ORIGEN

AND THE VALENTINIAN

GNOSIS

BY
G. QUISPEL

Roughly speaking we can divide research on Origen into three stages.

Eugene de Faye, Hal Koch and others stressed the philosophical aspects
These
of Origen's teaching and studied his relation to Greek philosophy.
books were valuable, even if at a later date the specific relevance of
Middle Platonism was underlined.
The catholic renewal after the last world war led to the discovery of
Origen as a churchman. Excellent books of Henri de Lubac, Henri Crouzel
and so many other prominent scholars showed that Origen was primarily
not a philosopher, but a theologian, whose source of revelation was the
Bible.2 The Dialogue with Heraclides, found at Toura, confirmed this
view, because it portrayed Origen as an ecclesiastical "troubleshooter".
To this new and enthusiastic approach we owe a renewed awareness of
the impact of Origen's exegesis on the tradition of the Church, and even
of the reformed churches.3 But perhaps adherents of this school have
sometimes gone too far in their zeal to vindicate the basic orthodoxy of
the Alexandrian doctor.
If I am not mistaken, a new stage has already begun, which pays full
attention to Origen in so far as he is a Gnostic. This is not to say that
this aspect was always and completely neglected in former studies. Hans
Jonas was so impressed by the affinities of Plotinus, Origen and Valentinus that he considered all three of them to be Gnostics.4 But his concept
of Gnosis was so vague that under his definition everything written between 0 and SOOA.D. could be labeled gnostic. Much more cautious
1 E. de Faye, Origne, sa vie, son oevre, sa pensie, I-III (Paris 1923-1928). Hal
Koch, Pronoia und Paideusis (Berlin und Leipzig 1932).
2 H. de Lubac, Histoire et Esprit (Paris 1950). H. Crouzel, Origne et la "connaissance mystique" (Paris 1961).
-3 Izaak Boot, The allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs, especially in the
Netherlands (in Dutch), diss. Utrecht 1971 (Woerden 1971).
'
4 H. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, II,1 (Gottingen 1954) 171-223.

30
was the approach of Jean Cardinal Dani6lou in his Origene. There he
showed in detail how Origen was influenced at certain points by the
strange vertical exegesis of men like Heracleon.5 Moreover he distinguished between typology, of Jewish origin, presupposing a history of
salvation with an aim and purpose and therefore strictly horizontal, and
allegory which interprets details of the Sacred text as allusions to pleromatic "happenings". Even when he found himself under fire, His Eminence maintained his positions, thus paving the way for a more gnostic
of Origen. As a matter of fact I do believe that in this
interpretation
For in his
respect Origen is much more a Gnostic than a Platonist.
world
all
kinds
of
do
take
whereas
place,
spiritual
happenings
among
Plato's ideas nothing happens at all. Nor should we say that such a
vertical exegesis is necessarily Greek, because the Stoics too gave allegorical interpretations
of Greek mythology. The later Jewish Cabbalists
a
similar
gave very
interpretation of the Old Testament. More than alien
influences it is a certain gnostic mentality which produces these hermeneutics.
Even if the above mentioned scholars met with stubborn opposition,
we must follow the road they indicated. Origen has been studied as an
isolated case, but from now on he should be studied in relationship to
his intellectual and theological environment.
We can and must do this
from now on, because so many new texts have been discovered, which
elucidate his Alexandrian background.
In the first place there are the
Bodmer Papyri, especially Papyrus 75, with the text of Luke and John
(about 200 A.D.).g This is an excellent, scholarly text, anticipating the
fourth century codices Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, made by competent
philologists, who learned their job from the traditional Alexandrian pagan
text critics. These texts reveal to us the existence of a circle of Hellenintellectuals in Alexandria before Clement and
istic, but "orthodox"
Origen, who had a certain predelection for Atticisms and identified the
Christian agape with the Platonic eros (the Egyptian text, represented by
ob qrel
Clement, Pap. 46 c and Vaticanus reads 1 Cor. 13, 5 : (f)
love does not seek but itself).
t yfi gat)T?q
This, I guess, was the intellectual climate of Origen's father Leonides.
It has now been shown by Michael Mees that Clement of Alexandria
had already this pure, scholarly text before him: whatever deviates in
5 Jean Danielou, Origne (Paris 1948) 190-198.
V. Martin-R. Kasser, Papyrus Bodmer XIV-XV, 1-2 (Coligny 1961).

