The Treatise on the Resurrection: The Imperishable Aeon

The Treatise on the Resurrection: The Imperishable Aeon

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The Treatise on the Resurrection, a Valentinian text from the Nag Hammadi library, presents a profound theological vision of the transformation from mortality to incorruptibility, centered on the figure of Jesus the Savior. It declares with clarity:

"The Savior swallowed up death - (of this) you are not reckoned as being ignorant - for he put aside the world which is perishing. He transformed himself into an imperishable Aeon and raised himself up, having swallowed the visible by the invisible, and he gave us the way of our immortality."

This declaration reveals that Jesus was once subject to the perishing world, participating fully in human nature. His resurrection was not a return to the same mortal state but a transformation: he became an imperishable Aeon. This term—Aeon—within Valentinian cosmology denotes an eternal, incorruptible emanation of divine being, thus indicating a shift in Jesus’ ontological status from the perishable to the imperishable.

The Apostle’s experience is echoed in the Treatise:

"Then, indeed, as the Apostle said, 'We suffered with him, and we arose with him, and we went to heaven with him'."

Here, “heaven” is not to be understood as a distant celestial location but as the reign of God—the new political order and spiritual communion of the elect. This ascent is symbolic of the spiritual transformation, which is echoed again:

"Now if we are manifest in this world wearing him, we are that one's beams, and we are embraced by him until our setting, that is to say, our death in this life. We are drawn to heaven by him, like beams by the sun, not being restrained by anything."

This metaphor of light—“beams by the sun”—aligns with the Messianic imagery found in Malachi:

"Unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in his beams; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall."

Thus, the Sun is not merely a cosmic object but represents Jesus as the source of righteousness and healing, whose transformative beams draw forth the faithful into resurrected glory.

The Treatise goes further:

"This is the spiritual resurrection which swallows up the psychic in the same way as the fleshly."

Here, the term “psychic” derives from the Greek ψυχικός (psychikos), meaning soulful, sensual, or natural—equivalent to the soulish body. This aligns with Paul’s teaching:

"It is sown a body of the soul, it is raised a body of the spirit; if there is a body of the soul, there is also of the spirit:—Thus, also, it is written—The first man, Adam, became, a living soul, the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. Howbeit, not first, is the [body] of the spirit, but that, of the soul,—afterwards, that of the spirit." (1 Corinthians 15:44–46)

This distinction between the body of the soul and the body of the spirit is central to the Valentinian understanding of resurrection. The transformation involves not an abandonment of the body, but its reconstitution into a higher, incorruptible mode.

Heracleon, a Valentinian teacher, reinforces this when he writes in Fragment 40 on John 4:46–53:

"By the words 'it was at the point of death,' the teaching of those who claim that the soul is immortal is refuted. In agreement with this is the statement that 'the body and soul are destroyed in Hell.' (Matthew 10:28) The soul is not immortal, but is possessed only of a disposition towards salvation, for it is the perishable which puts on imperishability and the mortal which puts on immortality when 'its death is swallowed up in victory.'" (1 Corinthians 15:54)

This clearly rejects the notion of an inherently immortal soul. Instead, both body and soul are subject to death and can only be transformed through union with the imperishable Aeon.

In Fragment 15 on John 2:19, Heracleon comments on Jesus’ words:

"'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.' The words 'in three days' are used instead of 'on the third day.' The third day is the spiritual day, on which the resurrection of the Church is revealed."

This interpretation emphasizes that the resurrection is not only about Jesus but about the Church—those united with him—rising into incorruptibility.

Theodotus, another Valentinian teacher, confirms the corporeal nature of soul and spirit:

"The demons are said to be incorporeal, not because they have no bodies (for they have even shape and are, therefore, capable of feeling punishment), but they are said to be incorporeal because, in comparison with the spiritual bodies which are saved, they are a shade. And the angels are bodies; at any rate they are seen. Why even the soul is a body, for the Apostle says, 'It is sown a body of soul, it is raised a body of spirit.' And how can the souls which are being punished be sensible of it, if they are not bodies? Certainly he says, 'Fear him who, after death, is able to cast soul and body into hell.' Now that which is visible is not purged by fire, but is dissolved into dust. But, from the story of Lazarus and Dives, the soul is directly shown by its possession of bodily limbs to be a body."

The transformation from dust to glory is further described through the imagery of dew and manna. The cloud of witnesses are described in Hebrews 12:1 and echoed in this vision:

"From these waters have been exhaled by 'the Spirit, which is the truth,' from the generations of the past, particles which, when viewed in mass, constitute, as Paul terms them, 'a great cloud of witnesses.' But this cloud is only seen as a matter of testimony... When he shall 'arise with healing in his rays,' they will come forth from the womb of the dawn as dew."

The dew symbolizes those resurrected, who then shine like the Sun of Righteousness:

"Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father" (Matthew 13:43)

In this vision, the Sun of Righteousness rises on the morning of the new creation. The faithful, like dew transformed by the morning sun, become incorruptible. As Paul writes:

"To him that overcomes I will give to sit down with me upon my throne, as I overcame and sit down with my Father upon his throne" (Revelation 3:21)

Thus, the resurrection is not the rescue of an immortal soul from the body, but the transformation of the whole human being—body and soul—into the likeness of the imperishable Aeon. This is the glory of the resurrection: that mortality is clothed with incorruption, and humanity is refashioned in the image of the risen Christ.