Hippolytus of Rome

• Ancient sources show confliction about Hippolytus’ identity.
• A learned and cultivated person whose heritage derived from the Greek-speaking East, Hippolytus became a leading theologian in the Church at Rome.
• He found himself in sharp disagreement with the bishops Zephyrinus and Callistus. When Bishop Callistus relaxed the treatment of penitents who had been guilty of mortal sin, the austere and ambitious Hippolytus accused him of having departed from the tradition of the primitive Church by his leniency. He also accused Callistus of being a Sabellianist and a heretic.
• Hippolytus, on the other hand, went too far and defended a theology of the Logos which had subordinationistic tendencies. He described the generation of the Word from the Father as a progressive development in three periods and taught that the Logos appeared as a person only later, at the time and in the way determined by the Father.
• The following passage highlights his heretical Christology: “There was nothing contemporaneous with God…All thjngs were in Him, and He was the All. When He willed, and as He willed, He manifested His Word in the times determined by Him, and by Him He made all things.”
• Hippolytus and some of his followers separated from the Church; he was elected bishop of Rome by a small but influential circle and thus became the first anti-pope.

• The most likely explanation for his designation in mainly eastern sources as a bishop (e.g., Eusebius, HE 6.20) is that he became the bishop of a schismatic community.
• In 235, Emperor Maximinus Thrax exiled both Hippolytus and bishop Pontianus to Sardinia. Before they were killed they were reconciled with the Pope, for Bishop Fabian (236-250) brought the two bodies back to Rome to be buried with honor by the Church on the same day.
• Since he was a schismatic and the last prominent writer of the Roman Church to use Greek, his works suffered much in transmission often preserved only in translations.
• Hippolytus resembled Irenaeus in theology, Origen in scholarship, and Tertullian in attitudes, but was inferior to all three in originality and achievement. His debt to Irenaeus’ theology is seen especially in his doctrine of salvation: Christ took on flesh and reversed the experience of Adam in order to confer immortality on the human race.
• Hippolytus clashed with Callistus on Christology and on the nature of the Church and forgiveness. The Word (Christ) was distinguished from the Father in such a way that Callistus accused him of believing in two gods. Hippolytus wanted a church of the pure and took a rigorist position against forgiving those guilty of serious sins after receiving baptism.

1. The most important work ascribed to Hippolytus is the Philosophumena (Refutation of All Heresies ), which finds the origin of Christian heresies in the philosophical schools of the Greeks. 2. The Syntagma (Against All Heresies): Against 32 heresies; composed long before his Philosophumena. 3. A treatise On Christ and Antichrist. 4. Exegetical Treatises

• Commentary on Daniel, preserved in Slavonic, is the earliest Orthodox commentary to survive in its entirety.
• Commentary on the Canticle of Canticles.
• On the Blessing of Jacob.
• On the Blessing of Moses.
• The Story of David and Goliath.
• On the Psalms. 5. Chronological Treatises
• The Chronicle.
• The Determination of the Date of Easter. 6. Homilies
• On the Passover.
• On the Praise of the Lord Our Savior.
• Homily on the Heresy of Noetus.
• Demonstration Against the Jews. 7. The Apostolic Tradition
• The recovery of Hippolytus’ Apostolic Tradition

from the later church-order literature that incorporated it has given valuable information on ordination ministries in the Church, the catechumenate, Baptism, Eucharist, the agape and other church practices.

• In his Apostolic Tradition Hippolytus wrote: If you are tempted, reverently sign yourself on the forehead. For this sign of the passion is displayed against the Devil, if it is made in faith and not to please people, but through knowledge, putting it forward like a breastplate. For if the Adversary sees the power of the Spirit…being outwardly demonstrated in the likeness of baptism, he will flee away trembling. 8. Lost Writings
• On the Universe, the Greeks and Plato.
• Against the Heresy of Artemon.
• On the Resurrection.
• Exhortation to Severina.
• Against Marcion.
• On the Gospel of John and the Apocalypse. 9. Against Gaius.