31
his works from this Egyptian text, should be ascribed to the free, extracanonical gospel tradition of Jewish Christian origin which was current
at this time in the Alexandrian congregation.'
This fact shows that there
were Jewish Christians in Alexandria, probably from the very beginning.
Manfred Hornschuh has pointed out that Alexandrian Christianity has
Jewish Christian origins.8 This is relevant for our subject, because Origen
knows Christians who think that God has a body.9 It would be rash to
dismiss this concept as the naive fancy of simple believers. The same is
found in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies (17, 7) ; and the Jewish mystics
of the time were familiar with the theme of the measuring of the body
(of God). This was mainly a reaction against the abstract concept of
God in Greek philosophy, which menaced the Jewish identity. In face
of this both Jewish mystics and Jewish Christians used the most bold
and provocative formulas to express their faith in a living personal God.lo
Origen is very much opposed to this "Judaizing" literalism. And in
this respect he agrees with the Gnostics against the Jewish Christians.
Other discoveries reveal the great pluriformity of Alexandrian Christianity before Clement and Origen. The codices of Nag Hammadi now
turn out to contain not only gnostic books, but also writings which must
be considered as pregnostic or definitely non gnostic. Among them the
first place must be attributed to the text Bront or Perfect Nous, recently
edited by Martin Krause." This book shows no signs of Christian influence and might have been written in Jewish Alexandrian circles in the
first century before Christ. Here Sophia reveals herself, using again and
again the introductory formula Ego eimi. This must have been inspired
by the same device in the Isis inscription of Heliopolis, known through
several copies found in the Hellenistic world. 12 It would seem that in
Alexandria at least some Jewish circles were open to the warm mother
religions of the Near East like that of Isis and integrated some of its
colours into their concept of divine, hypostatic Wisdom.
I M. Mees, Die Zitate aus dem Neuen Testamentbei ClemensvonAlexandrien
(Bari
1970).
8 Manfred Homschuh, Studien zur Epistula Apostolorum(Berlin
1965).
9 De princ.
1,1,1 (Koetschau p. 16): scio quoniam conabunturquidam etiam secundum scripturas nostras dicere deum corpus esse.
o Gershom Scholem, Von der mystischen Gestalt der Gottheit (Zrich
1962) 1-47.
m Martin Krause-Pahor Labib, Gnostischeund Hermetische
Schriften aus Codex II
und Codex VI (Gliickstadt 1971) 122-132.
12 J. Bergmann, Ich bin Isis. Studienzum memphitischenHintergrund der griechischen
Isisaretalogien (Uppsala 1968).

