Heresy

Teaching judged false, and the church's response to it.

Passages that substantially address this topic, in date order.

Didache 11.2Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Reject teachers who undermine this teaching; welcome those who build it up.
Didache 16.3Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · In the last days false prophets will multiply and love will turn to hate.
Didache 6.1Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Let no one lead you away from this teaching.
Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 11.1 (43.1)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · A false prophet sits before the believers.
Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 11.12 (43.12)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The false prophet seeks honor, lives in luxury, and prophesies for pay.
Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 11.13 (43.13)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The false prophet avoids the assembly and prophesies privately to doubters.
Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 11.2 (43.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The false prophet tells the doubters what they want to hear.
Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 11.3 (43.3)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Empty himself, he gives empty answers, mixed with some truth.
Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 11.4 (43.4)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Consulting a false prophet is idolatry.
Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 8.6.5 (72.5)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Hypocrites and false teachers who hindered repentance may still repent.
Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 9.19.2 (96.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The bare mountain: hypocrites and false teachers, who may still repent quickly.
Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 9.19.3 (96.3)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · They did not blaspheme or betray, so they may repent, though they will be punished.
Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 9.22.2 (99.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · They want to be teachers but lack understanding.
2 Clement 10.5Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · False teachers and their hearers will face double judgment.
2 Clement 9.1Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · The flesh will be judged and will rise.
To the Ephesians 16.2Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Corrupting the faith by false teaching is even worse than bodily sin.
To the Ephesians 17.1Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Christ's anointing brings incorruption; avoid the stench of the devil's teaching.
To the Ephesians 6.2Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · The Ephesian church is orderly and free from heresy.
To the Ephesians 7.1Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Beware of false teachers who bear Christ's name but act unworthily.
To the Ephesians 9.1Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · The Ephesians refused false teaching; they are stones raised into God's temple by the cross.
To the Magnesians 10.2Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Throw out the old leaven and be salted in Christ.
To the Magnesians 10.3Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · It is absurd to confess Christ and live as a Jew; Judaism has found its fulfillment in Christianity.
To the Magnesians 11.1Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Hold firmly to the real birth, death, and resurrection of Christ under Pontius Pilate.
To the Magnesians 8.1Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Do not go back to Jewish practice, as if grace had not come.
To the Philadelphians 2.1Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Avoid division and follow the bishop as sheep follow their shepherd.
To the Philadelphians 2.2Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Unity protects the church from deceptive wolves.
To the Philadelphians 3.1Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Avoid false teachers; Ignatius found the church purified, not divided.
To the Philadelphians 3.3Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Following a schismatic excludes one from God's kingdom.
To the Philadelphians 6.1Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Do not listen to those who teach Judaism instead of Christ.
To Polycarp 3.1Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Polycarp must stand firm against false teachers, like an anvil under the hammer.
To the Smyrnaeans 2.1Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Christ truly suffered and truly rose, against those who say he only seemed to.
To the Smyrnaeans 4.1Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Avoid the false teachers entirely, but pray for their repentance.
To the Smyrnaeans 5.1Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Those who deny Christ's real suffering are themselves denied by him.
To the Smyrnaeans 5.2Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Denying that Christ had flesh is denying him completely.
To the Smyrnaeans 5.3Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Ignatius will not name the false teachers until they repent.
To the Smyrnaeans 6.2Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · The false teachers show no love or care for those in need.
To the Smyrnaeans 7.1Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · The docetists avoid the Eucharist because they deny it is Christ's flesh.
To the Smyrnaeans 7.2Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Avoid the false teachers and attend to the prophets and the gospel.
To the Trallians 10.1Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · If Christ only seemed to suffer, Ignatius's martyrdom would be pointless.
To the Trallians 11.1Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · False teachers are poisonous growths, not the Father's planting.
To the Trallians 6.1Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Feed only on Christian teaching and avoid heresy.
To the Trallians 6.2Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · False teachers disguise poison with sweet words about Christ.
To the Trallians 7.1Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Stay close to God, the bishop, and the apostles' teaching.
To the Trallians 9.1Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Christ was truly born, truly suffered, and truly died.
To the Philippians 6.3Polycarp of Smyrna · ca. 110–135 · Serve Christ reverently as the Lord, apostles, and prophets taught, and avoid false brothers and hypocrites who mislead the unwary.
To the Philippians 7.1Polycarp of Smyrna · ca. 110–135 · Polycarp condemns those who deny that Christ came in the flesh, who deny the witness of the cross, and who twist the Lord's words to deny resurrection and judgment.
To the Philippians 7.2Polycarp of Smyrna · ca. 110–135 · Believers should hold to the teaching handed down from the beginning, watching in prayer and fasting as the Lord taught.
First Apology 26Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · Simon Magus, Menander, and Marcion, inspired by demons, are honored or tolerated, while true Christians are persecuted.
First Apology 56Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · After Christ came, the demons raised up Simon Magus and Menander; Justin asks that Simon's statue in Rome be taken down.
First Apology 58Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · Marcion, prompted by demons, teaches another god than the Creator; the demons' whole aim is to draw people from God.
Second Apology 15Justin Martyr · ca. 150–160 · Justin closes, asking again for publication, and prays that all may come to the truth.
Dialogue with Trypho 120.6Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Justin speaks the truth regardless of consequences; he denounced Simon Magus to the emperor though a Samaritan himself.
Dialogue with Trypho 128.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Some teach that the power that appeared is only a name for the Father's activity.
Dialogue with Trypho 128.3Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · They compare the Son to sunlight, drawn back when the Father wills.
Dialogue with Trypho 35.1Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Trypho says many who call themselves Christians eat idol meat.
Dialogue with Trypho 35.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Justin replies that such false Christians fulfill Christ's own prophecy and strengthen true believers.
Dialogue with Trypho 35.3Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Jesus foretold false prophets, schisms, and heresies.
Dialogue with Trypho 35.4Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Heretics are named after their founders.
Dialogue with Trypho 35.5Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · The heretics blaspheme the Creator; Christians have no fellowship with them.
Dialogue with Trypho 35.6Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Justin names the Marcionites, Valentinians, Basilidians, and Saturnilians.
Dialogue with Trypho 47.3Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Jewish believers who compel Gentiles to keep the law, or refuse fellowship, are not accepted.
Dialogue with Trypho 48.4Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Justin rejects the view of some Jewish Christians that Jesus was merely a man.
Dialogue with Trypho 51.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Christ's own predictions of his passion, return, and the rise of heresies have been fulfilled.
Dialogue with Trypho 62.3Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Gen 3:22, “one of us,” indicates at least two; not angels, as some teach.
Dialogue with Trypho 80.3Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Justin will write up the whole discussion.
Dialogue with Trypho 80.4Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Those who deny the resurrection are not Christians, just as some Jewish sects are not true Jews.
Dialogue with Trypho 82.1Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Prophetic gifts continue in the church, as do false teachers, as Christ foretold.
Dialogue with Trypho 82.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Christ foretold persecution and false prophets.
Dialogue with Trypho 82.3Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Christians must warn others, as Ezekiel was told to be a watchman.
To Autolycus 2.14Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Plants growing from seeds foreshadow the resurrection; the world is like a salt sea kept alive by God's law and prophets, with the churches as safe harbors and the heresies as deadly reefs.
The Instructor 1.5.18Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Perfection belongs to Christ, the perfect man; the church, guarded from heresies, is perfected by receiving him as its head.
The Instructor 1.6.25Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Christians are not called children because their knowledge is childish: at baptism, as at Christ's baptism, they receive perfection by enlightenment and the Spirit.
The Instructor 1.6.31Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · All the baptized are sons of God and equal in Christ; there is no division into “gnostics” and lower “psychics.”
The Instructor 1.6.32Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Using his opponents' own language of “straining,” Clement says baptism strains away sin; God reveals himself to infants, those born again and clothed with Christ.
The Instructor 1.6.33Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Paul distinguishes the good infancy of simplicity from the bad infancy of those under the law; in Christ believers are adopted heirs, not slaves.
The Instructor 1.6.35Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Clement proposes a different punctuation of 1 Cor 3:1–2: Paul gave milk “in Christ,” and milk is the simple, true, natural food of the Word.
The Instructor 1.6.37Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · No one, not even the Gnostics, knows now what “eye has not seen”; we boast only in Christ, the milk of the flock, and milk and solid food are the same Word.
The Instructor 1.6.39Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Clement argues from ancient physiology that milk is changed blood, so that milk and meat, flesh and blood, are one in substance, against those who rank “solid food” above milk.
The Instructor 1.6.52Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Butter fuels the lamp as the Word enlightens; those who call themselves perfect “gnostics” should learn from Paul, who did not claim to have attained perfection.
The Instructor 1.8.62Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Against those who say the God who threatens and punishes is not good, Clement answers that he became man out of love and hates nothing that he has made.
The Instructor 1.8.64Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Justice is itself a good; so the good God can also be just, and his anger and punishment serve the right training of his children.
The Instructor 1.8.71Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Christ's prayer in John 17 shows the one God to be both good and righteous: the Father is called good and the Son, his Word in the Father, just.
The Instructor 1.8.72Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Jesus himself calls his Father good, merciful, and the one who makes the sun shine and the rain fall: so the good Father and the just Creator are the same God.
The Instructor 1.8.73Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The Father to whom Jesus prays is the Creator of the heavens, whom all admit to be just; so the Lord is the Son of the just God, as Paul also teaches.
The Instructor 1.8.74Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The one God is good, just, and Creator; his rebukes are medicine, and even his “wrath” is love, since he stoops to human passions for the sake of humankind.
The Instructor 1.9.88Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Like a mirror or a physician, God's reproof only reveals sin; God is good in himself and just for our sake, and his justice came to us in the law and in the incarnate Word.
The Instructor 2.2.32Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Warlike peoples glory in drunkenness, but the peaceful Christian drinks soberly, as the Lord did: he drank wine, blessed the cup as his blood, and taught self-control at meals.
The Instructor 2.2.33Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The Encratites, who reject wine, are answered by the Lord's example; women should drink modestly and not expose themselves, and all should behave as in the Lord's presence.
The Instructor 3.2.9Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The testimony of pagan writers is followed by Scripture: cosmetics betray a sick soul, and Proverbs warns against drinking from a strange river, the adulterous woman or heresy.
Prophetic Extracts 17.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Against the preexistence of souls: we did not exist before God made us, or we would remember it.
Prophetic Extracts 18.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The one God measures the beginning and end of all things.
Prophetic Extracts 25.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · John's baptism “with Spirit and fire” was not literal fire, though Heracleon reports that some branded the ears of the baptized; the winnowing image explains it.
Prophetic Extracts 26.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Christ's fire cleanses the holy; the heretics say it destroys the material, but Clement says it disciplines.
Prophetic Extracts 28.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · As the sea and earth serve different people differently, so Scripture helps readers in different ways.
Prophetic Extracts 28.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The spiritual athlete trains in the teaching and defeats the opponents of true knowledge.
Prophetic Extracts 29.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Studying heretical teaching trains the inquiring mind and protects the learner from being deceived.
Prophetic Extracts 38.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Against Tatian, who read “Let there be light” as the Creator praying to a higher God: the Creator says there is no other God.
Prophetic Extracts 56.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Hermogenes said Christ laid aside his body in the sun; Clement's teacher Pantaenus taught that prophecy often uses one tense for another, as here.
Excerpts from Theodotus 1.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Valentinians read Christ's dying words as committing to the Father the spiritual seed that Wisdom gave him as a covering when he came down.
Excerpts from Theodotus 1.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · In this reading, at his passion Christ entrusts Wisdom, and with her all the elect, to the Father.
Excerpts from Theodotus 1.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Clement's own view: the elect seed is a spark, the pupil of the eye, a mustard seed, and leaven,
Excerpts from Theodotus 16.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The dove at Christ's baptism was seen as a body; the church says it was the Holy Spirit, while the Basilideans and Valentinians gave other interpretations.
Excerpts from Theodotus 17.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Valentinians hold that Jesus, the Church, and Wisdom are completely blended.
Excerpts from Theodotus 17.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They cite examples of mixture: marriage, burial, water with wine.
Excerpts from Theodotus 17.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Clement objects that spiritual beings are joined by juxtaposition, not mixture; God's power sanctifies the soul by pervading it.
Excerpts from Theodotus 17.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · God's Spirit pervades by power, not by substance; spirit lies beside spirit.
Excerpts from Theodotus 2.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · which unites what seemed divided. The Valentinians say the Word placed a male spiritual seed in the elect soul while Adam slept.
Excerpts from Theodotus 2.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The seed acted as leaven; Adam's sleep was the soul's forgetfulness, which preserved the spiritual seed.
Excerpts from Theodotus 21.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Valentinians read Gen 1:27 as the emanation of Wisdom: the male are the angels (the elect), the female themselves (the called).
Excerpts from Theodotus 21.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They say Eve was formed from the female seed taken from Adam.
Excerpts from Theodotus 21.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They teach that the female seed, made male, is united with the angels and enters the Pleroma; so the church becomes angels.
Excerpts from Theodotus 22.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Valentinians read “baptized for the dead” as the angels' baptism on our behalf.
Excerpts from Theodotus 22.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · In their reading, we are the dead, the angels are the living.
Excerpts from Theodotus 22.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They say we rise to be reunited with our angelic counterparts.
Excerpts from Theodotus 22.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They say the angels were baptized for us so that we, bearing the Name, may pass the Limit into the Pleroma.
Excerpts from Theodotus 22.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Valentinian rite of laying on hands ends with the words “for angelic redemption,” so that the baptized share the redemption of their angels.
Excerpts from Theodotus 22.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They say the angels were baptized in the Name that descended on Jesus as a dove.
Excerpts from Theodotus 22.7Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Theodotus even says that Jesus himself needed redemption.
Excerpts from Theodotus 23.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Valentinians call Jesus the Paraclete, full of all the Aeons.
Excerpts from Theodotus 23.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · In their myth Christ asks the Aeons to help Wisdom, and Jesus is sent forth as her Paraclete; Paul is a type of the Paraclete.
Excerpts from Theodotus 23.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · In the Valentinian reading, Paul preached Christ in two ways: as born and suffering, for the lower beings, and as spiritual, born of the Spirit and a virgin, for the higher.
Excerpts from Theodotus 23.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Each knows the Lord in his own way; the angels of the elect see the Father's face.
Excerpts from Theodotus 24.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Valentinians say the prophetic Spirit is now poured out on the whole church, which performs healings and prophecies.
Excerpts from Theodotus 24.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Clement answers that the Spirit at work in the church is the same Spirit who worked in the old covenant.
Excerpts from Theodotus 25.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Valentinians define angels as messages from God and call the Aeons “words.”
Excerpts from Theodotus 25.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Theodotus says the twelve apostles replace the twelve signs of the zodiac, overseeing rebirth as the signs govern birth.
Excerpts from Theodotus 26.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Theodotus says the visible Jesus was Wisdom and the Church of the spiritual seeds, the invisible part the only-begotten Son.
Excerpts from Theodotus 26.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · “I am the door” means the spiritual seed will come as far as the boundary where Christ is,
Excerpts from Theodotus 26.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · and will enter the Pleroma with him through the door.
Excerpts from Theodotus 28.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Basilideans read the punishment “to the third and fourth generation” as reincarnation; the Valentinians as the lower powers and their seeds.
Excerpts from Theodotus 29.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · In the Valentinian myth, Silence, mother of all the emanations of the Depth, kept silent about the ineffable.
Excerpts from Theodotus 3.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Christ awakened the soul and kindled its spark, since his words are power.
Excerpts from Theodotus 3.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · When Christ breathed the Spirit on the apostles, he blew away the earthly dust and rekindled their spark.
Excerpts from Theodotus 30.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Clement: forgetting God's glory, they impiously say that the Father suffered, as Theodotus holds.
Excerpts from Theodotus 30.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Theodotus argues that sympathy is suffering, and that the whole Pleroma suffered with the fallen Aeon.
Excerpts from Theodotus 31.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They argue that since the fullness dwelt in the Savior who suffered, the whole suffered with him.
Excerpts from Theodotus 31.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Pleroma, they say, learned from the fall of the twelfth Aeon.
Excerpts from Theodotus 31.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Aeons learned that they exist by the Father's grace; Wisdom, grasping beyond knowledge, fell into ignorance.
Excerpts from Theodotus 31.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Wisdom's fall produced an emptiness, a shadow of the Name, the Son.
Excerpts from Theodotus 32.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Each Aeon's fullness is its pair; what comes from a pair is a fullness, from a single Aeon an image.
Excerpts from Theodotus 32.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Theodotus calls Christ, born of Wisdom's thought, an image of the Pleroma.
Excerpts from Theodotus 32.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Christ left his mother Wisdom and ascended to the Pleroma,
Excerpts from Theodotus 33.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · where he was joined to the Paraclete; Christ became an adopted son, “firstborn” of the lower world.
Excerpts from Theodotus 33.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Clement: this is a distortion of the church's teaching that the Savior is the firstborn, our root and head, and the church his fruit.
Excerpts from Theodotus 33.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They say Wisdom then produced the Demiurge as a copy of Christ, and a type of the Father.
Excerpts from Theodotus 33.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Demiurge is inferior, born of desire; Wisdom was disgusted at his harshness.
Excerpts from Theodotus 34.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The lower powers were not formed by the light but left to be formed by the Place.
Excerpts from Theodotus 34.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · When Wisdom enters the Pleroma with the spiritual seeds, the Demiurge will take her place.
Excerpts from Theodotus 35.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Jesus is our light,
Excerpts from Theodotus 35.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Theodotus reads Christ's self-emptying as his leaving the Pleroma, bringing with him the angels of the spiritual seed for its correction.
Excerpts from Theodotus 35.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The angels plead for us, their counterparts, being held back until we can enter with them,
Excerpts from Theodotus 35.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · since they cannot enter the Pleroma without us.
Excerpts from Theodotus 36.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They say our angels were produced as a unity.
Excerpts from Theodotus 36.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Jesus was baptized, the undivided being divided, to unite divided humanity with the angels in the Pleroma.
Excerpts from Theodotus 37.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Valentinians say the righteous descendants of Adam are held with the Demiurge, the others in darkness feeling the fire.
Excerpts from Theodotus 38.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · A river of fire flows from the Demiurge's throne into Gehenna; the Demiurge himself is fiery.
Excerpts from Theodotus 38.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · A veil shields the spirits from him; only the archangel enters, as the high priest entered the Holy of Holies once a year.
Excerpts from Theodotus 38.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Jesus sat beside the Demiurge to restrain the spirits, tame him, and open a way for the seed into the Pleroma.
Excerpts from Theodotus 39.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Wisdom, abandoned by Christ, produced nothing complete thereafter and keeps the angelic elements of the lower beings.
Excerpts from Theodotus 40.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The right-hand powers were produced before Wisdom asked for light, the church's seeds after.
Excerpts from Theodotus 41.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Theodotus says the spiritual seeds came forth as children, not as passions or creatures.
Excerpts from Theodotus 41.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The seeds are akin to the light, Jesus; so the church is said to be chosen before the foundation of the world.
Excerpts from Theodotus 41.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They apply “let your light shine” and “the light that enlightens every man” to the spiritual seed alone.
Excerpts from Theodotus 41.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They read “coming into the world” as the enlightened person ordering himself by casting off the passions.
Excerpts from Theodotus 42.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Cross is a sign of the Limit: it separates believers from unbelievers.
Excerpts from Theodotus 42.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Jesus carries the spiritual seeds on his shoulders into the Pleroma by the sign of the cross.
Excerpts from Theodotus 42.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They read the saying about taking up the cross as Christ's taking up Jesus' body, which shares the church's substance.
Excerpts from Theodotus 43.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They say the higher powers knew Christ's names but not the power of the cross.
Excerpts from Theodotus 43.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · With the Father's authority and the Pleroma's consent, the Savior is sent forth as the “angel of counsel.”
Excerpts from Theodotus 43.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · He becomes head of all things after the Father, in whom all things were created.
Excerpts from Theodotus 44.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · In the myth, Wisdom recognized the Savior and worshiped him, but veiled herself before his male angels.
Excerpts from Theodotus 44.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They see in Wisdom's veil the reason for Paul's command that women be veiled “because of the angels.”
Excerpts from Theodotus 45.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Savior healed Wisdom, showing her the Pleroma and removing her passions.
Excerpts from Theodotus 45.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · He freed her from passion and turned her passions into the substance of the lower world, which was thus created.
Excerpts from Theodotus 45.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They cite John 1:3 for the Savior's role in creation.
Excerpts from Theodotus 46.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The passions were turned first into matter, then into bodies, gradually.
Excerpts from Theodotus 46.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Savior is the first creator; Wisdom, second, builds her house on seven pillars.
Excerpts from Theodotus 47.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Wisdom first produces the Demiurge, image of the Father,
Excerpts from Theodotus 47.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · through whom she made heaven and earth, the right and the left.
Excerpts from Theodotus 47.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Demiurge produces the psychic Christ, archangels, and angels; “the Spirit borne above the waters” is read as the pure substance above the material.
Excerpts from Theodotus 47.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · “Invisible” in Gen 1:2 is read as describing formless matter.
Excerpts from Theodotus 48.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They read “let there be light” as the Demiurge's separating and revealing the pure substance, the sun's light coming later.
Excerpts from Theodotus 48.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · From Wisdom's grief the Demiurge made the evil spiritual forces.
Excerpts from Theodotus 48.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · From fear came the beasts, from perplexity the elements of the world.
Excerpts from Theodotus 48.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Fire pervades the other three elements, having no place of its own.
Excerpts from Theodotus 49.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Demiurge, unaware that Wisdom works through him, thinks he creates by his own power; they apply Rom 8:20–21 to him.
Excerpts from Theodotus 49.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · His blessing of the Sabbath shows that he labored unwillingly.
Excerpts from Theodotus 50.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They say the Demiurge formed from matter an earthy, irrational soul, the man “according to the image.”
Excerpts from Theodotus 50.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The man “according to the likeness” is what the Demiurge breathed into him, of his own substance.
Excerpts from Theodotus 50.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The breath of life, once formed, became a living soul.
Excerpts from Theodotus 51.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Within the earthy man is a psychic man, whole within whole, created in paradise, the fourth heaven;
Excerpts from Theodotus 51.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They read “bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh” as the divine soul hidden in the material soul.
Excerpts from Theodotus 51.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Christ's warning about destroying soul and body in Gehenna refers to these two.
Excerpts from Theodotus 52.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The flesh is the “adversary” of the Gospel, Paul's warring law, and the strong man to be bound.
Excerpts from Theodotus 53.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · This flesh is the tare sown among the good seed, the devil's seed, the serpent that strikes the heel,
Excerpts from Theodotus 53.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · attacking the king's head.
Excerpts from Theodotus 53.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Wisdom secretly sowed the spiritual seed in Adam, through angels, as Paul says of the law.
Excerpts from Theodotus 53.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Like the Demiurge, human beings think they act on their own, unaware of Wisdom's moving them.
Excerpts from Theodotus 53.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The spiritual seed in Adam is the bone full of marrow; from Adam come three kinds of people: first the irrational,
Excerpts from Theodotus 54.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · represented by Cain; second the rational and just, Abel; third the spiritual,
Excerpts from Theodotus 54.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Seth; the three correspond to image, likeness, and spirit, and “the book of the generation of men” refers to them.
Excerpts from Theodotus 54.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Seth, neither shepherd nor farmer, is spiritual; his son Enosh, who called on the Lord's name, belongs to heaven.
Excerpts from Theodotus 55.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The earthy body is the fourth nature, the “garments of skin.”
Excerpts from Theodotus 55.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Adam does not transmit the divine spirit or breath by begetting,
Excerpts from Theodotus 55.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · but only his material part; in this sense he is our father, the earthy first man.
Excerpts from Theodotus 56.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Hence the material people are many, the psychic fewer, and the spiritual rare.
Excerpts from Theodotus 56.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Valentinian doctrine of three natures: the spiritual saved by nature, the psychic free to choose, the material lost by nature.
Excerpts from Theodotus 56.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · When the psychic are grafted into the olive tree and the Gentiles come in, all Israel will be saved.
Excerpts from Theodotus 56.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Israel means the spiritual man who sees God, son of the free woman, not of Hagar.
Excerpts from Theodotus 57.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The spiritual are formed; the psychic are transferred from slavery to freedom.
Excerpts from Theodotus 58.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · After the reign of death, Jesus the great champion took up the church, both spiritual and psychic, and saved them and all like them.
Excerpts from Theodotus 58.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · If the firstfruits are holy, so is the whole.
Excerpts from Theodotus 59.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Savior first put on the spiritual seed from Wisdom, containing it by his power,
Excerpts from Theodotus 59.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · At the Demiurge's realm he put on the psychic Christ foretold by the prophets and the law.
Excerpts from Theodotus 59.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The psychic Christ was invisible, but the one coming into the world had to be seen, touched, and have a perceptible body.
Excerpts from Theodotus 59.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · So a body was woven for him from psychic substance, made perceptible by divine power.
Excerpts from Theodotus 6.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Valentinian reading of John 1:1 follows.
Excerpts from Theodotus 6.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They identify “the Beginning” with the Only-begotten, called God in John 1:18.
Excerpts from Theodotus 6.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They see in John's prologue their pairs of aeons: Mind and Truth, Word and Life.
Excerpts from Theodotus 6.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They read “life” in John 1:4 as the Word's female consort.
Excerpts from Theodotus 60.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They read Luke 1:35 as the Spirit forming Christ's body and God's power shaping it; and they hold the Savior was distinct from what he assumed.
Excerpts from Theodotus 61.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Christ's own claims about himself are cited.
Excerpts from Theodotus 61.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Christ's growth in wisdom and stature refers to the spiritual and psychic elements he assumed.
