Gospel of Truth - 1
The last two weeks have been spent taking an overview of Valentinus as seen through the eyes of a number of experts in the field of ancient texts. But there is no substitute for the real thing, and so today I will attempt to delve, in earnest, into Valentines’ magnum opus, The Gospel of Truth.
This sermon will cover the first few sections. First we will read a short summary out of Wikipedia, then we will go directly into the book. The work begins with a salutation and praise: “The Gospel of Truth is joy!” This is followed by a discussion of language, then comes obeisance to Jesus Christ, “He it is who is called "the Savior”; then we turn to the a basic gnostic tenet: that ignorance of the Father brought about terror and fear, along with this remarkable thought, “Forgetfulness did not exist with the Father, although it existed because of him.” Remember “gnosis” means “knowledge”, and in a higher sense, “knowledge of God”. Of Jesus, Valentinus states: “What exists in him is knowledge, which was revealed so that forgetfulness might be destroyed, He did not, however, destroy them because they ate of it. He rather caused those who ate of it to be joyful because of this discovery.” Opposites come into play here. Finally we wills mention various aspects of Heaven on Earth.
The Gospel of Truth is one of the more talked-about of the apocryphal works because it is, more than many of the other gnostic texts, jam-packed with doctrinal principles and sacraments. Terms like “logos” and “pleroma” appear consistently, as do the gnostic attitudes toward knowledge and spiritual manifestation. Wikipedia has this to say:
“The Gospel of Truth is one of the Gnostic texts from the New Testament apocrypha found in the Nag Hammadi codices ("NHC"). It exists in two Coptic translations, a Subakhmimic rendition surviving almost in full in the first codex (the "Jung Codex") and a Sahidic in fragments in the twelfth.
The Gospel of Truth was probably written in Greek between 140 and 180 by Valentinian Gnostics (or, as some posit, by Valentinus himself). It was known to Irenaeus of Lyons, who objected to its Gostic content and declared it heresy. Irenaeus declares it one of the works of the disciples of "Valentinius", and the similarity of the work to others thought to be by Valentinus and his followers has made many scholars agree with Irenaeus on this point.
“But the followers of Valentinus, putting away all fear, bring forward their own compositions and boast that they have more Gospels than really exist. Indeed their audacity has gone so far that they entitle their recent composition the Gospel of Truth, though it agrees in nothing with the Gospels of the apostles, and so no Gospel of theirs is free from blasphemy. For if what they produce is the Gospel of Truth, and is different from those the apostles handed down to us, those who care to can learn how it can be shown from the Scriptures themselves that [then] what is handed down from the apostles is not the Gospel of Truth.”
After its Coptic translations and their burial at Nag Hammadi, the text had been lost until the Nag Hammadi discovery.
The text is written with strong poetic skill (notable even in translation), and includes a heavily cyclical presentation of themes. It is not a "gospel" in the sense of an account of the works of Jesus of Nazareth, but is better understood as a homily. The text is generally considered by scholars one of the best written texts in the whole Nag Hammadi collection, considering its worth highly as both a great literary work and a gnostic exegesis on several gospels, canonical and otherwise.
Not all scholars, however, agree that the text is to be considered Gnostic. Paterson Brown has argued forcefully that the three Nag Hammadi Coptic Gospels of Thomas, Philip and Truth are demonstrably not Gnostic in content, since each explicitly affirms the basic reality and sanctity of incarnate life, which Brown argues that Gnosticism considers illusory or evil.
The writing is thought to cite or allude to the New Testament Gospels of Matthew and John, as well as 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, Hebrews, 1 John and the Book of Revelation--John's Gospel the most often. It is also influenced by Thomas; for instance at one point (22:13-19) it cites John 3:8 alongside Thomas 28.
The text describes a theory of the rise of Error in personified form. The ignorance and yearning to see the Father bred fear, which coalesced into a fog by which Error gained power.”
Let’s read about that far:
“The Gospel of Truth is joy to those who have received from the Father of truth the gift of knowing him by the power of the Logos, who has come from the Pleroma and who is in the thought and the mind of the Father;”
[Sidebar: To get us started, let us make examine these terms, “logos” and “pleroma”, not out of ignorance, but because there are so many various definitions of some of these words that we must be quite clear about what is meant in the gnostic sense:
Logos From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
“Logos ; is a term in Western philosophy, psychology, rhetoric, and religion derived from a Greek word variously meaning "ground", "plea", "opinion", "expectation", "word", "speech", "account", "reason", "proportion", and "discourse", but it became a technical term in philosophy beginning with Heraclitus (c. 535 – c. 475 BC), who used the term for a principle of order and knowledge.