32
Wisdom, who here styles herself as Logos, and as "the Wisdom of the
Greeks and the Gnosis of the Barbarians", in her numinous paradoxes
even dares to call herself the Saint and the Prostitute: "I am the saint
and the whore
(p. 122,1.18). We understand then how
it came that Simon the Magician could say that his Helen, who was also
Sophia, had been a prostitute in a brothel in Tyre. We also see that the
view of the Apocryphon of John, according to which Sophia fell owing to
her libido (prounikon), is traditional.
All this was already there in Alexandria before the arrival of Christianity. Among the manuscripts of Nag
Hammadi some fragments of the Sentences of Sextus have been identified.
Owing to the excellent edition of Henri Chadwick we now know that
the author of this writing, who lived in Alexandria some time before
Clement and Origen, integrated Greek philosophical sayings into his
collection, and must be considered as an orthodox Christian with encratitic leanings. 13 This leads us to the problem of Encratism within the
Egyptian church. Clement in the third book of his Stromateis, is engaging in polemics against Tatian, Julius Cassianus and the local Encratites of Alexandria.
This, however, does not imply that the Encratites
had already been expelled from the Church then and formed a separate
sect in Alexandria.
Certainly this Encratism had very deep roots in
Alexandrian soil: the concept of the Gospel according to the Egyptians
that the "two must be made one" has its antecedents in Philon and in
Platonic philosophy. Originally Encratism must have been an indigenous
form of Christianity in Egypt, strongly hellenised and to be distinguished
from Gnosticism. 14
The most famous text of Nag Hammadi, the Gospel of Thomas, is, as
I see it, not gnostic in origin, but encratitic. The text must have been
composed in Edessa for several reasons, amongst which the use of the
special term monachos, an equivalent of the Syriac ihidaja, bachelor,
which is not found in any Egyptian text of the time. Greek fragments
of the work have been found at Oxyrrhynchus, which should be dated in
the first half of the third century. This would mean then that the encratitic views of the Gospel of Thomas were known in Alexandria at a
very early date and had found an echo there.
The Teachings of Silvanus, also found at Nag Hammadi, contain nothing
13 H. Chadwick, The Sentences of Sextus. A Contribution to the History of Early
Christian Ethics (Cambridge 1959).
G. Quispel, Makarius, das Thomasevangeliumund das Lied von der Perle (Leiden
1967) 82 ff.

33
that is specifically gnostic. It is suggested that this book was written in
Alexandria in the course of the second century.15 It proclaims an enlightened, Hellenistic Christianity, tinged with Stoic and Platonic lore.
Thus it shows that a philosophical interpretation of the Christian religion
was already to be found in Alexandria before Clement and Origen.
All this shows us that Egyptian Christianity in the second and third
century was very open and was characterised by a pluriformity of currents
within the one Church. Did it include also the various schools of Gnosticism ?
There is no evidence whatsoever to show that Basilides and Valentinus,
both of whom taught in Alexandria, had ever been expelled from the
local Church during their lifetime. This is astonishing, because both
taught the distinction between the demiurge and the highest God. It
would seem that both were familiar with an already existing gnostic myth,
very similar to the primitive form of the Apocryphon of John, which they
christianised. The original doctrines of Basilides and of Valentinus, which
can be reconstructed with some confidence, are christocentric and agree
to teach that Christ awakens the unconscious Self in man. But this basic
intuition was expressed in myths which in our eyes are very different from
the biblical views. Nevertheless we are never told that they were expelled
from the Egyptian Church. Nor do we know at what date this happened
to their followers. As long as we compare Origen with Valentinus, it is
clear that their systems are very different indeed. For Valentinus salvation
is the result of a dialectical process, for Origen the will of man is the
basic intuition of his philosophy. But if we take into account that within
the school of Valentinus a certain evolution has taken place, the problem
does not admit of such a clear-cut solution anymore. There has been a
way from Valentinus to Heracleon, and from Heracleon to Origen. The
transition is much more gradual than a phenomenological
comparison
can discern.
The school of Valentinus had split into an Oriental section, to which
Theodotus belonged, and a Western or Italian branch, headed by Ptolemy
and Heracleon. Whereas the Eastern school remained remarkably faithful to the teachings of the master, the Western school introduced many
new elements into the primitive system. Although the views of Heracleon
were not identical with those of Ptolemy (in fact they differed more than
15 J. Zandee, Die Lehren des Silvanus. Stoischer Rationalismus und Christentum
im Zeitalter der frhkatholischen Kirche, in M. Krause, Essays on the Nag Hammadi
Texts in Honour of Alexander Bdhlig (Leiden 1972) 144-155.

