Ad
related to: valentinus and gnostic tradition definition bible dictionary
Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Valentinus (Greek: Οὐαλεντῖνος; c. 100 – c. 180 CE) was the best known and, for a time, most successful early Christian Gnostic theologian. [1] He founded his school in Rome. According to Tertullian, Valentinus was a candidate for bishop but started his own group when another was chosen. [2]
The doctrine, practices and beliefs of Valentinus and the Gnostic movement that bore his name were condemned as heretical by proto-orthodox Christian leaders and scholars. Prominent Church Fathers such as Irenaeus of Lyons and Hippolytus of Rome wrote against Gnosticism. Because early church leaders encouraged the destruction of Gnostic texts ...
In Gnosticism the use becomes more technical, though its applications are still very variable. The Gnostic writers appeal to the use in the NT (evidenced in Irenaeus' account of their views and his corresponding refutation, Iren I. iii. 4), and the word retains from it the sense of totality in contrast to the constituent parts; but the chief associations of pleroma in their systems are with ...
Irenaeus declares it one of the works of the disciples of "Valentinus", and the similarity of the work to others thought to be by Valentinus and his followers has made many scholars agree. [3] But the followers of Valentinus, putting away all fear, bring forward their own compositions and boast that they have more Gospels than really exist.
In Gnostic tradition, the name Sophia (Σοφία, Greek for "wisdom") refers to the final emanation of God, and is identified with the anima mundi or world-soul. She is occasionally referred to by the Hebrew equivalent of Achamoth [dubious – discuss] (this is a feature of Ptolemy's version of the Valentinian Gnostic myth).
The Gospel of Philip is a text that reveals some connections with Early Christian writings of the Gnostic traditions. It is a series of logia or aphoristic utterances, most of them apparently quotations and excerpts of lost writings, without any attempt at a narrative context.
The most successful Christian Gnostic was the priest Valentinus (c. 100 – c. 160), who founded a Gnostic church in Rome and developed an elaborate cosmology. Gnostics considered the material world to be a prison created by a fallen or evil spirit, the god of the material world (called the demiurge ).
The pleroma is the abode of the Æons. . . they are, or they comprise, the eternal ideas or archetypes of the Platonic philosophy. . . .Separated from this celestial region by Horos. . . or Boundary . . . lies the ‘kenoma’ or ‘void’—the kingdom of this world, the region of matter and material things, the land of shadow and darkness.