Basilides, Carpocrates, Valentinus

The "Sacred Triumvirate of Alexandria": Three Great Second-Century Gnostic Teachers

As neo-classical Gnostics, we seek to live out a spirituality that continues the religious tradition begun by the classical Gnostics who emerged in the early Christian era. Classical Gnosticism developed most fully and powerfully in the second century CE, primarily under the leadership of three exceedingly influential teachers, Carpocrates, Basilides, and Valentinus. All three lived and worked in Alexandria, earning them our cognomen "Sacred Triumvirate of Alexandria," although Valentinus later also worked in Rome and the island of Cyprus. Their lives all overlapped, although as far as we know, they had no direct contact with each other -- which in itself demonstrates the richness and diversity of this period in Gnostic history! This page will provide information, written primarily by our Vicar Br. Matthew, about all three of these Gnostic teachers, as well as links to some additional material about them.

Carpocrates (especially active c. 130-150 CE) was one of the great second-century Gnostic theologians. He is considered a saint within our tradition, along with the other two members of what we like to speak of as the "sacred triumvirate," Basilides and Valentinus, all of whom established the major schools and traditions of neo-classical Gnosticism in the second century; within the Gnostic Litany we pray during our Divine Service, he is acknowledged as "Carpocrates the Enlightened." Carpocrates was responsible for the great statement of Gnostic theology on the genuine humanity of Jesus Christ:

Unfortunately, few of St. Carpocrates writings remain after extensive persecution by mainstream Christianity following the Church's alliance/surrender with imperial authority following the conversion of Constantine. However, you can read more about what anti-Gnostic Christians wrote about Carpocrates, or a longer except written about blessed Carpocrates by the somewhat violently crazed anti-Gnostic misanthrope and "heretic-hunter" Irenaeus of Lyon, which should naturally be taken with several tons of salt. St. Carpocrates' son, Epiphanes, is believed to have been the author of the text "On Justice," which set out the act-libertarian component of classical Gnostic moral theology (namely the belief that morality does not inhere specifically to particular material acts, e.g. such as "good" or "evil" sexual orientations in contemporary pharisaical Christianity, but rather is a matter of dynamic spiritual progression). If you would like to read more about this, please see our essays and statements on Gnostic Morality.

Basilides (especially active c. 125-140s CE) was another of the three great Gnostic teachers of the second century CE. He, like Carpocrates and Valentinus, is considered a saint within our Church tradition, and is recognized in the Gnostic Litany of the Divine Service as "Basilides the Venerable." Although St. Basilides spent most of his career in Alexandria, like St. Carpocrates, it is not believed that they ever met, which provides some indication of Alexandria's role as a gigantic mecca for progressive philosophers and theologians at this period in Gnostic history. Again, the monstrous anti-Gnostic zealot Irenaeus of Lyons provides most of the remaining fragments of quotes from Basilides, to the extent that his word can be trusted. Basilides apparently claimed to have received teachings handed down from the Apostles Peter and Matthew (interestingly, Matthew or Levi was also an important figure in the Gnostic Gospel of Mary). Basilides is also supposed to have collected his own personal canon of Gospel writings, much as Marcion did. Basilides' major contributions to classical and neo-classical Gnostic thought are threefold:

Basilides wrote extensively on the mythology of aeons and archons that forms an important part of Gnostic mytho-poetic cosmology. Despite most of his writings being suppressed by the crazed anti-Gnostic polemicists, some important statements remain, filtered through the writings of people like Irenaeus.
Even more importantly, Basilides developed the notion of the ouk on theos or the "Non-Being God." Although we do not have extensive primary sources about Basilides' thinking on this subject, contemporary neo-classical Gnostics have been able to recover much of his likely theology drawing on other traditions of Gnostic apophasis or the via negativa, including material from the Nag Hammadi documents. We can divide Gnostic (like Christian mystical) spirituality into kataphatic and apophatic approaches. Kataphasis, the via positiva, refers to spiritual and theological endeavors that make positive statements about God, and particularly which view God as absolute affirmation, "the fullness of being." Apophatic approaches, however, which have been most characteristic of Gnosticism as well as Christian, Jewish, and Islamic mysticism, emphasis the negative side of spiritual experience and the ultimate futility (in an absolute sense) of theological language. Whatever we can say about God, or about the spirit, or about the mystical union of gnosis, much more must remain fundamentally unsaid. This is reflected in the most fundamental belief of Gnosticis, that the one God, living and true, is not only without form, shape, or gender, not only uncreated and ungenerated, but also ineffable and unutterable. God, and the spirit, are literally "incomprehensible" in the sense that they cannot be contained within a physical language dominated by material limitations and dualities.