Logos is the logic behind an argument. Logos tries to persuade an audience using logical arguments and supportive evidence. Logos is a persuasive technique often used in writing and rhetoric.
Ancient Greek philosophers used the term in different ways. The sophists used the term to mean discourse; Aristotle applied the term to refer to "reasoned discourse"or "the argument" in the field of rhetoric, and considered it one of the three modes of persuasion alongside ethos and pathos. Stoic philosophers identified the term with the divine animating principle pervading the Universe.
[Sidebar: This is the definition we will come back to: “the divine animating principle pervading the Universe.”
Back to Wikipedia:]
“Within Hellenistic Judaism, Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BC – c. 50 AD) adopted the term into Jewish philosophy. The Gospel of John identifies the Logos, through which all things are made, as divine (theos), and further identifies Jesus Christ as the incarnate Logos. The term is also used in Sufism, and the analytical psychology of Carl Jung.
Despite the conventional translation as "word", it is not used for a word in the grammatical sense; instead, the term lexis (λέξις, léxis) was used. However, both logos and lexis derive from the same verb légō (λέγω), meaning "(I) count, tell, say, speak”.”
Now “pleroma”:
“Pleroma generally refers to the totality of divine powers. The word means fullness from πληρόω ("I fill") comparable to πλήρης which means "full", and is used in Christian theological contexts: both in Gnosticism generally, and by St. Paul the Apostle in Colossians 2:9:
“For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form,”
The word is used 17 times in the New Testament.
Pleroma is also used in the general Greek language and is used by the Greek Orthodox Church in this general form since the word appears in the book of Colossians. Proponents of the view that Paul was actually a Gnostic, such as Elaine Pagels of Princeton University, view the reference in Colossians as something that was to be interpreted in the Gnostic sense.”
[Sidebar: It is interesting to me how much hidden meaning is embedded in our language; we all know that knowledge of a person’s position in the social hierarchy, his income, even his place of birth, may be discovered merely by listening to his accent and vocabulary. Thus, merely by using the word Pleroma, the authorities place Paul in the box marked “gnostics”. And this is not without reason— remember what Frank Zappa said:
“Everyone in this room is wearing a uniform, and don’t kid yourself.”
Everything we do and say identifies us with a culture or a clique, a country or a county. If Paul used the word “pleroma” he had to have heard the word somewhere, and where else than from a gnostic philosopher? Remember that Paul was classically educated, and was well aware of the ideas underlying much of the philosophical outlook of the time. Thus, if the presence of a gnostic philosophy was felt in the pulse of the collective consciousness, surely the word pleroma would have been public domain but with an obvious and telling pedigree. I think the word “gnostics”, just like any other label you can name, is sort of like the word “politicians”—there are lots of them and they can’t agree on anything.
Now back to Valentinus:]
“The Gospel of Truth is joy to those who have received from the Father of truth the gift of knowing him by the power of the Logos, who has come from the Pleroma and who is in the thought and the mind of the Father;”
[Sidebar: The language is very twisted here, but I think a reasonable paraphrase of this might go like this:
“The Gospel of Truth is joy to those who have received from the Father of truth the gift of knowing him (the Father) by the power of the Logos, (Jesus Christ) who has come from the Pleroma (come to where from the pleroma? here into the physical, OUTSIDE the pleroma—remember? to rescue the lost Sophia who has abandoned herself to the illusions of grief and suffering which comprise the outer darkness), who (Jesus again) is in the thought and the mind of the Father;”
You can see here that, in just this one paragraph, there is concentrated a lot of material that requires a background in Gnostic mythology to understand. Thus did Irenaeus declare in Against Heresies 3:2:1:
"The scriptures are ambiguous and the truth cannot be extracted from them by those who are ignorant of tradition."
There is an important point to be brought home, here: the interpretation of sacred texts (or any text for that matter) must take place in the light of the CONTEXT of the material, the historical era during which it was created. To confuse things, idiomatic expressions, especially those of an abstract nature, elicit complicated sometimes contradictory definitions; also, we must be aware that these verbal nuances are specific to the life of that particular time. Moreover, we must admit that the process of using words, to express intangible things, is infected with many problems of a philological nature; thus, from a passage filled with language whose words bear many multiple meanings, no LITERAL interpretation of a sacred text will yield any eternal truth. A literal interpretation demands a fixed definition of static realities—and yet there ARE NO static realities—we say that “reality” is a verb, and “time waits for no man”. There has never been a single moment in time that has ever stopped flowing like a river to the sea.