34
earlier scholars supposed) these great doctors had a basic tendency in
common.
They had a greater sympathy than Valentinus for the catholic church,
or as they would have said in their very efficient technical terminology,
they had a higher appreciation of the psychic element. 16 Therefore they
held that catholics, ordinary churchgoers who lived by faith without
Gnosis, could be saved too. Of course this is completely against the logic
of the system, according to which the spirit that got lost in matter and
thus caused a split within the deity, has to return to its origin in order
to restore the balance of the Pleroma. At the cost of consistency Ptolemy
and Heracleon taught that the "psychics", if they had done good works,
would live on ever after at the entrance of the Pleroma. In accordance
with this principle they taught that Christ had not only a human spirit
(as Valentinus did) but also a soul and a psychic body. Whereas Valentinus had stressed that the demiurge was the origin of death, Ptolemy was
of the opinion that the demiurge was not evil, but just. We only have to
. read Ptolemy's Letter to Flora, on the relative value of the Old Testament
Law, to see to what extent he and Heracleon were approaching the
catholic positions. The works of Valentinus, Theodotus, and Ptolemy
were known to Clement of Alexandria.
Origen had the commentary of
Heracleon on the fourth gospel at his disposal. We must assume that
representatives of the Eastern and the Western, Italian school of Valentinianism were present in Alexandria at that time. Even more important
is that both Alexandrians must have been familiar with their opponent's
concept of the Church, consisting of both pneumatics and psychics. This
view of Ptolemy and Heracleon anticipated to a large extent the concept
of Origen, according to which the Church was primarily a "commune"
of true Gnostics with an appendix consisting of the faithful. The agreement will be clearer if we remember that according to Saint Paul all
Christians were pneumatics.
The agreements between Heracleon and Origen would be still more
numerous, if we could attribute with certainty the last writing of the Jung
Codex to Heracleon himself. This contains an authentic description of a
gnostic system, starting with the origin of the Pleroma in God, telling
about the fall of one of the Eons, which puts into movement the world
process, describing the coming of Christ to save both the pneumatics and
lB
6 Manlio Simonetti, Psyche e psychikos nella Gnosi valentiniana, Rivista di storia
e l,Itteraturareligiosa 2 (1966) 1-47.
e

35
the psychics and ending with a picture of the final consummation.
When
the Jung Codex was discovered, on May 10th 1952, the editors H.-Ch.
Puech and G. Quispel, basing themselves upon part of the material (the
rest turned out to be in the Coptic Museum in Cairo), have given their
reasons for supposing that this very profound and very difficult work
Can this provisional hypothesis be
had been written by Heradeon.i?
maintained after so many years, now that the book is known almost completely and has been published in part?18
Let me be clear. I do not for a moment believe that this so called
Tractatus tripartitus consists of three different treatises, to be disinguishd
by differences in choice of words and in style. The text most clearly is
a unity, like the Valentinian source in the first book of Irenaeus' Adversus
haereses. Nor would this hypothesis have been propounded, if its author
would have known, that there has been an author named Irenaeus whose
works contain valuable information about the Valentinian Gnosis.19 Nor
would I be ready to discuss the possibility that Valentinus himself wrote
these treatises. It is only too clear that this writing originates in the
Italian school of Valentinianism, which differed considerably from the
founder. And I do not think it necessary to expound that Irenaeus'
sources reflect the views of Ptolemy and his pupils and simply are not
identical with the newly found book, though they contain a striking
parallel to it. Such dilettantic errors we can dismiss without much ado.
However, the problem is that this extremely difficult book can be
read in different ways. There are many contacts with the views of Heracleon, and sometimes with Heracleon only. On the other hand there are
also differences. More disturbing is the fact that the Tractatus tripartitus
sometimes contains doctrines and concepts different from those of Ptolemy : until now we believed that the systems of Ptolemy and of Heracleon
were virtually identical. That the writing reflects the views of the Western
school of Valentinianism
and more specifically those of the school of
Heracleon, is completely clear. Future critics may decide whether the
For the moment we
authorship of Heracleon can still be maintained.
this
in
the
and
provisionally accept
hypothesis
speak
following text about
the Jung Codex is
where
the
author
of
the
fourth
treatise
of
Heracleon,
17 H.-Ch. Puech and G. Quispel, Lc quatri6me icrit gnostique du Codex Jung,
Vigilae Christianae 9 (1955) 65-102.
18 Tractatus tripartitus, Pars I (Bern, Francke Verlag, 1973).
19 R. Kasser, Les subdivisions du Tractatus Tripartitus, Le Museon 82,1-2 (Louvain 1969) 101-121.

