Valentinus (Οὐαλεντῖνος)
c. 100 - c. 160 · Gnosticism · Prominent
Valentinus trained in Alexandria, taught Christianity at Rome around 150, and became the most influential of the Gnostic masters. Almost nothing survives in his own voice, seven fragments and one of them a psalm. In them the visible world stands to the living one as a portrait stands to a face, lesser and yet honoured by the name it bears. The thirty aeons and the fall of Sophia come from Irenaeus summarising a pupil of his.
Signature
The position Valentinus is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Ground of Being
- strongly leans Transcendence
- Beginning of Things
- Demiurgic
Positions on the 3 axes the sources answer
- Identity
- strongly leans Unchanging (5 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- strongly leans Inherent (90 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Ground of Being
- strongly leans Transcendence (100 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
17 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Valentinus refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Non-Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Union with God
What is the highest good? - Knowledge
- Grounded in God
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Beginning of Things
- Demiurgic
What is the origin of reality? - Human Nature
- Imago Dei
What is human nature?