The Treatise on the Apostolic Tradition of St Hippolytus of Rome, Bishop and Martyr


Book Description

First Published in 1995. This book first appeared in 1937, and includes the Apostolic Tradition of St Hippolytus which is generally recognised as the single more illuminating single source of evidence on the inner life and religious polity of the early Christian Church. With a revised preface as well as the original first edition preface.







On Christ and Antichrist


Book Description

Hippolytus of Rome (170–235) was the most important 3rd-century theologian in the Christian Church in Rome, where he was probably born. Photios I of Constantinople describes him in his Bibliotheca (cod. 121) as a disciple of Irenaeus, who was said to be a disciple of Polycarp, and from the context of this passage it is supposed that he suggested that Hippolytus himself so styled himself. However, this assertion is doubtful. He came into conflict with the popes of his time and seems to have headed a schismatic group as a rival Bishop of Rome. For that reason he is sometimes considered the first antipope. He opposed the Roman bishops who softened the penitential system to accommodate the large number of new pagan converts. However, he was very probably reconciled to the Church when he died as a martyr. Starting in the 4th century, various legends arose about him, identifying him as a priest of the Novatianist schism or as a soldier converted by Saint Lawrence. He has also been confused with another martyr of the same name. Ironically, it is Pius IV who identifies him as "Saint Hippolytus, Bishop of Pontus" who was martyred in the reign of Alexander Severus through his inscription on a statue found at the Church of St. Lawrence in Rome and kept at the Vatican as photographed and published in Brunsen.




St. Irenaeus


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When the Church Was Young


Book Description

If the word trinity isn’t in Scripture, why is it such an important part of our faith? And if the Bible can be interpreted in many ways, how do we know what to make of it? And who decided what should be in the Bible anyway? The Church Fathers provide the answers. These brilliant, embattled, and sometimes eccentric men defined the biblical canon, hammered out the Creed, and gave us our understanding of sacraments and salvation. It is they who preserved for us the rich legacy of the early Church. D’Ambrosio dusts off the dry theology and brings you the exciting stories and great heroes such as Ambrose, Augustine, Basil, Athanasius, Chrysostom, and Jerome. This page-turner will inspire and challenge you with the lives and insights of these seminal teachers from when the Church was young.




Homilies on Numbers


Book Description

Origen was one of the most influential pre-Nicene church fathers, whose exegetical method shaped much of subsequent interpretation of the Old Testament. Some of his theological speculations were condemned in the 6th cenutry, but his influence as a Christian scholar and Old Testament exegete remain undiminished. This book offers a fresh, contemporary translation of Origen's 28 homilies on the book of Numbers.







Hippolytus Between East and West


Book Description

Who was the Church Father Hippolytus? The answer to this question has eluded scholars for centuries. His true identity was unknown even to Eusebius, the church historian, in the fourth century and to subsequent writers of the ancient Church. Yet his corpus was largely preserved through theearly centuries and influenced numerous theologians and exegetes, including Origen, Ambrose, and Jerome. Using ancient, Byzantine, and modern sources, the present study charts the growth of the Hippolytus question from its inception to the present day. It traces how early speculations led to theformation of various traditions of a prolific and controversial writer.This book is the first thorough analysis of the Hippolytus question in English for over a hundred years. Drawing on leading scholarship of the twentieth century, it untangles millennia of theory and points to the evidence of the Asian roots of the great biblical commentator known as SaintHippolytus. It suggests that this writer, so influential on the rethinking of western liturgical practice in the twentieth century, is best viewed as a scion of the East.