The Valentinian Eucharist — Thanksgiving as Transformation
The Valentinian eucharistic practice transformed the shared meal into a ritual of divine recognition — the bread and wine becoming vehicles for the transmission of pneumatic presence.
Valentinian sacramental theology developed a distinctive understanding of the eucharist (thanksgiving, shared meal) as a vehicle for pneumatic presence rather than primarily as a memorial or propitiatory sacrifice. The Gospel of Philip: 'The eucharist is Jesus. For he is called in Syriac "Pharisatha," which is "the one who is spread out," for Jesus came to crucify the world.' The eucharistic transformation in Valentinian understanding occurs not in the elements (bread and wine become Christ's body and blood in the more physical Catholic sense) but in the participants: the pneumatics who share the meal are brought into communion with the divine Logos and their divine spark is nourished and strengthened. This symbolic/spiritual understanding of eucharistic transformation was one of Irenaeus's primary objections to Valentinian practice — he argued that genuine incarnation requires the real, physical transformation of the elements.
The eucharist is Jesus. In the eucharist, the world is crucified and the divine presence is spread out for all who can receive it.
Liturgical scholar Paul Bradshaw (The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship) documents that eucharistic theology in the 2nd century was far more diverse than later orthodoxy suggests — Valentinian eucharistic understanding represents one legitimate strand of early Christian practice rather than a deviant innovation.
Nag Hammadi Library