The notion of the ouk on theos takes the via negativa to, as it were, its final destination, by saying that due to the reality of apophasis, God must be experienced as much through negation as through affirmation. Thus, while it is quite true that God is in a genuine sense the fullness of being and the ground of our own being and our own existence, at the same time, what we call being is actually just as much limitation of being as it is actualization of being. In other words, to say "I am," is not so much to make an affirmative statement as a series of negative assertions: "I am not you," "I am not him," "I am not an animal," "I am not dead," "I am not what I was yesterday," "I am not what I will be tomorrow," "I am not what lies outside my form." Thus, essence or being is experienced materialistically in a way that is simultaneously being and limitation of being. Insofar as God is fullness of being, this will seem to us as much like negation or emptiness as it will affirmation or presence, due to the fact that our awareness of being is so defined and constricted by material negativities. Thus, in the most extreme sense, a Gnostic must make the powerful assertion "I believe that God exists, and I believe that God does not exist," falling into paradox to express the apophatic mystery of a God who is beyond existence insofar as existence has heretofore been experienced only as limitation. This is the greatest mystery of all, the mystery of the ouk on theos, the Non-Being God.

Valentinus

Valentinus is unquestionably the best known of the three great Alexandrian Gnostics. He is considered a saint within our tradition, along with the other two members of the triumvirate, Basilides and Valentinus, ; within the Gnostic Litany we pray during our Divine Service, he is acknowledged as "Valentinus the Great." While Valentinus received his basic philosophical and theological training in Egypt, he rose to prominence working in Rome, just as Marcion eventually gravitated to Rome as well after beginning his work elsewhere (coastal Asia Minor, in his case). Indeed, there are more than a few parallels between the life stories of Valentinus and Marcion. Like Marcion, who was born in the Black Sea port city of Sinope, Valentinus also originated in a coastal community, in his case Phrenobis on the Nile Delta in Egypt. Phrenobis was close to Alexandria, which was the epicenter of the cultural universe not only for Gnostics but for a huge number of theologians and philosophers of all types in the early Christian era. From Alexandria, Valentinus traveled to Rome and spent a considerable amount of time teaching, preaching, and cultivating disciples there, probably from around the late 130s or early 140s. His Roman career thus may have briefly overlapped with that of the great Marcion, who was finally excommunicated by the Christian establishment around 144. Despite the growing intolerance and hatred evinced by this excommunication, it appears that Valentinus was able to hold forth in Rome for about another decade, until he was finally condemned as well under the administration of the Christian Pope Anicetus, who was one of a series of popes who began trying to consolidate power in the hands of the bishop of Rome. After being essentially exiled from Rome, Valentinus eventually found a refuge and home for his teaching in Cyprus, and probably died around the year 175 or so.

Valentinus' system of classical Gnosticism was characterized by three major themes, which also represent his continuing trifold importance to contemporary neo-classical Gnostic theology and our Church in particular:

Valentinus emphasized a primary characteristic of God (we might call it God's essence or even God's "godness") as being bythos or bathos, which is to say "divine depth." God is like a giant chasm or abyss, though not an abyss of sadness or suffering, but rather an abyss of love, joy, and infinite unity. Gnosis, to Valentinian Gnostics, thus represented not just a series of steps ascending toward the pleroma or fullness, but also a falling into this great and incomprehensible depth of the divine. Since, indeed, we hold the divine within our very beings through our pneuma or spiritual nature, we thus have, as it were, a individual spark of the bathos within us. Thus, spirituality must turn, as the Gospel of Thomas suggests, both inside us and outside us -- inside to the depth that we find in contemplative mystic encounters, and outside to compassion toward others, the community of mystic seekers, and the one true God who is at once above and below, here and beyond, immanent and transcendent. This bathos, like all characteristics of God and the spirit, is in the end a supreme mystery, and it is by giving in to the mystery through apophasis that we finally are able to touch it, only by being, as it were, consumed by it, as we fall into the depths of God after attempting to speak and finally falling into a mystical silence as we touch the very face of God.
Valentinus, perhaps in contrast to other Gnostic teachers, proposed a richly and deeply sacramental version of classical Gnosticism. Texts attributed to Valentinus are constantly stressing the eucharist, by which he seemed to imply, as we also seek to in our Divine Service, not merely the commemoration of the Lord's Supper or Holy Communion ("do this to remember me") but also a great internal Holy Communion that takes place transcending physical symbols, between the spirit and the God from which it originates and to which it is returning through the mysteries of gnosis and the final dissolution and reunification of the pleroma. They also stress baptism and confirmation, which along with the sacrament of the bridal chamber form the three initiatory sacraments we celebrate for full members in the AGCA. All this should indicate our great dependence on Valentinus in the construction of our sacramental life today.

