What

God Has Made Clean, You Must Not Call Profane

(Acts 10:15)

The Goodness and Sanctity of Materiality In Irenaeus Teachings on God, Christ, and

Salvation and his Refutation of Valentinian Gnostics On These Points

REL 620: Early Christian Theology

Yale Divinity School
Fall 2016
Professor Christopher Beeley
Written by: John Kennedy
 Is the Earth good? Are we, as human beings, truly at home here? Is God present and

active in this world in a way that gives it meaning and inherent value? These questions and

how we answer them, while so simple as to often not be asked, are of tremendous

consequence in our time. Climate change poses an existential threat to the Earths

habitability, and human activity is accelerating and exacerbating the crisis. Glaciers are

melting and sea levels are rising. We destroy mountains to extract coal, burn fossil fuels that

pollute and overheat the atmosphere, and have thrown so much trash into our oceans that

an island of waste estimated to be the size of Texas \loats in the paci\ic ocean, full of

plastics that will take centuries to decompose. This state of affairs re\lects troubling

attitudes toward the Earth, our common home. It seems that far too many of us do not

really feel that the Earth is good. We do not see God in it, nor do we quite feel at home here.

The attitudes and assumptions behind the desecration and degradation of our planet, much

of it carried out by American Christians, could be called a modern day heresy; The Earth is

the Lords, and all that is in it, (Psalm 24:1) but too many treat it as though it belongs to

whoever has the most power, to be used for convenience and to maximize pro\it at the

expense of vulnerable people, animals, and plant life.

We \ind a strong rebuke to this contemporary heresy in an ancient voice who,

responding to an anti-materialist heresy of his own time, echoes through the ages to the

present day. The voice belongs to St. Irenaeus, second-century Bishop of present-day Lyon

and early Father of the Church. The heresy is Gnosticism, namely Valentinian Gnosticism. In

his book Against Heresies, Irenaeus attempts to refute Valentinian Gnostic teachings on God,

creation, Christ, and salvation, among others. In doing so, he describes the Valentinian

school in extensive detail and compellingly articulates his proto-orthodox and world-
af\irming theology. In what follows, I will compare and contrast Valentinian thought, both

as characterized by Irenaeus and in Valentinian texts themselves, with the porto-orthodoxy

represented by Irenaeus regarding God and his role and relationship to creation on the one

hand, and the Incarnation of Christ and the nature of salvation on the other. Along the way I

will consider what is being said, implicitly or explicitly, about the value of the created world

in the perspectives being considered, paying close attention to the world-af\irming

character present in much of Irenaeus thought.

God and Creation

Of the points of contention between Irenaeus and the Valentinians, perhaps none are

more foundational than the questions of who is responsible for the creation of the world

and how it came into being. It has far reaching implications, especially as it relates to the

question of whether or not this world is inherently good. For Irenaeus, there was no

ambiguity: this world is the work of one God, entirely good and entirely just, beside whom

there is no other. Now, today this is of course about as obvious as anything that could be

said about orthodox, credal Christian belief, but at the time of Irenaeus writing Against the

Heresies, c. 180 C.E., this was a contested idea within the varied streams of early

Christianity. In proclaiming the one and only good and just God who established and

adorned the universe,1 Irenaeus had in his polemical crosshairs the disciples of

Valentinus,2 in his view the most dangerous of the heretical sects.3

1 St. Irenaeus of Lyon, Against the Heresies, Volume 1, Book 1, trans. Dominic J. Unger, O.F.M. (New York: Paulist Press,

