Refutation of All Heresies 1.19.23

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: For Plato evil is not made by God but is a falling away from the good.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 36–38

Κακοῦ δὲ φύσιν οὔτε ὑπὸ θεοῦ γενέσθαι, οὔτε καθʼ αὑτὴν ὑπόστασιν ἔχειν, ἀλλὰ κατʼ ἐναντίωσιν καὶ παρακολούθησιν τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ γενέσθαι, ἢ καθʼ ὑπερβολὴν ἢ κατὰ μείωσιν, ὡς περὶ τῶν ἀρετῶν προείπομεν. Ὁ μὲν οὖν Πλάτων, καθὼς προείπομεν, συναγαγὼν τὰ τρία μέρη τῆς κατὰ πάντα φιλοσοφίας, οὕτως ἐφιλοσόφησεν.

English · Claude translation

The nature of evil was neither made by God nor has subsistence of its own, but comes about by opposition to and as a consequence of the good, either by excess or by deficiency, as we said above about the virtues. So Plato, as we said before, bringing together the three parts of philosophy in every respect, philosophized in this way.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 36–38 · 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. 1.19.23 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/19/23/).

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Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 1.19.23 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/1/19/23/).