Excerpts from Theodotus 61.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The blood and water from Christ's side signify the saved substances freed from passion.
Excerpts from Theodotus 61.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They read Christ's predictions of his passion as referring to another, the passible element.
Excerpts from Theodotus 61.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · “I will go before you into Galilee” hints at the raising of the soul.
Excerpts from Theodotus 61.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They say Christ's body died when the Spirit from his baptism withdrew; otherwise death would have overpowered the Savior.
Excerpts from Theodotus 61.7Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Death was tricked: when it seized the body, the Savior destroyed death and raised the body, freed from passions.
Excerpts from Theodotus 61.8Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The psychic are raised; the believing spiritual are saved beyond them, their souls being wedding garments. The psychic Christ sits at the Demiurge's right hand,
Excerpts from Theodotus 62.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · as Ps 110 says.
Excerpts from Theodotus 62.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · He sits until the end, when they will look on him whom they pierced; they pierced only the psychic flesh, and his “bone,” the soul, was not broken.
Excerpts from Theodotus 62.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Christ's soul committed itself to the Father at his death; the spiritual element he saves himself.
Excerpts from Theodotus 63.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The spiritual rest with Wisdom in the Ogdoad; other faithful souls are with the Demiurge until the end, when they too enter the Ogdoad.
Excerpts from Theodotus 63.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Then all the saved share the wedding feast; afterward the spiritual put off their souls,
Excerpts from Theodotus 64.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · and, with Wisdom and their angel bridegrooms, enter the bridal chamber and see the Father, becoming Aeons in eternal union.
Excerpts from Theodotus 65.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Demiurge is like the friend of the bridegroom who stands outside and rejoices at his voice.
Excerpts from Theodotus 65.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · That is his fullness of joy.
Excerpts from Theodotus 66.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Christ taught the apostles first through types, then parables, and finally plainly in private.
Excerpts from Theodotus 67.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They read Paul's “when we were in the flesh” as referring to the weakness produced by Wisdom.
Excerpts from Theodotus 67.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Christ's saying to Salome, that death lasts as long as women bear children, does not condemn birth,
Excerpts from Theodotus 67.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · which must go on until the seed
Excerpts from Theodotus 67.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · is complete; they say it refers to Wisdom, whose passions became creation, and from whose passion the Lord came to rescue us.
Excerpts from Theodotus 68.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Children of Wisdom alone, we were formless, like miscarriages; formed by the Savior, we have become children of the bridal chamber.
Excerpts from Theodotus 69.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Fate is the combined action of invisible, conflicting powers that govern the stars.
Excerpts from Theodotus 69.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Each power rules those born when it is ascendant.
Excerpts from Theodotus 7.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · In the Valentinian account, the unknown Father, wishing to be known, put forth the Only-begotten, who is knowledge,
Excerpts from Theodotus 7.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · since the Father is known through the Son; love and knowledge are joined as Father and Son, Thought and Truth.
Excerpts from Theodotus 7.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They distinguish the Only-begotten who remained in the Father's bosom from the one who appeared on earth, called “as only-begotten” and “firstborn,” though they say he is the same.
Excerpts from Theodotus 7.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Valentinians call the Creator (Demiurge) an image of the Only-begotten, so his works perish; Christ's raising of the dead was only an image of spiritual resurrection.
Excerpts from Theodotus 70.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The powers riding on the stars control births;
Excerpts from Theodotus 70.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · the stars themselves only signify their activity, as birds' flight signifies without causing.
Excerpts from Theodotus 71.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The zodiac and planets, moved by the powers, indicate births and changes of fortune.
Excerpts from Theodotus 71.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The powers differ, good and evil, right and left, and each birth falls under them at its own time.
Excerpts from Theodotus 75.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They say Fate is real for others, as fulfilled predictions and astronomy show.
Excerpts from Theodotus 78.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They say Fate holds until baptism; after it astrology is no longer true.
Excerpts from Theodotus 78.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Not only the washing frees, but the knowledge of who we were and have become, where we came from and where we go, what birth and rebirth are.
Excerpts from Theodotus 79.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Once formed, the seed becomes a son of the bridegroom, freed from the cosmic powers.
Excerpts from Theodotus 80.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The one born of the mother goes to death; the one reborn by Christ passes to life.
Miscellanies 1.1.15Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Stromata will hint rather than state, refute the heresies, and prepare the ground for the higher knowledge of the tradition; it will use the best of philosophy, becoming Greek to the Greeks, as Paul did.
Miscellanies 1.10.47Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Word and deed need each other; sophistry must be rejected, for its victories are ruinous; Scripture denies that the knowledge of wickedness is wisdom, which belongs to the righteous.
Miscellanies 1.10.49Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows seeks no display; one hearer suffices; Pindar commends silence, and Paul warns against wordy disputes and empty chatter.
Miscellanies 1.11.50Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Worldly wisdom is folly with God, and boasting belongs only in knowing the Lord; when Paul warns against “philosophy and empty deceit,” he means not all philosophy but the Epicurean, which denies providence.
Miscellanies 1.11.51Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul also opposes the Stoics' material god and hair-splitting logic; true inquiry, like an athletic contest, needs daring and wisdom, and Christ's “seek and you will find” leads to real finding.
Miscellanies 1.11.52Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · True philosophy, following the divine tradition, upholds providence and the Creator, and teaches likeness to God; the philosophy Paul condemns deifies the elements and denies providence.
Miscellanies 1.19.95Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Proverbs speaks of sowing righteousness; Gentiles who keep the law by nature are a law to themselves; philosophy is like a near friend, but heresies, which leave the ancient church, wander in a waterless desert.
Miscellanies 1.19.96Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Proverbs' stolen bread and water are the heretics' Eucharists, some using only water, contrary to the church's rule; their baptism is “strange water” that sweeps people back into the sea of paganism.
Miscellanies 1.20.99Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Philosophy is a preliminary training and joint cause, not a necessary condition: most believers received the word of God by faith without it; it justified the Greeks partially, and it helps with clarity and defense against heresies.
Miscellanies 1.21.146Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Basilidians celebrate Christ's baptism on 15 or 11 Tybi and date his passion variously; Clement applies Daniel's 2,300 days to the years from Nero's desecration to the fall of Jerusalem.
Miscellanies 1.3.22Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Many mock the truth or attack it with sophistries: talkative sophists who please itching ears with a river of words but a drop of sense.
Miscellanies 1.3.23Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Solon mocked those who follow the fox's tracks; Christ, who had nowhere to lay his head among the foxes, rests only on the believer, and catches the wise in their craftiness.
Miscellanies 1.3.24Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Greeks themselves called busybodies sophists; of such empty talkers Scripture says God will destroy the wisdom of the wise.
Miscellanies 1.8.39Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Sophistry creates false opinions that seem true; Plato and Aristotle condemned it; rhetoric aims at persuasion, eristic at victory, sophistry at astonishment, and none at truth.
Miscellanies 1.8.40Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul calls the sophists' love of disputes a sickness; Euripides agrees; the sound word is Christ, the truth; false teachers are wolves in sheep's clothing who prey on the simple.
Miscellanies 1.8.41Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Eloquence can steal the truth, as the tragedians say; contentious heretics and dialecticians are futile deceivers; the Christian does not seek to please the many.
Miscellanies 1.9.44Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The experienced Christian, like a touchstone, can tell true philosophy from sophistry and truth from heresy; distinguishing ambiguous words is useful, as Christ did against the devil in the temptation.
Miscellanies 2.11.48Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Worldly knowledge puffs up, but faithful knowledge is a sure demonstration from the Scriptures; faith and demonstration are each twofold, scientific or opinion-based, and faith is a power of God.
Miscellanies 2.11.52Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Abraham and Moses “stood” before God, as faith keeps the soul steady; false knowledge has discredited true knowledge, as Paul warns Timothy, which is why the heretics reject those letters; the one who knows Christ knows the Father.
Miscellanies 2.15.66Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Sins not arising from choice are not counted; God, who is both just and good, forgives sins, as Jeremiah says; John's first letter distinguishes sins unto death and not unto death.
Miscellanies 2.15.67Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Following Barnabas, Clement reads Psalm 1 with the food laws: scaleless fish, the pig, and birds of prey stand for kinds of sinners; a wise teacher read the three phrases as Gentiles, Jewish belief, and the heresies.
Miscellanies 2.16.74Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Against the Gnostics, we are not parts of God or of his substance, or God would sin in us; God, rich in mercy, cares for us out of goodness, though we are neither parts of him nor his children by nature.
Miscellanies 2.18.79Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God rejects the sacrifices of the lawless and accepts prayer, justice, and a broken heart; Pythagoras's “do not step over a balance” comes from Proverbs; Clement begins defining courage, self-restraint, and related virtues.
Miscellanies 2.18.86Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law shows God's justice and goodness in the gleanings, the tithes, the sabbatical year, and the jubilee restoring land to the poor; so it is good and a teacher of justice; mercy to the poor is blessed.
Miscellanies 2.18.91Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law is humane, a schoolmaster to Christ, and the one God is good with justice; the Lord's saying on mercy and measure sums it up; the law protects servants, debtors, and suppliants, and God tests hearts.
Miscellanies 2.20.112Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Basilidians call the passions “appendages,” spirits of animals and plants attached to the soul, whose characteristics make the soul's desires like those of beasts.
Miscellanies 2.20.113Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Basilidian man is like a Trojan horse full of spirits; even Isidore, Basilides' son, warns that the doctrine gives the wicked an excuse to say they were forced.
Miscellanies 2.20.114Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Isidore urges mastering the lower soul; Valentinus writes that the heart is like an inn fouled by demons until the one good Father, revealed through the Son, visits and purifies it, so that the pure in heart see God.
Miscellanies 2.20.115Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · If the soul is saved by nature, as Valentinus holds, why is it not cared for from the start? If it must repent, salvation comes from obedient change, not nature; fleshly desires cloud the soul like marsh mists.
Miscellanies 2.20.117Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Barnabas speaks of sins, not indwelling demons, being removed when God comes to dwell in us; Clement tells of a heretic leader who claimed to fight pleasure by indulging it.
Miscellanies 2.20.118Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Like Aristippus with Lais, the Nicolaitans misuse Nicolaus' saying “abuse the flesh” to justify indulgence, though he meant self-discipline; they are no better than Sardanapalus; pleasure merely accompanies natural needs.
Miscellanies 2.23.147Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law's death penalty for adultery agrees with the gospel, since one Lord gave both: the adulteress dies to the commandments, but the one who repents is reborn; more is required of those given more. Book 2 ends here.
Miscellanies 2.3.10Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Basilidians make faith a natural gift of the elect; the Valentinians leave faith to simple Christians and claim knowledge for themselves, the spiritual saved by nature.
Miscellanies 2.3.11Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · If faith were a natural gift, there would be no praise or blame, no repentance, no baptism, no need of the Son or the Father: salvation rests on voluntary faith.
Miscellanies 2.6.27Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Repentance and hope arise from faith; the faithful servant keeps what God has entrusted; God is faithful and worthy of belief; faith is not mere supposition but assent to what is strong.
Miscellanies 2.6.28Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Faith is a willing preconception, confidence a firm judgment; we trust God alone, who keeps his promises; Abraham's faith was reckoned as righteousness, and we, his seed by hearing, must believe; the one God gave both covenants.
Miscellanies 2.6.29Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Gentile church has inherited Israel's covenant; the old and new covenants are one in power, given by one God through the Son; salvation runs “from faith to faith,” from prophecy to gospel.
Miscellanies 2.7.32Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · To attack fear is to attack the law and the God who gave it; without law, desire rules; the fear the commandments inspire is not irrational but rational, whatever the philosophers call it.
Miscellanies 2.7.33Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Renamed “caution,” fear is rational, avoiding harm and leading to repentance; the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, so those who reject the law are without wisdom.
Miscellanies 2.7.34Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law threatens not outward misfortunes but real evils, such as adultery and the soul's death; it does not create sin but reveals it, as a good teacher shows what saves and what harms.
Miscellanies 2.7.35Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law revealed sin but did not create it; it is a good schoolmaster to Christ, leading through fear to repentance; the one near the Lord endures hardship for the truth; Barnabas too joins fear with keeping the commandments.
Miscellanies 2.8.36Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Basilidians read “fear is the beginning of wisdom” of the Ruler's astonishment at the gospel; Valentinus writes that the angels feared Adam because of the higher seed placed in him, and destroyed their work.
Miscellanies 2.8.37Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · There is one first principle; God gave fear through Moses to tame the hard of heart; if the Ruler's astonishment began wisdom, then ignorance would be the cause of God's wisdom, creation, and salvation.
Miscellanies 2.8.38Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Clement presses dilemmas against Basilides and Valentinus: if ignorance is good, baptism is needless; if evil, evil causes the best things; and the angels' plot against Adam fails on every account of what they knew.
Miscellanies 2.8.39Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Against the Marcionites, who call the law just but not good, Clement argues that the fear of the Lord destroys evil and so is good, bringing fearlessness and moderation; to fear sinning and keep the commandments honors God.
Miscellanies 3.1.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Book 3 opens with the heretics' views on marriage: the Valentinians approve it; the Basilidians explain Christ's saying about eunuchs, praising those who renounce marriage for the kingdom to avoid its cares.
Miscellanies 3.1.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Basilidians read “better to marry than to burn” as advice not to wear out the soul in struggle; Isidore counsels marriage for those who cannot pray free of desire, and otherwise brotherly help.
Miscellanies 3.1.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Isidore distinguishes necessary from merely natural desires; Clement quotes him to rebuke later Basilidians who claim that their election lets them sin, bringing blasphemy on Christ's name.
Miscellanies 3.10.68Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · “Where two or three are gathered” may mean husband, wife, and child, since God joins them; the heretics set the Creator with the many and the Savior with the one elect, but the same God is with the married and the celibate.
Miscellanies 3.10.70Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The two or three may also be Jews and Gentiles made one new man in the church, and law, prophets, and gospel united in one knowledge; those who refuse marriage from hatred or misuse the flesh from desire are not among them.
Miscellanies 3.11.71Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Clement turns to the Scriptures that refute the heretics: the law's “you shall not covet” anticipated Christ's “you shall not desire”; the law's rule on captive women shows it meant marriage to be used with restraint and for children.
Miscellanies 3.11.73Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Moses required three days' abstinence before Sinai; Paul's call to “come out and be separate” means separation from pagan immorality and heresy, not from the married.
Miscellanies 3.11.74Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul wants the church presented as a pure virgin to Christ, its only Bridegroom; but each believer may lawfully marry, meaning a first marriage; Paul fears deception like Eve's.
Miscellanies 3.11.76Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul proclaims the same God in law and gospel, attributing “you shall not covet” to the law; his words that no good dwells in his flesh refer to indwelling sin, not to the Creator's work.
Miscellanies 3.11.77Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul attributes his evil deeds to indwelling sin, from which the law of the Spirit sets him free through the Son; the body, dead through sin, becomes a temple when the Spirit who raised Jesus dwells in it.
Miscellanies 3.11.78Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul contrasts living by the flesh, which is death and enmity to God, with life in the Spirit; believers are sons of God by the Spirit of adoption, not free to indulge the flesh.
Miscellanies 3.12.80Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul's image of the wife bound to her husband applies allegorically to the church's union with the risen Christ; his permission for a widow to remarry “only in the Lord” and his preference that she remain establishes monogamy, and does not make marriage devilish.
Miscellanies 3.12.81Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Tatian taught that returning to marital relations after prayer serves the devil; Clement answers that sexual immorality is devilish, but chaste marriage unites for prayer and children, as Scripture's “Adam knew Eve … God raised up seed” shows.
Miscellanies 3.12.82Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul's “come together again” prevents temptation; Christ, the same Lord of law and gospel, replaced polygamy with monogamy; second marriage after a spouse's death is permitted but falls short of the gospel's perfection; baptism replaces the law's washings after intercourse.
Miscellanies 3.12.83Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law's washing after emission of seed foreshadowed baptismal rebirth without condemning birth; marriage is not merely of the old law, for the same God gave law and gospel, and what God joined man may not separate.
Miscellanies 3.12.84Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law is holy and shows sin without creating it; so marriage according to the law is holy, a mystery of Christ and the church; sexual immorality and marriage are as far apart as the devil from God.
Miscellanies 3.12.85Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul foretold that some would forbid marriage and foods, which God created good to be received with thanksgiving; no one may be compelled to abstain from marriage, meat, or wine, though abstaining with thanksgiving is also good.
Miscellanies 3.12.86Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul's letters never reject chaste marriage but accept both marriage and celibacy; a heretic reads “do not store up treasure on earth” as forbidding children, but Christ was urging the rich to share with the needy.
Miscellanies 3.12.87Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · “They neither marry nor are given in marriage” does not reject marriage but corrects hopes of fleshly pleasure in the resurrection; “call no one father on earth” means the earthly father is only a servant of birth, God the true Father.
Miscellanies 3.12.89Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · To call marriage fornication is blasphemy; fornication, like idolatry, is falling from the one to the many, and defilement is union with another's body; Paul wants younger widows to marry and bear children.
Miscellanies 3.12.90Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul accepts the husband of one wife, whether presbyter, deacon, or layman; Christ called the Jews adulterous for abandoning the law's intent; the man who excused himself from the supper because of marriage illustrates preferring pleasure to God, not a condemnation of marriage.
Miscellanies 3.13.91Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Julius Cassianus, founder of Docetism, argues that sexual organs do not prove intercourse is from God, since Christ blessed eunuchs and Isaiah calls them not fruitless trees.
Miscellanies 3.13.92Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Cassianus, like Tatian but from Valentinus's school, thinks Christ freed us from sexual union; he cites the Lord's saying to Salome: “when you tread on the garment of shame, and the two become one.”
Miscellanies 3.13.93Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The saying Cassianus cites is not in the four Gospels handed down but in the Gospel of the Egyptians; male and female there mean anger and desire, and when they are overcome the soul becomes one, as Paul says there is neither male nor female.
Miscellanies 3.14.94Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Cassianus misreads Paul's warning about Eve's deception as saying birth came from deception; Christ came to those who had strayed in mind through disobedience, perhaps because Adam sought marriage before God's time.
Miscellanies 3.14.95Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The old and new man mean disobedient and obedient life, not birth and rebirth; Cassianus wrongly takes the garments of skin as bodies; Christians, citizens of heaven, should marry and possess as though not doing so, using creation with thanksgiving.
Miscellanies 3.15.98Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Isaiah promises both the faithful eunuch and the married their reward: celibacy justifies only with obedience, and the children of the chosen are blessed, not cursed, as the heretics claim.
Miscellanies 3.16.100Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Jeremiah's curse on his birthday laments the people's sins, not birth; Ezra and Job lament too; a newborn has committed no sin; David's “in sin my mother conceived me” refers to Eve, mother of the living, not to his own sinfulness.
Miscellanies 3.17.102Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · If birth were evil, then Christ and the Virgin would be in evil; this is the root of Docetism in Cassianus, Marcion, and Valentinus; man becomes a beast not in marriage but in adultery; the view that the serpent taught Adam intercourse insults the Creator.
Miscellanies 3.17.103Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Even if Adam and Eve sinned by coming together too soon, birth itself is holy, the means by which all things exist; the church's life needs the body, since Christ came in the flesh; good desire is a tree of life.
Miscellanies 3.17.104Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Some claim marital “knowledge” was the sin of the tree of knowledge; but then knowledge of truth is the tree of life, and chaste marriage shares in it; Christ healed bodies, so the flesh is not the enemy; “flesh and blood” that cannot inherit the kingdom is sin.
Miscellanies 3.18.105Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Clement sums up: some, strict to the point of blasphemy, reject creation and marriage, though celibacy should be chosen with thanksgiving and without despising the married; others, libertines, follow the words of the wicked in Proverbs about a common purse.
Miscellanies 3.18.106Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Proverbs warns against the paths of the wicked, who destroy themselves and others; Paul commands cleaning out the old leaven and not associating with immoral “brothers”; the believer, crucified with Christ, lives by faith.
Miscellanies 3.18.107Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Christ warns against leading his elect astray; Paul forbids association with the sexually immoral but does not call marriage immorality; spouses must not deprive each other except by agreement for a time.
Miscellanies 3.18.109Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · To the pure all things are pure; Paul lists those excluded from the kingdom, from which believers were washed; the libertines “baptize” into immorality under the name of false knowledge; Christians should think on what is true and pure.
Miscellanies 3.18.110Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Peter too calls believers to holiness, not to their former desires; Clement ends Book 3, noting that the controversy with the false Gnostics has made it long.
Miscellanies 3.2.10Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Clement reports that the Carpocratians' common meals end in promiscuity in the dark; he says Carpocrates misread Plato, who meant women are open to suitors before marriage but not after.
Miscellanies 3.2.11Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Persian Magi, Xanthus reports, allowed incest and wife-sharing; Jude's letter prophetically describes such heretics as dreamers speaking arrogant things.
Miscellanies 3.2.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Carpocratians hold wives in common; Epiphanes, son of Carpocrates, died at seventeen and was worshiped as a god in Cephallenia; he taught a doctrine of the Monad.
Miscellanies 3.2.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Epiphanes argues from the sun, sky, and nature, which God gives equally to all creatures, that divine justice is community with equality.
Miscellanies 3.2.7Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Epiphanes claims that God gave all things equally, while human laws, introducing “mine and yours,” created lawbreaking and theft; Clement notes that he misunderstands Paul on the law revealing sin.
Miscellanies 3.2.8Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Epiphanes says God made male and female for common union and gave men strong desire, which no law can abolish; Clement answers that this destroys both law and gospel, which forbid adultery and coveting a neighbor's wife.
Miscellanies 3.2.9Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law's death penalty and Christ's “but I say, do not desire” show the force of the commandment; Epiphanes mocks “you shall not covet” as absurd, since God gave desire, and calls marriage private ownership.
Miscellanies 3.3.12Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Marcionites refuse marriage not from choice but from hatred of the Creator, whose world they think evil; yet they eat his food, breathe his air, and received the gospel in his world.
Miscellanies 3.3.13Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Marcionites took from the philosophers the idea that birth is evil; but the philosophers meant that the divine soul is sent into the world as a place of punishment, a view belonging to believers in reincarnation.
Miscellanies 3.3.14Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Heraclitus, Empedocles, the Sibyl, and Homer lament birth and the frailty of mortal life.
Miscellanies 3.3.15Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Theognis says it is best never to be born; Euripides would mourn births and celebrate deaths, and asks whether life is death.
Miscellanies 3.3.16Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Herodotus's Solon calls man a misfortune; Homer compares men to leaves; Plato attributes to Orpheus the idea that the body is the soul's tomb and prison.
Miscellanies 3.3.17Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Philolaus says the soul is buried in the body as a punishment; Pindar blesses the initiate; Plato's Phaedo calls the body an evil and philosophy a practice of dying.
Miscellanies 3.3.18Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Plato says the philosopher's soul flees the body, like Paul's cry about “the body of this death”; in the Republic he welcomes old age for freeing him from sexual desire, a savage master.
Miscellanies 3.3.19Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Plato calls this life a prison but forbids escaping it by suicide, and speaks piously of the world as receiving all good from its Maker; he gave Marcion no ground for calling matter evil.
Miscellanies 3.3.20Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Plato traces the world's evils to the disorder of matter, pities the toiling human race, and in the Epinomis describes how hard birth and upbringing are.
Miscellanies 3.3.21Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Heraclitus too calls life death; Clement concludes that Marcion took his strange doctrines from Plato, ungratefully and ignorantly.
Miscellanies 3.3.22Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Greek tragedians complained of the pains of bearing and raising children; the Marcionites took such complaints godlessly and turned them against the Creator.
Miscellanies 3.3.23Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · More tragic laments: no mortal is happy, human woes are endless.
Miscellanies 3.4.25Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Marcion is self-controlled only out of hatred of the Creator; Christ's “let the dead bury their dead” does not condemn the flesh; the Nicolaitans misuse a story of Nicolaus giving up his wife to justify sexual immorality.
Miscellanies 3.4.26Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Nicolaus himself was faithful to one wife and his children lived chastely; his gesture renounced passion, and “abusing the flesh” meant self-control, as Matthias also taught.
Miscellanies 3.4.27Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Some heretics call promiscuity “mystical fellowship”; one quoted “give to everyone who asks” to a Christian virgin, who answered innocently that he should speak to her mother about marriage; they falsify Christ's words.
Miscellanies 3.4.28Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Such “fellowship” belongs in the brothel; Paul teaches Christians to put off the old man and put on the new, to imitate God in love, and not even to name sexual immorality among them.
Miscellanies 3.4.29Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Their doctrine comes from an apocryphal book telling how the One had “fellowship” with an Inspiration to produce the Beloved and invisible powers; they turn this into a license for carnal union.
Miscellanies 3.4.30Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The followers of Prodicus claim to be sons of the first God, above all law, and live for pleasure; but they commit adultery in secret like slaves, and whoever sins is a slave.
Miscellanies 3.4.31Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · One cannot live for God while giving oneself to every desire; if the Gnostics are strangers in the world, they should behave as good sojourners, not like adulterers the pagans themselves condemn.
Miscellanies 3.4.32Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Lawless living is hateful to human and divine lawgivers, as Phinehas's zeal shows; John says those who walk in darkness cannot claim fellowship with God.
Miscellanies 3.4.33Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Those who live like the worst of the worldly cannot claim a higher nature; Christ demands righteousness greater than the Pharisees', and Scripture teaches obedience and self-control.
Miscellanies 3.4.34Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Some claim the lower body was made by an inferior power, contrary to Christ, who said the same God made inner and outer man; the “Opposers” commit adultery to defy the lesser god who gave the law.
Miscellanies 3.4.35Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · False prophets are known by their works; if the commandments against shameful deeds are good, the “Opposers” are fighting the good and doing evil.