36
meant. In my commentary I have given several examples of how near
this writing comes to Origen. From these I choose a few items now,
which are essential: 1) the eternal generation of the Son; 2) free will as
the cause of the Fall; 3) Pronoia and Paideusis.
I. THE TRINITY
Valentinus seems to have taught that the Ground of being is a quaternio.
Irenaeus (1, l,1) puts it in the following way:
"They say that in invisible and unutterable heights a perfection was preexisting. Him they call "Un-ground" (proarche) and "Fore-father" (propatdr) and
Depth ... With Him was Idea, whom they also call Grace and Silence. And once
this Depth conceived of the idea to bring forth the origin of all. This emanation,
which he thought to bring forth, was like a sperma. And this he laid down as in a
womb in Silence, who was with Him. And she, conceiving the seed and having
become pregnant, gave birth to Nous and A16theia. From these emanated the
other eons of the Pleroma. This is the first and original Pythagorean tetraktus,
which they also call root of all."
Valentinus seems to follow here the pattern of the myth contained in
the Apocryphon of John, according to which Barbelo, the female companion of God, is "the womb (mitra) of the all" and the (androgynous)
Father-Mother
(Metropatr).20 Modern editors have so little awareness
of the mythological overtones of these texts, that they translate metra
with "mother" and M tropatr with "Grandfather".
This obliges us to state that the imagery is incredibly crude. If Gnosis
strives after vision, then certainly that of Valentinus is the most shameless vision recorded in the history of mankind. Nothing of the kind is
to be found in the treatise of Heracleon. The Ground of being is God, a
Heracleon and
all negative predicates.
personal God notwithstanding
Origen have in common that their concept of God remains strictly personal, even if they use the Platonic categories to express His transcendence. Because God is Father in the real sense of the word, he is the
eternal Father of the eternal Son. From their mutual love a third hypostasis is born, enigmatically called Ekklesia. But from the Pastor of Hermas
we know that the Holy Ghost is sometimes revealing itself in the shape
of the Ekklesia (Sim. 9, 1, 1). Therefore we may say that Heracleon
teaches an ontological and eternal Trinity. We see then that the catholicising tendencies in the Western school of Valentinianism went as far as

20 S.Giversen, ApocryphonJohannis (Copenhagen 1963) 53, 5..

37
to replace the quaternio by a trias. But this also means that the Gnosis
of this school was much nearer to Origen than the original doctrine of
Valentinus. Whereas it was usual to oppose the ideas of Origen to those
of the Gnostics, we now see that in the second half of the second century
the transitions had become so gradual as to become almost imperceptable.
In this perspective Origen is the consummation of gnostic developments.
Just as Valentinus christianised a non-christian gnostic system, so Heracleon christianised Valentinus and Origen in his turn Heracleon.
It certainly will be objected that this vantage point does not explain
the whole Origen, who also was a churchman opposed to heresy. This
is certainly true. But my vantage point certainly helps to understand
better the system of Origen, which has an even greater affinity with
Valentinian Gnosis than could be established before the discovery of the
Jung Codex.
'
..
II. THE FALL
From a psychological point of view the Valentinian myth of the Fall
is extremely profound.
Whereas in the Apocryphon of John the Fall is
due to libido (prounikon), Valentinus ascribes it to the hybris (tolma) of
Sophia, who desires to penetrate into the eternal mystery of God. This
reflects the situation of spiritual man on earth who should not seek the
unio mystica as long as he is immature, but who must expect the revelation
which will come in God's time. There is no instant-nirwana,
no shortcut
to Gnosis.
The story is even more impressive, if we see it in the light of the philosophy of that time. Posidonius had discovered the principle of wholeness:
a being has its essence and function in an organic and corporate whole.
Such a holon is the Pleroma. The tolma of Sophia is the desire to isolate
herself from this whole body and to act on her own. This means that the
principium individuationis leads to the fall.
It was thus that Plotinus understood the myth. And he accepted it
during a certain period of his career. According to him the fall of the
soul is due to the tolma, the hybridic desire to be an isolated self.21
There is however another aspect, which gets lost when we demythologise and actualise too fervently and do not take the manner of thinking
of the Gnostics as seriously as it deserves. According to Valentinus
21 Plotinus, Enneades 4, 7 (2),13,11;5,1 (10),1, 4. E. R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian
in an Age of Anxiety (Cambridge 1965) 24.

