Refutation of All Heresies 9.13.4

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: The book proclaimed a new forgiveness of sins through a further baptism, dated to Trajan's third year (about AD 100), which Hippolytus links to Callistus's laxity.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 462–464

Ταῦτα τερατολογῶν νομίζει ταράσσειν τοὺς μωρούς, λέγων λόγον τοῦτον· εὐηγγελίσθαι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις καινὴν ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν ἐπὶ Τραϊανοῦ βασιλείας τρίτῳ, καὶ βάπτισμα ὁρίζει, ὃ καὶ αὐτὸ διηγήσομαι, φάσκων τοὺς ἐν πάσῃ ἀσελγείᾳ καὶ μιασμῷ καὶ ἀνομήμασιν ἐμφυρέντας, εἰ καὶ πιστὸς εἴη, ἐπιστρέψαντα καὶ τῆς βίβλου κατακούσαντα καὶ πιστεύσαντα, ὁρίζει βαπτίσματι λαμβάνειν ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν. Ταῦτα δὲ ἐτόλμησε τεχνάσαι τὰ πανουργήματα ἀπὸ τοῦ προειρημένου δόγματος ἀφορμὴν λαβών, οὗ προεστήσατο Κάλλιστος.

English · Claude translation

Telling these marvels, he thinks to confound the foolish, saying this: that a new forgiveness of sins was proclaimed to people in the third year of Trajan's reign; and he prescribes a baptism, which I shall also describe, saying that those who have wallowed in every licentiousness, defilement, and lawlessness, even if one be a believer, if he turns and listens to the book and believes, he prescribes that by baptism he receives forgiveness of sins. He dared to contrive these knaveries taking his starting point from the doctrine mentioned before, which Callistus championed.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 462–464 · 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, Baptism

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 9.13.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/9/13/4/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 9.13.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/9/13/4/).