Refutation of All Heresies 6.25.3

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: Strife divides the world into creatures and makes things come to be; Love gathers them back into the one universe.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 264

Ὥσπερ εἴ τις ἀριθμητικῶς τὴν μυριάδα εἰς χιλιάδας καὶ ἑκατοντάδας καὶ δεκάδας, καὶ δραχμὰς εἰς ὀβολοὺς καὶ κοδράντας μικροὺς κατακερματίσας τέμνει, οὕτω τὸ νεῖκος τὴν οὐσίαν τοῦ κόσμου, φησί, τέμνει εἰς ζῷα, φυτά, μέταλλα καὶ τὰ τούτοις παραπλήσια· καὶ ἔστι τῆς γενέσεως τῶν γινομένων πάντων κατʼ αὐτοὺς δημιουργὸς τὸ νεῖκος, ἡ δʼ αὖ φιλία ἐπιτροπεύουσα καὶ προνοουμένη τοῦ παντὸς ἵνα μένῃ, καὶ εἰς τὸ ἓν τὰ διῃρημένα καὶ τοῦ παντὸς ἀπεσπασμένα συνάγουσα καὶ ἐξάγουσα τοῦ βίου, συνάπτει καὶ προστίθησι τῷ παντί, ἵνα μένῃ, καὶ ἔστιν ἕν.

English · Claude translation

As if someone were arithmetically to cut up the myriad into thousands, hundreds, and tens, and drachmas into obols and small quadrantes, so, he says, Strife cuts the substance of the world into animals, plants, metals, and the like. And according to them Strife is the craftsman of the generation of all things that come to be, while Love governs and cares for the universe so that it may remain; gathering into one the things that have been divided and torn from the universe, and leading them out of life, it joins and adds them to the universe, so that it may remain; and it is one.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 264 · 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.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.25.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/25/3/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.25.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/25/3/).