Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume V/Hippolytus/The Extant Works and Fragments of Hippolytus/Dogmatical and Historical/Against Beron and Helix/Fragment IV

by Hippolytus

Fragment IV.

For, in the view of apostles and prophets and teachers, the mystery of the divine incarnation has been distinguished as having two points of contemplation natural to it,^[1] distinct in all things, inasmuch as on the one hand it is the subsistence of perfect deity, and on the other is demonstrative of full humanity. As long, therefore,^[2] as the Word is acknowledged to be in substance one, of one energy, there shall never in any way be known a movement^[3] in the two. For while God, who is essentially ever-existent, became by His infinite power, according to His will, sinless man, He is what He was, in all wherein God is known; and what He became, He is in all wherein man is known and can be recognised. In both aspects of Himself He never falls out of Himself,^[4] in His divine activities and in His human alike, preserving in both relations His own essentially unchangeable perfection.

Footnotes

1. διττὴν καὶ διαφορὰν ἔχον διέγνωσται τὴν ἐν πᾶσι φυσικὴν θεωρίαν.
2. The text goes, ἕως ἂν οὐχ, which is adopted by Combefisius. But Capperonnier and Migne read οὖν for οὐχ, as we have rendered it.
3. Change, κίνησις.
4. μένει ἀνέκπτωτος.