1991), 21

2 Ibid.

3 David Brakke, Self-differentiation among Christian groups: the Gnostics and their opponents, in Cambridge Histories

Online, ed. Margaret M. Mitchell and Frances M. Young (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 256.
 According to his characterization of the Valentinian school, they taught multiple

divisions within the divine realm, with the Son of God, the Savior, and Christ all being

separate entities4 that emanate from a process of division and devolution within the

heavenly spheres. He accuses them of thinking up another God besides the Creator, Maker,

and Nourisher of this universe or another Christ, or another Only-begotten.5 He goes on to

describe an elaborate metaphysical scheme of divine powers and their emanations and

divisions. While too complex to detail at length, the main idea is that there is an uncreated,

unnameable Duality from which a second duality is emitted. From this Tetrad comes

another Tetrad, including the Word, completing the \irst Ogdoad. From this come further

emanations, and one of these goes astray and becomes degenerate, this cosmic fall being

the cause of the rest of the affairs. It is after this that Christ is brought forth; Christ,

instead of being co-eternal with the Father, was not even emitted by the Aeons (heavenly

beings) within the Fullness (Pleroma). He was born of the Mother, also known as Wisdom or

Sophia, but only after she had gone out of the Fullness/Pleroma as a result of her passion

and confusion. In other words, Christ was born in a de\icient or inferior state.

Christ, however, goes into the Fullness/Pleroma and leaves his Mother behind, who

then brings forth another son, called the Demiurge, the all-powerful of things under him. 6

In Valentinian Gnosticism, the Demiurge is the creator of the material world and often

identi\ied with the God of the Old Testament, as distinct from the Father, the high God

revealed by Jesus. In the Letter to Flora, an important source for Valentinian Gnosticism

written by Ptolemy, whose disciples are identi\ied by Irenaeus as an offshoot of the

4 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.9.2

5 Ibid., 1.10.3

6 Ibid., 1.11.1
Valentinian school,7 we have a clear description of the Demiurge and his role in creation.

This Demiurge (dmiourgos, translated Creator) is a God who is inferior to the perfect

God begotten, not unbegotten, and is the creator and maker of this whole world and all

that is in it.8

We see here a Valentinian conception of God and of Gods relationship to creation

that would foster an at-best ambivalent view of the value of the material world; since the

world in which we live was created by a demiurge, born of de\iciency and confusion, it

doesnt follow that it could be said to be truly good. However, Irenaeus had a polemical axe

to grind, so it is worth considering the perspectives represented in the Valentinian texts

themselves, namely The Gospel of Truth, an early Christian text often attributed to

Valentinus himself which is evidently referenced by Irenaeus in Against Heresies 3.11.9. The

Gospel of Truth makes no mention of the elaborate mythology of the emanation of aeons

from the Godhead, the fall of the Sophia, or of the demiurge who created the material world.

It is highly allegorical and mystical, and doesnt read like a systematic treatise, so caution

and restraint should be exercised in deducing its metaphysical underpinnings. For example,

consider the following passage:

All have sought for the one from whom they have come forth. All have been
within him, the illimitable, the inconceivable, who is beyond all thought. But
ignorance of the Father brought terror and fear, and terror grew dense like a fog, so
that no one could see. Thus Error grew powerful. She worked on her material
substance in vain. Since she did not know the truth, she assumed a fashioned \igure
and prepared, with power and in beauty, a substitute for truth.
-Gospel of Truth 17,4-18,11

7 Ibid., Book 1, Preface

8 Ptolemy, Letter to Flora, in Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church, trans. and ed. Karlfried Froehlich (Philadelphia:

Fortress Press, 1980), 42.

 While it can be read as a description of the origin of the material world as arising

from Error and ignorance, thus removing the Father from the act of material creation, I

can also see a purely allegorical reading that doesnt necessitate the conclusions of other