Miscellanies 3.4.36Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Christ commands reconciliation and good works, not defiance and display of vice; if the Opposers truly defied the lawgiver, why only in matters of self-control, and not by overturning the seasons like Xerxes?
Miscellanies 3.4.37Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · If the Opposers were consistent they would defy every commandment, even to abstain from marriage and food, and worship idols; by following the lawgiver's will to sin they make him stronger than their own “good” father.
Miscellanies 3.4.38Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Opposers misread Malachi's “they opposed God and were saved,” which reports the grumbling of the chastised people, not a command; if any God is “shameless,” it is the devil.
Miscellanies 3.4.39Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul condemns “let us do evil that good may come”; the heretics twist Scripture by changing accents and punctuation, and Malachi rebukes those who say evildoers please God.
Miscellanies 3.5.40Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Clement divides the heresies into two classes, the libertine and the harshly ascetic; against the first, if all lives are permitted to the elect, the self-controlled life is all the more permitted.
Miscellanies 3.5.41Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God gave us free choice; both the licentious and the self-controlled are free, but only the latter frees the soul; the libertines must either obey every desire, even the most unholy, or admit that some must be refused.
Miscellanies 3.5.42Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · One enslaved to bodily pleasure cannot become like the Lord or know God; since the commandments show the blessed life and failure brings endless evil, we must purify ourselves, so that the divine image is restored in a pure mind.
Miscellanies 3.5.43Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Those led by passion cannot know God, and conduct reveals ignorance of him; Paul tells believers, circumcised in Christ and raised with him, to seek things above and put to death sexual immorality and evil desire.
Miscellanies 3.5.44Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Knowledge is tested by conduct, as a tree by its fruit; true knowledge is a divine light from obedience; true freedom is release from pleasure through Christ, and whoever claims to know God but disobeys is a liar.
Miscellanies 3.6.45Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Against ascetics who reject marriage as feeding death, Clement cites John on antichrists who left the church, and explains the saying to Salome, “as long as women bear children,” as teaching the natural order, not that birth is evil.
Miscellanies 3.6.46Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law aims at self-restrained marriage and family life; Christ fulfilled, not abolished it; marriage can be used with self-control, and those who call intercourse polluted, being born of it, condemn themselves.
Miscellanies 3.6.48Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · If the ascetics have already received the resurrection, they should stop eating too; abstinence alone proves nothing, since pagans and the Magi practice it; the kingdom is not food and drink, and self-control is a hidden virtue of the soul.
Miscellanies 3.6.49Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Some call marriage fornication from the devil and claim to imitate the unmarried Lord; but Christ's bride was the church, he needed no helper or heirs, and he himself upheld marriage and spoke of it continuing until his coming.
Miscellanies 3.6.51Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Aristotle of Cyrene kept his oath to Lais by sending her portrait home; celibacy is no virtue unless for love of God; Paul condemns those who forbid marriage and counsels spouses to stay together.
Miscellanies 3.6.52Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The righteous of old ate with thanksgiving and married with self-control; Paul forbids judging over food; Christ himself ate and drank; the ascetics cannot claim to surpass them.
Miscellanies 3.6.53Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Peter and Philip had children, and Paul had a wife; the apostles took their wives along as sisters and fellow ministers to women; the kingdom is not food and drink; the ascetics do not match the prophets, who lived austerely yet thanked the Creator.
Miscellanies 3.6.54Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Christ's command to give and lend presupposes private property, refuting Carpocrates' “community”; he identifies himself with the needy, and the old covenant also commands giving to the poor.
Miscellanies 3.6.55Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Scripture presupposes givers and receivers, as the world consists of opposites; Christ's call to the rich young man exposed his failure to love his neighbor and taught him to share out of love.
Miscellanies 3.7.59Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Self-control extends beyond sex to money, luxury, speech, and thought; even angels fell through desire; Valentinus claimed Jesus did not digest food; Christians embrace self-control out of love for the Lord, sanctifying the Spirit's temple.
Miscellanies 3.7.60Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Those who reject marriage and food out of hatred for the flesh are like pagan ascetics, such as the Brahmans and the Indian “Holy Men,” who abstain from meat, wine, and women.
Miscellanies 3.8.61Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The libertines cite “you are not under law but under grace,” but Paul himself answers: “Shall we sin because we are under grace? By no means.”
Miscellanies 3.9.63Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The ascetics cite the Gospel of the Egyptians, “I came to destroy the works of the female”; but the world still goes on, so Christ destroyed the works of desire, the vices that are the soul's decay, not natural birth.
Miscellanies 3.9.64Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Christ's answer, “as long as women bear children,” means as long as desires are active, since sin is the soul's death; death follows birth by God's order, and woman, bearing children, is also the source of life.
Miscellanies 3.9.66Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The ascetics omit the rest of the Salome dialogue: when she said she did well not to bear children, the Lord answered, “Eat every plant, but not the bitter one,” leaving marriage or celibacy to free choice.
Miscellanies 4.1.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Clement plans to treat the philosophers' first principles, then prophecy and the authority of Scripture, showing against the heresies one God proclaimed by law, prophets, and gospel.
Miscellanies 4.12.81Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Basilides taught that martyrs suffer for hidden sins, mercifully under the name of Christians; even the apparently sinless suffer, as infants do, not by a hostile power.
Miscellanies 4.12.82Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Basilides argues that even infants and the seemingly perfect suffer because they have the capacity to sin, as one who wills adultery is an adulterer; he would say anything rather than call providence evil.
Miscellanies 4.12.83Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Basilides, pressed about the Lord's sufferings, would call even him a sinful man; his theory that martyrs are punished for sins in a former life fails, since confessing or denying rests with our choice.
Miscellanies 4.12.84Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · If martyrdom were punishment decreed by providence, denial would thwart providence, martyrs would deserve no reward, and providence would be unjust both to the righteous sufferer and to the sinner spared.
Miscellanies 4.12.85Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Basilides virtually deifies the devil and makes the Lord a sinner; the devil is permitted to tempt only to test our free choice, shame himself, and strengthen the church; if martyrdom were punishment, faith, love, and virtue would lose their meaning.
Miscellanies 4.12.86Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · If suffering were God's will, persecution would be good or persecutors innocent; rather, God does not will persecution but does not prevent it, which preserves both his providence and his goodness.
Miscellanies 4.12.88Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · If martyrs suffer for sins in a former life by providence, then either the persecutors act justly or persecution is God's will; the Basilidian theory destroys itself.
Miscellanies 4.13.89Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Valentinus taught that the spiritual, immortal by nature, came down to destroy death, which is the Creator's work; he reads “no one sees God's face and lives” of the Creator, and calls the world an image inferior to the living Aeon.
Miscellanies 4.13.90Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Valentinus called the Creator an image of the true God, fashioned by Wisdom, and taught that a distinct spiritual seed was breathed into the elect unknown to the Creator, reading Genesis's creation of man in this sense.
Miscellanies 4.13.91Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · If the spiritual race destroys death, Christ did not; if Christ did, the Valentinians do not; their doctrine secretly sets them and Christ above the Creator, as if a son contended with his father.
Miscellanies 4.13.92Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Clement defers proof that the Creator is Christ's Father; Paul tells the Philippians suffering for Christ is a gift, and calls them “united in soul,” refuting the Valentinian contempt for the “psychic.”
Miscellanies 4.13.93Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Neither Valentinians nor Montanists should call other Christians “psychics”; the perfect practice love, which means loving enemies as God's creatures, not their sins, for sin lies in activity, not in substance.
Miscellanies 4.13.94Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Sinners are God's enemies by rejecting his commands; “desire nothing” does not mean the world is evil or belongs to another god, but that worldly goods are ours only for use, not permanent possession, to be used well without excess.
Miscellanies 4.23.147Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · All created things, including marriage and childbearing with self-restraint, are good, though freedom from passion is better; those who abstain from fear or dislike slander the Creator; true obedience to “do not desire” comes from within.
Miscellanies 4.24.153Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · What rests with us is choosing between opposites, such as believing or not; God forgives sins before faith, all of them, not only involuntary ones as Basilides held; punishment aims at preventing future sin, not undoing the past.
Miscellanies 4.25.162Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Basilides made Righteousness and Peace beings of the Ogdoad; the Savior initiates us into his mysteries, as Euripides' Dionysus says; God, without beginning, is the source of physics, ethics, and logic, and the Word, his Son, is the only teacher.
Miscellanies 4.26.163Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The body, made upright to see heaven and with senses for knowledge, is not evil but a fit dwelling for the soul and the Holy Spirit; wisdom, justice, and holiness go together; Isaiah's “all flesh is grass” is explained by Jeremiah as referring to the disobedient.
Miscellanies 4.26.164Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Jeremiah shows that “flesh” means sinful living, not the body as such; the soul is better than the body, but neither is good or evil by nature; man is composed of different, not opposed, elements.
Miscellanies 4.26.165Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The wise soul lodges in the body as a guest, respecting it but ready to leave; Basilides wrongly made the elect foreign to the world by nature, for all belongs to the one God; the elect lives as a stranger by choice.
Miscellanies 4.26.167Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul aims to please the one God, creator of all; Epicharmus and a lyric poet also teach that pious souls go to heaven and the ungodly suffer; the soul was not sent down from heaven as punishment, but the righteous soul rises from earth to heaven.
Miscellanies 4.26.170Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Scripture proclaims that God hears the righteous and does no wrong, refuting the heresies that make God responsible for evil; God asks Israel to fear, love, and serve him, and we have the power to choose salvation.
Miscellanies 4.3.10Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Justice is known only where there is wrongdoing; Paul says love fulfills all the commandments; so the commandments that threaten fear aim at love, not hatred.
Miscellanies 4.3.9Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God alone is wise, and the philosopher is his friend; man is like a centaur of soul and body, the body tending to earth, the soul to God; the law's fear exists because of sin, and the law is not for the righteous.
Miscellanies 4.4.16Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Heraclitus and Plato honor those who fall in battle; some heretics, misreading the Lord, say true martyrdom is only knowledge of God and that dying for the faith is suicide, a cowardly sophism.
Miscellanies 4.4.17Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Clement condemns those who rush to death out of hatred for the Creator; such heretics die without true martyrdom, like the Indian ascetics who burn themselves; the body's health aids the mind.
Miscellanies 4.4.18Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Plato too taught care of the body for the soul's harmony; life and health are the path to knowledge, and the good life lived in the body leads to eternity.
Miscellanies 4.7.45Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Many sins lead to Hades; poets mock mortal frailty, but Christ says the spirit is willing though the flesh is weak; Paul shows the body is dead through sin yet the Spirit gives life, and present sufferings are nothing beside the coming glory.
Miscellanies 4.8.66Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The earthly church is an image of the heavenly, as we pray; Paul's call to compassion, forgiveness, love, and thankfulness is repeated to shame Marcion, who should be grateful to the Creator who called us in the body.
Miscellanies 4.9.71Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Heracleon distinguishes confession in faith and life, which is universal, from confession by voice before authorities, which is partial; not all the saved, such as Matthew, Philip, and Thomas, confessed by voice and died.
Miscellanies 4.9.72Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Heracleon notes that Christ says “confess in me” but “deny me”: those who are in him confess by their lives and can never deny him; those who deny are not in him.
Miscellanies 4.9.73Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Against Heracleon, Clement holds that confession by voice unto death proves genuine faith, and such martyrdom cuts off all passions at once, a sudden repentance; the Spirit bears witness in martyrs, whose defense strengthens the church and wins outsiders.
Miscellanies 5.1.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Book 5 opens on faith: faith and knowledge cannot be separated, as the Father cannot be without the Son; we believe the Son to know the Father; Christians believe and know what most disbelieve and do not know.
Miscellanies 5.1.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Faith grows like a mustard seed; if, as Basilides and Valentinus hold, the elect know God and are saved by nature, the commandments and even Christ's coming would be superfluous; if his coming was necessary, salvation is by learning and good works, not nature.
Miscellanies 5.1.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Abraham believed and was counted righteous before Christ's coming, disproving salvation by nature; and if, as Marcion says, the Creator saved Abraham, the “good God” came late, imitating him and saving by force or stealth, which is not goodness.
Miscellanies 5.11.74Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · We see God now only as in a mirror; Moses allowed one temple and no image, showing that God is invisible and uncircumscribed, and the prophets reject temples and sacrifices as containing God.
Miscellanies 5.14.126Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Orphic hymn's “mother-father” points to creation from nothing (though Gnostics misuse it to imagine a consort of God), and its verses paraphrase the prophets' God who makes the thunder and alone kills and makes alive.
Miscellanies 5.4.26Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul calls the common faith milk and foundation, and knowledge solid food and precious building; the heresies build stubble; fire will test each work; spiritual gifts could not be written openly.
Miscellanies 5.9.57Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Concealed sayings admit several meanings, clear to the knower but not to the ignorant; the Pythagoreans expelled Hipparchus for publishing secrets; Scripture calls apostates dead and bids believers separate from the unclean.
Miscellanies 6.10.83Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows studies the liberal arts and philosophy as secondary aids, using for good what heretics misuse; the full truth, like the sun, exposes every sophistry.
Miscellanies 6.12.96Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Adam was created not perfect but fitted to acquire virtue by his own choice; all are made for virtue, but people advance unequally, and knowledge is the hardest thing to acquire.
Miscellanies 6.15.123Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · As Plato says, truth comes only from God or his offspring, and Christians are taught by the Son; philosophy speaks of God only in outline, and heretics who invent another God and misread Christ speak in outline too.
Miscellanies 6.15.124Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul circumcised Timothy and Daniel wore the Persian chain out of accommodation; the true liars are those who corrupt the essentials and do not hand on Scripture worthily, whereas the apostolic tradition is proclaimed and explained by the rule of truth.
Miscellanies 6.6.52Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The flood was a corrective punishment that could not harm souls; even Valentinus admits that much of what is in public books is found in the church.
Miscellanies 6.6.53Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Valentinus treats the truth in public books as common; Isidore, son of Basilides, also says the philosophers took their teachings on daemons and the elect from the prophets.
Miscellanies 6.8.67Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Philosophy was given by God to the Greeks as a kind of covenant preparing for Christ, but, as in the church, the enemy sowed weeds in it, such as Epicurus' godlessness.
Miscellanies 6.9.71Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows feels only the bodily needs of hunger and thirst; Christ ate only to prove his real body, and the apostles, after the resurrection, rose above even the good emotions, needing neither boldness, cheer, anger, nor zeal.
Miscellanies 7.15.89Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Answering the objection that Christians disagree among themselves, Clement notes that Jews and Greek philosophers also have many sects, and that the Lord foretold heresies would grow like weeds among the wheat.
Miscellanies 7.15.90Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Others' breaking of faith is no reason to abandon the truth; we keep the church's rule and its confession; as the sick do not refuse doctors because medical schools disagree, so heresies are no excuse, and they exist so that the approved may be recognized.
Miscellanies 7.15.91Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Because truth is hard to find, heresies arise from conceit, so we must search the more carefully, as one tells real fruit from wax fruit or takes the royal road among dangerous paths, using reason to separate truth from falsehood.
Miscellanies 7.15.92Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The truth can be found by demonstration from the Scriptures, which shows that exact knowledge belongs to the ancient church alone; heretics either deceive themselves or knowingly deceive others, and they head schools, not a church.
Miscellanies 7.16.100Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · As a soldier must hold his post, the believer must keep the place the Word assigns; sudden temptation, bad habit, and conflicting doctrines each have their remedy; the gentiles live in ignorance, the heresies in conceit, and the true church in understanding.
Miscellanies 7.16.101Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · As each master makes his pupil a craftsman, the Lord makes his obedient follower godlike; sin springs from ignorance and weakness, both of which lie in our power.
Miscellanies 7.16.102Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Ignorance is cured by knowledge from Scripture, weakness by disciplined practice; Clement hopes the heretics will repent, and if not, that God's fatherly chastisements, which are corrective, not vengeful, will bring them to repentance before the final judgment.
Miscellanies 7.16.103Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Some reject the truth unheard; others twist Scripture from laziness or love of glory, setting human teachings against the apostolic tradition; Marcion and Prodicus added nothing to what the apostles and teachers had handed down.
Miscellanies 7.16.105Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Wisdom “puffs up” her children in the good sense of making them confident in the truth; heretics commit adultery against the truth and steal the church's rule, whereas love of neighbor means teaching them to hold to the truth.
Miscellanies 7.16.93Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Seekers of truth must find their proof in the Scriptures and lay aside conceit; whoever has once received the gospel must not look back, like Lot's wife, either to his old life or to the heresies.
Miscellanies 7.16.94Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · As Mary gave birth and remained a virgin, so the Scriptures give birth to the truth yet keep its mysteries hidden; those who know receive their offspring, while heretics, lacking the rule of truth, twist Scripture to suit their desires.
Miscellanies 7.16.95Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Whoever rejects the church's tradition for heresy becomes like Circe's beasts, while whoever returns to the Scriptures is made godlike; the Lord speaking in Scripture is the first principle, grasped by faith, and his voice is the surest proof.
Miscellanies 7.16.96Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Heretics use Scripture selectively, taking isolated ambiguous phrases and changing their meaning; the truth is found by reading Scripture as a whole and interpreting Scripture by Scripture in a way worthy of God.
Miscellanies 7.16.97Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · When refuted from Scripture, heretical leaders prefer their own opinions to the prophets, gospel, and apostles; despising the common faith and reading Scripture superficially, they fell away from the truth.
Miscellanies 7.16.98Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Heretics, puffed up with conceit, cling to their positions out of ambition for leadership and first places at their love-feasts; conceit, like every passion, is healed by understanding its cause and by training the soul.
Miscellanies 7.16.99Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Muddied by false doctrines, heretics cannot see the truth; like naughty children shutting out their tutor, they exclude the prophets from their churches, and like bad almonds they are empty of God's purposes and Christ's traditions.
Miscellanies 7.17.106Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Heretics, like thieves who break through the church's wall with a false key, came later than the catholic church: Christ taught under Augustus and Tiberius, the apostles finished their work under Nero, but the heresiarchs arose under Hadrian and Antoninus.
Miscellanies 7.17.107Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Since the heresies are later counterfeits, the true church is the one ancient catholic church, which, like the one God and one Lord, is one and gathers the elect into the unity of one faith.
Miscellanies 7.17.108Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Clement lists how heresies are named: after founders (Valentinus, Marcion, Basilides), places, nations (the Phrygians), practices (the Encratites), doctrines (the Docetists), what they honor (Cainites, Ophites), or their lawless deeds.
Miscellanies 7.18.109Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Clement closes with an allegory of the food laws: clean animals both divide the hoof (faith in the Father and the Son) and chew the cud (meditating on Scripture); animals with only one sign stand for most Jews and for the heretics.
Miscellanies 7.18.110Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Those with neither sign, neither faith nor meditation on Scripture, are wholly unclean and count for nothing; Clement ends his ethical sketch, having scattered the seeds of true knowledge so that the uninitiated will not find them easily.
Miscellanies 7.7.41Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Against the followers of Prodicus, who say one need not pray, Clement holds that the one who knows according to the church's rule receives what he asks; he gives thanks and prays for others' conversion, as the Lord did.
On Idolatry 5Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Idol-makers' excuses, that they must earn a living, that Paul told each to remain as he was called, or that Moses made the bronze serpent, do not excuse them.
On Baptism 1Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Tertullian writes on baptism to instruct believers because a woman of the Cainite heresy has been leading many astray by denying baptism, whereas Christians, like fish, are born and live in water.
On Baptism 13Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Though Abraham was saved by faith alone, after Christ's resurrection faith is bound to baptism, which Christ commanded, as Paul's own baptism shows.
On Baptism 15Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · There is only one baptism, given once; heretics, who do not share the same God and Christ, do not have true baptism.
Prescription against Heretics 1Tertullian · ca. 203 · Christians should not be astonished that heresies exist and are strong, since they were foretold and serve to test faith.
Prescription against Heretics 10Tertullian · ca. 203 · Seeking has a matter, a time, and a limit: one seeks what Christ taught until one finds and believes it; otherwise every heretic's appeal would keep one seeking forever.
Prescription against Heretics 11Tertullian · ca. 203 · No one seeks what he already has; like the woman with the lost coin, the neighbor at night, and the widow, the believer stops seeking once he has found.
Prescription against Heretics 12Tertullian · ca. 203 · If seeking is still needed, it must be done within the church and without harm to the rule of faith, never among heretics.
Prescription against Heretics 13Tertullian · ca. 203 · Tertullian states the rule of faith: one Creator God, his Word and Son born of the virgin Mary, crucified, risen, ascended, sending the Spirit, and coming to judge, with the resurrection of the flesh.
Prescription against Heretics 14Tertullian · ca. 203 · Within the rule of faith one may inquire freely, but faith, not skill in Scripture, saves; heretics who claim still to be seeking are not yet believers, and conferring with them only leads the blind into the pit.
Prescription against Heretics 15Tertullian · ca. 203 · Since heretics appeal to Scripture, the first question must be to whom the Scriptures belong; those who have no right to them are not to be admitted to argue from them.
Prescription against Heretics 16Tertullian · ca. 203 · Paul forbids disputing with heretics and allows only a single rebuke, and arguing over Scripture with them achieves nothing.
Prescription against Heretics 17Tertullian · ca. 203 · Heretics reject, mutilate, or misinterpret Scripture, so arguing from it with them gains nothing.
Prescription against Heretics 18Tertullian · ca. 203 · A doubter who watches such a dispute leaves more uncertain, since each side accuses the other of corrupting Scripture.
Prescription against Heretics 19Tertullian · ca. 203 · The first question is not what Scripture says but to whom the faith and the Scriptures belong; where the true faith is, there are the true Scriptures and interpretation.
Prescription against Heretics 2Tertullian · ca. 203 · Like fever, heresies should be avoided rather than admired; they are strong only against weak faith, as a boxer wins only against a weak opponent.
Prescription against Heretics 20Tertullian · ca. 203 · Christ sent the apostles, who founded churches in every city; all later churches derive from these and so are apostolic, united in peace, brotherhood, and hospitality by the one tradition.
Prescription against Heretics 21Tertullian · ca. 203 · Only the preachers Christ sent are to be received, and their teaching is proved by agreement with the churches the apostles founded; the church's communion with those churches is the proof of its truth.
Prescription against Heretics 22Tertullian · ca. 203 · Heretics say the apostles did not know everything, or did not teach everything to all; but Christ taught them fully and promised the Spirit would lead them into all truth, as Acts shows he did.
Prescription against Heretics 23Tertullian · ca. 203 · Paul's rebuke of Peter shows no new gospel: Paul was received by the apostles, shared their preaching, and rebuked Peter only for a fault of conduct.
Prescription against Heretics 24Tertullian · ca. 203 · Paul himself adapted his conduct to circumstances, as Peter did; and what Paul heard in paradise could not be told, so no heresy can claim it as a secret doctrine.
Prescription against Heretics 25Tertullian · ca. 203 · Paul's charge to Timothy to guard the deposit refers to the teaching he had given openly before many witnesses, not to a secret doctrine.
Prescription against Heretics 26Tertullian · ca. 203 · Christ commanded the apostles to preach openly, and they feared no one; they did not keep a secret rule of faith for a few that differed from what they taught all.
Prescription against Heretics 27Tertullian · ca. 203 · Heretics claim that the churches received the apostles' teaching wrongly, citing Galatians and Corinthians; but those churches were corrected, and others Paul praised share the same faith.
Prescription against Heretics 28Tertullian · ca. 203 · If the churches had erred, their errors would differ; the agreement of so many churches in one faith shows it is tradition, not error.
Prescription against Heretics 29Tertullian · ca. 203 · If the church had erred until the heretics came, all its baptisms, gifts, ministries, and martyrdoms would have been in vain; but truth comes before its copies, and the true doctrine foretold the heresies.
Prescription against Heretics 3Tertullian · ca. 203 · The fall of prominent Christians proves nothing for heresy: even Saul, David, Solomon, and an apostle fell; persons are tested by the faith, not the faith by persons.
Prescription against Heretics 30Tertullian · ca. 203 · Marcion, Valentinus, and Apelles were recent, expelled from the church at Rome, and their own innovations prove them later than the truth; they cannot show apostolic authority or apostolic miracles.
Prescription against Heretics 31Tertullian · ca. 203 · The parable of the wheat and the weeds shows that what was sown first is true and what came later is false.
Prescription against Heretics 32Tertullian · ca. 203 · Apostolic churches can show a succession of bishops going back to an apostle, as Smyrna from John and Rome from Peter; newer churches are apostolic by sharing the same doctrine, but heresies pass neither test.
Prescription against Heretics 33Tertullian · ca. 203 · Many heresies were already present or foreshadowed in the apostles' day and condemned by them: denial of the resurrection, Judaizing, forbidding marriage, endless genealogies, the Nicolaitans, docetism, and Simon's magic.
Prescription against Heretics 34Tertullian · ca. 203 · No heresy in the apostles' day questioned the Creator; Marcion, Apelles, and Valentinus were the first, so they are either condemned with the older heresies or condemned by their lateness.
Prescription against Heretics 35Tertullian · ca. 203 · The heretics cannot turn these arguments against the church, whose doctrine is earliest and was never condemned but defended by the apostles.
Prescription against Heretics 36Tertullian · ca. 203 · Anyone may visit the apostolic churches, such as Corinth, Philippi, Ephesus, and Rome, where the apostles taught and died; Rome's faith, shared with Africa, is the one from which the heresies broke away.
Prescription against Heretics 37Tertullian · ca. 203 · Heretics, not being Christians, have no right to Christian Scripture; the church, as heir of the apostles, holds it by lawful title.
