DeConick A.D

240
SPIRITUAL AVATARS
that she had about the biblical God and encourages her initiation into
the pneumatic ranks, which Ptolemy says would plant her spiritual seed in
fertile soil (Epiphanius, Panarion 33.3.1–7.10).
The question that most divided the soulish Christians from the spiritual
Christians was about the identity and nature of the biblical God,
the God of creation. The psychic Christians in the Valentinian churches,
like their Apostolic Catholic brothers and sisters, identified the supreme
God of worship with the biblical God YHWH, the creator and ruler of
the universe. They believed that he had given certain commandments to
humans for the purpose of ensuring righteousness and that he expected
humans to observe them. These laws were written in the five books of
Moses, the Torah.
The worship of YHWH and the observance of his commandments
maintained Christianity’s connection with Judaism. This connection was
valued because Christians had been arguing for decades that the Jewish
scriptures had prophesied Jesus’ advent. This connection gave their religion
at least the facade of a natural history, and with it, a tradition that
could boast some authority.
But Gnostic Christians like Ptolemy found the issue much more complex
than did the Apostolic Catholics. As avid readers of the fourth Gospel,
the Valentinians questioned whether the Father that Jesus revealed in
the Christian scriptures, the God of grace and goodness, could really be
the cruel and arrogant God they saw when they read the Jewish scripture.
They came to distinguish YHWH from Jesus’ Father. They saw this as a
spiritual truth that trumps all others.
So the beginning of the pneumatic catechism was the disclosure that
the supreme God of worship transcends YHWH. This supreme God is
the one and only good God (Matthew 19:17), whom Jesus called his Father,
and he is not the biblical Creator God (Epiphanius, Panarion 33.7.5).
He is the unbegotten Father whose existence and form are impossible to
conceive. Speech cannot convey him, eye cannot see him, bodies cannot
grasp him because of his inscrutable greatness, incomprehensible depth,
immeasurable height, and illimitable will. He transcends all wisdom, intellect,
glory, beauty, sweetness, and greatness. He is simply unknowable by
anything except himself (Tripartite Tractate NHC I.5 54.13–26). Although
male pronouns are used to identify him, he transcends gender. He is really
a he-she, the Father-Mother God.