38
the longing for God started among the eons around Nous and A16theia,
like a sort of "focal infection", which became an abcess and burst
out in Sophia, ut solent vitia in corpore alibi connata in aliud membrum
perniciem suam efflare (Tertullian, Adv. Valent. 9). This then means
that evil is the result of a process, a moment in the "explication" or
of the Divinity into its different aspects. For Valentinus
"explicitation"
held that the eons were sensus et affectus, motus within the Godhead itself
(Adv. Val. 4). Evil then is a byproduct of evolution and emanation, as
in Jewish mysticism and German idealism.
Tertullian tells us that Ptolemy, one of the leaders of the Western
school, had changed the views of Valentinus : for him the eons were
personales substantiae, sed extra deum determinatae (Adv. Val. 4). Until
now we had no evidence to confirm this report. For in the documents
from Ptolemy and his school there is no certain indication that this
distinction was made. Nevertheless the statement of Tertullian must
contain some truth. For in the Tractatus tripartitus this tragic concept is
completely absent.
There the eons have a free will (69,26). More important still, also
Sophia, the last eon, here called Logos, has a free will. And this autexousion was for Sophia the cause that she did what she willed, without
This, of course, is in strong agreeanything restraining her (75,35-76,2).
ment with the teaching of Origen, according to whom the free will of one
spiritual being, who was followed by all others but one, was the origin
of the Fall and of the subsequent creation of the world.
It could be objected that among the many Middle Platonists who
thought or did not think about the fall of the soul from its celestial realm,
there was one, Albinos, who according to lamblichus said that the soul
fell because of its autexousion.22 Moreover it could be supposed that
this concept influenced both Heracleon and Origen.
But even if it could be established that both Heracleon and Origen
knew Albinos, this answer would be very unsatisfactory.
For Albinos
this question was so unimportant that he did not mention it at all in his
Didaskalikos.
Moreover Albinos was not familiar with the concept of a
Pleroma consisting of eons or the related concept of a realm of spirits.
Such a stress on Greek influence would obscure the real issue of what
was happening here.
22 Stobaeus 1,375. P.Kbel, Schuld und Schicksal bei Origenes, Gnostikern und
Platonikern (Stuttgart 1973)20.