Prescription against Heretics 38Tertullian · ca. 203 · Corrupt doctrine requires corrupted Scriptures: Marcion cut the text with a knife, Valentinus kept the text but twisted its meaning; the church's Scriptures are unaltered because its doctrine is original.
Prescription against Heretics 39Tertullian · ca. 203 · Just as poets patch new works out of Virgil and Homer, heretics can build their doctrines out of Scripture; God so arranged the Scriptures that heresies might be possible.
Prescription against Heretics 4Tertullian · ca. 203 · Christ and the apostles foretold heresies as wolves in sheep's clothing; they exist so that the approved may be shown, and “test all things” does not justify changing one's faith.
Prescription against Heretics 40Tertullian · ca. 203 · The devil imitates Christian sacraments in pagan mysteries, as in Mithraism, and likewise twists Scripture into heresy, which is a kind of idolatry.
Prescription against Heretics 41Tertullian · ca. 203 · Heretics live without discipline: no distinction between catechumens and believers, women who teach and baptize, and careless, shifting ordinations.
Prescription against Heretics 42Tertullian · ca. 203 · Heretics aim to overthrow believers rather than convert pagans; they respect no authority, and their unity is itself schism, since each follows his own choice.
Prescription against Heretics 43Tertullian · ca. 203 · Heretics associate with magicians and astrologers and deny that God is to be feared; but where God is feared there is order, discipline, and a united church.
Prescription against Heretics 44Tertullian · ca. 203 · At the judgment heretics will have no excuse, since Christ warned against false teachers; Tertullian ironically imagines Christ recanting his teaching, and closes by promising treatises against particular heresies.
Prescription against Heretics 5Tertullian · ca. 203 · In 1 Corinthians 11 Paul ranks heresies with schisms and dissensions as evils against unity, so those who turn to heresy are not thereby approved.
Prescription against Heretics 6Tertullian · ca. 203 · Paul condemns heresy, which means “choice”; Christians may choose nothing of their own but hold to what the apostles received from Christ, even against an angel.
Prescription against Heretics 7Tertullian · ca. 203 · Heresies draw their questions and doctrines from philosophy; Athens has nothing to do with Jerusalem, and after Christ and the gospel no further inquiry is needed.
Prescription against Heretics 8Tertullian · ca. 203 · “Seek and you will find” was spoken early in Christ's ministry chiefly to the Jews, who had the law and prophets to seek him in; Christians receive the teaching through the apostles.
Prescription against Heretics 9Tertullian · ca. 203 · Christ taught one definite thing, which is to be sought until found, then believed and kept, with no further seeking.
Against Marcion 1.1Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Tertullian explains that this is the third edition of his work, paints Marcion's homeland Pontus as a land of savagery, and declares Marcion a heretic because his teaching is newer than the faith he once held.
Against Marcion 1.10Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The Creator has been known since creation, not only since Moses: every human soul naturally speaks of God, so he was never unknown, even in Pontus.
Against Marcion 1.11Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · A god who created nothing, owns nothing, and has left no works by which to be known cannot be proved God; if Marcion's god wished to be known, he should have made himself known through works greater than the Creator's.
Against Marcion 1.12Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · A god without works would exist without purpose, which is unworthy of God; and by demanding faith while giving no works to ground it, he would be both impudent and malicious.
Against Marcion 1.13Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The Marcionites scorn the world as unworthy of God, yet even pagan philosophers found it so splendid that they made its elements into gods, and the smallest flower or shell refutes them.
Against Marcion 1.14Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Even tiny creatures show the Creator's skill; Marcion's own Christ loved the Creator's man and uses the Creator's water, oil, milk, honey, and bread in his sacraments, and the Marcionites themselves live on the Creator's world.
Against Marcion 1.15Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion's god has no visible world of his own; and if he made one, the place and matter it required would themselves be gods, so that Marcion's system actually implies nine gods, not two.
Against Marcion 1.16Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Creation is full of contrasting pairs, so the invisible world belongs to the same Creator as the visible one, not to a god who has made nothing that can be seen.
Against Marcion 1.17Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Saying that Marcion's god saved mankind proves nothing until his existence is shown from works; and a good god who waited so long to reveal himself would be either ignorant, hesitant, powerless, or unwilling.
Against Marcion 1.18Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion's god has no works by which to be known and no prophets to proclaim him; if Marcion simply devised him, he is no more a god than the deities invented by Roman kings and emperors.
Against Marcion 1.19Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion's god appeared only in the reign of Antoninus Pius, over a century after Christ, and was born of Marcion's own Antitheses, which set the gospel against the law; so Christ did not reveal him.
Against Marcion 1.2Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion, troubled by the problem of evil and misreading Jesus' saying about good and bad trees and Isaiah's “I create evil,” split God into an evil Creator and a new good god revealed in Christ.
Against Marcion 1.20Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Paul's rebuke of Peter concerned conduct, not doctrine; the apostles agreed on one gospel, and Paul's attack on Jewish ceremonies in Galatians only carries out what the Creator himself had foretold through the prophets.
Against Marcion 1.21Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The apostolic churches argued about conduct, never about which God to worship; their unbroken tradition confesses only the Creator, so Marcion's god is his own invention.
Against Marcion 1.22Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Real goodness in God must be natural and eternal, acting as soon as there is need; a god who let the human race suffer and perish for ages before helping would be malicious, like a doctor who lets a disease worsen to earn a bigger fee.
Against Marcion 1.23Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · True goodness is rational and just: it serves its own first and never wrongs another; Marcion's god, stealing the Creator's man like a kidnapper stealing another's slave, shows a goodness that is irrational and unjust.
Against Marcion 1.24Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion's god saves only a few, and saves only their souls, abandoning the flesh that bears baptism, celibacy, and martyrdom; and he leaves his followers suffering under the Creator's hand, so his goodness is not perfect.
Against Marcion 1.25Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · A god of goodness alone, free of all feeling, is the idle god of Epicurus; yet by willing to save mankind Marcion's god already shows desire, care, and rivalry, and so must have the other emotions Marcion denies him.
Against Marcion 1.26Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · A god who forbids sin but never judges or punishes it in effect permits it; true goodness must hate and punish evil in order to protect the good.
Against Marcion 1.27Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · A god who forbids sin but never punishes it invites every vice; the Marcionites themselves still fear sin, and their teaching that sinners are “cast away” implies a judgment after all.
Against Marcion 1.28Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion's god hands sinners over to the Creator's fire, and his baptism makes no sense: he forgives sins he never charged, frees from a death he never imposed, and washes flesh he will not save.
Against Marcion 1.29Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion baptized only the celibate and those who divorced, condemning marriage; Tertullian answers that marriage is good, blessed by the Creator, and that celibacy is better only as a free choice, while abolishing marriage would destroy both holiness and the human race.
Against Marcion 1.5Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · If two gods are admitted, there is no reason not to admit many; two equal gods would be pointless and would make worship itself impossible to get right.
Against Marcion 1.6Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion's two gods are in fact unequal (a harsh judge and a merely good god), but if both are truly God, neither can be less than the other, so inequality between them is impossible too.
Against Marcion 1.7Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · That Scripture calls others “gods” proves nothing: supreme greatness belongs to God's eternal substance, not to the name, and so two gods can be neither equal nor unequal.
Against Marcion 1.8Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The Marcionites boast of a “new” god, but a new god can only be a false one, since the true God is eternal and has neither beginning nor end.
Against Marcion 1.9Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion's god, unknown until Christ, is at best uncertain; and since both gods are claimed to share the same divine nature, the uncertain one must be tested by the pattern of the known Creator, who was never unknown.
Against Marcion 2.1Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Book 2 turns from Marcion's false god to the defence of the true God, the Creator, who ought to be worshipped rather than put on trial.
Against Marcion 2.10Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The devil was created a good angel and became evil by his own free choice, as Ezekiel's lament over the prince of Tyre shows; God delays his destruction so that man, by the same free will, may defeat him and return to paradise.
Against Marcion 2.11Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · God's severity after the fall (pain in childbirth, the cursed ground, death) followed his original goodness as a response to sin; justice is not evil but the safeguard of goodness.
Against Marcion 2.12Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Goodness and justice cannot be split between two gods: from the first days of creation the Creator's justice was at work, separating light from darkness and ordering every part of the world.
Against Marcion 2.13Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Once evil entered the world, God's justice became the guardian of goodness: the fear of judgment keeps people from evil, and a God who can both reward and punish is to be loved as Father and feared as Lord.
Against Marcion 2.14Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · When God says “I create evil,” he means the evils of punishment, which are just, not the evils of sin, which come from the devil; the flood, the plagues of Egypt, and other judgments were deserved.
Against Marcion 2.15Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Punishing children for their fathers' sins was a remedy for a hard-hearted people, later replaced by individual responsibility; and the Jews who cried “His blood be on us and on our children” brought that sentence on themselves.
Against Marcion 2.16Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Anger and jealousy in God are the just instruments of a good judge, like a surgeon's tools; God's feelings share names with ours but, like his “hands” and “eyes,” exist in him in a divine, incorruptible way.
Against Marcion 2.17Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The Creator's judgments serve his goodness: he sends rain on good and evil, spares the repentant (Nineveh, Hezekiah, David), and gave laws of justice and kindness long before any pagan lawgiver.
Against Marcion 2.18Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The law of “eye for eye” was meant to restrain violence by the fear of immediate requital; the food laws taught self-control and prepared for fasting; and the sacrifices kept an idolatry-prone people bound to the true God.
Against Marcion 2.19Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The law kept Israel mindful of God in every part of life, and the prophets taught justice, mercy, and care for the poor, while the Psalms promise blessing to the righteous: proof of a supremely good God.
Against Marcion 2.2Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Heretics put the Creator on trial because they cannot grasp him, like blind men wishing for a gentler sun; but Scripture teaches that God's ways are beyond human judgment, and even Adam, the first to choose his own opinion over God's, never blamed his Maker.
Against Marcion 2.20Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcionites accuse the Creator of theft for telling the Hebrews to take the Egyptians' gold and silver, but it was modest back pay for generations of unpaid slave labour and murdered children.
Against Marcion 2.21Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Carrying the ark around Jericho on the sabbath did not contradict the sabbath law, which forbids ordinary human work, not sacred work commanded by God.
Against Marcion 2.22Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The ban on images targets idolatry, so the bronze serpent and the cherubim on the ark do not break it; and when God rejects sacrifices he is rejecting worship offered without faith, not contradicting his own law.
Against Marcion 2.23Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · God's choosing and later rejecting Saul or Solomon is not fickleness but justice, judging each person by his conduct at the time.
Against Marcion 2.24Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · When Scripture says God “repented” of making Saul king or of destroying Nineveh, it does not mean God erred; it means a just change of sentence in response to changing human conduct, since God “is not a man, that he should repent.”
Against Marcion 2.25Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · God's questions to Adam and Cain were not ignorance but invitations to confess, and his “going down” to Sodom was a threat, not uncertainty; Marcion's own god also “came down.”
Against Marcion 2.26Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · God swears by himself because there is no other god to swear by; and when he told Moses “let me alone” to destroy Israel, he was inviting Moses to intercede, prefiguring Christ.
Against Marcion 2.27Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · God's human-like actions in the Old Testament belong to the Son, the Word who from the beginning dealt with patriarchs and prophets and was preparing to become man; the invisible Father is never seen, and God's humility is the means of human salvation.
Against Marcion 2.28Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Tertullian turns Marcion's method back on him: every charge made against the Creator — ignorance, change of mind, repentance, fraud, cruelty — can be made against Marcion's own god.
Against Marcion 2.29Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion's Antitheses, which set Christ's mercy against the Creator's severity, actually show one God who is both good and just, gentler once his people had been trained; the world itself is built of harmonized opposites made by one Creator.
Against Marcion 2.3Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The Creator's goodness is eternal: before anything existed he willed to make a world through which he could be known, so his goodness is older than time itself, unlike the late-arriving goodness of Marcion's god.
Against Marcion 2.4Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The Creator's goodness shows in the whole creation, made through his Word and pronounced good, and above all in man, formed in God's image, given dominion, a helper, and a law with a kind warning attached.
Against Marcion 2.5Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · To the Marcionite charge that a good, all-knowing, all-powerful God would have prevented the fall, Tertullian answers that God's works prove all three attributes, and that the fall came from the free will God gave man as the very mark of his image.
Against Marcion 2.6Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · God rightly made man free: only a free being could truly be God's image, possess goodness as its own, resist evil, and deserve reward or punishment; so the fall is man's fault, not God's.
Against Marcion 2.7Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Having given man free will, God rightly did not snatch it back to prevent the fall; had he done so, Marcion would have called him fickle and faithless.
Against Marcion 2.8Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · God made man for life, not death; man fell not because he was too weak, since God's image was stronger than the tempting angel, and the same free will today lets believers defeat the devil.
Against Marcion 2.9Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The soul is God's “breath,” not his Spirit: an image of God, free and rational, but not incapable of sin as God is; so its sin comes from its free choice, not from God, who forbade sin and warned of death.
Against Marcion 3.1Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Tertullian begins his rewritten third book: having shown there is no god but the Creator, he will now prove that Christ belongs to the Creator, which also excludes Marcion's god.
Against Marcion 3.10Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · If Marcion's god despised flesh, he should also have scorned its likeness; by feigning flesh he honors it, and the Creator could appear without flesh when he chose.
Against Marcion 3.11Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion denied Christ's real flesh to avoid his birth, but a real birth is no more unworthy of God than a real death; if Christ had flesh he was born, as the prophets foretold.
Against Marcion 3.15Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The title “Christ” belongs to the Creator's plan and means “anointed,” which requires a body; Marcion's god borrowing it would be both inconsistent and deceitful.
Against Marcion 3.16Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The name Jesus, given to Joshua who led Israel into the promised land, was a figure of the Creator's Christ; both names therefore belong to the Creator's Christ.
Against Marcion 3.2Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · A son should be acknowledged by his father and a messenger by his sender beforehand; nothing from God is sudden, so Marcion's unannounced Christ is suspect.
Against Marcion 3.21Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The calling of all nations, not merely of proselytes, was foretold for the last days, when the law would go out from Zion and swords be beaten into ploughshares; this is fulfilled in Christ.
Against Marcion 3.24Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Tertullian describes the thousand-year kingdom in a heavenly Jerusalem after the resurrection, then the heavenly kingdom, and shows that the Creator promised both earthly and heavenly blessings.
Against Marcion 3.3Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Miracles alone cannot prove Marcion's Christ, since Christ himself warned that false Christs would work signs, and the Creator's works came first.
Against Marcion 3.4Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion's god came at an absurd time, too late to correct the Creator and too early to forestall the Creator's Christ, and so shows himself inconsistent.
Against Marcion 3.6Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The Jews' rejection of Jesus does not prove he was a stranger to their God, for the Creator's prophets foretold that they would fail to recognize their own Christ.
Against Marcion 3.8Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · If Christ's flesh was a phantom, as Marcion holds, then his works, sufferings, death, and resurrection were unreal, and our faith and resurrection are empty.
Against Marcion 3.9Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The angels who ate with Abraham had real, though unborn, flesh; only Christ needed to be born, since only he was to die; so they give Marcion no precedent for a phantom Christ.
Against Marcion 4.1Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Opening his examination of Marcion's gospel, Tertullian turns Marcion's Antitheses against him: the Creator himself foretold a new law and covenant, and contrasts in his works point to one God, not two.
Against Marcion 4.10Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Healing the paralytic and forgiving sins fulfills Isaiah; the title Son of Man, from Daniel, means Christ was born of a human mother, a virgin, and so had a real body.
Against Marcion 4.11Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The call of Levi, the question of fasting, Christ as bridegroom, and the sayings on new wine and patches all show Christ fulfilling the Creator's law and prophets, not separating from a foreign god.
Against Marcion 4.12Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · In the sabbath controversies Christ did not destroy the Creator's sabbath but fulfilled it, allowing the relief of hunger as David did and doing God's work of saving life, as Elisha had done.
Against Marcion 4.15Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The woes on the rich, the full, the laughing, and the praised are the Creator's own warnings from the law and prophets; the same God who blesses the poor rebukes the rich, so there is one God, not two.
Against Marcion 4.16Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Love of enemies, turning the other cheek, giving to all who ask, and the Golden Rule are the Creator's own law brought to fulfillment by Christ; a god who does not avenge would command patience in vain.
Against Marcion 4.17Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Tertullian argues that Christ's teaching on lending, mercy, judging, and being called “Lord” in Luke 6 continues the Creator's law and prophets, and mocks Marcion's god as a eunuch who forbids marriage yet claims sons.
Against Marcion 4.18Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The centurion's faith, the raising of the widow's son, John the Baptist's question, and the sinful woman who anointed Jesus all show that Christ belonged to the Creator and had a real body.
Against Marcion 4.19Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The women who served Jesus, his warnings about hearing, and his saying “Who is my mother?” all fit the Creator's prophecies, and the last shows that Jesus really had a mother and brothers.
Against Marcion 4.2Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The gospels rest on apostles (Matthew, John) and apostolic men (Mark, Luke); Marcion's gospel, a cut-down Luke with no author's name, lacks the apostolic authority even Paul sought.
Against Marcion 4.20Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ's stilling of the storm, his victory over the legion of demons, and his healing of the bleeding woman all show him to be the Creator's Christ, with a real body, fulfilling rather than opposing the law.
Against Marcion 4.21Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The sending of the Twelve, the feeding of the five thousand, Peter's confession, and Christ's sayings on losing one's life and being ashamed of him all belong to the Creator's Christ, who truly took flesh and suffered.
Against Marcion 4.22Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The Transfiguration, where Christ appears in glory with Moses and Elijah and the Father's voice commands “hear him,” shows that Christ is the one foretold by the Creator's law and prophets, not their destroyer.
Against Marcion 4.23Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ's rebuke of unbelief, his love for children, his gentleness toward the Samaritans, and his hard sayings to would-be followers all fit the Creator, who had long dealt with Israel, blessed marriage and children, and gave the laws of priesthood and vows.
Against Marcion 4.24Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The mission of the seventy, with its instructions on travel, greetings, wages, the nearness of the kingdom, and power over snakes and scorpions, follows patterns set by the Creator in the Exodus, in Elisha, and in Isaiah.
Against Marcion 4.25Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ's thanksgiving that things hidden from the wise are revealed to little ones, his claim that all things were delivered to him, and his answer to the lawyer about eternal life all point to the Creator, who hid and promised to reveal through his Christ.
Against Marcion 4.26Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The Lord's Prayer, the teaching on asking and knocking, the casting out of demons “by the finger of God,” and the blessing of those who hear God's word all point to the Creator as the Father to whom Christ taught his disciples to pray.
Against Marcion 4.27Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ's own apparent inconsistencies and his rebukes of the Pharisees and lawyers over washing, tithes, honors, burdens, the prophets' tombs, and the key of knowledge show that he upheld the Creator's law rather than attacking it.
Against Marcion 4.28Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ's warnings against hypocrisy, his call to fear the one who can cast into Gehenna and to confess him before men, and his refusal to divide an inheritance all fit the Creator, who judges and who inspired Balaam and Moses.
Against Marcion 4.29Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ's teaching on anxiety, watchfulness, the faithful steward, the fire he came to cast, and just judgment all point to the Creator who provides, judges, and repays.
Against Marcion 4.3Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Paul's rebuke of Peter concerned conduct, not doctrine; if the apostolic gospel was wholly corrupted, Marcion has no true gospel either, and if his agrees with ours, ours is apostolic too.
Against Marcion 4.30Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ's defense of healing on the sabbath, the parables of the mustard seed and the leaven, and the shut door of judgment all belong to the Creator, who both rules the kingdom and judges.
Against Marcion 4.31Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ's command to invite the poor and his parable of the great dinner follow the Creator's long history of inviting Israel through the fathers and prophets and then calling the gentiles in their place.
Against Marcion 4.32Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin fit only the Creator, to whom man belongs and who long ago said he prefers a sinner's repentance to his death.
Against Marcion 4.33Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ's sayings on God and mammon, on the Pharisees' self-justification, and on the law and the prophets lasting until John show one God, the Creator, whose law is fulfilled rather than destroyed.
Against Marcion 4.34Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Tertullian argues that Christ's saying on divorce and remarriage forbids putting away a wife in order to marry another, allows divorce for adultery as Moses did, and was aimed at Herod's unlawful marriage; the parable of the rich man and Lazarus likewise upholds Moses and the prophets.
Against Marcion 4.35Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ's warnings about causing stumbling, his teaching on rebuke and forgiveness, the healing of the ten lepers, and his sayings on the kingdom and the days of Noah and Lot all follow the Creator's law and prophets.
Against Marcion 4.36Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The parables of the persistent widow and of the Pharisee and the publican, the rich young ruler, and the blind man who called Jesus “son of David” all show that Christ taught prayer to, and obedience toward, the Creator, and was truly David's descendant.
Against Marcion 4.37Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Zacchaeus fulfilled Isaiah's commands of mercy and was saved, Christ came to save the whole man, flesh as well as soul, and the parable of the entrusted money shows a God who judges.
Against Marcion 4.38Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ's questions about John's baptism, his answer about Caesar's coin, his reply to the Sadducees on marriage and the resurrection, and his words on David's son and Lord all belong to the Creator's Christ.
Against Marcion 4.39Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The false Christs, the signs of the end, the persecutions of the disciples, and the coming of the Son of Man in Luke 21 all follow the prophets, so that both the troubles before his coming and the blessings after it belong to the Creator's Christ.
Against Marcion 4.4Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Truth comes before its corruption; Marcion once held the church's gospel and wrote the Antitheses against it, which proves the church's Luke is older than his altered version.
Against Marcion 4.40Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ chose the Passover, was betrayed and sold as the prophets foretold, and at the Last Supper called the bread his body and the cup his blood, which shows that he had a real body of flesh and blood.
Against Marcion 4.41Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ's woe on his betrayer, his foretelling of Peter's denial, and his answers before the council about the Son of Man and the Son of God show him to be the Creator's Christ, foretold by Daniel and David.
Against Marcion 4.42Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ's trial before Pilate and Herod, his silence, his crucifixion between criminals, the darkening of the sun, and his death and burial all fulfill the psalms and prophets and prove that he had a real body.
Against Marcion 4.43Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The burial, the women at the tomb, the road to Emmaus, and the risen Christ's showing of his hands and feet all fulfill the prophets and prove his real body, so that the Christ of Marcion's own gospel is the Creator's Christ.
Against Marcion 4.5Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The apostolic churches have held Luke's gospel, with Matthew, Mark, and John, from the beginning; Marcion's version is known only in his own late churches, so it is the altered one.
Against Marcion 4.6Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Tertullian sets his test: whatever in Marcion's own gospel shows Christ fulfilling the Creator's law, prophecies, and character proves Christ is the Creator's.
Against Marcion 4.7Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion's Christ begins at Capernaum, in the Galilee Isaiah foretold; he teaches in the synagogue without opposing the law, and the demon who names him Holy One recognizes the Creator's Christ.
Against Marcion 4.8Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ bears the Creator's name Nazarene, has a real body that was seized at Nazareth and heals by touch, and is confessed by demons who fear the Creator's Son, as Isaiah foretold.
Against Marcion 4.9Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The call of fishermen fulfills Jeremiah; Christ's cleansing of the leper and his command to show himself to the priest confirm the law, as Elisha's cure of Naaman prefigured.
Against Marcion 5.1Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Tertullian demands that Marcion show where his apostle Paul comes from, argues that Paul was foretold in the Creator's Scriptures and attested by Acts, and promises to prove from Paul's own letters that he preached no other god.
Against Marcion 5.10Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Paul's arguments against those who denied the resurrection, his analogies of seed and body, the first and last Adam, and the change of the flesh at the end all assume the resurrection of the body, which Marcion denies.
Against Marcion 5.11Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · In 2 Corinthians 1–4 the Father of mercies, the new covenant of the Spirit, the veil of Moses, the “god of this age,” and the treasure in earthen vessels all point to the Creator and to the resurrection of the body.
Against Marcion 5.12Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · In 2 Corinthians 5–13 Paul's hope of being clothed over, the judgment seat of Christ, the new creation, and his thorn in the flesh and threats of discipline point to the Creator and to the resurrection of the body.
Against Marcion 5.13Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · In Romans 1–7 the God whose wrath and judgment are revealed, who judges by the gospel through Christ, whose law is holy and spiritual, and with whom sinners are reconciled, is the Creator, not Marcion's god.
Against Marcion 5.14Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh, not in a phantom body; God will raise mortal bodies as he raised Christ; and Paul's lament over Israel's ignorance, his praise of God's riches, and his moral precepts in Romans 8–14 all come from the Creator's Scriptures.
Against Marcion 5.15Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · In 1 Thessalonians the Jews' guilt for killing both the prophets and the Lord, the call to holiness in marriage, the rapture to meet the Lord, the command not to quench the Spirit, and the prayer for spirit, soul, and body all fit only the Creator.
Against Marcion 5.16Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · In 2 Thessalonians the Lord who comes in flaming fire to punish, even those who do not know God, and who sends deceit through the man of sin on those who rejected the truth, is the Creator; so the gospel and salvation are his too.
Against Marcion 5.17Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Ephesians, which Marcion called Laodiceans, speaks of summing up all things in Christ, of the Spirit promised by Joel, of the nations brought near to Israel's God, and of Christ's real flesh and the prophets' foundation, all of which belong to the Creator.
Against Marcion 5.18Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion altered Ephesians 3:9 to make the mystery hidden from the Creator, but the context, Paul's spiritual allegories, his moral commands, his teaching on marriage as a great mystery, and the powers of darkness in Ephesians 3–6 all point to the Creator.
Against Marcion 5.19Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · In Colossians the gospel's spread through the world, Christ as image and firstborn of creation, the reconciliation of all things, the warning against philosophy, and the law as a shadow of Christ all point to the Creator, and Marcion's doctrines come from the philosophers.
