Refutation of All Heresies 6.9.5

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: The infinite power dwells in man; it is a fire with a hidden and a manifest nature.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 236–238

Οἰκητήριον δὲ λέγει εἶναι τὸν ἄνθρωπον τοῦτον τὸν ἐξ αἱμάτων γεγεννημένον, καὶ κατοικεῖν ἐν αὐτῷ τὴν ἀπέραντον δύναμιν, ἣν ῥίζαν εἶναι τῶν ὅλων φησίν. Ἔστι δὲ ἡ ἀπέραντος δύναμις, τὸ πῦρ, κατὰ τὸν Σίμωνα οὐδὲν ἁπλοῦν, καθάπερ οἱ πολλοὶ ἁπλᾶ λέγοντες εἶναι τὰ τέσσαρα στοιχεῖα καὶ τὸ πῦρ ἁπλοῦν εἶναι νενομίκασιν, ἀλλὰ γὰρ εἶναι τὴν τοῦ πυρὸς διπλῆν τινὰ τὴν φύσιν, καὶ τῆς διπλῆς ταύτης καλεῖ τὸ μέν τι κρυπτόν, τὸ δέ τι φανερόν·

English · Claude translation

He says that the dwelling is this man who is born of blood, and that the infinite power, which he says is the root of all things, dwells in him. According to Simon, the infinite power, the fire, is nothing simple (as most people, saying that the four elements are simple, have thought fire to be simple); rather the nature of fire is a kind of double one, and of this double nature he calls one part hidden and the other manifest;

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 236–238 · 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. 6.9.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/9/5/).

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Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.9.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/9/5/).