Valentinians
Charles Buck Theological Dictionary [1]
A sect who sprung up in the second century, and were so called from their leader Valentinus. The Valentinians were only a branch of the Gnostics, who realized or personified the Platonic ideas concerning the Deity, whom they called Pleroma, or Plenitude. Their system was this: the first principle is Bythos, 1: e. Depth, which remained many ages unknown, having with it Enroe or Thought, and Siege or Silence: from these sprung the Nous or Intelligence, which is the only Son, equal to and alone capable of comprehending the Bythos. The sister of Nous they called Aletheia or Truth; and these constituted the first quaternity of AEons, which were the source and original of all the rest; for Nous and Aletheia produced the world and life, and from these two proceeded man and the church. But, besides these eight principal AEons there were twenty-two more; the last of which, called Sophia, being desirous to arrive at the knowledge of Bythos, gave herself a great deal of uneasiness, which created in her Anger and Fear, of which was born Matter.
But the Horos or Bounder stopped her, preserved her in the Pleronia, and restored her to perfection. Sophia then produced the Christ and the Holy Spirit, which brought the AEons to their last perfection, and made every one of them contribute their utmost to form a Saviour. Her Enthymese or Thought, dwelling near the Pleroma, perfected by the Christ, produced every thing that is in this world by its divers passions. The Christ sent into it the Saviour, accompanied with angels, who delivered it from its passions without annihilating it: from thence was formed corporeal matter. And in this manner did they romance concerning God, nature, and the mysteries of the Christian religion.
The Nuttall Encyclopedia [2]
A Gnostic sect, called after their leader Valentine, a native of Egypt of the 2nd century, regarded heathenism as preparatory to Christianity, and Christ as the full and final development in human form of a series of fifteen stages of emanation from the infinite divine to the finite divine in Him "the fulness of Him that filleth all in all," each stage in the process achieved by the union of a male element with a female, that is, a conceptive and a susceptive.
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature [3]
the followers of the Gnostic heretic Valentinus (q.v.).