Against Marcion 5.2Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Galatians attacks the old law, not the Creator: the dispute there was only whether the Creator's law still bound believers, and Paul's “no other gospel” and his agreement with Acts show he preached no new god.
Against Marcion 5.20Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · In Philippians the differing motives of preachers show no difference of doctrine; Christ, found in the form of a servant, truly became man and truly died; and the promised transformation of our lowly body means the body will rise.
Against Marcion 5.21Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Philemon survived Marcion's editing because of its brevity, though he rejected the Pastoral Letters; Tertullian closes the work by defending its repetitions and postponements.
Against Marcion 5.3Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Paul's visit to Jerusalem, his yielding for a time to Jewish scruples, and his rebuke of Peter concerned only the law, and his teaching on faith, curse, and blessing belongs to the Creator, Abraham's God.
Against Marcion 5.4Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Working through Galatians 3–6, Tertullian argues that the promise to Abraham, the fullness of time, the end of the old observances, the allegory of the two sons, and the law of love all belong to the Creator, and that Paul's scars show Christ's flesh was real.
Against Marcion 5.5Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The greeting “grace and peace” and Paul's teaching that God made the world's wisdom foolish through the cross fit only the Creator, who was offended and foretold these things, and they require a Christ with real flesh who truly died.
Against Marcion 5.6Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The hidden wisdom Paul speaks of was the Creator's, veiled in figures and revealed in Christ; the rulers who crucified the Lord of glory, the one foundation, the temple of God, and the folly of worldly wisdom all point to the Creator.
Against Marcion 5.7Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · In 1 Corinthians 4–10 Tertullian finds the Creator's judgment, his festivals fulfilled in Christ, the resurrection of the body, the regulation (not abolition) of marriage, the one Father from whom are all things, and the law of the ox and the rock in the wilderness as figures of Christ.
Against Marcion 5.8Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Paul's teaching on headship, the veil, the Lord's Supper, and above all the spiritual gifts matches Isaiah's prophecy of the Spirit resting on Christ and Joel's promise, so the gifts belong to the Creator; Marcion's church cannot produce them.
Against Marcion 5.9Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Those who denied the resurrection denied the resurrection of the body, which the very words “dead” and “rise again” require; and Christ, who reigns until his enemies are subdued, is the Christ of Psalms 110 and 72, not Hezekiah or Solomon.
Against Praxeas 1Tertullian · ca. 213 or later · Praxeas brought to Rome the heresy that the Father himself was born and suffered, and also turned the bishop of Rome against the New Prophecy; Tertullian announces his refutation.
Against Praxeas 10Tertullian · ca. 213 or later · No one can be his own father or son; the Monarchians' claim that God made himself his own Son abolishes both Father and Son, and God's omnipotence proves nothing unless Scripture shows he did it.
Against Praxeas 18Tertullian · ca. 213 or later · When Scripture says there is only one God, it excludes idols and false gods, not the Son, who is included in the Father as the ray in the sun.
Against Praxeas 19Tertullian · ca. 213 or later · God “alone” stretched out the heavens in contrast to angels and other powers, not to his Wisdom and Word, the Son, who made all things with him; Father and Son are two by arrangement, not separation, and remain one God.
Against Praxeas 2Tertullian · ca. 213 or later · Against Praxeas, Tertullian sets out the rule of faith: one God under an “economy,” Father, Son, and Spirit, three in degree, form, and aspect but one in substance, condition, and power.
Against Praxeas 20Tertullian · ca. 213 or later · Monarchians rely on three sayings of Jesus against the whole of Scripture; but the few must be read in the light of the many and the earlier.
Against Praxeas 27Tertullian · ca. 213 or later · Praxeas' followers split Jesus (the flesh, the Son) from Christ (the Spirit, the Father); Tertullian answers that the Word did not change into flesh but put it on, so that Jesus is one person with two substances, God and man, unconfused, each acting in its own way.
Against Praxeas 3Tertullian · ca. 213 or later · Simple believers fear that the Trinity divides God's “monarchy,” but a monarchy is not destroyed by being administered through a son or through officers; it is overthrown only when a rival god is set against the Creator.
Against Praxeas 31Tertullian · ca. 213 or later · To believe in one God without the Son and the Spirit is the Jewish faith; the gospel reveals one God in three persons, and those who confuse Father and Son deny both, like the antichrists John condemns.
Against Praxeas 8Tertullian · ca. 213 or later · The Son was “put forth” from the Father, not separated as in Valentinus' system, but as a shoot from a root, a river from a spring, a ray from the sun; the Spirit is third, and the Trinity preserves the monarchy.
Refutation of All Heresies, Book 1, preface 1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus explains that he once refuted the heretics only in outline, hoping shame would make them stop.
Refutation of All Heresies, Book 1, preface 11Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus begins with the first Greek natural philosophers, from whom the heresiarchs stole their ideas.
Refutation of All Heresies, Book 1, preface 2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Because the heretics do not repent, Hippolytus will expose the secret teachings they give only to those they have drawn in.
Refutation of All Heresies, Book 1, preface 3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The initiate is bound to secrecy by oaths and, still more, by the shame of what he has done.
Refutation of All Heresies, Book 1, preface 4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · An initiate who revealed these deeds would be counted worse than a beast.
Refutation of All Heresies, Book 1, preface 5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus resolves to set out all the heretics' teachings in detail so that others will not be misled.
Refutation of All Heresies, Book 1, preface 6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Only the Holy Spirit given to the church can refute heresy, and Hippolytus, as a successor of the apostles, must guard the church and teach.
Refutation of All Heresies, Book 1, preface 7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus will both expose error and proclaim the truth received from the Father.
Refutation of All Heresies, Book 1, preface 8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus will first set out Greek philosophy, to show that the heresies come from it rather than from Scripture.
Refutation of All Heresies, Book 1, preface 9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Each heresy will then be matched with the philosopher from whom its founder borrowed.
Refutation of All Heresies 1.25.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Druids foretell the future by Pythagorean number lore and practice magic.
Refutation of All Heresies 1.26.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Having set out the philosophers, Hippolytus will next treat mysteries and astrology, the other sources of heresy.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.10.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Summary of the Peratae: one world divided in three, the first part a great spring divisible without end.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.10.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Peratae divide the world into an unbegotten Good, a self-begotten multitude of powers, and a begotten particular world, with three gods, words, minds, and men.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.10.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · In Herod's time a threefold Christ came down, containing the elements and powers of all three parts of the world.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.10.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Peratae cite Col 2:9 and say Christ came down to save what was divided into three.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.10.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The two higher parts will be saved through Christ; the third, the particular world, will perish.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.11.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Summary of the Sethians: three principles, each able to become all things as a child can learn any art.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.11.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The light above sends the perfect Word, who took the form of a serpent and entered the womb to rescue the spark of light.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.11.11Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Sethians read Phil 2:6–7, “the form of a slave,” as the serpent form taken by the Word.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.11.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Sethians' principles are light above, darkness below, and between them Spirit, like a subtle fragrance.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.11.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Light shines down into darkness and the Spirit's fragrance spreads between, so that light and Spirit are both caught in the darkness below.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.11.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The darkness, a fearful water, strives to keep the captured light and Spirit, knowing it would be powerless without them.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.11.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Like the dark pupil of the eye lit by spirit, the darkness holds countless powers that shape all things like seals.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.11.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · From the meeting of the three principles came heaven and earth, shaped like a womb, and all other things are impressed in the same way.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.11.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · From the water came a violent wind, the first-born cause of all generation.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.11.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The wind takes the form of a hissing serpent and drives the womb-like world to generate all things.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.11.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The spark of light, trapped in the body and the waters, strives to escape and cries out, as the Sethians read the Psalms.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.12.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Summary of Simon Magus: an infinite power, fire, is the root of all, with a hidden and a manifest nature.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.12.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The world came from the unbegotten fire through six roots in pairs: Mind and Thought, Voice and Name, Reasoning and Reflection.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.12.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The infinite power, “He who stands, stood, and will stand,” if fully formed in the six powers, becomes one with the unbegotten power.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.12.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · If not formed, the power perishes like an untaught talent; Simon claimed to be this highest power himself.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.13.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Summary of Valentinus: the first principle is the Father, called Depth, alone for some, with Silence as consort for others.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.13.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Six emanations complete the first Ogdoad; beings are ranked as within the Pleroma, outside it, and outside Limit in the Deficiency.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.13.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Demiurge came from the Deficiency; Christ descended from the Pleroma to save the spirit dwelling in the inner man.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.13.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Valentinians deny the salvation of the flesh, calling it a “garment of skin.”
Refutation of All Heresies 10.14.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Summary of Basilides: a non-existent God laid down a seed containing the whole world, like a mustard seed or peacock's egg.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.14.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Basilides' followers claim to be the sons who purify souls and will rise with the Sonship; the world lasts until all souls ascend.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.14.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The seed contained a threefold Sonship of the same substance as God: fine, coarse, and needing purification.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.14.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The fine Sonship rose at once to the non-existent God.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.14.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The coarser Sonship rose using the Holy Spirit as wings.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.14.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The third Sonship stayed in the seed-mass; the world and what is above it are divided by the boundary Spirit.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.14.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The great Archon rose to the firmament and thought himself supreme, ignorant of the wiser Sonship left below.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.14.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Archon begot a son greater than himself, seated him at his right hand in the Ogdoad, and made the heavens.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.14.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · A second, lesser Archon, the Hebdomad, rules the lower world and also begot a wiser son.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.14.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The power of the gospel came down through the sons of both Archons onto Jesus, son of Mary, to purify the Sonship left behind.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.15.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Summary of the Gnostic Justin: three principles, the Good, the Father Elohim, and a female principle.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.15.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The female principle, Edem or Israel, is half virgin and half viper.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.15.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Elohim and Edem produced twelve angels, some siding with the father and some with the mother.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.15.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Animals came from Edem's beastly half and man from her upper half; Edem gave him a soul and Elohim a spirit.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.15.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Elohim ascended to the Good and left Edem, who in anger plots against his spirit in humans; Baruch was sent through the prophets to rescue it.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.15.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Justin makes Heracles a prophet overcome by Omphale, who is Babel or Aphrodite.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.15.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Jesus, son of Mary and Joseph, resisted Edem, who had him crucified; his spirit rose to the Good, and so will the spirits of Justin's followers.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.16.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Summary of the Docetae: God is like a fig seed from which came three Aeons and then countless others.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.16.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Together the Aeons begot from the virgin Mary the Savior, equal to the first seed except that he is begotten.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.16.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The great light of the Aeons, full of forms, came down on the chaos and impressed the shapes of all things on it.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.16.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The third Aeon made heaven to separate light from darkness.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.16.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The impress of the third Aeon, living fire, became the great Archon, Moses' fiery God, who keeps putting forms into bodies.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.16.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Savior was born to show the captive souls the way of escape; clothed in the only-begotten power, he could not be seen in his glory.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.17.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Summary of Monoimus: the first principle is Man and Son of Man, and the world came from a part of the Son of Man.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.17.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Son of Man is the iota, the number ten, source of all numbers and of the elements.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.17.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The iota contains all; the six days of creation are six powers, and the geometric solids of the elements come from its numbers.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.17.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Moses' rod and the ten plagues allegorize the iota.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.17.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · To know the whole, one must seek within oneself the one who says “my soul, my flesh, my mind.”
Refutation of All Heresies 10.18.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Summary of Tatian: invisible Aeons, a Cynic life, and Marcion-like blasphemy and rules against marriage.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.19.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Summary of Marcion and Cerdo: three principles, good, just, and matter; some add a fourth, evil.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.19.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Good made nothing; the Just (or evil) god made the world badly from matter.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.19.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Marcion cites “a good tree cannot bear bad fruit” against the Creator and holds that Christ, son of the Good, only seemed to have flesh, birth, and suffering.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.19.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Marcion denies the resurrection of the flesh and calls marriage corruption, to spite the Creator.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.20.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Summary of Apelles: four gods, the good God, the creator, the fiery one, and an evil one, with Christ as a fifth.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.20.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Apelles followed Philumene's Revelations, said Christ's flesh came from the world's elements, attacked the Law and Prophets, and denied the resurrection of the flesh.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.21.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Summary of Cerinthus: an angelic power, ignorant of the highest God, made the world.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.21.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · For Cerinthus, Jesus was the natural son of Joseph and Mary, excelling in virtue.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.21.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Christ descended on Jesus at baptism and left him at the passion.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.22.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Summary of the Ebionites: the true God made the world; they keep the law of Moses to be justified.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.23.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Summary of Theodotus: God made all things; Christ was an ordinary man born of a virgin by God's will.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.23.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Theodotus held that the Christ descended at baptism and that Christ is not God.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.24.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Melchizedekians agree with Theodotus but make Melchizedek a supreme power and Christ his image.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.25.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Summary of the Montanists: orthodox on creation and Christ, but they prefer their prophets to the Gospels and impose new fasts.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.26.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Some Montanists follow Noetus, saying the Father of all is himself the Son, visible and invisible, mortal and immortal.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.27.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Summary of Noetus: the one Father and God of all made everything and was invisible or visible as he willed.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.27.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · For Noetus the one God is invisible or visible, unbegotten or born, impassible or suffering, and is called Son at different times.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.27.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Summary of Callistus: one God, Father and Son by name, one Spirit in substance; God is not other than the Word.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.27.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Callistus called the Word one God who became flesh, the visible flesh being the Son and the indwelling God the Father.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.28.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Summary of Hermogenes: God made everything from eternal matter.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.29.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Summary of the Elchasaites, who compiled a strange book from all the heresies.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.29.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They teach that the Christ above passes from body to body, now in Jesus, and will keep reappearing.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.29.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Elchasaites use incantations, baptisms invoking the elements, astrology, and magic.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.3.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: summary of the heresies.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.32.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Not knowing these causes, the Greeks worshipped parts of creation instead of the Creator, and the heresiarchs built on their errors.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.9.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Summary of the Naassenes: the first principle is Man, also Son of Man, divided into intellectual, psychic, and earthly parts.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.9.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They call Man Adamas; all three natures came together in Jesus, who spoke to the three kinds of people.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.9.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassenes teach three races and three churches, elect, called, and captive, and falsely claim the teaching came from James through Mariamne.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.13.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Some heretics, like Colarbasus, built their teaching on numbers and measures.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.13.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Number-diviners deceive the simple by boasting of their rare successes.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.15.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · When their method fails, the diviners make excuses; any would-be heresiarch could exploit such nonsense.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.15.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus turns to physiognomy, divination from the face.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.2.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Peratae borrowed astrological ideas for their doctrine of Aeons and powers, which Hippolytus will refute later.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.2.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus will briefly show that Chaldean astrology is vain and harmful.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.2.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Because the Peratae rely on astrology, Hippolytus first refutes astrology itself.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.42.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The heresiarchs imitated the magicians' techniques of secrecy and display.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.42.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus explains why he has digressed on magic.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.42.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus proposes to summarize what he has shown so far.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.45.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus hopes his survey will make pagans respect Christians and see their own follies.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.45.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Knowing these opinions will equip Christians to resist error and help the deceived.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.46.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus turns to the heresies themselves, hoping to bring their followers back to the truth.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.46.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Some heretics allegorize Aratus's star-lore as images of Scripture.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.46.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Readers should not be caught by the heretics' star-dance like the owl.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.47.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The heretics identify Aratus's Dragon near the pole with the devil in Job who goes about the earth.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.47.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The heretics identify the Kneeler with Adam, who guards the serpent's head as in Genesis.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.48.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Kneeler, between the Lyre and the Crown, seems to be confessing sin.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.48.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Little Bear ("dog's tail") signifies the Word as guard dog and begetter.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.48.11Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Before the Dog Star rises, rootless plants still look alive.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.48.12Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · As the Dog Star shows which plants live, the Word judges the living and the dead.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.48.13Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Dragon lies between the two creations, keeping people from passing to the new one.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.48.14Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Another constellation group, Cepheus and his family, teaches the same lesson.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.48.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The seven-stringed Lyre, made by the infant Hermes (the Word), stands for the seven days of creation.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.48.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · If Adam obeys the Word he wins the Crown; if not, he shares the beast's fate.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.48.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · A smaller serpent tries to snatch the Kneeler's crown.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.48.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Serpent-holder (Ophiuchus) holds the serpent back from the crown.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.48.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The heretics say the Serpent-holder is the Word protecting man.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.48.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The two Bears represent two creations: Adam's, and the new creation in Christ.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.48.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Great Bear, which the Greeks steer by, stands for a creation that turns men back.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.48.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Little Bear, by which the Phoenicians steer, stands for the narrow way of the few.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.49.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The heretics read Cepheus as Adam, Cassiepeia as Eve, Andromeda as the soul, and Perseus as the Word.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.49.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Perseus the Word rescues Andromeda the soul from the monster.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.49.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Swan, which sings at death, symbolizes the divine Spirit.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.49.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The animal constellations are patterns of the creatures on earth.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.50.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus warns readers not to be charmed like the owl by the heretics' star-lore.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.50.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The star names are human inventions, much later than the stars, and prove nothing.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.51.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Since most heresies build on Pythagorean number lore, Hippolytus summarizes it.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.51.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Others derived their sevens from the anatomy of the brain.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.51.13Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The cerebellum resembles a serpent's head, and seven pairs of nerves come from the brain.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.51.14Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · With the four books on pagan thought complete, Hippolytus turns to the heretics who copied it.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.51.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · From the point come line, plane, and solid; Simon Magus borrowed this in his saying "the small will be great."
Refutation of All Heresies 4.51.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon and Valentinus renamed the Pythagorean seven as their divine beings.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.7.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Astrology has been refuted here only because the heretics use it.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.7.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus turns to those who speculate about the sizes and distances of the heavens.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.10.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus has given only a sample of the Naassenes' teaching and adds one of their hymns.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.10.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassene psalm tells of the soul's wanderings and of Jesus descending with seals to reveal the hidden way.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.11.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus compares heresy to the many-headed Hydra and will strike its heads one by one.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.12.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus turns to the Peratae, who teach a world divided in three.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.12.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Peratae's three parts are the perfect Good, the infinite powers, and the particular world.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.12.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Peratae speak of three gods, words, minds, and men, one for each part of the world.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.12.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Peratae say a threefold Christ came down in Herod's time bearing the powers of all three worlds.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.12.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They cite Colossians on the fullness dwelling bodily in Christ, and say seeds of power came down from the upper worlds.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.12.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Peratae say Christ came to save the upper worlds, while the lower "world" must perish.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.13.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus begins to show that the Peratae took their teaching from the astrologers, who divide the cosmos into the fixed sphere of the zodiac and the sphere of the planets.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.13.12Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Peratae took over Chaldean star lore and passed it off as Christ's teaching under new names such as “toparchs” and “suburbans.”
Refutation of All Heresies 5.13.13Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus will set Peratic writings beside astrology to show they come from astrologers, not from Christ.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.13.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The four turning signs mark the seasons; the Peratic leaders Euphrates and Celbes merely renamed the astrologers' doctrines.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.14.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus quotes a Peratic book that describes a watery power from Chaos which people named the Sea.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.14.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The last power, called Eros by ignorance, ends the Peratic book titled “The suburbans up to the ether.”
Refutation of All Heresies 5.14.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Peratic book says that ignorance named this power Kronos, whose earthly copies were Cepheus, Prometheus, and Iapetus.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.14.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · A male-female power over the sea, called Chorzar, was named Poseidon by ignorance.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.14.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · A power around the twelve-angled pyramid, which ignorance named Kore, has five ministers with strange names.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.14.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The book names the planets and the rulers of air and winds, equating them with the Curetes and with Aeolus.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.14.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The rulers of night and day are named Soklan and Euno, whom ignorance called Osiris and Isis.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.14.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The book lists further powers, identified by ignorance with Rhea and Demeter, and their human copies.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.14.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The power over fruits (called Men) and the power of fire (called Hephaestus) are listed with their human images, many of them famed astrologers and magicians.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.14.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Three powers in the air, causes of birth, were named the Fates by ignorance.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.15.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus concludes that the Peratic system is astrology with new names.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.15.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Peratae hold that the world came about by outflow from above and that the visible stars cause its generation.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.15.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They teach that earthly things arise, perish, and are ruled by the stars' outflow.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.15.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Peratae turned the astrologers' cardinal points into God (the center) and left and right powers.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.15.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Their “right” and “left” powers are just the astrologers' ascension and declination.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.16.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Peratae (“those who cross over”) claim that they alone know how to pass beyond the fate that rules everything born.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.16.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Peratae say the serpent appeared under Herod and was prefigured by Joseph's coat and by Esau.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.16.11Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The perfect serpent is Nimrod the hunter and the serpent Moses lifted up, as John 3:14 says.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.16.12Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Peratae identify the serpent with the constellation in heaven and with the Word of John's prologue.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.16.13Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The “life” that came to be in the Word is Eve.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.16.14Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Eve is the common nature of all beings, and the serpent in the sky is the source of all motion and every event.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.16.15Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The head of the heavenly Dragon, where setting and rising meet, is the great wonder that the poet Aratus described.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.16.16Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Peratae read the neighboring constellations (Crown, Lyre, Kneeler, Serpent-holder) as parts of their myth.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.16.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Peratae identify corruption with water and with Kronos, whom nothing born can escape.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.16.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Kronos brings every birth to decay, and the Peratae cite Homer's oath by the water of Styx as proof that even the gods fear water.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.16.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They cite Heraclitus, that for souls it is death to become water, and apply it to the Egyptians drowned in the Red Sea.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.16.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Peratae read the Exodus as escape from the body: Egypt is the body and the Red Sea is corruption.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.16.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The stars, gods of destruction, are the biting serpents of the wilderness.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.16.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Only the perfect serpent that Moses showed can save those who leave the body and the world.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.16.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The saving serpent is Moses' rod that swallowed the magicians' serpents, and it is the “wise word” spoken to Eve.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.16.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Peratae make the serpent the river of Eden and the mark of Cain, and say that the god of this world prefers bloody sacrifice.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.17.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus summarizes the Peratic system: the universe consists of Father, Son, and Matter.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.17.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · As a magnet draws iron, the serpent draws the perfect race back from the world.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.17.11Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Peratae compare the brain to the Father and the serpent-shaped cerebellum to the Son.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.17.12Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Life-giving substance passes through the pineal gland and cerebellum into the spinal marrow, as forms pass from the Son into Matter.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.17.13Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Their secret mysteries, Hippolytus says, are easy to grasp from this analogy.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.17.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Son, identified with the serpent, receives forms from the Father and stamps them on formless Matter.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.17.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Son is imprinted by the Father as Jacob's rods imprinted colors on the conceiving flocks.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.17.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Powers flow from the Son into Matter like the colors onto Jacob's flocks, producing corruptible and incorruptible births.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.17.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Like a painter copying without diminishing his models, the Son copies the Father's characters into Matter.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.17.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Whoever recognizes that he is a copy of the Father becomes consubstantial with him and ascends; whoever does not perishes.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.17.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Peratae distinguish the heavenly Father of the Gospels from the murderous demiurge of John 8:44.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.17.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Only the Son, the serpent, can carry the awakened back up to the Father.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.17.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Son is the door of John 10:9; the rest of the sentence is lost.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.18.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus ends his account of the Peratae, whose own teachings condemn them.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Sethians teach three principles, each with countless powers, that is, capacities to become anything.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Each meeting of powers stamps an image like a seal, and so there are countless images.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.11Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The first meeting of the principles produced heaven and earth, shaped like a womb.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.12Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Countless further meetings of powers produced countless womb-shaped seals and so all living creatures.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.13Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Spirit and light are scattered in all creatures, and from the water came a violent wind, the cause of generation.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.14Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The wind stirs waves, which become pregnant with man or mind.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.15Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The mind, a divine spark from the light above, is born of water into human bodies and seeks release.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.16Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The light above seeks to free the mind from the dark body and from the wind that begot it.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.17Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The captured ray of light is the spirit “borne above the water” of Genesis; the rest is damaged.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.18Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The hissing wind is like a serpent, and from it all generation began.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.19Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The serpent-wind enters the unclean womb and begets man.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · A child can become anything by being near a master of that art; so too with the principles.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.20Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Sethians say the Word took the serpent's likeness and entered a virgin's womb to free the imprisoned mind.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.21Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · After his birth the Word washed and drank living water, which all must drink to put on a heavenly garment.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Sethian principles are light above, darkness below, and between them spirit, like a fine fragrance.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Light shines down into darkness, while the spirit's fragrance spreads in every direction.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Light and spirit have been drawn down into the darkness, which is a fearful water.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The darkness knows it is nothing without the light and strives to keep the captured spark.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The pupil of the eye pictures the struggle: darkness keeps the light, while light and spirit strive to recover it.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The countless intelligent powers of the principles are at rest when kept apart.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · When unlike powers meet, their meeting produces motion and activity.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.2.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Book 5 will treat the Naassenes and show their debt to Greek philosophy and the mysteries.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.20.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Sethian doctrine is patched together from natural philosophy and borrowed sayings.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.20.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Homer's oath by the Styx shows, they say, that water is dreadful, as it is to the mind.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.20.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Sethians find their three principles in every triad of the books of Moses.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.20.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Sethians' three laws are the prohibition in Eden, the call of Abraham, and the commandments with fixed penalties.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.20.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Sethian teaching derives from the old poets Musaeus, Linus, and Orpheus.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.20.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Their doctrine of the womb and navel is in Orphic poems and in the rites of Phlius, older than the Eleusinian mysteries.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.20.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus describes a painting at Phlius of a winged old man pursuing a dark woman, which he links to Sethian doctrine.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.20.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The painting's inscriptions are read as light flowing downward and the dark water below.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.20.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Sethian rites resemble those of Phlius, and Homer's threefold division of the world is cited for their three principles.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.20.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Sethians borrow from Homer to describe the dark water that holds the fallen light.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.21.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Sethians urge their disciples to study the philosophical theory of blending and mixture.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.21.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Sethians cite a Persian well whose single draught separates into three substances.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.21.11Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The well yields salt, asphalt, and black oil, as Herodotus relates.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.21.12Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Sethians count the well their best proof.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.21.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The spark of light is mixed into the dark waters like many incenses in one scent.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.21.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · A skilled nose can pick out each ingredient in mixed incense.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.21.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Metals mixed in gold or silver, and water in wine, can be separated by skill.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.21.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Sethians read Christ's “sword” as the separation of the light from its mixture.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.21.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Only the Sethians, reborn as spiritual, know the place where the mixed elements are separated.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.21.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus charges that they twist good texts and hide their error in parables.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.21.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Mixed things are drawn to their own places, as iron to a magnet.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.21.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Through teaching, the captured ray hastens to the Word who came in a slave's form and becomes one with him.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.22.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus points to the Paraphrase of Seth for the full Sethian system and turns to the Gnostic Justin.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.23.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Gnostic Justin leads his hearers back to Greek myths and binds them by oath before revealing his mystery.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.23.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Justin sweetens his long books with myths, then binds his followers by dreadful oaths before handing on his mysteries.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.23.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · All these sects share one spirit and call themselves Gnostics, claiming special knowledge.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.24.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Justin requires an oath of secrecy, citing Paul's “what eye has not seen” and the Lord's oath in the Psalm.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.24.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus will expose Justin's secrets from one of his books.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.24.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Justin's book Baruch is built on a myth taken from Herodotus.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.25.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Heracles names the sons, recovers his horse, and leaves; Hippolytus now turns to Justin's use of the myth.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Justin teaches three principles: the Good, the Father, and a female half-maiden, half-viper.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Justin explains the dowry as an imitation of Eden's gift to Elohim.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.11Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Eden's twelve angels form four groups, the four rivers of paradise, and rule the world.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.12Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The angelic groups rotate around the world in turn.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.13Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Wherever each group of Eden's angels rules, famine and disease follow in turn.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.14Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Evil began when Elohim rose to the heights of heaven, leaving the earthly Eden below.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.15Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Seeing a higher light, Elohim asks to enter, realizing he is not the supreme Lord.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.16Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Elohim enters to the Good one, sees what no eye has seen, and is seated at his right hand.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.17Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Elohim asks leave to destroy the world in order to recover his spirit from humankind.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.18Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Good one refuses and bids Elohim stay with him, leaving creation to Eden.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.19Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Abandoned, Eden adorns herself hoping to win Elohim back.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Father, named Elohim, and the female Eden desire each other and unite.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.20Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · In Justin's myth, the abandoned Eden has Babel (Aphrodite) cause adultery and the breakup of marriages to torment Elohim's spirit in humans.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.21Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Eden sets the angel Naas to torment Elohim's spirit in humans, and Elohim sends Baruch to help.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.22Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Baruch tells Adam to obey Eden's angels except Naas, the lawless tree of knowledge.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.23Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · In Justin's myth Naas seduces Eve and abuses Adam, the origin of adultery and of sex between males, while Elohim's ascent shows the way up.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.24Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Baruch was sent to Moses to turn Israel to the Good one.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.25Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Naas, working through the soul, obscured Baruch's commands to Moses; so soul and spirit war in everyone.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.26Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Baruch was sent to the prophets, but Naas led them all astray.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.27Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Elohim sent Heracles, a Gentile prophet, whose twelve labors were victories over Eden's twelve angels.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.28Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Omphale (Babel) seduced Heracles and stripped him of his power, so his mission failed.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.29Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Baruch comes to the twelve-year-old Jesus, a shepherd boy in Nazareth, and tells him the whole story.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · From Elohim and Eden come twelve paternal angels, among them Baruch.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.30Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Baruch charges Jesus to proclaim the Good one and ascend to him.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.31Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Jesus stayed faithful; Naas had him crucified, but he left Eden's body on the cross and ascended.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.32Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · From the cross Jesus gave the soul and body back to Eden and committed the spirit to the Father.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.33Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Justin identifies the Good one with Priapus, “maker before” all things.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.34Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · In the myth of Leda and the swan, the swan is Elohim and Leda is Eden.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.35Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Justin reads other Greek myths, Ganymede and Danae, as his own story.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.36Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Justin reads Isaiah's “Hear, O heaven” as addressed to spirit and soul, with Israel meaning Eden.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.37Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Israel (Eden) did not know that Elohim was with the Good one, and so she torments the spirit in humans.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Eden makes twelve maternal angels, among them Babel and Naas.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The twenty-four angels together are the paradise “planted in Eden.”