Thinking about the river flowing to the sea, I began to see it as an apt metaphor that could apply to several other metaphors we have been developing. We think of the river as constantly flowing—moving—to empty into a vast becalmed ocean of bliss, where still and silence reign. Thus, the endlessly flowing river represents time, while the ocean represents timelessness. Also, in terms of the Father/Mother God dichotomy, the river represents the masculine, and the ocean represents the feminine.
Back to Valentinus; this is where he attributes to Jesus, the Savior, the qualities of Hope, Infinite Knowledge, and Humility.]
“He it is who is called "the Savior," since that is the name of the work which he must do for the redemption of those who have not known the Father.
For the name of the gospel is the manifestation of hope, since that is the discovery of those who seek him, because the All sought him from whom it had come forth.”
[Sidebar: This is a complicated issue: seeking. The passage states, somewhat ambiguously, that the one separated from the Pleroma SEEKS to return to the Source, HOPES to return to the Source. But then it says, “the All sought him from whom it had come forth”; this implies the ALL (the Pleroma) also sought the lost one. There is a law of mutual attraction here that cannot be ignored, a law of opposites, possibly of a masculine/feminine nature. [Sing:] “Oh how I love Jesus, because He first loved me.”]
Valentinus goes on to explain:
“You see, the All had been inside of him, that illimitable, inconceivable one, who is better than every thought. This ignorance of the Father brought about terror and fear. And terror became dense like a fog, that no one was able to see.”
[Sidebar: The sentence structure is somewhat confused, here, but I think a proper annotation for the passage would go something like this:
“You see, the All (the Pleroma, that illimitable, inconceivable one) had been inside of him (the protagonist). The All, who is better than every thought (the ALL Who is beyond thought in the Cloud of Unknowing). This ignorance of the Father (ignorance engendered by false thoughts (or any thoughts)) brought about terror and fear. And terror became dense like a fog, that no one was able to see. (This fog may be thought of as the illusory material from which the Physical universe was created.)
Back to Valentinus:]
“Because of this, error became strong. But it worked on its hylic substance (of matter; material, the opposite of psychic) vainly, because it did not know the truth. It was in a fashioned form while it was preparing, in power and in beauty, the equivalent of truth.”
[Sidebar: This passage gets a big hooray from me, because it recapitulates a point I have made several times: that false doctrine springs from an adherence to a tangible form, a form which deludes the observer with an EQUIVALENT Truth, a truth with a bright glowing surface, but whose innards are defiled by subtle misdirections of language.
The next passage returns to the Logos (Jesus); notice that the descent into the Outer Darkness, to rescue Sophia, was not a humiliation for Him. From this (no humiliation) is true humility born.]
“This then, was not a humiliation for him, that illimitable, inconceivable one. For they were as nothing, this terror and this forgetfulness and this figure of falsehood, whereas this established truth is unchanging, unperturbed and completely beautiful.
For this reason, do not take error too seriously. Thus, since it had no root, it was in a fog as regards the Father, engaged in preparing works and forgetfulnesses and fears in order, by these means, to beguile those of the middle and to make them captive. The forgetfulness of error was not revealed. It did not become light beside the Father. Forgetfulness did not exist with the Father, although it existed because of him.”
[Sidebar: Embedded in this paragraph are several deep concepts. Recall our numerous discussions of the parable—we have suggested that Jesus spoke in parables to protect the uninitiated from too much too soon. Now, this passage from Valentinus makes reference to “the middle”, the people who have become the target of Satanic fascination:
“engaged in preparing works and forgetfulnesses and fears in order, by these means, to beguile those of the middle and to make them captive.”
This “middle” must refer to the common layman, the poor peasant who cannot be trusted with the secret truths of Jesus, but only the parables of Jesus. Unfortunately, the mediocre spirit consciousness poses the most convenient target for the beguiling powers of Satan. All this points to a recommendation of “Knowledge” over “Forgetfulness”, and the affirmative moral imperative of the initiate to rescue the uninitiated, as Jesus came to rescue Sophia.
Notice the use of the term “forgetfulness”; remember that at the heart of Gnostic doctrine is the idea that: through Gnosis, Knowledge, the Truth will be revealed. Coincidentally, a primary article of New Age theology is that: we all already know who we are and where we come from, but we have merely forgotten. Gnosis is not discovering something new, but is, rather, uncovering something ancient.
And this part kills me: “Forgetfulness did not exist with the Father, although it existed because of him.” Again I sense an attraction of opposites i.e.,
forgetfulness is bad because it separates us from the All, but forgetfulness is good because it comes from the Father, and only good can come from the Father, and, as many Hindus would say, this forgetfulness may be seen as God’s play.
