Philosophumena; or, The refutation of all heresies, Volume I — David Hume — John Shaqi
Philosophumena; or, The refutation of all heresies, Volume I
David Hume · en
This has led some critics to conclude that the summary is by another
hand. There is nothing in the literary manners of the age to compel us
to reject this supposition, and similar cases have been quoted. The
evidence of style is, however, against it, and it is unlikely that
if the summarizer were any other person than Hippolytus, he would
have taken up Hippolytus’ personal quarrel against Callistus. Yet in
the text of Book X before us the charge of heresy against Callistus
is repeated, although perhaps with less asperity than in Book IX,
the accusations against his morals being omitted. Nor is it easy to
dissociate from Hippolytus the really eloquent appeal to men of all
nations to escape the terrors of Tartarus and gain an immortality of
bliss by becoming converted to the Doctrine of Truth with which the
Book ends, after an excursion into Hebrew Chronology, a subject which
always had great fascination for Hippolytus. Although the matter is not
beyond doubt, it would appear, therefore, that the summary, like the
rest of the book, is by Hippolytus’ own hand.
In these circumstances there is but one theory that in the opinion
of the present writer will reconcile all the conflicting facts. This
is that the foundation of our text _is_ the synopsis that Hippolytus
made, as Photius tells us, after receiving instruction from Irenæus;
that those notes were, as Hippolytus himself says, “set forth” by him
possibly in the form of lectures, equally possibly in writing, but in
any case a long time before our text was compiled; and that when his
rivalry with Callistus became acute, he thought of republishing these
discourses and bringing them up to date by adding to them the Noetian
and other non-Gnostic heresies which were then making headway among the
Christian community, together with the facts about the divinatory and
magical tricks which had come to his knowledge during his long stay in
Rome. We may next conjecture that, after the greater part of his book
was written, chance threw in his way the documents belonging to the
Naassene and other Ophite sects, which went back to the earliest days
of Christianity and were probably in Hippolytus’ time on the verge
of extinction.[62] He had before determined to omit these sects as
of slight importance,[63] but now perceiving the interest of the new
documents, he hastily incorporated them in his book immediately after
his account of the magicians, so that they might appear as what he with
some truth said they were, to wit, the fount and source of all later
Gnosticism. To do this, he had to displace the account of the Jewish
and Samaritan sects with which all the heresiologists of the time
thought it necessary to begin their histories. He probably felt the
less reluctance in doing so, because the usual mention of these sects
as “heresies” in some sort contradicted his pet theory, which was that
the Gnostic tenets were not a mere perversion of Christian teaching,