''Adversus Valentinianos'', or ''Against the Valentinians'', is a famous refutation of

Valentinianism Valentinianism was one of the major Gnostic Christian movements. Founded by Valentinus in the 2nd century AD, its influence spread widely, not just within Rome but also from Northwest Africa to Egypt through to Asia Minor and Syria in the East. ...

Tertullian Tertullian (; la, Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus; 155 AD – 220 AD) was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. He was the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of L ...

, an orthodox contemporary of the

Gnostics Gnosticism (from grc, γνωστικός, gnōstikós, , 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems which coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized pe ...

and one of the first to investigate them. The work satirized the bizarre elements that appear in Gnostic mythology, ridiculing the Gnostics for creating elaborate cosmologies, with multi-storied heavens like apartment houses. Though an enemy of Valentinus, Tertullian nevertheless spoke of him as a brilliant and eloquent man. Tertullian claims that Valentinus refused to submit himself to the superior authority of the bishop of Rome because he wanted to become bishop himself. In Tertullian's version of events, when another man was chosen to be bishop, Valentinus was filled with envy and frustrated ambition and separated himself from the church to found a rival group of his own. Tertullian's story follows a typical polemic against heresy, maintaining that envy and ambition lead heretics to deviate from the true faith, and for this and other reasons is largely rejected by historians. Twenty years after the incident which Tertullian claims led to their separation from it, followers of Valentinus still considered themselves full members of the church, and they resisted orthodox attempts to expel them. The religious historian

Elaine Pagels Elaine Pagels, née Hiesey (born February 13, 1943), is an American historian of religion. She is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. Pagels has conducted extensive research into early Christianity and Gnosti ...

writes that though Tertullian's story may be untrue, it illustrates the potential of heresy to encourage insubordination to clerical authority, which Christians saw as one of its dangers. Pagels 1989. pp. 39, 162.

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Bibliography

* * {{refend 2nd-century Latin books Gnosticism Works by Tertullian