The observance of Valentine’s Day is recognized as sort of a joyous celebration of love and romance, an opportunity to make somebody that is special to you feel special. It’s sort of a very nice idea and it’s become, as many of the hallmark holidays, sort of a very widely accepted ubiquitous global tradition. Endorsed by Christianity, endorsed by commerce and certainly by schoolteachers, it’s one of those holidays that everyone seems to participate in and there is a lot of social pressure to be involved. But, if we look back at the meaning of the holiday we often find with these things, reasons why God’s people should not be involved.
Where does the name St. Valentine’s come from? According to legend, the Roman Emperor Claudius II stopped certain soldiers from marrying because he thought they made better soldiers if they weren’t married and a priest named Valentine continued to perform marriages in secret. There is not a lot of actual support for that factually, but that is the legend that is popularized. The Catholic Encyclopedia actually lists between three and eight different martyrs that are apparently associated with the name Valentine. When you look at that on a cursory level, there is really very little basis for the labeling of the feast of St. Valentine.
What we do know is that in 496 AD, Pope Gelasius I declared February 14th to be the feast of St Valentine and he described Valentine as being among those whose names are rightly reverenced, but whose actions are known only to God. It is probable that he made him up. There’s not really a St. Valentine that was attributed to this day.
Reading further into the history, we would suggest that possibly the most likely candidate for the influence on naming the festival was a gentleman by the name of Valentinus of Alexandria. He was a gnostic heretic. He was a prominent and influential gnostic priest in Rome in the second century, so much so that he was actually almost made Bishop of Rome. He taught a little bit off traditional Catholic doctrine at the time. He promoted Platonism, so he was drawing from Greek pagan philosophies and incorporating those into Catholic doctrine.
He helped popularize Trinitarianism and in that mode of teaching, he really pushed into Catholic doctrine, paganized versions of god or gods with a small “g”. He introduced the idea that there was a sub-deity that created the earth, that it was an imperfect creation and that is why there is sin in the world. So there is sin because of that imperfect creation of one of these sub-deities that created the earth, and therefore we as human beings are required to transcend our physical environment in order to obtain the perfection of the divine nature.
Part of Gnosticism is the teaching that sex is a primary means to achieve that transcending experience. This priest, Valentinus of Alexandria championed conjugal relationships and eroticism and that made him, among other things I’m sure, quite popular with the masses. He was eventually declared a heretic and apostate from the Catholic Church, but he remained very popular and influential, particularly in Rome.
It is our assessment from this reading, that Pope Gelasius used Valentinus’ popularity to label this festival and to appropriate what was otherwise a pagan event. That pagan event is actually, Lupercalia. The Feast of Lupercalia is an event that has long preceded the day of Valentine’s. It’s an ancient Roman and Greek orgiastic festival that was again very popular with the otherwise pagan population. It was a one week festival that began on the night of February 14th. At this event, young men and women were encouraged to write names on love notes and put them into vessels and then draw lots for their partner for the festival. It was a festival that honored the body fertility deity Lupercus, and that deity has a variety of different names including Faunus and Pan.
This deity that was being honored in this fertility festival is one of many. We find this deity appears in virtually all cultures across the world. It is a ubiquitous pagan god. Interestingly, we can tie it back even further if we look more into who this Lupercus or Pan actually was.
Lupercus was the mighty wolf hunter of the Roman culture and, according to the classical dictionaries, the Semites called Pan, Baal. That’s a name we would recognize directly from the Bible. Baal is actually another name for Nimrod and Nimrod, is the mighty hunter (Genesis 10:9). The name Valentine, interestingly enough, means strong, powerful or mighty. We can tie all of this back through all of these different cultures to the worship of Nimrod, who deified himself.
Babylonian tradition, which predates Roman, is that on February 14th Queen Semiramis presented her son Nimrod to the kingdom. Nimrod was the original Valentine, as best we can tell, and Valentine’s Day honors him.
Ok, well that’s a lot of interesting background and history, but it’s not really what people are doing today when they celebrate Valentine’s Day. No one is worshipping this ancient character in the Bible. Valentine’s Day is an innocent and nice idea. It’s fun for the kids to give notes to each other. It’s a great reminder to take care of your significant other. Who cares? What’s the big deal? That’s the answer we always get whenever we raise the issues related to many of these popular observances.