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The tree of life is the angel Baruch and the tree of knowledge is the angel Naas.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Elohim's angels made man from Eden's human upper part, and the beasts came from her lower part.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Adam receives soul from Eden and spirit from Elohim, a symbol of their marriage.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Eve likewise has soul from Eden and spirit from Elohim, and the first couple is told to inherit “the earth,” meaning Eden.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.27.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Justin's initiates swear the oath Elohim swore before the Good one.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.27.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The initiate swears secrecy, enters to the Good one, and drinks living water as a ritual washing.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.27.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Justin distinguishes the lower water of creation from the living water above, in which the spiritual are washed.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.27.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Justin reads Hosea's command to marry an unfaithful wife as the mystery of Eden's departure from Elohim.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.27.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Justin's followers twist the prophets in many books, chiefly Baruch; Hippolytus calls this the worst heresy he has met.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.27.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus compares refuting Justin to Heracles cleaning the Augean stables.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.28.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus closes Book 5 and announces that he will expose the following heresies, beginning with Simon.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.3.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Book 5 will treat the Peratae and their astrological sources.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.4.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Book 5 will treat the Sethians and their borrowings from Greek poets.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.5.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Book 5 will treat the Gnostic Justin and his use of Herodotus.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.6.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The heresiarchs patched together old errors and presented them as new.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.6.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus begins with the Naassenes, named for the Hebrew word for serpent.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.6.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassenes call themselves Gnostics and honor a divine Man and Son of Man.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.6.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassenes hymn a male-female heavenly Man called Adamas.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.6.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassenes divide the Man into intellectual, psychic, and earthly parts; knowing him leads to knowing God.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.6.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassenes say the three natures came together in Jesus, and there are three kinds of church: chosen, called, and captive.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassenes claim a tradition from James through Mariamne; Hippolytus will show it comes from pagan mysteries.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They teach that all nature, even stone, desires soul, the cause of growth.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.11Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · In Assyrian myth, Aphrodite (generation) loves Adonis (the soul).
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.12Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Persephone's and Selene's loves are read as allegories of the soul.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.13Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The castration of Attis by the Mother of the gods is read as the soul's recall to the eternal realm.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.14Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The heavenly Man is both male and female.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.15Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassenes forbid marital intercourse, reading Attis's castration as passage to a sexless new creation.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.16Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They cite Paul in Romans on creation revealing God.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.17Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Romans passage continues on idolatry and unnatural passions.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.18Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassenes reinterpret Paul's word "shamelessness" as the first shapeless substance.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.19Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They claim Paul's words hide their mystery, and that their baptism brings unfading pleasure.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassenes apply Isaiah's "who will tell his generation" to their Man.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.20Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassenes cite a saying from the Gospel of Thomas about finding the kingdom in children.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.21Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus traces the saying to Hippocrates, not Christ.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.22Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassenes turn to the Egyptian mysteries of Isis.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.23Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Isis seeking Osiris is read as changeable creation clothed in the seven planets.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.24Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They read Proverbs' "the righteous falls seven times" as the motions of the planets.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.25Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The seed, cause of all things, is unmoved and becomes none of them.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.26Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They apply Jesus' saying that only the Father is good to their first principle.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.27Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · This, they say, is the great Egyptian mystery.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.28Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassenes see the phallic image of Osiris, set up publicly, as the "good" proclaimed on the housetops.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.29Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They say Hermes, shown as a phallic pillar, is the Word.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Greeks say Earth first brought forth man.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.30Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They read Homer's Hermes leading the suitors' souls as the call to souls fallen from the heavenly Man.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.31Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Homer's description of Hermes' golden wand is quoted.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.32Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They link Hermes' wand with the Psalm's rod of iron.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.33Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They cite "Wake up, sleeper" and say Christ is the Son of Man stamped on all things.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.34Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They link the Eleusinian cry, the Psalm, and Homer's image of souls following Hermes like bats.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.35Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They identify Adamas with the cornerstone of the Psalms and Isaiah.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.36Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassenes say the inner man, cut from Adamas, fell into the earthly body.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.37Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Homer's souls following Hermes past Ocean are read as souls led to the eternal realm.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.38Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Ocean flowing down begets men, flowing up begets gods.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.39Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They read "you are gods" as promised to those who flee bodily union, and "you die like men" to those who return to it.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Different peoples claim different first men.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.40Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They distinguish mortal fleshly birth from immortal spiritual birth of water and spirit.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.41Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They read Joshua's parting of the Jordan as Jesus reversing the flow of generation.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Libyans and Egyptians have their own first men.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Chaldeans' Adam lay lifeless, an image of the heavenly Adamas made by many powers.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · A soul was given to the molded Adam so that the image of the perfect Man would suffer in bondage.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassenes seek the soul's nature in the mysteries, not in Scripture.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassenes use the Gospel of the Egyptians and Assyrian rites on the threefold soul.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassenes treat Homer as their prophet and teach that all things come from three.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Two statues at Samothrace are said to represent the Primal Man and the reborn spiritual man.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.11Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They combine Jesus' sayings about eating his flesh and drinking his cup.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.12Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They teach that each person can only receive what fits his own nature.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.13Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They say the Thracians call this Man Corybas, whose descent from the "crown" cannot be understood.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.14Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They read "we have not seen his form" of the hidden Man in the body.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.15Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They read the Psalms' God over the flood as the Man crying out from the waters of generation.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.16Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They read Isaiah's promise of safety through rivers and fire as protection from generation and desire.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.17Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They put Isaiah's words of God's remembering into the mouth of Adamas.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.18Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They read Psalm 24's King of glory and Psalm 22's "worm and no man" as the reborn Man.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.19Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They read the Psalm's "war" as the body's inner conflict and Jacob's vision as the gate of rebirth.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The three natures are the heavenly Man, the mortal below, and the "kingless race" figured by Moses' household.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.20Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Jacob's "gate of heaven" is linked with Jesus' "I am the gate."
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.21Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Salvation, they say, requires rebirth through this gate.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.22Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Phrygian name Papas is linked with "stop" and with the peace for those far and near.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.23Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They read "whitewashed tombs" and the dead leaving the tombs as bodies without and with the spiritual Man.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.24Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Resurrection for them is entry through the heavenly gate, by which one becomes a god.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.25Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They cite Paul's rapture to the third heaven.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.26Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They cite Paul on spiritual things that the "psychic" man cannot receive, claiming them for themselves.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.27Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They cite Jesus' sayings on being drawn by the Father and doing his will.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.28Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They pun on "tax collectors" and "ends", claiming to be those on whom the ends of the ages have come.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.29Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They apply the parable of the sower to themselves as the only true hearers.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They cite Homer's threefold division and Jesus' saying about hearing without hearing.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.30Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They read the land of milk and honey as the Pleroma shared by the perfect.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.31Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Man is "unfruitful" when fleshly; the only true fruits are the spiritual who enter the third gate.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.32Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They quote a saying about eating dead and living things, meaning spiritual words and men.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.33Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They read "do not throw pearls to swine" as a condemnation of sexual union.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.34Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They derive "goatherd" from a word for turning, making the Man the mover of the cosmos.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.35Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They support the etymology with "poles", Homer's Proteus, and "cities".
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.36Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They read "more are the children of the desolate" as the many reborn spiritual children.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.37Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They read Rachel's weeping and Jeremiah's lament as grief over fleshly generation.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.38Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They cite Jeremiah's "who will know him" of the hidden perfect Man.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.39Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They say the Eleusinian mystery of the reaped ear of grain points to the Man.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Their three secret words name the heavenly Man, the mortal man, and the upward-flowing Jordan.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.40Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They cite the Eleusinian hierophant's cry announcing the birth of a holy child.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.41Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They derive "Eleusis" from "coming" down and "Anactoreion" from going back up.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.42Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The lesser mysteries lead to the greater, for "greater deaths obtain greater portions."
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.43Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The lesser mysteries of Persephone lie at the end of the broad road of the perishing.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.44Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The greater mysteries are the gate of heaven, open only to the spiritual, who become bridegrooms.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.45Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The virgin of Isaiah bears a spiritual Aeon; they cite the narrow and broad ways.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They read John's prologue so that the material world is the "nothing" made without the Word.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They identify Joseph's divining cup with the cup of Anacreon's drinking song.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They link Anacreon's cup with the water turned to wine at Cana.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They say the kingdom of heaven lies hidden within like treasure or leaven.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They claim the Samothracian mysteries teach their Primal Man.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They call the Father an "almond" that split open to beget the ineffable Son.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassenes attend the rites of the Great Mother and imitate her castrated priests.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.11Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassenes forbid intercourse with women and worship the serpent.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.12Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They derive the word for temple from the serpent, claiming every rite honors him.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.13Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They make the serpent the moist substance, like Thales' water.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.14Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The serpent is good and gives beauty to all, like the river from Eden dividing into four.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.15Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They read Eden as the brain and the rivers of paradise as the senses, beginning with Pishon.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.16Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Pishon is the eye and Gihon hearing; the Tigris follows.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.17Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Tigris is the sense of smell.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.18Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Euphrates is the mouth, and the water above the firmament is the living water Jesus offers.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.19Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Each nature draws its own from this water, as a magnet draws iron.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The almond's splitting produced the invisible one through whom all things were made.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.20Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Through the Naassenes, they claim, the blind may see how one water gives each plant its own fruit.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.21Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Man is despised in the world; the Naassenes claim to draw their own from the living water through Jesus, the gate.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.22Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassenes claim to be the only true Christians, anointed from the horn like David.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The one begotten is a "piper", harmonious spirit; they cite Jesus on worship in spirit.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The perfect worship in spirit the many-named being that all nature desires.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They describe the hidden word of God as a point from which all things grow.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They identify the kingdom and the mustard seed with the hidden point in the body.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They claim that everything, even theater, secretly speaks their mysteries.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · A theater hymn to Attis lists his many names, which the Naassenes claim as their own.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.9.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Another hymn to the many-formed Attis.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.10.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon uses Isaiah's vineyard to show that the tree is man.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.10.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon cites “all flesh is grass” and makes the enduring word of the Lord the word born in the mouth.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.11.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon calls the fire perfect and intelligent, so that everything in it thinks and acts, and cites Empedocles on like knowing like.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.12.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · All parts of the fire are intelligent, and the world arose from this unbegotten fire.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.12.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · From the fire came six roots in pairs, Mind and Thought, Voice and Name, Reasoning and Reflection, holding the infinite power potentially.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.12.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The infinite power, “he who stands,” if fully realized in the six roots, becomes equal to the unbegotten power.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.12.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · If left unrealized, the power perishes like an untrained talent that dies with its owner.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.13.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon pairs the powers with heaven and earth, sun and moon, air and water, and makes the seventh power the speaker of Isaiah 1:2.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.14.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon reworks the six days and the seventh day of rest to make himself divine.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.14.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The veins feed the fetus with blood and the arteries bring it spirit through the aorta to the heart.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.14.11Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The unborn child does not eat or breathe but is fed and receives spirit through the umbilical vessels.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.14.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The three days before sun and moon stand for Mind, Thought, and the seventh power.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.14.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The saying “before all the ages he begets me” is applied to the seventh power.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.14.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The seventh power is the Spirit borne above the waters, the image of the infinite power.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.14.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · God formed man double, according to image and likeness.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.14.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Spirit in man perishes with the world unless it is fully realized, when the small becomes great and eternal.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.14.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon makes paradise mean the womb, where God forms man.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.14.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon makes the river of Eden the umbilical cord, dividing into two arteries and two veins.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.14.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The cord joins the child at the navel; the rest of the sentence is lost.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.15.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon makes the rivers of Eden the senses of the unborn child and relates the five books of Moses to them.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.15.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Genesis stands for sight; Exodus comes next.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.15.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Exodus stands for hearing: after birth through the “Red Sea” of blood, the child tastes the bitter water of life.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.15.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The bitter water made sweet by Moses is compared to the magic herb moly in Homer.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.16.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Odysseus, protected by moly, escaped Circe's spell and restored his transformed companions.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.16.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Leviticus, the book of sacrifices and incense, stands for smell.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.16.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Numbers stands for taste and Deuteronomy for touch.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.16.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · As touch confirms the other senses, Deuteronomy sums up the other four books.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.16.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · With right teaching the potential in us is realized, bitter turns sweet, and we become like the infinite power.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.16.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The unrealized tree bears no fruit and is cut down and burned.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.17.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon explains his title “he who stands, stood, and will stand” as the stages of the divine power.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.17.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · There are three “standing” Aeons, and through them the begotten one becomes equal to the unbegotten power.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.17.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The one power is all relations to itself, mother, father, consort, and child, and the root of all.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.17.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The desire for procreation comes from fire, which is why desire is called burning.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.17.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Blood turns to seed in men and milk in women; this is the “flaming sword that turns” in Genesis.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.17.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · This power is both father and mother, and the tree of life guarded by it is the seventh power.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.17.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · If rightly taught, the power in seed and milk grows from a spark into an infinite, unchanging power.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.18.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · By his own system Simon made himself a god, like Apsethus the Libyan.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.18.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus quotes the opening of a passage from Simon's Great Declaration.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.18.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · From one root, Silence, come a male Mind above and a female Thought below, with Air between them.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.18.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Within the Air is the Father, “he who stands,” a male-female power from which Thought proceeded.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.18.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The one power became two by manifesting himself, and was called Father only when Thought named him.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.18.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Power and Thought mirror each other and are really one male-female being.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.18.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The being that appears from them is one yet two, as Mind is in Thought.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.19.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon also allegorized the poets, such as the Trojan horse and Helen, to fit his myth.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.19.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon said his Thought was the lost sheep, who once dwelt in Helen of Troy and caused the Trojan war.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.19.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Stesichorus was blinded for slandering Helen; passed from body to body, she ended in a brothel in Tyre, where Simon found her.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.19.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon claimed to have come to redeem Helen; Hippolytus says he bought a woman he loved and invented the myth to excuse it.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.19.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus charges Simon's followers with promiscuity, which they call perfect love, claiming that the redeemed cannot sin.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.19.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon claimed to have come in disguise to correct the angels' misrule, appearing as Son, Father, or Holy Spirit to different peoples.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.19.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon's followers reject the prophets as inspired by the world-making angels and claim freedom to do as they wish.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.19.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They teach that evil is only a convention of the world-making angels and expect the world's dissolution.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.2.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: Simon's doctrine, drawn from magic and poetry.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.20.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon's disciples practice magic and worship images of Simon as Zeus and Helen as Athena.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.20.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon, cursed by the apostles in Samaria, later went to Rome, where Peter opposed him.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.20.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon had himself buried alive, promising to rise on the third day, and never rose.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.20.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Valentinus's six Aeons are Simon's six roots renamed; Hippolytus turns to Valentinus.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.21.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus says that Valentinus built on Pythagoras and Plato, and first recalls their teaching.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.21.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus will summarize Pythagoras and Plato again so that Valentinus's borrowing can be seen.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.21.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Pythagoras and Plato took their teaching from Egypt; Valentinus borrowed it from them, renamed it, and made a Greek heresy foreign to Christ.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.22.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus will set out Pythagoras's teaching and then show how Valentinus applied it to Christ, the Father, and Silence.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.27.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus recalls Pythagoras's symbolic sayings, because the heretics imitate that manner of speech.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.28.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Pythagoreans make the sun the craftsman of the world, set in it like a soul in a body.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.29.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Valentinus and his school, Heracleon and Ptolemy, built their teaching on Pythagorean number, not on the Gospels.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.29.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Valentinians' first principle is an unbegotten, generative monad, which they call Father.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.29.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Some Valentinians make the Father solitary; others give him a consort, Silence.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.29.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus leaves that dispute aside and follows the version with a solitary Father.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.29.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Father, alone and at rest, was love, and so brought forth what was best in himself.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.29.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Father emitted Mind and Truth, mother of all the Aeons in the Pleroma.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.29.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Mind and Truth emit Word and Life, who emit Man and Church, and Mind and Truth offer the Father ten Aeons.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.29.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Ten is the perfect number offered to the perfect Father, who alone produced all roots through Mind and Truth.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.3.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: Valentinus, whose doctrine comes from Plato and Pythagoras rather than Scripture.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.30.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Word and Life wished in turn to glorify their parents, Mind and Truth.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.30.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Because Mind and Truth were begotten, Word and Life offered them an imperfect number, twelve Aeons.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.30.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The first six Aeons are the roots; ten Aeons come from Mind and Truth and twelve from Word and Life,
Refutation of All Heresies 6.30.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Twenty-eight Aeons in all; the ten are named in pairs.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.30.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The twelve Aeons are named in pairs, ending with Willed and Wisdom.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.30.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Sophia, the youngest Aeon, noticed that only the Father begets without a consort.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.30.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Sophia tried to beget alone like the Father, not knowing that only the unbegotten can do so.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.30.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Without a male partner Sophia could only emit formless substance.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.30.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The formless substance is the “invisible and unfurnished earth” of Genesis and the promised land, the heavenly Jerusalem.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.31.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Sophia's formless offspring caused alarm among the Aeons, who feared corruption.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.31.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · At the Aeons' plea the Father has Mind and Truth emit Christ and the Holy Spirit to shape the abortion and comfort Sophia.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.31.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · With Christ and the Holy Spirit the Aeons number thirty.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.31.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Christ and the Holy Spirit separate Sophia's formless offspring from the other Aeons.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.31.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Father emits the Aeon Cross, the Boundary that guards the Pleroma of thirty Aeons.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.31.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Boundary is also called Participator and Cross, keeping the Deficiency out of the Pleroma.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.31.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Outside the Boundary is the Ogdoad, the outer Sophia, whom Christ formed into a perfect Aeon.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.31.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Having formed the outer Sophia, Christ and the Holy Spirit returned into the Pleroma.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.32.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The thirty Aeons together emitted one Aeon, the common fruit of the Pleroma, as an offering to the Father.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.32.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The common fruit is Jesus, the great high priest; meanwhile the outer Sophia feared she would perish without Christ.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.32.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Sophia, grieving and perplexed, turned to entreat the one who had left her.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.32.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Aeons sent Jesus, the common fruit, to be Sophia's consort and heal her passions.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.32.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Fruit healed Sophia's four passions but saw that, being eternal, they could not simply be destroyed.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.32.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Sophia's passions became substances: fear the psychic, grief the material, perplexity the demonic, and her turning the “right” power.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.32.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Demiurge arose from Sophia's fear; he is fiery and is called Place, Hebdomad, and Ancient of Days.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.32.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Demiurge is the “consuming fire” of Deuteronomy; the soul is a middle realm, the Hebdomad.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.32.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The soul, between the Ogdoad and matter, becomes immortal if it is made like what is above, and perishes if it is made like matter.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.33.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Valentinians make the devil and Beelzebul the rulers of matter and demons, and the ignorant Demiurge a tool of Sophia who wrongly claims to be the only God.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.34.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Valentinus reuses the Pythagorean tetraktys: Sophia is spirit, the Demiurge soul, and the devil and Beelzebul rulers of world and demons.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.34.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The thirty Aeons emitted further Aeons in proportion, to complete a perfect number.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.34.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Like the Pythagoreans, the Valentinians subdivide the Pleroma and the Ogdoad.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.34.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Sophia and her bridegroom emitted heavenly “words”; the Demiurge, called Abraham, emitted souls and made bodies for them from matter.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.34.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The breath of Gen 2:7 is the psychic inner man, housed in a material body made from the devilish substance.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.34.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The body is an inn housing the soul alone, or the soul with demons, or the soul with heavenly words.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.34.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Valentinians read Eph 3 as describing the Father (depth), the Cross (breadth), and the Pleroma (length).
