Sophia Scriptura

Refutation of All Heresies 10.33.9

Hippolytus of Rome · Refutation of All Heresies · ca. 222–235 · Rome · Read in context

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: Humans were made with free will; evil is not a created thing but arises when a free being chooses it.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 540

Ὁ δὲ γενόμενος ἄνθρωπος ζῷον αὐτεξούσιον ἦν, οὐκ ἄρχοντα νοῦν ἔχον, οὐκ ἐπινοίᾳ καὶ ἐξουσίᾳ καὶ δυνάμει πάντων κρατοῦν, ἀλλὰ δοῦλον καὶ πάντα ἔχον τὰ ἐναντία· ὃς τῷ αὐτεξούσιον ὑπάρχειν τὸ κακὸν ἐπιγεννᾷ, ἐκ συμβεβηκότος ἀποτελούμενον, [ὂν] μὲν οὐδέν, ἐὰν μὴ ποιῇς· ἐν γὰρ τῷ θέλειν καὶ νομίζειν τι κακὸν τὸ κακὸν ὀνομάζεται, οὐκ ὂν ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς, ἀλλʼ ἐπιγινόμενον.

English · Claude translation

And the human being who came into being was a living being with free will, not having a ruling mind, not mastering all things by thought and authority and power, but a servant, and having all the opposites; who, by being free, brings evil into being, which is produced as an accident, being nothing if you do not do it. For evil is named in the willing and considering of something evil; it was not from the beginning, but comes into being afterward.

About this passage

Source
Duncker–Schneidewin, 540 · 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

Notes

Translation notes

  • αὐτεξούσιος is rendered “having free will.”

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 10.33.9 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/33/9/).

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Plain text
Hippolytus, Haer. 10.33.9 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/10/33/9/).

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