Valentinian/Gnostic creation myths. It could simply be a poetic way of describing an

observable human predicament; human beings, ignorant of their origin in God, become lost

in the illusion that the material world is all there is and thus identify with it to an inordinate

degree. Becoming attached to it, they are blinded to spiritual reality due to the power of this

illusion which is dense like a fog. I dont see anything necessarily heterodox in such a

reading. Further complicating a more systematically Gnostic reading, as in Irenaeus

exposition above, is the following: Nothing happens without [the Fathers] pleasure;

nothing happens without the Fathers will. And his will is incomprehensible.9 This idea of

nothing happening outside the Fathers will seems in tension with the notion that the

material world arose out of error and confusion. However, tension doesnt always mean

contradiction, and paradox is a common characteristic of mystical teachings. Overall, I \ind

it likely that The Gospel of Truth does share the anti-materialistic presuppositions of the

broader Valentinian school. The way it personi\ies Error as female and speaks of her as

working on material substance in vain, and assuming a fashioned \igure is resonant with

the myth of the Mother/Sophia going astray, leaving the Pleroma and giving birth to the

Demiurge who fashions the material world.

A broader overview of Valentinian Gnosticism from the texts discovered at Nag

Hammada in 1945 reveals more of the developed, systematic mythological cosmological

9The Gospel of Truth [36,35-38,6], in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The Revised and Updated Translation of Sacred

Gnostic Texts, trans. and ed. Marvin Meyer (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007), 45.
character of Irenaeus characterization as summarized above. The theological system holds

that a single \irst principle [called the Father] is the ultimate source of all The Fathers

self-knowledge produces the Son. From the Father and Son, numerous spiritual entities are

generated who are also distinct personalities. These beings are often referred to as

aeons, such as in Against Heresies. Sophia, the youngest of the aeons and referred to as the

Mother in Against Heresies, tries to grasp the totality of the Father, but fails because it is

not in her nature to comprehend the ultimate. She then suffers and is split in two. Her

perfect, spiritual part remains in the Pleroma but her imperfect part is cast out, dwelling in

a state of de\iciency and unful\illed, irrational passion. It is this fallen condition that gives

rise to matter. However, matter is only one of three constituent elements of the as-yet-

uncreated cosmos.

Following the origin of matter, Sophia repents and prays to the aeons in the Pleroma

for help. The quality of her repentance and conversion gives rise the to psychical substance,

the characteristic substance of the soul. In response to her prayer, the Pleroma brings forth

the Savior who is a joint product of all the aeons. The vision of the Savior heals Sophia of

her passions and she experiences joy. In this joyful state she gives birth to spiritual beings.

From the three substances of matter, soul, and spirit, the cosmos is created by Sophia and/

or the Savior. However, the manual work of creation was carried out by the demiurge who

did not realize that he is only a tool used by the real creators. This demiurge is identi\ied

with YHWH, the god of the Old Testament, but not with the Father, the God of Jesus, and so

the will of both Jesus and the Father is in opposition to that of the demiurge/YHWH in that

the demiurge, believing himself to be the high God, is also in ignorance regarding his true
nature and governs the created world in this state of error and confusion, a state that Jesus

is understood to provide freedom from.10

We see here a similar though more nuanced picture than what we get from Irenaeus.

While both descriptions agree that the Valentinian system attributes the creation of matter

to error, ignorance, or de\iciency, Irenaeus says nothing of the positive aspects to creation,

the soul and spirit substances generated by Sophia in her redeemed states. These two

accounts of the Valentinian system do agree that it makes the Son and the Savior out to be

two separate entities, something clearly out of alignment with the proto-orthodoxy of

Irenaeus. Other Valentinian systems do bear a closer resemblance to the description

provided by Irenaeus; we have other accounts of Sophia giving birth to a son, usually called

Christ, who returns to the Pleroma while Sophia remains outside in a fallen state, just as

described by Irenaeus.11

Now, after detailing the labyrinthine intricacies of the relationship of God and

creation in Valentinian mythology, we now turn to the more familiar and comparatively

simple proto-orthodox teachings on God and creation found in Against Heresies. In contrast

to the Valentinian scheme of emanations, aeons, divisions, and con\lict that led to the

creation of the world, as well as the belief that the God and Father of Jesus Christ is a

different and higher God than the maker of the material world and the god of the Old

Testament, Irenaeus states that one and the same God [emphasis mine] made some things

temporal, others eternal, and some heavenly, others earthly, and that God appeared to

10 Einar Thomassen, The Valentinian School of Gnostic Thought, in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The Revised and

Updated Translation of Sacred Gnostic Texts, ed. Marvin Meyer (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007), 790-94.

