Christian Texts and History • How did Clement feel about Valentinus as a person and theologian in Stromata book 3?

The Valentinians, who hold that the union of man and woman is derived from the divine emanation in heaven above, approve of marriage.

If these people spoke of acts of spiritual union like the Valentinians, perhaps one could accept their view.

However, one ought to consider continence not merely in relation to one form of it, that is, sexual relations, but in relation to all the other indulgences for which the soul craves when it is ill content with what is necessary and seeks for luxury. It is continence to despise money, softness, property, to hold in small esteem outward appearance, to control one's tongue, to master evil thoughts. In the past certain angels became incontinent and were seized by desire so that they fell from heaven to earth. And Valentinus says in the letter .to Agathopus: "Jesus endured " all things and was continent; It was his endeavour to earn a divine nature; he ate and drank in a manner peculiar to him- self, and the food did not pass out of his body. Such was the power of his continence that food was not corrupted within him; for he himself was not subject to the process of corruption." As for ourselves, we set high value on continence which arises from love to the Lord and seeks that which is good for its own sake, sanctifying the temple of the Spirit. It is good if for the sake of the kingdom of heaven a man emasculates himself from all desire, and "purifies his conscience from dead works to serve the living God."

It is not marriage that is a sin but fornication, since otherwise they must say that birth and the creation of birth are sinful.

91. Such are the arguments of Julius Casinos, the originator of deceits. At any rate in his book Concerning Continence and Celibacy he says these words: "And let no one say that because we have these parts, that the female body is shaped this way and the male that way, the one to receive, the other to give seed, sexual intercourse is allowed by God. For if this arrangement had been made by God, to whom we seek to attain, he would not have pronounced eunuchs blessed; nor would the prophet have said that they are 'not an unfruitful tree,' using the tree as an illustration of the man who chooses to emasculate himself of any such notion."

92. And striving still further to support his godless opinion he adds: "Could not one rightly find fault with the Saviour if he was responsible for our formation and then delivered us from error and from this use of the generative organs?" In this respect his teaching is the same as Tatian’s. But he departed from the school of Valentinus. On this account he says: "When Salome ' asked when she would know the answer to her questions, the Lord said, When you trample on the robe of shame, and when the two shall be one, and the male with the female, and there is neither male nor female."

93. In the first place we have not got the saying in the four Gospels that have been handed down to us, but in the Gospel according to the Egyptians.

If birth is something evil, let the blasphemers say that the Lord who shared in birth was born in evil, and that the virgin gave birth to him in evil. Woe to these wicked fellows! They blaspheme against the will of God and the mystery of creation in speaking evil of birth. This is the ground upon which Docetism is held by Cassian and by Marcion also, and on which even Valentinus indeed teaches that Christ's body was "psychic."