Also, don’t forget that God created EVERYTHING, the good with the bad, and set up the whole lost-soul-redemption thing.
This is one of two references, close together, to God as the Source of all evil as well as good. The first is: “Thus, since it had no root, it was in a fog as regards the Father, engaged in preparing works and forgetfulnesses and fears.” This sentence is confusing; it can either mean, “It—the error—was engaged in preparing works and forgetfulnesses and fears,” or “the Father was engaged in preparing works and forgetfulnesses and fears.” If we choose the latter meaning, the one where the Father prepares forgetfulnesses and fears,we clearly portray a demonic God who curses His creation at the same time He blesses it.
It is difficult to come to grips with the idea that God created Good and Evil at the same time, perhaps as expressions of gender; we like to think of spiritual life as a constantly forward-moving progress, down a path toward some bright ineffable star— but what if William Blake’s idea of the Contraries is true, and all there is, is opposition of opposites?
I’m sure that, on some level, any description of reality you can think of may be said to be true; but the following paragraph gives this GoodGod/BadGod scenario a happy ending, as we read that Knowledge is the cure for Forgetfulness.
Back to Valentinus:]
“What exists in him is knowledge, which was revealed so that forgetfulness might be destroyed and that they might know the Father, Since forgetfulness existed because they did not know the Father, if they then come to know the Father, from that moment on forgetfulness will cease to exist.”
The next section describes Jesus as having been sent down by God to remove ignorance. Jesus was a teacher confounding the other scribes and teachers, and asserted they were foolish since they tried to understand the world by analyzing the law. But Error grew angry at this, and nailed Jesus to a cross. It also proceeds to describe how it is knowledge of the father that grants salvation, which constitutes eternal rest, describing ignorance as a nightmare.
“That is the gospel of him whom they seek, which he has revealed to the perfect through the mercies of the Father as the hidden mystery, Jesus the Christ. Through him he enlightened those who were in darkness because of forgetfulness. He enlightened them and gave them a path. And that path is the truth which he taught them.
For this reason error was angry with him, so it persecuted him. It was distressed by him, so it made him powerless. He was nailed to a cross. He became a fruit of the knowledge of the Father. He did not, however, destroy them because they ate of it. He rather caused those who ate of it to be joyful because of this discovery.”
[Sidebar: I find this paragraph amazing! It begins with the statement that “error”, (the power of Darkness personified), was angry with Him, and so persecuted Him; persecuted Him through the power of dominion over the Earth that had, for a time, been given by God to Satan. Jesus’ crucifixion is described as “a fruit of the knowledge of the Father.” Thus, is the suffering of Jesus justified in the inexorable bonds of Fate. This Knowledge, this fruit, is Knowledge not unlike the fruit that blossomed from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, but THIS time, instead of bringing down a curse,
“He rather caused those who ate of it to be joyful because of this discovery [of Knowledge].”
This shocking revelation is similar to the many shocking turns of plot in the Bhagavad Gita. It seems that religious literature thrives on paradox, little crusts of doctrine stuffed between the cracks of short parenthetical statements. Where physical reality touches eternity—there is the essence of paradox; hence, a new spirit of Mankind is born out of the suffering of a single person. Jesus’ death gives new life to an ailing world, His Ghost rises out of His body, nailed to the cross, and He thus makes us all free.]
Back to Valentinus:
“And as for him, them he found in himself, and him they found in themselves, that illimitable, inconceivable one, that perfect Father who made the all, in whom the All is, and whom the All lacks, since he retained in himself their perfection, which he had not given to the all.”
Wikipedia provides some summary remarks:
“In this gospel we see darkness and Satan recast as 'error', which can be taken as another way of describing the same thing. It's a poetic way of presenting the data of life: the world is dark, Jesus is the light. But Jesus is also the path to the father. What the father brings, according to this gospel, is 'fullness' for the 'deficient'. But this is clearly the same thing as the 'inexpressible joy' and the peace that passes all understanding discussed in the canonical gospels. It's the place of rest. It's the Kingdom of Heaven, which followers of Jesus find, and live in, while they are still on earth.”
A key point here is:
“It's the Kingdom of Heaven, which followers of Jesus find, and live in, while they are still on earth.”
The idea of Heaven on Earth is one we have visited many times in the past. Last week we read this from the Brons article on Valentinus:
“Valentinians describe the process of union with the divine in terms of a general eschatology that can be realized in the individual here and now. First the person spiritually ascends above the Craftsman and the lower powers to join Sophia, the Savior and their angel. Rejoicing with all of the saved, the person is joined with their angel and enters the Fullness. Such a person is "in the world but not of it." They have already attained a spiritual existence such that, for them, the world has become the Fullness.”
