Refutation of All Heresies 1.22.3

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.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 42

Τὸν δὲ θεὸν ὁμολογῶν εἶναι ἀΐδιον καὶ ἄφθαρτόν φησι μηδενὸς προνοεῖν, καὶ ὅλως πρόνοιαν μὴ εἶναι μηδὲ εἱμαρμένην, ἀλλὰ πάντα κατὰ αὐτοματισμὸν γίνεσθαι. Καθῆσθαι γὰρ τὸν θεὸν ἐν τοῖς μετακοσμίοις, οὕτω καλουμένοις ὑπʼ αὐτοῦ· ἔξω γάρ τι τοῦ κόσμου οἰκητήριον τοῦ θεοῦ ἔθετο εἶναι, λεγόμενον τὰ μετακόσμια, ἥδεσθαί τε καὶ ἡσυχάζειν ἐν τῇ ἀκροτάτῃ εὐφροσύνῃ, καὶ μήτε αὐτὸν πράγματα ἔχειν μήτε ἄλλοις παρέχειν.

English · Claude translation

While admitting that God is everlasting and imperishable, he says that God exercises providence over nothing, and that there is no providence or fate at all, but all things happen by chance. For God sits in the intermundia, as he calls them; for he supposed that there is a dwelling of God outside the world, called the intermundia, and that God takes pleasure and rests in the highest delight, and neither has troubles himself nor causes them for others.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 42 · 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.

Notes

Translation notes

A letter the digitizers could not read, marked (??), is restored as the article τὰ from the context.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (unreadable letter in the digital text; the article is certain from the context): λεγόμενον τ(??) μετακόσμια → λεγόμενον τὰ μετακόσμια.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.22.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/22/3/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.22.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/22/3/).