11 ibid.
the prophets.12 These statements assert that the creation, including the earthly and

temporal aspects, is the work of one God, the God and Father of Jesus Christ, the same God

who appeared to the prophets of the Old Testament. In Book 4, humankind is said to be

formed after the likeness of God, and molded by his hands, that is, by the Son and Holy

Spirit, to whom also he said, Let us make man. 13 In making these statements, Irenaeus

declares that there was no error in the creation of the world; it is all the work of the one

good God. In referencing Genesis, he likely had in mind the world-af\irming refrain that the

world God had made was very good. (Genesis 1:36)

Christ and Salvation

While we have already touched on the Valentinian schools conceptions of Christ and

his role in the creation of the world, we will now turn to its treatment of the incarnation

and its understanding of salvation. According to Irenaeus, the Valentinians taught that the

divine Christ descended on the human Jesus and was temporarily joined with him but \lew

upwards from [him] before the passion.14 In other words, the human and divine were

never truly one and that the divine Christ did not suffer death, only the human Jesus; the

one partook of sufferings while the other remained impassible.15 Resonance with this

characterization of the Gnostic view of Jesus is found in The Gospel of Truth in a passage

which speaks of Jesus having stripped off the perishable rags16 at the time of his death in

order to clothe himself with incorruptibility. This expresses a clear dualism between the

12 Against Heresies 1.10.3

13 Ibid., 4.0.3, cf. Genesis 1:26)

14 Ibid., 3.16.5

15 Ibid., 3.17.4

16 Gospel of Truth 19,34-21,25

perishable rags of the body and the incorruptible spirit/soul, and indeed it was common

in Platonism to view the human body as the garment of the soul. Particularly striking is how

this description of Jesus cruci\ixion and exaltation makes no mention of the resurrection;

his death is suf\icient, for it liberates his soul from the body. Resurrection would probably

be viewed as a step backward.

There is, however, a subtle difference between the characterization given by

Irenaeus and the perspective represented in the Gospel of Truth regarding the incarnation.

Irenaeus reports on a school of thought within Valentinian Gnosticism that teaches that the

Savior assumed a psychical Christ in the incarnation and this Christ was the one who

suffered on the cross, not the Savior. The Gospel of Truth, on the other hand, teaches that the

Savior was incarnated in a material body but abandoned this body during the cruci\ixion.

The Savior took on a body not to redeem human embodiment but to rather to save people

from this corporeal existence. 17 In either case, salvation is not to be found in a redeemed

and perfected materiality but in a return to the immaterial and invisible Father through the

Savior. Salvation points backwards to a time, or state, prior to the error that led to

materiality.

Irenaeus view of the Incarnation and salvation is a compelling reversal of the key

points in the Valentinian gnostic positions seen above. Counter to the Valentinians, who

posited that the Word and Jesus are separate but related entities, and at most made the

nature of this relationship unclear, Irenaeus clearly and unequivocally states that the Jesus

who suffered for us is the Word (Logos) of God. 18 Against the Gnostics various divisions

17 Thomassen, The Valentinian School of Gnostic Thought, 790-794.

18 Against Heresies 1.9.3

between Christ, the Word, the Only-Begotten, the Savior, and Jesus, Irenaeus emphasizes

the complete unity of Christ as the only-begotten Son and Word of God who became

incarnate in Jesus for the salvation of the world, citing the Gospel of John (The Word

became \lesh, John 1:14) and the genealogy in the Gospel of Matthew which traces the

human, embodied lineage of not just Jesus but the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of

David (Matthew 1:1) who was born of Mary. In other words, Christ the Savior did not

descend on the Jesus who was born of Mary but rather is the Jesus who was born of Mary. A

profound point that emerges from Irenaeus treatment of the incarnation is that \lesh and

materiality are the site of revelation, where the invisible and incomprehensible God has

been made visible and knowable in Jesus Christ. In Irenaeus words, the invisible becoming

visible; the incomprehensible, comprehensible; the impassible, passible; the Word, man.19

Far from concealing spiritual reality, as in Gnostic thought, God in Christ is revealed in the

material world as one who has joined himself to it completely.

