The Gnostics described how the pleroma (spiritual realm) that existed in the beginning was disrupted by the fall. The Creator God of Genesis, aborted from the primordial world, became a Demiurge – Satan - who created the material universe. He deliberately created two kinds of human being and animated them with his breath: the hylics and the psychics. Unknown to that Demiurge, however, certain remnants of pleromic wisdom contained in his breath lodged as spiritual particles in matter and produced a third group of beings called pneumatics.

The God of Genesis now tried to prevent these Gnostics from discovering their past origins, present powers, and future destinies. Gnostics (the pneumatics) contain within themselves divine sparks expelled from the pleroma. Christ was sent from the pleroma to teach Gnostics the saving knowledge (gnosis) of their true identities and was crucified when the Demiurge of Genesis discovered that the Christ (the male partner of the feminine Holy Spirit) was in Jesus. After Christ returned to the pleroma, the Holy Spirit must now be sought for it had descended, arisen, or gone elsewhere. As part of their search for essential knowledge – to learn to be like God – sexual freedom was necessary.

Irenaeus the Bishop of Lyon found these ideas anathema He used his writing to push hard for censorship and heretical labeling for all those who disagreed with him. We do not know what Christianity would have become if Valentinius had not gone down to defeat. It seems likely the priesthood would not have remained celebate. Marriage is logically defensible as God’s preferred state of living. Also, the pursuit of knowledge may have become more inquisitive and less dedicated to the past. Instead, history headed toward Nicaea where the male bishops would stamp heresy on the brow of all who stood in their way.

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