Refutation of All Heresies 6.34.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The foolishness of 1 Cor 2:14 is the Demiurge's ignorance of Sophia's work through him.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.35.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Valentinians say the law and prophets came from the foolish Demiurge, citing John 10:8.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.35.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The prophets knew nothing of the Valentinian mysteries; the psychic man had a veil over his heart until the time of revelation.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.35.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Valentinians read the annunciation as Sophia (Spirit) and the Demiurge (Most High) acting together in Jesus' birth.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.35.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Jesus, the new man, received his body from the Demiurge and his substance from Sophia, a heavenly Word born through Mary.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.35.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The question of Jesus' body split the Valentinians into Eastern and Italian schools.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.35.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Italian school (Heracleon, Ptolemy) held that Jesus' body was psychic and that the Spirit came on him at his baptism.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.35.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Eastern school (Axionicus, Ardesianes) held that the Savior's body was spiritual.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.36.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus leaves the dispute to them.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.36.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Sophia taught the Demiurge that he was not the only God, and he kept the secret, as his words to Moses show.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.36.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Jesus was born through Mary to heal the passions of the soul, as the higher Christ healed Sophia's.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.36.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Valentinians teach three Christs: the one emitted in the Pleroma, the common fruit, and the one born of Mary.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.37.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus will close his account of Valentinus with a refutation.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.37.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Plato says he has written nothing on these matters; Valentinus made Plato's “king of all” his Father and Depth.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.37.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Valentinus made Plato's second things the Aeons within the Boundary, and the third things what lies outside.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.37.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus quotes Valentinus's psalm, which sets out the hierarchy of being from flesh up to the depth.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.37.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus decodes the psalm: flesh is matter, soul the Demiurge, air the outer Sophia, ether the Pleroma, and the fruits the Aeons.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.37.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus ends his account of Valentinus and turns to his followers' differing views.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.38.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Secundus taught a right and a left tetrad and said that the fallen power came from the Aeons' fruits.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.38.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Epiphanes taught that Oneness and Unity, without emitting, produced the Monad.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.38.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Monad and One complete a first tetrad; others name the first Ogdoad Pre-principle, Inconceivable, Ineffable, and Invisible.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.38.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Each of the first four powers emitted a second, completing the first Ogdoad, which they place before Depth and Silence.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.38.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Valentinians disagree about Depth; Ptolemy's followers give him two consorts, Thought and Will.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.38.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · From the Father's Thought and Will came the pair Only-begotten (Mind) and Truth.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.38.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Mind images the Will and Truth the Thought, since Thought could emit only when Will was added.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.39.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Marcus, a magician among the Valentinians, claimed to hold the greatest power.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.39.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Marcus made the eucharistic cup turn purple or red to make people think grace had come upon it.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.39.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus explains the trick: Marcus secretly added a dye and talked until it dissolved.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.4.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: the Valentinians Secundus, Ptolemy, and Heracleon, who restated Greek philosophy.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.40.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Marcus had a woman give thanks over a small cup and then poured it back and forth into a larger one.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.40.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · With an invocation of Grace, Marcus made the small cup seem to fill and overflow the larger one.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.40.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The trick used an effervescent drug smeared in the empty cup, which foamed up as the wine was poured.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.40.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Marcus had the cup drunk quickly before the foam subsided, and people took it as divine.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.41.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Marcus was thought to prophesy and taught his disciples that, belonging to the perfect power, they could sin without danger.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.41.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Marcus's followers promise a second rite after baptism, called redemption,
Refutation of All Heresies 6.41.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They use the promise of a second forgiveness, and further promises, to keep their followers bound to them.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.41.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · A secret word is spoken over the one who receives the redemption, or into his ear by the bishop at death.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.41.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The secret keeps disciples attached to their bishop; Hippolytus withholds it to avoid seeming to slander them.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.42.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Irenaeus exposed these rites, which some deny; Hippolytus has inquired carefully into their two washings.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.42.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Like Valentinus, who claimed to have seen the Word as a newborn child, Marcus invented a vision.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.42.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Marcus claimed that the Tetrad appeared to him as a woman and revealed the origin of all things.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.42.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Father, wishing to express himself, spoke a Word like himself.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.42.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Father's name was spoken in four syllables of four, four, ten, and twelve letters.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.42.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The name has thirty letters; each letter knows only its own sound and thinks it names the whole.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.42.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The restoration of all things comes when all letters sound as one, pictured in the common “Amen”; the sounds are the angels who see the Father's face.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.43.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Marcus calls the letters Aeons, Words, Roots, Seeds, Fullnesses, and Fruits.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.43.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The last sound of the last letter fell below and produced the lower world, while the letter itself was taken back up.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.43.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Each letter's name is spelled with other letters, whose names are spelled with others, without end.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.43.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · For example, “delta” is spelled with five letters, each of which is spelled with others.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.43.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus mocks the endless regress of letters out of which Marcus builds his Forefather.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.43.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Since no one can utter the whole name, the Father let each Aeon sound its own letter.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.44.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Tetrad offers to show Marcus Truth herself.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.44.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Marcus describes Truth as a body made of the Greek alphabet, paired letters for each part from head to foot.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.44.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · This lettered figure, called Man, is the source of all speech; Marcus is told to hear the Word from Truth's mouth.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.45.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Truth spoke the name “Christ Jesus” and fell silent.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.45.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Tetrad tells Marcus he knows the name's sound but not its power.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.45.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The six-letter name “Jesus” used by the called differs from the manifold name known in the Pleroma.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.46.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The twenty-four letters of the alphabet are emanations of three higher powers.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.46.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The nine mute consonants belong to Father and Truth, the eight semivowels to Word and Life, the seven vowels to Man and Church.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.46.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · To correct the deficient number, one who was set apart in the Father came down, restoring the unity of the Pleroma.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.46.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Three groups of eight make twenty-four, which is also six times the ineffable Tetrad.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.46.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The double letters, added to the twenty-four, make thirty.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.47.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Marcus reads the Transfiguration as a number mystery: Jesus went up as the fourth and became the sixth.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.47.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The dove at Jesus' baptism is “omega and alpha,” since the letters of “dove” add up to 801.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.47.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Christ's passion on the sixth day and at the sixth hour regenerated the first man.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.47.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Six is the number of creation and regeneration, and it completes the thirty-letter name.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.48.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Demiurge, in imitation of a higher sevenfold power, ensouled the world of the seven heavens.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.48.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Each of the seven heavens sounds one of the seven Greek vowels.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.48.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The heavens' united praise, echoing to earth, shapes earthly things, as newborns' cries show.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.48.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Infants' cries praise the Word like the seven heavens, and the soul in pain cries “O” to summon help from above.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.49.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Marcus derives the twenty-four letters from the first powers by addition and multiplication.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.49.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The first tetrad's secret names are Ineffable, Silence, Father, and Truth.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.49.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Marcus counts the letters of divine names, including the letters in the spelled-out names of each letter of “Christ,” and links “alpha and omega” to the dove.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.5.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: Marcus and Colarbasus, given to magic and number lore.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.50.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Jesus' secret generation: from the first tetrad came the second, making an ogdoad, and from it the decad.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.50.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Eight multiplied by ten gives 8, 80, 800, totaling 888, the numerical value of “Jesus” in Greek.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.50.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Greek alphabet's numerals sum to 888, the number of Jesus, who is therefore “alpha and omega.”
Refutation of All Heresies 6.51.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Marcus maps the annunciation onto the second tetrad: Gabriel, Holy Spirit, power of the Most High, and the Virgin.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.51.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · At the baptism the higher power came down on Jesus as a dove, carrying the seed of the elect.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.51.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The power that descended on Jesus contains the Father, the Son, Silence, and all the Aeons.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.51.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Spirit united with Jesus spoke through him; the Savior destroyed death and made the Father known.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.51.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · “Jesus” names the human of the economy, who, receiving the heavenly Man, became all the Aeons.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.52.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus judges Marcus's system to be astrology and Pythagorean arithmetic, not godly knowledge.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.52.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Two lambdas make M, the twelfth letter; the Marcosians seek the “one” that turns ninety-nine into a hundred, from the left hand to the right.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.52.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Marcosians, like the Pythagoreans, derive all from monad and dyad; 1+2+3+4 makes ten.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.52.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Even numbers 2+4+6 make twelve, and 2 through 10 make thirty.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.52.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They say the twelfth Aeon's fall is the lost sheep, since twelve contains the “notable” number six.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.52.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They connect the lost coin and the lost sheep with the number ninety-nine, which is also the value of “Amen.”
Refutation of All Heresies 6.52.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Eta is eighth counting the episemon, and the values of the letters up to eta without it add up to thirty.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.52.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The letter values from alpha to eta (without six) total thirty, and three times thirty is ninety.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.52.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · By adding and removing units from 8, 10, and 12 they arrive at ninety-nine.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.52.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Lambda, the eleventh letter (value thirty), brings the sum of the letter values to ninety-nine, imaging the fall of the twelfth Aeon.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.53.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The four elements and their four qualities are said to image the upper tetrad and ogdoad.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.53.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Marcosians count ten heavenly powers: seven heavens, the enclosing eighth heaven, the sun, and the moon.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.53.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They say the ten heavenly bodies image the invisible Decad and the twelve signs of the zodiac image the Duodecad.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.53.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They make the slow outermost heaven, which takes thirty years to go round, an image of Limit, which encloses their thirty-named Mother.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.53.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The moon's thirty days stand for the thirty Aeons, the sun's twelve months for the Duodecad.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.53.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The twelve hours of the day and the 360 degrees of the zodiac are also made into symbols of their numbers.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.53.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They say the earth is divided into twelve zones, each receiving a power from the heavens, as a type of the Duodecad above.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.54.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They say the Demiurge, himself the fruit of a deficiency, tried to imitate the eternal Ogdoad by multiplying times and years.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.54.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Because truth escaped the Demiurge, they say, his work is false and will be dissolved when its times are complete.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.55.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus sums up: the Valentinians keep inventing ever newer doctrines about creation and count novelty as fruitfulness.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.55.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus will not repeat their allegorical number-readings of Scripture, which Irenaeus already refuted, and says they took them from Pythagoreans and astrologers.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.55.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Having finished with Marcus and Colarbasus, Hippolytus turns to Basilides.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.6.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus recalls the serpent sects of Book 5 and promises to refute all the heresies that follow.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.7.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon of Gitta, a magician refuted by the apostles in Acts, tried to make himself a god, and later sects took their start from him.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.7.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus introduces the story of Apsethus the Libyan, who also wished to be thought a god.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.9.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon is to be seen as another Apsethus, a man who made himself a god by a trick.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.9.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The fruit, if fully formed, is stored, while the chaff is burned.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.9.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus will “reteach Simon's parrots” that Simon was no Christ but an ordinary man.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.9.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon misread Moses' “God is a consuming fire” to make fire the principle of all things, borrowing from Heraclitus.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.9.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon's book, the Great Declaration, opens by calling the first principle the infinite power.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.9.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The infinite power dwells in man; it is a fire with a hidden and a manifest nature.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.9.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The hidden and manifest parts of fire correspond to Aristotle's potency and act or Plato's intelligible and sensible.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.9.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The manifest fire holds all visible things, the hidden fire all intelligible things.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.9.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon likens the heavenly fire to Nebuchadnezzar's great tree, which feeds all flesh.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.9.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The visible parts of the tree are consumed by the fire.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.10.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: Cerdo, Marcion's teacher.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.11.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: Lucian, a disciple of Marcion.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.12.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: Apelles, Marcion's disciple, who departed from his teacher.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.13.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Heresies are like a monster-filled sea, such as the Sicilian sea of the Odyssey, which a wise hearer should sail past.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.13.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus advises readers either not to listen to heresies at all or to listen while bound fast by faith to the cross of Christ.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.14.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus will first summarize Aristotle so that readers can see Basilides' doctrines are borrowed from him.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.19.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Aristotle also wrote on ethics; if Basilides has transferred Aristotle's words into the gospel, his disciples are pagans whom Christ will not profit.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.2.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: Basilides took his system from Aristotle.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.20.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Basilides and his son Isidore claim secret teachings from Matthias, which Hippolytus says falsify both Matthias and the Savior.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.20.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Basilides begins: once there was nothing at all, not even “nothing” as a thing; “was” is used only for want of a better word.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.20.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · What Basilides speaks of is beyond even the word “unspeakable,” above every name that is named.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.20.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Basilides says names cannot fit even the world, and homonymy breeds confusion.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.20.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus says this teaching on names was stolen from Aristotle's Categories, written generations before Basilides.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.21.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · When nothing existed, Basilides says, the “non-existent God,” without thought or will, willed to make a world.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.21.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · “Willed” is only a manner of speaking, and the “world” meant is the seed of the world.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.21.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Like a mustard seed or a peacock's egg, the one seed laid down by the non-existent God contained the whole world in potential.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.22.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Everything the world would ever contain was stored in the seed, to unfold in time as teeth and reason appear later in a child.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.22.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The second Sonship rises by putting on the Holy Spirit as a wing, like the winged soul of Plato's Phaedrus.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.22.11Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Like a bird and its wing, the Sonship and the Spirit need each other to rise.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.22.12Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · When the second Sonship came near the non-existent God, it could not take the Spirit with it, since the Spirit was not of its substance.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.22.13Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The realm of the non-existent God was as unnatural to the Spirit as dry air to fish.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.22.14Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Spirit, left behind as a boundary, keeps the scent of the Sonship like a jar that once held ointment; the third Sonship remains below in the seed-mass.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.22.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Basilides rejects emanation or pre-existing matter as the way God made the world.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.22.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Basilides reads “Let there be light” as creation from nothing by the word of a God who “was not.”
Refutation of All Heresies 7.22.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The seed of the world is the word “Let there be light,” which Basilides identifies with the true light of John's Gospel.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.22.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · This seed is Aristotle's genus, divided into countless species.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.22.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Whatever comes into being later was already stored in the cosmic seed, so one need not ask where it came from.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.22.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The seed contained a threefold Sonship, of one substance with the non-existent God: one fine, one coarse, one needing purification.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.22.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The first, fine Sonship at once rushed upward to the non-existent God, whom every nature longs for.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.22.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The second, coarser Sonship could not rise on its own.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.23.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · After the two ascents, the Holy Spirit remained as a firmament between the world and what lies beyond it.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.23.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Basilides divides reality into the world and what is above it, with the Holy Spirit as the boundary between.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.23.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · From the seed-mass there burst forth the great Archon, head of the world.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.23.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The great Archon rose to the firmament and, thinking nothing lay beyond, took himself for the highest, not knowing the third Sonship was greater.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.23.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Thinking himself lord, the Archon set about creating and begot a son wiser than himself.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.23.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Archon, amazed at his son's beauty, seated him at his right hand.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.23.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Archon's seat is the Ogdoad; he made the ethereal creation, prompted by his wiser son.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.24.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus says the Archon and his son are Aristotle's body and soul under new names.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.24.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · As Aristotle's soul governs the body, so Basilides' son governs the Archon.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.24.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The ethereal region down to the moon is ruled by the great Archon; then a second, lesser Archon arose from the seed-mass.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.24.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The second Archon rules the Hebdomad and likewise begot a wiser son.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.24.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Below the Hebdomad things develop by nature as planned in the seed, with no ruler over them.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.25.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The third Sonship must be revealed and restored above, which Basilides finds in Paul's words about creation awaiting the revelation of God's sons.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.25.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Basilides' followers call themselves the spiritual sons left below to perfect souls.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.25.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · From Adam to Moses the great Archon reigned in ignorance, which Basilides reads as Paul's “sin reigned” and the hidden mystery.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.25.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Archon of the Hebdomad is the God who spoke to Moses and did not reveal the higher God's name.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.25.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The prophets spoke from the Hebdomad; when God's children were to be revealed, the gospel came through every power.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.25.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Nothing actually descended; like naphtha catching fire from afar, powers reach from below up to the Sonship.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.25.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Through the Spirit at the boundary, the thoughts of the Sonship pass to the son of the great Archon.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.26.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Through his son the great Archon learned he was not the supreme God, and he turned in fear.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.26.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The world lasts until the whole third Sonship follows Jesus, is purified, and rises like the first.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.26.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Archon's fear was the beginning of wisdom, as the Christ beside him taught him the whole system, the wisdom spoken in a mystery.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.26.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Taught by the Spirit's wisdom, the Archon confessed his sin of self-exaltation.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.26.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Archon's confession fulfilled the psalm; then the gospel had to go on to the Hebdomad.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.26.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The light passed to the son of the second Archon, who preached to his father, and he too feared and confessed.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.26.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Basilides' followers speak of 365 heavens ruled by Abrasax, whose name adds up to the days of the year.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.26.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Next the mystery had to be revealed to the third Sonship left below in the formless world, as Paul speaks of revelation and unspeakable words.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.26.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The light came down through the Hebdomad onto Jesus, son of Mary, and enlightened him.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.26.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Basilides reads the angel's words to Mary as the descent of the light through the heavens.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.27.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · When the whole Sonship has ascended, God will bring a great ignorance on the world, so that nothing desires what is beyond its nature.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.27.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · At the passion each part of Jesus returned to its own level: body to the formless, soul to the Hebdomad, and higher parts to the great Archon and the boundary Spirit.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.27.11Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Through Jesus the third Sonship was purified and ascended; their whole system is mixing, sorting, and restoring.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.27.12Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The passion served only to sort out the mixture; the whole Sonship must be sorted as Jesus was.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.27.13Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus ends his account of Basilides, who he says learned it in Egypt.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.27.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Souls below will know nothing higher, so that they are not tormented by impossible longings, like a fish wanting to graze with sheep.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.27.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Things stay incorruptible in their own place; ignorance will spare the lower Archon grief and sighing.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.27.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Ignorance will also seize the great Archon, and all things will be restored to their natural places in their own seasons.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.27.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Basilides cites “my hour has not yet come” and the Magi's star to show that even Jesus was under appointed times and stars.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.27.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Jesus is the spiritual inner man within the psychic one, clothed with his own soul.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.27.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · For Basilides the gospel is the knowledge of the realities above the world, which made the great Archon rejoice.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.27.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Jesus' life happened as the Gospels say, so that he might be the first fruits of sorting out what was mixed together.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.27.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Because the world has three levels, the mixed elements had to be sorted out by dividing Jesus.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.28.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Saturnilus of Antioch taught one unknown Father who made the angels and powers.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.28.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Seven angels made the world and, seeing a luminous image from above, tried to make a human being after it.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.28.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The angels' man writhed like a worm until the higher power, pitying its likeness, sent a spark of life.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.28.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · At death the spark returns above; Saturnilus held that the Savior only appeared to be a man.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.28.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Saturnilus made the God of the Jews one of the angels, whom Christ came to overthrow while saving those with the spark of life.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.28.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Saturnilus taught two races of humans, evil and good, and that the Savior came to destroy the evil and save the good.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.28.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Saturnilus said marriage and procreation come from Satan, and his followers abstained from meat; prophecies came partly from the world-making angels and partly from Satan.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.29.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Marcion of Pontus taught two principles, one good and one evil, and founded a school of harsh Cynic living.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.29.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus claims Marcion took his two principles from Empedocles' Strife and Love.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.29.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus will again summarize Empedocles to compare him with Marcion.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.3.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: Saturnilus, a contemporary of Basilides.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.30.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus says Marcion's contrast of good and evil gods comes not from Paul or Mark but from Empedocles of Sicily.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.30.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus addresses Marcion directly: calling the Creator evil is teaching Empedocles to the church.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.30.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Marcion's good God is Empedocles' Love, and his ban on marriage and foods is Empedocles' purifications.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.30.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Marcion forbids meat and dissolves marriages joined by God, following Empedocles' view that marriage divides the One.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.31.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus turns to a newer Marcionite, Prepon the Assyrian, who wrote against Bardesanes.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.31.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Prepon added a third, just principle between good and evil, but this too came from Empedocles.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.31.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Marcion denied Christ's birth, saying he came down from heaven in Tiberius's fifteenth year and taught in the synagogues.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.31.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Prepon's Jesus came down unborn, free from both evil and good, as a middle being, citing “Why do you call me good?”
Refutation of All Heresies 7.31.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The quotation continues: “One is good.”
Refutation of All Heresies 7.31.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus closes his refutation of Marcion as a borrower from Empedocles and turns to Carpocrates.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.32.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Carpocrates taught that angels made the world and that Jesus, son of Joseph, received power from above because his pure soul remembered what it had seen with God.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.32.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Jesus' soul, trained in Jewish customs, despised them and so received powers to overcome the passions.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.32.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Carpocratians claim that anyone who despises the world-rulers as Jesus did gets the same power, and some think themselves superior even to the apostles.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.32.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They claim their souls come from above and could even surpass Jesus by despising the world more.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.32.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Carpocratians practice magic, claiming power over the world's rulers and all their works.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.32.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus says Satan used such sects to bring the church into disrepute among pagans.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.32.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Carpocratians teach reincarnation until a soul has committed every sin, after which all souls are freed and saved.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.32.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Some souls finish all sins in one life; the sect brands its disciples' ears and keeps portraits of Christ said to be made by Pilate.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.33.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Cerinthus taught that a lower power made the world and that Jesus was the natural son of Joseph and Mary.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.33.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · For Cerinthus the Christ descended on Jesus at his baptism and left him before the passion.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.34.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Ebionites accept the true God as creator but share Cerinthus's view of Christ.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.34.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Ebionites keep the Jewish law, saying Jesus became Christ by keeping it perfectly and that they too can become Christs.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.35.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Theodotus of Byzantium agreed with the church on creation but took his view of Christ from the Gnostics, Cerinthus, and Ebion.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.35.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Theodotus held that Jesus, a man born of a virgin, received the Christ-Spirit at his baptism; his followers differed on whether he ever became God.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.36.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Theodotus the banker taught that Melchizedek is a great power, greater than Christ, who was made in his image.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.36.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus will not list the many Gnostic opinions, which he thinks less reverent than the Greek philosophers.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.36.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus blames Nicolaus, one of the seven deacons, whose followers John rebuked in Revelation for sexual immorality and eating idol sacrifices.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.37.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Cerdo taught that the just God of Moses and the prophets is not the unknown, good Father of Jesus Christ.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.37.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Marcion built on Cerdo's teaching in his Antitheses, and his disciple Lucian did the same.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.38.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Apelles taught a good God, a just creator, a fiery God who spoke to Moses, and a fourth cause of evil, called angels.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.38.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Apelles rejected the Law and Prophets, picked from the Gospels and Paul, and followed the prophetess Philumene.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.38.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Apelles said Christ was not born of a virgin but made himself a real body from the elements.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.38.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Christ died, rose after three days, and showed the disciples his wounds to prove he was not a phantom.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.38.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Apelles said Christ returned his body to the elements and went to the good Father, leaving the seed of life through the disciples.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.38.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus turns next to the Docetae.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.4.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: Menander taught that angels made the world.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.5.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: Marcion's doctrine comes from Empedocles, not Scripture.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.6.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: Carpocrates also said angels made the world.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.7.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: Cerinthus drew on Egyptian ideas, not Scripture.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.8.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: the Ebionites and their Jewish customs.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.9.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: Theodotus borrowed from the Ebionites and Cerinthus.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.10.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The fiery God made the world; until the Savior came, the souls, “cooled” from above, passed from body to body under his guard.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.10.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · This is why the sects quarrel over Jesus: each sees only the aspect of him akin to itself and thinks it the only one.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.10.11Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Docetae claim that they alone, coming from the highest realms, know the whole Jesus; others know only in part.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.10.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Docetae cite Job and Jesus' words about Elijah for transmigration, which they say ended with the Savior.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.10.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The only-begotten Son contracted his greatness into a small body, like the light of the eye that reaches the stars yet hides under the eyelids.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.10.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Clothed in the thirty Aeons, the only-begotten entered the world hidden, unknown, and disbelieved.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.10.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · To put on flesh, the “outer darkness,” he was announced to Mary by an angel and born of her.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.10.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · At his baptism Jesus received a copy of his body in the water, so that at the cross his soul, stripping off the flesh, would not be found naked.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.10.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Docetae read John 3:5–6 as the water-body of baptism, and Jesus' thirty years as the thirty Aeons.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.10.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Each soul, from one of the thirty Aeons, can know only the aspect of Jesus that matches its own origin.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.11.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus ends his account of the Docetae with a pun on their name and the beam in the eye.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.11.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Docetae's teaching was anticipated by the Greek sophists; next comes Monoimus.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.12.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Monoimus the Arab made Man what Homer made Ocean.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.12.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Monoimus taught that Man is the eternal first principle of all things, and the Son of Man is begotten and passible.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.12.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Monoimus: the Son came from the Man faster than thought or will.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.12.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Monoimus reads “he was and came to be” as the Man and his Son, like fire and its light.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.12.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Monoimus's Man is a monad that unites all opposites like a musical harmony, both mother and father.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.12.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The perfect Man is imaged by the single stroke of the letter iota, simple yet containing multiplicity.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.12.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The one stroke of the iota is the image of the invisible perfect Man.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.13.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The iota, whose number value is ten, contains all the numbers from one to ten.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.13.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Monoimus reads Colossians' “all the fullness dwelling bodily” as the numbers contained in the iota.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.13.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Son of Man, unknown to all, is wrongly imagined by creation as born of a woman; his faint rays sustain the world.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.13.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Everything in the world came from only a part of the Son of Man, who is the single iota flowing from above.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.14.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The six days of creation are six powers in the iota, and the Sabbath comes from the seventh.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.14.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The geometric solids that make up the elements come from the numbers in the iota, the perfect Son.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.14.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Moses' rod, which brought ten plagues, is the one stroke of the iota, and the plagues symbolize creation.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.14.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Everything is produced by a “stroke,” as vines by pruning and a man from a man; the Ten Commandments allegorize the one stroke.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.14.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · All knowledge is the ten plagues and ten commandments; even the five books of the Law come from the number five in the iota.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.14.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Passover, chosen on the tenth day and kept on the fourteenth, is read as a number mystery of the iota.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.14.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The seven days of unleavened bread mean that creation needs no outside “leaven”; the whole world is the Lord's Passover.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.14.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The plagues show God rejoicing in the changes of creation; the locusts eating grass mean elements turned into flesh, for “all flesh is grass.”
Refutation of All Heresies 8.14.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus suggests Monoimus's ten-fold reading of the law comes from Aristotle's ten categories.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.15.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Monoimus wrote to Theophrastus: stop seeking God outside and seek him within yourself.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.15.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · By examining one's own mind and involuntary feelings, Monoimus says, one finds God within, one and many.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.15.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Monoimus's teaching comes from Pythagorean geometry and arithmetic; Hippolytus moves on.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.16.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Tatian, Justin's disciple, taught invisible Aeons, called marriage corruption, and denied Adam's salvation.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.17.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hermogenes taught that God made everything out of eternal, unbegotten matter.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.17.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hermogenes said God tamed part of seething matter into the world and left the rest wild, an idea Hippolytus traces to Plato.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.17.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hermogenes confessed Christ's virgin birth and resurrection but said at the ascension he left his body in the sun.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.17.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hermogenes supported his view with Psalm 19's “in the sun he set his tent.”