39
When one attributes the fall to free will, one has solved the problem
"unde malum' in a very specific way. Evil then becomes a sin or the
consequence of sin, for which ultimately man is responsible. It has always
been assumed that Origen made the autexousion the leading idea of his
system in opposition to the gnostic concept of automatic salvation for
the few. It now transpires that there was a precedent for this in Gnosticism. It may even be that Origen took this idea from Heracleon. For
if the idea of free will was widespread in Hellenistic and Christian circles,
the specific view that the worldprocess is due to the free decision of one
spiritual being in the beyond cannot be attested elsewhere than in Origen
and the Tractatus tripartitus of the Codex Jung. Here evil is no longer a
by-product of evolution, but due to a contingent decision of a spiritual
being. It is true that this is only one side of the coin. The author of the
new treatise seems also to have known a sort of felix culpa. According
to him it is not fitting to accuse the movement of the Logos, because
this movement is the cause for the "dispensation"
which was destined
to come about, in other words this passion of Sophia was instrumental in
bringing about the worldprocess (77, 6-11). It was not without the will
of God that Sophia had been engendered, nor without Him that she
went forth to penetrate into his Being, but on the contrary God had
brought her forth in order that, through her intermediary, those would
come into being of whom He knew beforehand that they would have to
come into being (76, 23-30). It would seem then that Heracleon has
combined free will with a strictly supralapsarian point of view.
III. PRONOIAAND PAIDEUSIS
In the new treatise the importance of the demiurge is minimal. This
is astonishing if we remember the intense hate in the Apocryphon of John
against Jaldabaoth, curious mixture of Aion, Zervan and Jahweh. Nor
is this animosity alien to the other Valentinian sources: in the Gospel
of Truth the demiurge seems to have been identified with plane, the Error
which kills Christ (18,24). In the Tractatus tripartitus Sophia-Logos uses
the demiurge as her hand, through which she creates the visible world,
and as her mouth, through which the prophesies are spoken (100, 30-35).
Behind the scene it is Sophia who directs the universe and the universal
history towards the coming of Christ.
Mankind is said to have gone through the Inferno of materialism, its
hylic or Hellenic phase, and through the Purgatorio of religion and ethics,
its psychic or Jewish phase, before the decisive pneumatic phase of Gnosis

40
and freedom was inaugurated by Christ.
All this is held to have been necessary.
to form the spirit:

Soul and matter are necessary

"They came into being on behalf of those who needed education and instruction
and formation, in order that the smallness should receive growth, little by little,
as by means of a reflected image" (104,20-25).
It is even said that evil and death are part of this grandiose plan of
education, because they lead to eternal life. This too has been predestined
by the providence of Wisdom.
"The Spirit has appointed this (short time of death), when he considered in the
beginning, that man should receive this greatest experience of what is evil, which
is death, which is ignorance concerning the end of all things, in order that he,
after he had received the experience of all bad things, which originate from this
and after the losses which originated from these things, and everything which is
bad, should participate in the highest good, which is eternal life" (107,26-108,2).
In this the history of mankind repeats the history of the Pleroma. God
is said to be the cause of ignorance as well as of Gnosis. He wants the
eons to come to the experience of ignorance and its pains: they should
taste evil and should train themselves in it (126, 6-34).
Henri-Charles Puech spoke about the absolute optimism of the author
of this writing. How far are we here from the tragic experiences of other
Gnostics, from their abhorrence of evil and their certainty that God is
not the originator of evil. Everything is good here, everything is predestined and predetermined, tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des
mondes possibles.
Such optimism can also be found in Origen. This shows that the latter's
roseate views are not strictly personal, not a consequence of his castration
which is sometimes said to lead to a highminded ideology. More specifically Hal Koch has shown that Pronoia and Paideusis were the keywords of Origen's system. And Koch thought he could show the origin
of this concept in the philosophy of the time. We may ask whether such
an interpretation does justice to the importance of the subject. Recently
Wolf-Dieter Hauschild has shown that the concept of formation by the
Spirit has Jewish and prechristian origins. Already in the Dead Sea
Scrolls we find that the Spirit of God forms the spirit of man. This
tradition was taken over by various Christians. So Tatian can say that
the Spirit saves the soul, thus making of the Holy Spirit a second Saviour.
The Valentinians elaborated the same tradition: according to them the
Grace of the Spirit gave the formation of Gnosis to the spirit of man,