Arguably the most important statement of sacramental classical Gnosticism is the Gospel of Philip, which can be read online or in a much more useful translation as part of the Gnostic Bible, available through our Amazon associates program which helps fund our Internet ministries and charitable endeavors. It has been an object of substantial discussion and debate whether the GoP represents a fundamentally Valentinian text or derives from some other particular school of Gnostic thought. It is clear, at any rate, that the GoP represents a development and elaboration on Valentinus' stress upon sacramental Gnostic spirituality. The Gospel of Philip is arguably one of the four or five most important texts in the Nag Hammadi collection because it so effectively exemplifies how Gnostics could and can use very similar symbols to mean very different things from theircommon use by more traditional Christians. We can consider, for example, the question of baptism, so important to Valentinus and his followers. The Gospel of Philip makes clear that the Gnostic theology of baptism is vastly different from Christian interpretation. Whereas mainstream Christianity portrays baptism as a sort of cleansing bath, freeing people from the dirty "stains" of "sin," Gnosticism understands baptism as, in the words of the Gospel of Philip, a "dipping" in the "dye" of God's divinity; we are thus symbolically covered in the spiritual unity which we aim to understand more fully and actualize through the process and attainment of enlightenment that we call gnosis. Because of this, where Christianity sees baptism as death, Gnosticism sees baptism as birth: "Enter the water and live!"
Finally, Valentinus devoted a great deal of time to developing a complex and fairly comprehensive Gnostic christology (or interpretation of the meaning and role of Christ). This is demonstrated in particular in a Nag Hammadi text that almost all observers agree was either written by Valentinus himself or by a very close associate, the Gospel of Truth, which you can read online or as part of the Gnostic Bible, available through our Amazon associates program. It is without doubt perhaps the most beautiful and, in many ways, the simplest expression of pure Gnostic ideology to be found in any part of the Nag Hammadi codices. Again, Valentinus' simple but elegant expressions show how differently Christianity and Gnosticism can interpret something very similar, in this case the nature of Christ. First, the Gospel author argues, we have allowed the "sacrificial" interpretation of Christ (as some kind of bloody human sacrifice whose death served to appease an angry and vengeful God who is furious at human "sin") to obscure the most fundamental reason for Christ's ministry: teaching. "Jesus became a guide, quiet and at leisure. In the middle of a school he came and spoke the word, as a teacher." His death was merely the final extension of his teaching, the final lesson, the culminating "lecture" by the logos: "Just as in the case of a will that has not yet been opened, the fortune of the deceased master of the house is hidden, so also in the case of all that had been hidden as long as the father of all was invisible and unique in himself, in whom every space has its source. For this reason Jesus appeared. He put on that book. He was nailed to a cross. He affixed the edict of the father to the cross." Indeed, Jesus was so fundamentally a teacher and a guide that his life (and death) were extensions of the words he spoke, words that unlocked the hidden mysteries ("hidden sayings" from the "living Jesus" in the words of the Gospel of Thomas).

As a true teacher should be, the Gospel of Truth goes on to say, Jesus was not just a preacher or a leader but more fundamentally an example, a perfect example ("the perfect man") in the sense that he represents the penultimate model for what we can attain and what we should aim for: gnosis and the ascension into spiritual liberation. Thus, we read the incredibly sensitive poem placed in the midst of the Gospel of Truth: "His wisdom contemplates the word / his teaching expresses it / his knowledge has revealed it / his honor is a crown upon it / his joy agrees with it / his glory has exalted it / his image has revealed it / his rest has received it / his love has embodied it / his trust has embraced it."

Valentinus' final great message to us, as revealed in the Gospel of Truth, is this: awaken, and take charge of your spiritual liberation! Like Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas, Valentinus realized that the mass of humanity are "intoxicated" and unaware of how "thirsty" they are for the gifts of the spirit (cf. Gospel of Thomas, 28). The world is sleeping, waited to be roused by the powerful call of Christ and the gentle touch of Sophia, and we ourselves must become the voice of Christ and the hands of Sophia in order to make this come to pass. "Raise up and awaken those who sleep. You are this understanding that seizes you. If the strong follow this course, they are even stronger." To bring the dawn to those who sleep, to attain this strength, we must let go of the pain and imperfection of the past; we cannot mire ourselves in guilt, in self-doubt, in petty fears about past actions that may have been "bad," for we have a mission that is divine! "Turn your attention to yourselves. Do not be concerned with other things, namely that which you have cast forth from yourselves, that which you have dismissed. Do not return to them to eat them. Do not be moth-eaten. Do not be worm-eaten, for you have already shaken it all off." The past has no power over us; the future exists only insofar as we will transform it into the coming of the kingdom, or we will fail and allow it to continue as the unconsciousness of a sleeping person dreaming illusive dreams of imagined tranquility. And remember, finally, that you are a thing of beauty, a treasure of unrivaled value, a child of the living God, indeed a participant in the divinity of that one true God! "And his children are perfect and worthy of his name, because he is the parent. Children of this kind are those whom he loves." Amen! Blessed Valentinus, pray for us.

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