Refutation of All Heresies 8.18.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Quartodecimans insist on keeping Easter on the fourteenth of Nisan, fearing the law's curse, not seeing that the true Passover is now kept by faith.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.18.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They ignore Paul's warning that keeping one part of the law obliges one to keep it all; otherwise they agree with the church.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.19.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Phrygians (Montanists) follow Montanus, Priscilla, and Maximilla as prophets of the Paraclete and claim to learn more from their books than from Scripture.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.19.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Montanists exalt their prophetesses above the apostles; orthodox on God and Christ, they add new fasts and dietary rules.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.19.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Some Montanists side with the Noetians, saying the Father himself is the Son who was born and died.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.19.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Montanists' many books are worthless and should be ignored by the sound-minded.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.2.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: the Docetae and their debt to natural philosophy.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.20.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Encratites, orthodox about God and Christ, abstain from meat and wine and forbid marriage, more like Cynics than Christians.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.20.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Paul foretold those who would forbid marriage and certain foods, which God created good.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.20.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Paul's words suffice to show that Encratism is a heresy; lesser sects like the Cainites and Ophites are not worth describing.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.20.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus turns to the Noetian heresy, which he calls the cause of all evils.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.3.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: Monoimus and his reliance on poets and mathematicians.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.4.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: Tatian and Hermogenes.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.5.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: the Quartodecimans, who kept Easter on the fourteenth of Nisan.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.6.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: the Montanists (“Phrygians”) and their prophets.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.7.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: the Encratites, whose teaching is not from Scripture.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.8.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus introduces Book 8 with the Lord's saying about the beam and the speck.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.8.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus begins his account of the Docetae, who named themselves from “seeming.”
Refutation of All Heresies 8.8.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Docetae liken the first God to a fig seed, tiny yet infinite, and read the Gospel fig tree story in that light.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.8.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · As a fig tree puts out branches, leaves, and fruit full of seed, so the world came into being.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.8.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Like trunk, leaves, and fruit, three Aeons came from the first God, which the Docetae find in the three words of Deuteronomy.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.8.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · God added nothing to the three Aeons, which supply all things and grew to perfection, while he remains apart.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.8.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The three Aeons, each perfected as ten, make thirty; they differ only by position and hence in power.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.9.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Docetae find the three Aeons in the hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold of the parable of the sower.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.9.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · All the Aeons together begot from the virgin Mary a common offspring, the Savior, equal to the first seed except that he is begotten.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.9.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The intelligible world, perfected, was a light full of forms that shone down into the chaos below.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.9.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Seeing its forms caught in the darkness below, the third Aeon set a firmament under the Aeons.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.9.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Docetae read Genesis 1 as the third Aeon separating light above from darkness below.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.9.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The impress of the third Aeon in the darkness became a living fire, the great Archon of whom Genesis speaks.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.9.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Archon is the fiery God who spoke from the bush, which they interpret as the dark air through which the forms passed.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.9.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Speech, smells, and colors all reach us through the air, the “bush.”
Refutation of All Heresies 9.10.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Noetians say one God is invisible and visible, unbegotten and begotten, immortal and mortal, just as Heraclitus paired opposites.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.10.11Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Noetus taught that the Father, by being born, became his own Son, so that Father and Son are one person under two names at different times.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.10.12Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Cleomenes and his followers say that the one crucified, buried, and raised is himself the God and Father of all.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.10.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Heraclitus says God is all opposites together, day and night, war and peace, which Hippolytus says is the root of Noetus's view.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.10.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Whether or not they read Heraclitus, Noetus's followers teach the same thing.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.11.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus says Callistus, hungry for the episcopate, manipulated the unlearned Bishop Zephyrinus and played both sides, telling each he agreed with them.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.11.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Sabellius listened to Hippolytus but was swayed by Callistus in private, only later seeing through him.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.11.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Callistus had Zephyrinus make ambiguous public statements; when Hippolytus resisted, Callistus called his party “worshippers of two gods.”
Refutation of All Heresies 9.12.15Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Once bishop, Callistus expelled Sabellius to clear himself of suspicion, but Hippolytus calls him a charlatan.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.12.16Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Callistus devised a new teaching: the Word is the Son, and the same is called Father, one indivisible Spirit.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.12.17Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Callistus said Father and Son are one and the same, and that the Spirit incarnate in the virgin is the Father, citing John 14:10.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.12.18Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · For Callistus the visible man is the Son and the Spirit in him is the Father; they are one God and one person, so the Father co-suffered with the Son.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.12.19Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus says Callistus avoids saying the Father suffered but wavers between Sabellius and Theodotus.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.12.20Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus charges that Callistus founded a rival school and was lax, promising forgiveness to any sinner who joined him.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.12.21Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus says Callistus's rule drew people with bad consciences and excommunicates, and that he refused to depose bishops even for mortal sin.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.12.26Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Under Callistus a second baptism was introduced, and his community, which admitted all to communion, took the name Callistians.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.13.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Alcibiades of Apamea came to Rome with a book said to have been received by a righteous man, Elchasai, from the Seres of Parthia.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.13.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The book was said to have been revealed by a gigantic angel, whose measurements Hippolytus reports.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.13.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · A female figure of the same size accompanies the angel; the male is the Son of God, the female the Holy Spirit.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.13.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · 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.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.13.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus says he opposed Alcibiades as a wolf among the sheep that Callistus had scattered.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.13.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus will expose Alcibiades's pretended asceticism and quote his writings.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.14.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Elchasaites require circumcision and the law, and teach that Christ is an ordinary man reborn many times.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.14.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They claim foreknowledge by Pythagorean number-lore.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.14.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Elchasaites practice astrology, magic, and incantations for dog-bites and demon possession.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.15.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The book of Elchasai offers a second baptism for forgiveness to anyone guilty of sexual sins, once they hear the book.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.15.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The baptized must call seven witnesses, heaven, water, holy spirits, angels of prayer, oil, salt, and earth; Hippolytus mocks these “mysteries.”
Refutation of All Heresies 9.15.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The book calls adulterers and false prophets to a second baptism in their clothes.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.15.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · For a rabid dog's bite the book prescribes immediate immersion in a river or spring, fully clothed.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.15.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The bitten person prays and invokes the seven witnesses.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.15.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · He vows before the seven witnesses to avoid sin and is baptized in his clothes.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.16.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The book prescribes repeated cold baths for the sick and possessed, and teaches that some stars are evil.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.16.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The book warns against beginning work or baptizing on days ruled by evil stars.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.16.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Wait until the moon leaves the evil stars before baptizing; and keep the Sabbath.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.16.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The book forbids starting anything on Tuesday and foretells a war of evil northern angels three years after Trajan's conquest of Parthia.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.17.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The book tells its readers to keep its secrets like costly pearls.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.17.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus mocks the book's wisdom as greater than anything the Greek sages learned in Egypt.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.2.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: Noetus followed Heraclitus, not Christ.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.3.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: Callistus and his new heresy, and his life.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.31.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus concludes that he has set out all doctrines of Greeks and barbarians and shown the heretics' borrowings.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.31.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · After nine books of refutation, Hippolytus will set out the doctrine of the truth in the tenth, so that readers may be saved.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.4.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: Elchasai, who claims to keep the law but practices Gnosticism, astrology, and magic.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.6.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus now faces the greatest task: refuting the heresies of his own day, which have troubled the church everywhere.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.7.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Noetus of Smyrna founded a heresy from Heraclitus; his disciple Epigonus brought it to Rome.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.7.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Cleomenes spread the teaching in Rome under Bishop Zephyrinus, whom Hippolytus calls ignorant and greedy, with Callistus as his adviser.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.7.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus says he repeatedly forced Zephyrinus and Callistus to confess the truth, but they soon fell back.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.8.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus will set out Heraclitus's views to show that the Noetians' doctrines are his, not Christ's.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.8.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Though Heraclitus was covered in the earlier Philosophumena, Hippolytus presents him again for a closer comparison.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.9.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Heraclitus calls the All both divisible and indivisible, generated and ungenerated, and Father and Son.
On Prayer 24.5Origen · ca. 233–234 · The Lord's Prayer uses imperatives that express wishes; Origen refutes Tatian, who wrongly took God's “Let there be light” as a prayer rather than a command.
On Prayer 27.6Origen · ca. 233–234 · Simple but sound teaching is better than brilliant teaching that denies that the Father of Jesus gave the law and the prophets; we should ask the Father for the living bread.
On Prayer 29.10Origen · ca. 233–234 · Even reading Scripture is a temptation: many have misread it and invented a false Father or Son, worshiping a figment instead of the true God.
On Prayer 29.12Origen · ca. 233–234 · Paul says God “gave up” sinners to their desires; this refutes those who divide the Godhead into a just God of the law and a merely good Father who never judges.
On Prayer 29.13Origen · ca. 233–234 · God governs each free soul toward its eternal life, sometimes letting sinners have their fill of sin so that they come to hate it, as he gave Israel quail until they loathed it.
On Prayer 5.1Origen · ca. 233–234 · Almost no one who believes in God's providence rejects prayer, but some heretics who reject baptism and the Eucharist have been persuaded that one should not pray.
On the Trinity 10Novatian · ca. 240–250 · The heretics' Christ, who rejects the Old Testament and comes only in appearance, is a fiction; the true Christ took real flesh from Mary, died, and rose in that body as the pattern of our resurrection.
On the Trinity 11Novatian · ca. 240–250 · Against those who say Christ was only a man, Scripture shows him both man and God: his weaknesses prove his humanity, and his mighty works and titles prove his divinity.
On the Trinity 12Novatian · ca. 240–250 · Hosea, Isaiah, and Habakkuk speak of God saving, coming, and working signs, which Christ fulfilled; so those who call Christ a mere man must either confess him God the Son or fall into Sabellianism.
On the Trinity 14Novatian · ca. 240–250 · A series of questions shows that a mere man could not have made the world, come from heaven, be present everywhere when called upon, be the object of hope, precede John the Baptist, or give life as the Father does.
On the Trinity 15Novatian · ca. 240–250 · Christ's sayings that he came from above, proceeded from God, gives immortality, existed before Abraham, and is one with the Father prove him God, yet the Son and not the Father.
On the Trinity 16Novatian · ca. 240–250 · Christ's promises of eternal life to believers, the Paraclete's receiving from him, his joining himself to the Father as object of faith, and his glory before the world prove him God, not a mere man or only predestined.
On the Trinity 18Novatian · ca. 240–250 · The God who appeared to Abraham at Mamre and the Angel who spoke to Hagar, called both angel and God, cannot be the invisible Father or a mere angel; he is the Son, who accustoms human eyes to see God.
On the Trinity 2Novatian · ca. 240–250 · God contains all things, has neither beginning nor end, and exceeds every thought and word; whatever we say of him names something of his rather than himself.
On the Trinity 20Novatian · ca. 240–250 · If angels, unjust judges, and Moses can be called “gods” without blasphemy, much more can Christ, who is Lord over them all and received the divine name without measure.
On the Trinity 21Novatian · ca. 240–250 · Christ's power to raise his own body, his title “firstborn of all creation,” and his putting off and on of the flesh show that the Word who took up a man is both God and man.
On the Trinity 22Novatian · ca. 240–250 · Philippians 2 shows Christ in the form of God, obedient to the Father, emptying himself by taking a servant's form and receiving the name above every name; a mere man is not emptied by being born, so Christ is God.
On the Trinity 23Novatian · ca. 240–250 · Even heretics who call Christ the Father, or who deny his flesh, testify by their error to his evident divinity; the Scriptures show him God as the Son and man as the Mediator who unites God and man.
On the Trinity 24Novatian · ca. 240–250 · Heretics use Luke 1:35 to identify the man born of Mary with the Son of God; but its “also” shows that the Son of God is principally the Word who came down, and that the man he took up became Son of God by union with him.
On the Trinity 25Novatian · ca. 240–250 · To the objection that if Christ is God then God died, Novatian answers that only the man in Christ died: as death cannot kill even the soul, much less can it touch the divinity of the Word.
On the Trinity 26Novatian · ca. 240–250 · Against those who say Christ is the Father because he is God, many texts show the Son as a second person after the Father, sent by him, obedient to him, and receiving all things from him.
On the Trinity 27Novatian · ca. 240–250 · “I and the Father are one” means one in concord, not one person: Christ says “one thing,” “we are,” and calls himself the Son sanctified and sent by the Father, as Paul and Apollos are two yet one.
On the Trinity 28Novatian · ca. 240–250 · “He who has seen me has seen the Father” does not make Christ the Father: Scripture speaks of the certain future as done, and whoever sees the Son, the Father's image, is on the way to seeing the invisible Father.
On the Trinity 29Novatian · ca. 240–250 · The rule of faith next requires belief in the Holy Spirit, promised by the prophets and given by Christ, who adorns the church with gifts, gives the new birth in baptism, sanctifies believers, and guards the church's truth.
On the Trinity 30Novatian · ca. 240–250 · Both Sabellians and adoptionists err by thinking “one God” excludes Christ's divinity; but as calling Christ Lord, Paul teacher, and Christ good does not undo the one Lord, Teacher, and Good, so Christ's being God does not undo the one God.
On the Trinity 8Novatian · ca. 240–250 · The church worships the God whom all creation praises, who guided sacred history from paradise to Christ and the apostles, and whose providence reaches every smallest thing, as Ezekiel's vision of his chariot shows.
Against Celsus 1.57Origen · ca. 248 · Jesus is Son of God in a unique sense, the source of all adoption; the would-be messiahs Theudas, Judas the Galilean, Dositheus, and Simon Magus all came to nothing, as Gamaliel foresaw.
Against Celsus 1.69Origen · ca. 248 · Christ truly took a human body, born of a woman and tempted like us but without sin; Celsus's objection rests on his belief in the Panthera story.
Against Celsus 2.1Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus's Jew accuses Jewish Christians of abandoning the law, but Jewish believers such as the Ebionites keep it, as Peter did for a long time and as Paul did among Jews.
Against Celsus 2.16Origen · ca. 248 · Origen answers Celsus that Jesus' death did not contradict his teaching, that his suffering and resurrection were real rather than apparent, and that he is immortal as the one risen from the dead.
Against Celsus 2.27Origen · ca. 248 · Origen answers Celsus's charge that Christians rewrote the Gospels: only heretics such as the followers of Marcion and Valentinus did so, and they no more discredit Christianity than bad philosophers discredit philosophy.
Against Celsus 2.3Origen · ca. 248 · Jewish Christians like Paul constantly appeal to the law, reading it spiritually; Celsus, writing as an enemy, did not trouble to distinguish the different groups.
Against Celsus 3.10Origen · ca. 248 · Origen answers Celsus's claim that Christians were few and united at first: even then crowds of thousands, including women and children, followed Jesus, and being few says nothing about unwillingness to persuade all.
Against Celsus 3.11Origen · ca. 248 · Origen replies that Christians disagreed from the beginning, as the apostolic dispute over Gentile believers and Paul's letters show, so divisions are not a later corruption caused by numbers.
Against Celsus 3.12Origen · ca. 248 · Origen answers Celsus's taunt about Christian divisions: every serious and useful discipline, such as medicine, philosophy, and Judaism, has its schools, so heresies are no argument against Christianity.
Against Celsus 3.13Origen · ca. 248 · Origen cites Paul's word that heresies must exist so that the approved may be revealed, and notes that Socrates' and Plato's schools also divided; groups like the Ophites and Cainites, who reject Jesus altogether, are not Christian at all.
Against Celsus 4.19Origen · ca. 248 · Christians hold that Christ's incarnation was real, not an illusion; yet even on Celsus's terms, a healing deception would not be absurd, since Christ came for sinners and enemies to make them God's friends.
Against Celsus 4.2Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus mocks both Christians and Jews for expecting a divine judge to come to earth, but he never engages the actual prophecies about Christ; and Jews do not say the coming Messiah is God.
Against Celsus 5.54Origen · ca. 248 · Only heretics like Apelles, Marcion's pupil, say Jesus alone came from God; Celsus garbled his story of the fallen angels from the Book of Enoch, which the churches do not accept as divine Scripture.
Against Celsus 5.61Origen · ca. 248 · Divisions among Christian sects no more discredit Christianity than rival schools discredit philosophy or medicine; Origen distinguishes the church from Valentinians, Gnostics, and the two kinds of Ebionites.
Against Celsus 5.62Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus lists many sects, including Simonians, who are not Christians at all since they exalt Simon rather than Jesus, and others Origen has never even encountered.
Against Celsus 5.63Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus says Christian sects curse and hate one another; true followers of Jesus bless those who revile them, try to win back those in error, and only avoid a persistent heretic, as Paul commands.
Against Celsus 5.64Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus garbled Christian polemical terms, such as 'seared consciences' from 1 Timothy, and claims all sects quote 'the world is crucified to me'; as if Paul had written nothing else.
Against Celsus 5.65Origen · ca. 248 · Not all sects quote Paul, since the Ebionites and Encratites reject him; Celsus next claims that Christianity's best ideas were said better by the philosophers, which Origen will answer in Book 6.
Against Celsus 6.11Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus asks how a seeker could choose among rival Christian saviours, but Origen replies that only Jesus is preached worldwide as Son of God, while pretenders like Simon Magus, Dositheus, Theudas, and Judas the Galilean came to nothing.
Against Celsus 6.23Origen · ca. 248 · For a deeper teaching on the soul's ascent Origen points to Ezekiel's temple gates, the heavenly Jerusalem of Revelation, and Israel's camps in Numbers, and insists Scripture never mentions seven heavens.
Against Celsus 6.24Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus compares Mithraism with a Christian “diagram,” which Origen identifies as belonging to the obscure Ophite sect, a teaching he has never found anyone actually holding.
Against Celsus 6.25Origen · ca. 248 · Origen describes the Ophite diagram, with its world-soul called Leviathan, and explains the biblical meaning of Gehenna, the Valley of Hinnom, as pointing to purifying punishment.
Against Celsus 6.26Origen · ca. 248 · Origen says the deeper teaching on punishment is not for everyone, since most people need the simple fear of eternal punishment, and he refuses to defend the Ophite diagram, which no Christian holds.
Against Celsus 6.27Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus invents a rite of the Christian “seal” and says Christians call the Creator accursed; Origen rejects this as slander like the old tales of child-eating and orgies spread about Christians.
Against Celsus 6.28Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus confuses Christians with the Ophites, who side with the serpent against the Creator, curse Jesus, and cannot be called Christians at all.
Against Celsus 6.29Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus accuses Christians of both honouring and cursing the Creator; Origen answers that Christians always worship the one God of the Jews, and that the resurrection body is not the same flesh and blood that was sown.
Against Celsus 6.30Origen · ca. 248 · Origen compares Celsus's list of seven animal-faced ruling demons with the Ophite diagram he himself had seen, to show that these are not Christian teachings.
Against Celsus 6.31Origen · ca. 248 · Origen quotes the passwords that the Ophites taught their members to say to each of the seven archons as the soul ascends through their gates.
Against Celsus 6.32Origen · ca. 248 · Origen explains that he describes these Ophite teachings only to expose them, and that their archons mix names from magic with Hebrew names that all belong to the one God.
Against Celsus 6.33Origen · ca. 248 · Origen describes more of the Ophite diagram, including a picture of the flaming sword guarding paradise, and says he has given their formulas to show how alien they are to Christianity.
Against Celsus 6.34Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus mocks a jumble of sayings he attributes to Christians, including resurrection “from the tree” because Jesus was crucified and a carpenter; Origen says he is stringing together half-heard scraps from various sects.
Against Celsus 6.35Origen · ca. 248 · Origen tries to trace Celsus's jumbled phrases to particular sects, such as the Valentinians' fallen Wisdom, and suspects Celsus invented some of them.
Against Celsus 6.37Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus's jibe about a “cliff of life” fits only the inventors of the Ophite myths, not the Church, whose teachings are understood by those who give their lives to studying Scripture.
Against Celsus 6.38Origen · ca. 248 · Origen describes further inscriptions in the Ophite diagram, such as circles labelled Father and Son, Love, Life, and Wisdom, to show that he knows it better than Celsus and rejects it.
Against Celsus 6.51Origen · ca. 248 · Origen declines to repeat his earlier commentary on the six days and dismisses Celsus's jibes about the Creator borrowing light as attacks on heretical sects that Christians themselves reject.
Against Celsus 6.52Origen · ca. 248 · Origen leaves aside the question of the world's origin and rejects as heretical, not Christian, the idea of a lower Creator to whom the high God lent his Spirit, which Celsus attacks.
Against Celsus 6.53Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus confuses the church's arguments against Marcion with Christianity itself, and then charges Christians with making God the author of evil, a charge that applies equally to his own views.
Against Celsus 6.74Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus rehearses Marcion's views and ridicules the idea of rival sons of rival gods fighting like quails, but Origen says such buffoonery only shows that Celsus lacks serious arguments.
Against Celsus 7.2Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus claims that Christians who keep the God of the Jews can only fall back on prophecy, and Origen turns to defend the prophets.
Against Celsus 7.25Origen · ca. 248 · Jesus' command to turn the other cheek is not opposed to the Old Testament, which already teaches it in Lamentations; the same God speaks in both.
Against Celsus 7.40Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus confuses Christians with the Ophite sect, whose magical names for the doorkeepers of the heavens Christians reject; those sectarians do not die for their faith, as Christians do.
Against Celsus 8.12Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus charges Christians with worshipping a recent man; Origen answers that Father and Son are one, two in subsistence but one in concord and will, and the Son who is the Truth existed before Abraham.
Against Celsus 8.14Origen · ca. 248 · Christians know from Scripture that Jesus is truly the Son of the Father, the radiance of his glory; he is the leader of peace, not sedition, and the Father is greater than the Son.
Against Celsus 8.15Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus quotes an obscure “heavenly dialogue” claiming the Son of Man is lord of God; Origen replies that no Christian he knows says this, since the Son is inferior to the Father and rules only those who willingly obey him.
Against Celsus 8.16Origen · ca. 248 · The sayings Celsus quotes come from another heresy, not from the church; Christians worship the Creator, not a new god invented as greater than him, and serve only the Son, the Word of God.
On the Lord's Prayer 24Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 252 · God looked at Abel's heart, not his gift; Abel became the first martyr, while one who hates his brother is not saved even by martyrdom.
On the Lord's Prayer 30Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 252 · Christ prayed for us, and above all that his people might be one as he and the Father are one.
On the Lapsed 33Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Some lapsed, blinded by God's judgment, refuse penance and, joining schismatics, take for themselves a false peace and communion.
On the Lapsed 34Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Believers should avoid those who promise the lapsed salvation without penance, for this false teaching is deadlier than persecution.
On the Unity of the Catholic Church 1Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Cyprian warns that the devil is most dangerous when he attacks secretly, under the appearance of peace.
On the Unity of the Catholic Church 10Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · God permits heresies to test the faithful; schismatics make themselves bishops without lawful ordination.
On the Unity of the Catholic Church 11Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Like the false prophets and broken cisterns in Jeremiah, schismatics offer a baptism that does not cleanse but defiles.
On the Unity of the Catholic Church 12Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Christ's promise to be with 'two or three' applies only to those praying in unity within the church, not to schismatics.
On the Unity of the Catholic Church 13Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · God accepts neither prayer nor sacrifice from those at odds with their brothers, so schismatics cannot expect Christ's presence.
On the Unity of the Catholic Church 14Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · A schismatic who dies for the name is not a martyr, since without charity and unity even martyrdom profits nothing.
On the Unity of the Catholic Church 15Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Miracles do not save without obedience; Christ summed up the law in love, which schismatics destroy.
On the Unity of the Catholic Church 16Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · The spread of heresy and schism fulfils Paul's prophecy of the last days.
On the Unity of the Catholic Church 17Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Believers must shun schismatics, who set up a rival altar and profane the Lord's sacrifice.
On the Unity of the Catholic Church 18Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Korah, Uzziah, and Aaron's sons were punished for usurping the priesthood, as schismatics will be.
On the Unity of the Catholic Church 19Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Schism is worse than lapsing under persecution, since the lapsed repent and harm only themselves, while schismatics mislead many.
On the Unity of the Catholic Church 22Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · As Judas's betrayal did not discredit the apostles, so the fall of some confessors does not discredit the faithful majority.
On the Unity of the Catholic Church 23Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Cyprian begs those misled by schism to return, for there is one God, one Christ, one church, and nothing cut off from it can live.
On the Unity of the Catholic Church 24Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Christ left peace as our inheritance; the sons of God must be peacemakers.
On the Unity of the Catholic Church 3Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · The devil, defeated by Christ, invented heresies and schisms to deceive people under the Christian name.
On the Unity of the Catholic Church 4Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Christ built the church on Peter to show its unity; the other apostles had equal honour and power, but the church begins from one and is one.
On the Unity of the Catholic Church 5Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · The bishops must uphold unity: the episcopate is one, held jointly by each, and the church is one like a sun with many rays or a spring with many streams.
On the Unity of the Catholic Church 6Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · The church is Christ's faithful bride and our mother; outside her, as outside Noah's ark, there is no salvation, for her unity reflects the unity of God.
On the Unity of the Catholic Church 7Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Christ's seamless tunic, not torn at the cross, signifies the church's unity, unlike Ahijah's torn garment, which signified Israel's division.
On the Unity of the Catholic Church 8Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · There is one flock and one shepherd; like Rahab's house and the Passover lamb eaten in one house, salvation is found only within the one church.
On the Unity of the Catholic Church 9Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · The Spirit came as a dove, a sign of the simplicity and peace the church needs; the good never leave the church, only the chaff.