There are numerous references, in scripture, to a Heaven on Earth:
1 Chronicles 29:11-12
"Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth; Yours is the dominion, O LORD, and You exalt Yourself as head over all. "Both riches and honor come from You, and You rule over all, and in Your hand is power and might; and it lies in Your hand to make great and to strengthen everyone.
Jesus’ promise of a Heaven on Earth is well documented:
Matthew 6:9-13 Jesus taught us to pray:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Matthew 5:16:
“In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”
In Matthew 16:19 Jesus tells his disciples,
“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
- Luke 13:29:
“People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God.”
Luke 9:1-2:
“1And he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases,
2 and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal.”
The apostle Paul has many comfortable words on the subject:
- Colossians 3:1-7:
- “1 Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
- 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
- John sees the ending of the old and the beginning of the new world:
Revelation 7:13-17:
“13 Then one of the elders asked me, “These in white robes—who are they, and where did they come from?”
14 I answered, “Sir, you know.” And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
15 Therefore, “they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence.
16 ‘Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat down on them,’nor any scorching heat.
17 For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; ‘he will lead them to springs of living water.’‘And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’ ”
Revelation 21:4-8:
4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
5 He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
6 He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life.
7 Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children.
The mistake people make, when interpreting Revelation, is in thinking that these apocalyptic visions are descriptions of some tangible event, in the history of time; many of us New Agers agree that these visions are merely metaphoric expressions of the soul’s migration from one consciousness level to another. And thus it is that on visiting the Kingdom, the soul’s victory over temptation delivers the devotee to his own personal Heaven on Earth.
Joseph Campbell agrees with this:
“Our world as the center of the universe, the world divided from the heavens, the world bound by horizons in which God’s love is reserved for members of the in group: That is the world that is passing away,” said Campbell. “Apocalypse is not about a fiery Armageddon and salvation of a chosen few, but about the fact that our ignorance and our complacency are coming to an end.”
William Blake gives us this assurance:
“In your own bosom you bear your heaven and earth,
And all you behold, though it appears without,
It is within, in your imagination,
Of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.”
From Nikos Kazantzakis we read:
“I lack nothing, I tell you!”
“Nothing?” I asked. “Not even heaven?”
He lowered his head and was silent. But after a moment:
“Heaven is too high for me. The earth is good, exceptionally good–and near me!”
“Nothing is nearer to us than heaven. The earth is beneath our feet and we tread upon it, but heaven is within us.”
Finally, I offer these remarks by Rudolf Steiner from his An Esoteric Cosmology Chapter XI: THE DEVACHANIC WORLD (HEAVEN):
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“Thus man is bound up with all the kingdoms of Nature. Plato speaks of the symbol of the Cross, saying that the soul of the world is bound to the body of the world as it were upon a Cross. What is the meaning of this symbol? It is an image of the soul passing through the kingdoms of Nature.
In contrast to the human being, the plant has its root beneath and its organs of generation above, turned towards the Sun. The animal is at the intermediary stage, its organism lying, generally speaking, in the horizontal direction. Man and the plants stand vertically upright and with the animal form a Cross — the Cross of the world.
In future ages there will be conscious participation on the part of man in the higher worlds after death in the work of building up the lower kingdoms of Nature. The consciousness of man will govern the circumstances whereby a new civilisation comes into being, concurrently with the appearance of a new flora. The divine mission of the Spirit is to forge the future.
A time will come when there will be no question of ‘miracle’ or chance. Flora and fauna will be a conscious expression of the transfigured soul of man. Creative works on Earth are wrought by the Devas and by man. If we build a cathedral, we are working on the mineral kingdom. The mountains, the banks of the holy Nile are the work of the Devas the temples on the banks of the Nile are the work of man. And the aim is one and the same — the transfiguration of the Earth.
In future ages man will learn to mould all the kingdoms of Nature with the same consciousness with which today he can give shape to mineral substances. He will give form to living beings and take upon himself the labours of the Gods. Thus will he transform the Earth into Devachan.”
This concludes this first installment from Valentinus’ The Gospel of Truth. In this sermon we have established that:
Mankind’s Fall from Grace was initiated by error—error in thinking, false thinking almost certainly inspired by Satan’s perversions of language;
Knowledge of the Logos is the key to the Kingdom of God, and
Having entered into the Kingdom, Heaven is available to all on any dimension of existence.
I find this doctrine to intellectual satisfying without demanding allegiance to the language in which it is expressed. Such a deal.
Let us pray: Jesus inspire us to overcome our spiritual forgetfulness and see what is before us, visible by the spiritual eye. Amen.
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