Refutation of All Heresies 6.18.6

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: Power and Thought mirror each other and are really one male-female being.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 252

Ὡς οὖν αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν ὑπὸ ἑαυτοῦ προαγαγὼν ἐφανέρωσεν ἑαυτῷ τὴν ἰδίαν ἐπίνοιαν, οὕτως καὶ ἡ φανεῖσα ἐπίνοια οὐκ ἐποίησεν, ἀλλὰ ἰδοῦσα αὐτὸν ἐνέκρυψε τὸν πατέρα ἐν ἑαυτῇ, τουτέστι τὴν δύναμιν, καὶ ἔστιν ἀρσενόθηλυς δύναμις καὶ ἐπίνοια, ὅθεν ἀλλήλοις ἀντιστοιχοῦσιν (οὐδὲν γὰρ διαφέρει δύναμις ἐπινοίας) ἓν ὄντες.

English · Claude translation

As, then, he himself, bringing himself forth by himself, manifested to himself his own Thought, so too the Thought that appeared did not make him, but seeing him she hid the Father, that is, the power, within herself; and it is a male-female power and thought, whence they correspond to one another (for power differs in no way from thought), being one.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 252 · 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. 6.18.6 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/18/6/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 6.18.6 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/6/18/6/).