Valentinus
Chapter:
Valentinus was the best known and for a time most successful early Christian gnostic theologian. He founded his school in Rome. According to Tertullian, Valentinus was a candidate for bishop of Rome but started his own group when another was chosen. Valentinus produced a variety of writings, but only fragments survive, largely those embedded in refuted quotations in the works of his opponents, not enough to reconstruct his system except in broad outline.
His doctrine is known to us only in the developed and modified form given to it by his disciples. He taught that there were three kinds of people, the spiritual, psychical, and material; and that only those of a spiritual nature (his own followers) received the gnosis (knowledge) that allowed them to return to the divine Pleroma, while those of a psychic nature (ordinary Christians) would attain a lesser form of salvation, and that those of a material nature (pagans and Jews) were doomed to perish.
Year: 120-160 AD
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IMPORTANT: All Scripture text has context and background. Scripture should never be read literally or in isolation. Always seek clarification from religious scholars and teachers. In general, Scripture adheres to four principles: (1) Literal Meaning - What the Scripture says (2) Historical Setting - The story events; how the Scripture was understood in its time (3) Grammar - The surrounding sentence and paragraph; textual context (4) Synthesis - A comparison with similar Scripture to give a better contextual understanding