41
who thus became consciously what he was already, a pneumatic. Origen
also knows the tradition of the formation by the Spirit. He engages in
polemics against the Valentinian idea, that the pneumatic is saved by
nature, but also according to him through the formation of the Spirit
the pneumatic is not a "new man", but becomes what he originally was,
pneumatic.23 Both concepts are very much akin. To a certain extent
If we admit, as we
Origen may have been influenced by Valentinianism.
ought to do, that the history of Valentinianism is an important part of
the history of dogmas, the old thesis of Hellenisation loses much of its
force.
This is not to say that all influence of Greek philosophy is to be excluded. Especially the Hellenic concept of Paideia could be integrated
easily both by Valentinus and Origen, once they admitted the Jewish idea
that the Spirit forms the spirit. But nowhere in Greek sources, not even
those of Middle Platonism, we find a systematic philosophy of history
When we study this alongside the
comparable to that of Heracleon.
system of Origen, we must admit that Origen is much nearer to Gnosis
than to philosophy.
And this leads us to the last question: what, then, is the essential
difference between Heracleon and Origen. In my article on the concept
of man in the Valentinian Gnosis, published in 1948, I defended the
thesis that the Gnosis of Valentinus was not primarily a philosophy of
identity, but a theology of grace and predestination.24 In this context I
quoted Tertullian who expressly said that spirit according to the Valentinians is not a part of human nature but a gift of Grace.25 This means
that the experience of Grace led the pneumatic to the discovery that he
was elect and had a spirit sleeping unconsciously in him. The experience
of grace was primary: its rationalisation into a theology of predestination
and the ontologisation of the spirit were secondary.
In De principiis 3, 166, 4 (Koetschau p. 222), Origen, discussing the
well-known passage in the prophet Ezekiel (11,19-21) about "the hearts
of stone" and the "hearts of flesh", says the following:
"And if we do not do something in order that we get "the heart of flesh", but
23 Wolf-Dieter Hauschild, Gottes Geist und der Mensch (Mnchen 1972) 126.
24 G. Quispel, La conception de l'homme dans la Gnose Valentinienne, Eranos
Jahrbuch 1947 (Ziirich 1948)249-286.
25 Tertullian, Adv. Valentinianos29 (Kroymann III, p. 205) :spiritalem ex Seth de
obvenientia superducunt iam non naturam sed indulgentiam, ut quam Achamoth de
superioribusin animas bonas depluat.

42
if this is the work of God (alone), it will not be our work to lead a virtuous life,
but exclusivelydivine grace (1tVtT]9sia
I am in no doubt that the views here refuted were held by the Valentinians. It was they who proclaimed the sola gratia. And Origen denies
this.
Now nobody will doubt that the Valentinian system, derived as it was
from a non-christian Gnosis like that contained in the Apocryphon of
John, was not adequate to express this basic intuition. But my point is
that Origen, out of sheer opposition to the Gnostics, did not find a
solution that is more acceptable to Christian theologians. This becomes
exceedingly clear, when we see which consequences this doctrine has in
eschatology.26
Origen denies the second coming. He rejects the belief that Christ will
'
He directs himself
come back on earth to found here his Kingdom.
some
Christians
who
believe
that
in
the
end
"their"
against
city Jerusalem
will be rebuilt (De princ. 2,11,1; Koetschau p.184). This seems to imply
that his opponents here were Jewish Christians, who had preserved the
millenarian views of their ancestors. Origen rejects this concrete eschatology just like the Valentinians. His own solution seems to be, that the
bodiless spirits return to their original equality. 27 This also comes very
near to the Valentinian concept.
With this difference, that even in the eschatological situation the spirits
preserve their freedom. And this principle of needs leads to the view,
more Indian than Gnostic or Christian, that again and again a new
worldprocess will start and that one world will succeed the other without
end. Valentinian Gnosis, for all its eccentricities, had preserved the idea
that time must have a stop. The concept of free will led Origen to the
opposite idea.
We see then that the basic issue between the oldest schools of Christian
theology was about grace and free will, a debate, which was to be continued throughout the millennia.
Bilthoven, Noordhoudringelaan

32

26 Paul Kiibel, o.c., 100.

21 F. H. Kettler, Der urspriinglicheSinn der Dogmatik des Origenes(Berlin 1966)25.