Paul had quite a little bit to say about this and it is clear from what he says, that God cares. In this section of scripture, he was addressing an issue where the Corinthians were eating meat that had been offered to idols. He points out that keeping God’s ceremonies and traditions link us to God and keeping pagan ceremonies and traditions link us to demons.
“The cup of blessing that we give thanks for, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? 17 Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for all of us share that one bread. 18 Look at the people of Israel. Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in what is offered on the altar? 19 What am I saying then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20 No, but I do say that what they sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. I do not want you to participate with demons! 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot share in the Lord’s table and the table of demons” (1 Corinthians 10:16-21 Holman Christian Standard Bible).
That’s a good analogy for us when we’re dealing with these pagan festivals. They may not mean anything. We know they don’t mean anything. We know that the god that is being observed is not a real god. But what we participate in, what we celebrate, what we observe, and what we worship does affect us by association.
Celebrating Valentine’s Day requires of us all the same actions that we would do in observing one of God’s sacred Holy Days. We are dedicating mental attention and physical energy to that time. We are essentially setting a time aside especially for that observance and we are participating in habits, practices, rituals that evoke the meaning of that event. That’s what we do on the Sabbath. Right? We have certain customs and traditions. We have time set aside; it’s holy. Our attention is commanded to be there. It’s the same thing that we would do on Valentine’s Day if we participate in those ceremonies. How is Valentine’s Day any different from what we would do on a Holy Day?
Wycliff Bible Encyclopedia says that “idolatry is paying divine honors to any item of human fabrication or the ascription of divine powers to purely natural agencies.” That’s what we’re doing on Valentine’s Day. It is a day sanctified for worshipping sex and fertility and for worshiping an anti-Christ who stood against God and deified himself. That’s essentially where the holiday came from and what it’s about. Human beings have worshipped sex and fertility from very, very early times and have abused the ecstatic, psycho-chemical effects of erotic love. They’ve perverted that and then they’ve called it religion (with interwoven sex) and it becomes something that is worshipped.
Gnosticism very explicitly and specifically integrates that into Christian ideas. It’s a more sophisticated version that we might have found at a Lupercalia festival, but it’s not really that different. It blends in Catholic ideas about sin and divinity. Gnosticism is by no means dead. There is somewhat of a resurgent movement of people who explicitly observe Gnosticism, the mystery religion, but it’s also very indirectly influential because of its impact on modern philosophy, religion and pop culture.
If you doubt that, we encourage you to listen to the lyrics of pop culture. The songs we hear recognize love, well sex, as a divine experience. I can draw from songs that probably aren’t as current as you may be able to if you’re younger and listen to the radio. Lyrics like: “You bring me closer to God, take me to church, like a prayer”. It goes on and on. Pop music is full of these references to the gnostic idea that sex brings us closer to God. Now there is nothing wrong with sex. God created it. It’s a wonderful thing. It’s good and it certainly reveals parts of His character, but it is a powerful and evil drug when it is abused the way Satan has influenced it to be abused. Is Valentine’s Day just a silly made up tradition? Yes, it is, but so is Baal. But, who cares?
God does. God cares greatly. He is a jealous God: “I am Yahweh, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another or My praise to idols (Isaiah 42:8 HCSB).
The Israelites were not even to name the name of other gods and they were commanded to tear down, destroy, smash and burn anything idolatrous. God is very clear that He cares about our association with pagan practices. You might ask, “Why?” This is not just a petty, capricious, jealous God who wants our attention. He is giving us these instructions to protect us. We can take so much from simply the first sentence of the Ten Commandments where He said, “I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt”. There is a lot in that. Yahweh is the only God. He is the Alpha and Omega. He is omnipotent and eternal and He is the fountain of all being and power. So, as that Being, He has the right to our complete and total attention.
Yahweh is our God. If we have made a covenant with this God, both parties have certain obligations when that covenant is taken. God has a just claim on our pure attention. Yahweh bought our freedom at a price. A steep price was paid for us to be free to observe in truth, so we are bound to obey Him.
As followers of Jesus Christ, we need to keep ourselves apprised of the truth, acknowledge the truth and respond to it. Valentine’s Day is idolatry. It looks fun and silly and it’s easy to get caught up in it. But God cares very much about our involvement in these pagan practices and He expects us to honor our covenant relationship with Him by recognizing His total sovereignty.
Christ said: “But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship Him” (John 4:23 HCSB). God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.
Staff