Refutation of All Heresies 1.19.20

Authorship disputed: The work names no author. Book 1 was long printed among Origen's works as the Philosophumena; after books 4–10 were found in a manuscript from Mount Athos (published 1851), it was assigned to Hippolytus, the usual view today, though some scholars ascribe it to another Roman writer of the same circle. Books 2 and 3 are lost, and book 4 lacks its beginning.

Summary: Plato taught that wrongdoing is involuntary, arising from ignorance of the good.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 36

Οἱ δὲ οὕτω τὸ καθʼ εἱμαρμένην, οἱ δὲ καὶ τὸ ἐφʼ ἡμῖν· ἀκούσια δέ φησιν εἶναι τὰ ἁμαρτήματα· εἰς γὰρ τὸ κάλλιστον τῶν ἐν ἡμῖν, ὅπερ ἐστὶν ἡ ψυχή, οὐκ ἄν τινα τὸ κακὸν παραδέξασθαι, τουτέστι τὴν ἀδικίαν· κατὰ ἄγνοιαν δὲ καὶ σφάλμα τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ, οἰομένους καλόν τι ποιεῖν, ἐπὶ τὸ κακὸν ἔρχεσθαι.

English · Claude translation

Some take him thus on what is by fate, others on what is in our power. He says that sins are involuntary; for no one would admit evil, that is injustice, into the finest thing in us, which is the soul; but through ignorance and missing the good, thinking they are doing something fine, people come to evil.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 36 · Ludwig Duncker and F. G. Schneidewin, eds., S. Hippolyti episcopi et martyris Refutationis omnium haeresium librorum decem quae supersunt (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1859); section divisions from Paul Wendland, ed., Hippolytus Werke 3: Refutatio omnium haeresium, GCS 26 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1916) · Greek text: L. Duncker and F. G. Schneidewin, Refutationis omnium haeresium (Göttingen, 1859), digitized by the Perseus Digital Library; section divisions from P. Wendland (GCS 26, 1916), digitized by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin); both CC BY-SA 4.0

Text

As printed in Duncker–Schneidewin. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.

Translation

Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Duncker–Schneidewin; made independently of existing English translations.

Compare

Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5 (1886) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made) · Its chapter numbers differ from the standard (Wendland) numbering used here.

Topics

Ethics

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.19.20 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/19/20/).

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

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.19.20 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/19/20/).