit implies the real thing exists (Part II). And the Pastoral Epistles were most likely written after Paul's lifetime -- most critical scholars date them to the late first or early second century. The verse warns against false gnosis. We agree.
• COLOSSIANS 2:8: "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men." The tradition of men -- like a catechism list that drops a commandment (Part VIII)? Like doctrines defined in 1854, 1870 and 1950 with no verse behind them (Part IX)? Colossians also says that in Christ "dwelleth all the fulness (pleroma) of the Godhead bodily" (Colossians 2:9). Pleroma. It is in your Bible.

OBJECTION 9: THE FATHERS WERE UNANIMOUS #

THEY SAY: "All the Church Fathers rejected Valentinus. Unanimous." ANSWER. Of course they did. We only have the writings that the winning side chose to copy. That is like judging a war only by the victors' newspapers.

And the "unanimous" fathers disagreed with each other constantly. Tertullian, who wrote against Valentinus, later joined the Montanists, condemned by the same Church. Origen, who argued against Heracleon but quoted him respectfully at length, was himself condemned centuries later, in 553. Clement of Alexandria preserved Valentinian teachings, called the true Christian "the gnostic" (Stromata, Book 7), and was quietly removed from the Roman martyrology in the sixteenth century. The line between "father" and "heretic" was redrawn every century by whoever held power.

OBJECTION 10: IT'S JUST PLATONISM #

THEY SAY: "It's just Greek philosophy -- Platonism dressed up as Christianity." ANSWER. Yes, the Valentinians used Greek philosophical language. And here is why it doesn't matter: so did everyone. John's Gospel opens with the Logos, a term from Greek philosophy. The Nicene Creed's key word -- homoousios, "of the same substance" -- is a philosophical term that appears nowhere in the Bible. Augustine said Platonist books led him toward Christ (Confessions 7.9). Aquinas built his theology on Aristotle.

If philosophy disqualifies a theology, then Nicaea goes first.

OBJECTION 11: 'GNOSTICISM' IS A MODERN CATEGORY #

THEY SAY: "There's no such thing as 'Gnosticism.' Scholars say the category is a modern invention." ANSWER. Partly true -- and it helps us. Michael Allen Williams ("Rethinking 'Gnosticism'," 1996) and Karen L. King ("What Is Gnosticism?," 2003) showed that "Gnosticism" as one single heretical religion is a modern construct, built largely from the polemics of the Church Fathers. The ancient groups were diverse.

That supports everything in this document. The "Gnostic heresy" you were warned about is a cartoon assembled by the people who destroyed them. Remove the cartoon, and you find the Valentinians: Christians who read the same scriptures, worshipped in the same churches, and took the Gospel deeper. And note: Irenaeus himself reports that certain groups called themselves "gnostics" (Against Heresies 1.25.6), and David Brakke ("The Gnostics," 2010) argues for keeping the term for a specific ancient movement. Either way, the Valentinians stand on their own name: they were followers of Valentinus, and of Christ.

THE OBJECTIONS AT A GLANCE #

   THEY SAY                        THE ANSWER IN ONE LINE
   ------------------------------  ---------------------------------------
   1  texts are late               so are Sinaiticus and Vaticanus
   2  lost the bishop election     proves he was a respected leader
   3  hated the body               taught resurrection with Paul
   4  elitist                      psychics saved; "awaken those who
                                   sleep"
   5  knowledge not grace          "the grace of knowing him"
   6  Demiurge insults OT God      Ptolemy: a "just" god, not evil
   7  docetism                     "he was nailed to a tree"
   8  1 Jn 4, 1 Tim 6, Col 2       they confessed Christ in the flesh;
                                   "pleroma" is in Col 2:9
   9  fathers unanimous            victors' newspapers
   10 just Platonism               so is homoousios
   11 "Gnosticism" is modern       yes -- the heresy was a cartoon