Refutation of All Heresies 7.32.4

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: They claim their souls come from above and could even surpass Jesus by despising the world more.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 400–402

τούτους δὲ κατὰ μηδὲν ἀπολείπεσθαι τοῦ Ἰησοῦ. Τὰς δὲ ψυχὰς αὐτῶν ἐκ τῆς ὑπερκειμένης ἐξουσίας παρούσας, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ὡσαύτως καταφρονούσας τῶν κοσμοποιῶν, τῆς αὐτῆς ἠξιῶσθαι δυνάμεως καὶ αὖθις εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ χωρῆσαι· εἰ δέ τις ἐκείνου πλέον καταφρονήσειεν τῶν ἐνταῦθα, δύνασθαι διαφορώτερον αὐτοῦ ὑπάρχειν.

English · Claude translation

and that these fall short of Jesus in nothing. And that their souls, coming from the power that lies above, and for this reason likewise despising the world-makers, have been deemed worthy of the same power and go back again to the same place; and if anyone should despise the things here more than he did, he could be superior to him.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 400–402 · 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. 7.32.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/32/4/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 7.32.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/32/4/).