Out of this view of the incarnation \lows Irenaeus understanding of salvation. Like

the Valentinians, Irenaeus conceives of salvation as a process of becoming united with God

the Father through the work of the Savior. The key difference is in just who or what it is that

is saved and joined to God. For the Valentinians, it is the non-material soul and spirit which

is clothed, even imprisoned, in materiality. For Irenaeus, it is the whole human beingsoul,

spirit, and body. He argues that a partial salvation that excludes the body is no salvation at

all, for a human is not a complete human without the body: Neither is the spirit a man, for

it is called the spirit, and not a man; but the commingling and union of all these [soul, body,

19 Ibid., 3.16.6
and spirit] constitutes the perfect man.20 Having answered the question of who or what is

saved by Christ, we now turn to the question of how the Incarnation is salvi\ic. Irenaeus

describes the incarnate Christ as one who, in himself, recapitulates all things, that is, joins

his divinity to the fullness of the human journey and experience to such a degree as to

raise up all \lesh of the whole human race.21 Whereas in the Gnostic myth, salvation

consists in raising up humanity from \lesh, Irenaeus holds that true salvation is the raising

up of \lesh. If God in Christ did not truly become man, incarnate in a human body, then our

bodies are not redeemed from the sin and death to which they were captive before the

incarnation. 22 What is not assumed by God is not redeemed. In recapitulating in himself the

long unfolding of humankind, 23 including death, Christ casts out and condemns the sin

and death to which humanity had been in captivity and from which it needed salvation. This

makes clear the importance, in Irenaeus view, of the real suffering and death of Christ for

the salvation of the whole human being. The very act of incarnation, the perfect union of the

human and divine in Jesus Christ, while something that only God could have initiated, has

now opened the way for all human beings, bodies included, to become sons and daughters

of God. The old orthodox adage that God became man so that man could become God

\inds powerful expression in the writings of Irenaeus and has profound implications for

how we understand our embodied human life and the divinely created world in which we

live it.

20 Ibid., 5.3.3

21 Ibid., 1.10.1

22 Ibid., 5.3.2

23 Ibid., 3.18.1
 As we have seen, the same language, concepts, \igures, and events can be used and

interpreted to very different ends. The proto-orthodoxy of Irenaeus and the Valentinian

Gnosticism which he sought to refute shared a common vocabulary and set of symbols.

They both spoke of Christ, God the Father, the cruci\ixion of Jesus, and salvation, but there

were key differences of meaning and interpretation that made these two early Christian

schools of thought actually quite opposed to one another on theological and philosophical

grounds. These differences had far reaching implications for the valuing of the material

world in which we live. Irenaeus, representing proto-orthodox Christian theology, much of

which later became codi\ied in the creeds that Christians still use today, confessed one

Creator God, maker of heaven and earth, and proclaimed Christs perfect and complete

union with humanity in the Incarnation which opened the way for the salvation of the

embodied, material world. Contrary to the Gnostic teachings of the de\icient nature of the

material world and a salvation that consists in escape from it, Irenaeus taught that the

home of God is among mortals (Revelation 21:3) because God has fully embraced, joined,

redeemed, and sancti\ied our materiality in the incarnation. Irenaeus, and the orthodox

Christian faith of which he is an early Father, is a voice that speaks from the past into the

present, reminding us, who face the spiritual, moral, and existential crisis of climate change,

that God created the world and called it good.