Refutation of All Heresies 6.12.2

Authorship disputed: The work names no author. Book 1 was long printed among Origen's works as the Philosophumena; after books 4–10 were found in a manuscript from Mount Athos (published 1851), it was assigned to Hippolytus, the usual view today, though some scholars ascribe it to another Roman writer of the same circle. Books 2 and 3 are lost, and book 4 lacks its beginning.

Summary: From the fire came six roots in pairs, Mind and Thought, Voice and Name, Reasoning and Reflection, holding the infinite power potentially.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 240

Ἓξ ῥίζας τὰς πρώτας τῆς ἀρχῆς τῆς γεννήσεως λαβὼν ὁ γεννητὸς ἀπὸ τῆς ἀρχῆς τοῦ πυρὸς ἐκείνου· γεγονέναι δὲ τὰς ῥίζας φησὶ κατὰ συζυγίας ἀπὸ τοῦ πυρός, ἅστινας ῥίζας καλεῖ νοῦν καὶ ἐπίνοιαν, φωνὴν καὶ ὄνομα, λογισμὸν καὶ ἐνθύμησιν· εἶναι δὲ ἐν ταῖς ἓξ ῥίζαις ταύταις πᾶσαν ὁμοῦ τὴν ἀπέραντον δύναμιν δυνάμει, οὐκ ἐνεργείᾳ.

English · Claude translation

The begotten world took the first six roots of the principle of generation from the principle of that fire; and he says that the roots came to be in pairs from the fire, and he calls these roots Mind and Thought, Voice and Name, Reasoning and Reflection; and in these six roots the whole infinite power is present together, in potentiality, not in actuality.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 240 · Ludwig Duncker and F. G. Schneidewin, eds., S. Hippolyti episcopi et martyris Refutationis omnium haeresium librorum decem quae supersunt (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1859); section divisions from Paul Wendland, ed., Hippolytus Werke 3: Refutatio omnium haeresium, GCS 26 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1916) · Greek text: L. Duncker and F. G. Schneidewin, Refutationis omnium haeresium (Göttingen, 1859), digitized by the Perseus Digital Library; section divisions from P. Wendland (GCS 26, 1916), digitized by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin); both CC BY-SA 4.0

Text

As printed in Duncker–Schneidewin. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.

Translation

Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Duncker–Schneidewin; made independently of existing English translations.

Compare

Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5 (1886) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made) · Its chapter numbers differ from the standard (Wendland) numbering used here.

Topics

Heresy

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.12.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/12/2/).

The SBL abbreviation for this work has not been checked yet.

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.12.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/12/2/).