Existence is a Spectrum: Rethinking Resurrection in the Treatise on the Resurrection
Existence is a Spectrum: Rethinking Resurrection in the Treatise on the Resurrection

Summary/Abstract: This article reexamines the concept of resurrection in the Valentinian “Treatise on the Resurrection” (or “Letter to Rheginos”, NHC I,4) by employing the framework of ‘modes of being’, a hermeneutical tool adapted from Platonic and Gnostic thought. Rather than viewing reality in terms of strict binaries, the article argues that Valentinian cosmology is best understood as a continuum: beginning with absolute non-existence, progressing through the material world, then to the state of the believer who has received gnosis, and culminating in the transcendent realm of the Father. Within this spectrum, resurrection emerges not as a singular or discontinuous event, but as a graded and continuous process that unfolds across different levels of existence. By drawing on both the “Treatise on the Resurrection” and related Valentinian texts, the study demonstrates how this spectrum of being provides a new interpretive key for understanding Valentinian soteriology and the ontological grounding of resurrection.

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