the "epistle to rheginus": valentinianism in the fourth century

The "Epistle to Rheginus": Valentinianism in the Fourth CenturyAuthor(s): M. J. EdwardsSource: Novum Testamentum, Vol. 37, Fasc. 1 (Jan., 1995), pp. 76-91Published by: BRILLStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1561238 .

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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 consistent 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.

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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 "revision" and "a response to orthodox criticism"

78




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.

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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 contrast 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.

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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 represent, 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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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 survival 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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 resurrection 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 different 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.

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the "epistle to rheginus": valentinianism in the fourth century

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