Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.10

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 teach that all nature, even stone, desires soul, the cause of growth.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 138

Ψυχῆς γὰρ, φασί, πᾶσα φύσις, ἄλλη δὲ ἄλλως ὀρέγεται· ἔστι γὰρ ψυχὴ πάντων τῶν γινομένων αἰτία· πάντα ὅσα τρέφεται, φησί, καὶ αὔξει, ψυχῆς δεῖται. Οὐδὲν γὰρ οὔτε τροφῆς, φησίν, οὔτε αὐξήσεως οἷόν τʼ ἐστιν ἐπιτυχεῖν ψυχῆς μὴ παρούσης. Καὶ γὰρ οἱ λίθοι, φησίν, εἰσὶν ἔμψυχοι· ἔχουσι γὰρ τὸ αὐξητικόν· αὔξησις δὲ οὐκ ἄν ποτε γένοιτο χωρὶς τροφῆς· κατὰ προσθήκην γὰρ αὔξει τὰ αὐξανόμενα· ἡ δὲ προσθήκη τροφὴ τοῦ τρεφομένου.

English · Claude translation

For every nature, they say, longs for soul, each in a different way; for soul is the cause of all things that come to be. All that is nourished, he says, and grows needs soul. For nothing, he says, can attain either nourishment or growth without soul present. For even stones, he says, are ensouled, for they have the power of growth; and growth could never come about without nourishment, for things that grow grow by addition, and the addition is the nourishment of what is nourished.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 138 · 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. 5.7.10 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/7/10/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 5.7.10 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/5/7/10/).