HADES OF HIPPOLYTUS OR OF TERTULLIAN? THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FRAGMENT DE UNIVERSO

BY

C. E. HILL

The variously-titled fragment De Universo found in the Sacra Parallela of (pseudo) John Damascene' is today nearly without excep- tion ascribed to Hippolytus of Rome.' It will be the purpose of this paper, however, first of all to show that the fragment's doctrine of the of the righteous is radically opposed to that found in the authentic' works of Hippolytus,' secondly to uncover other discrepancies which together weigh quite heavily against Hippolytan authorship and finally to offer another name, already disclosed in our title, which may be connected much more appropriately with the frag- ment De Universo.

I

In the view of the author of De Universo, all the dead, righteous and unrighteous alike, are 'detained' in the subterranean until the time of the resurrection of the body. The righteous there inhabit a plea- sant compartment, the , where they may con- template the blessings in their view and await the 'rest and eternal revival in heaven which succeed this location'. Separated from these by 'a deep and vast abyss', the wicked are dragged to a lower section of hades where they endure ghastly torments anticipatory of their ultimate ruin. The significant point for our study so far is that redeemed and non-redeemed alike are to be found in the until the last day. When we turn to Hippolytus, however, we find that in his view Christ's work of salvation has penetrated to the depths of hades, violently disrupting its demographics. In his On the Great Song frag- 5 ment 1 he comments,

' He who drew out of the nethermost hades the man firstformed of the earth, lost and held by the bonds of ; he who came down from 106

above and bore upward («vEVEYx«S)him who was below unto the things above; he who becomes the evangelist of the dead and the redeemer of and the resurrection of the buried; he it was who had become the helper of the conquered man...The heavenly one who calls the earthly (one) unto the things above; the well-born one who wills through his own obe- dience to set free the slave; the one who turned man into , when destroyed in the earth and become the food of serpents. And having been suspended on the tree he made him (man) lord over him who had con- quered and on this account he was found through the tree a victory- bearer. I

It is clear from this that the descensus of Christ into hades actually effected a release, a 'drawing out' of Adam, and presumably of others as well, and a bearing aloft to heaven.' Though it is true that Hippolytus often speaks of Christ's own ascension to heaven in terms of his pre- -- senting 'man', i.e. his own human nature, to God, by mentioning here the rescue of the individual Adam (a controverted issue since Tatian had denied salvation to the first sinner) Hippolytus shows that he, like many of his predecessors,8 held to a storming of hades by Christ. Christ's rescue of Adam 'from the deepest pit of Hades' is again proclaimed in De David et Goliath 11.1 Maintaining in his treatment of Dan. 9.24 (Commentary on Daniel IV.33.4) that Christ in his first advent loosed what was until then sealed up, Hippolytus says, 'As many, therefore, as had ensnared and bound, these the Lord, when he came, loosed from the bonds of death, having bound the one who was strong against us, but having set humanity free. As also Isaiah says, "Then he will say to the men in " bonds, 'Come forth', and to those in darkness, 'Show yourselves' (Isa. 49.9)'.'° A comparison with the passage quoted above from On the Great Song would suggest that those who were in the 'bonds of death' were deceased and in hades." I Consistent with this view of a transferral of the ancients from hades to heaven is Hippolytus's belief that the righteous of the Christian era are no longer subject to the hold of the underworld but instead rise to heaven to be with Christ. In Comm. Dan. 1.21.4, 5 Hippolytus expounds upon Susanna's cry that it is better for her to fall prey to the false charges of the wicked elders than to acquiesce to their lusts and thus to sin against God:

For those who are brought forward for the sake of the name of Christ, if they do what is commanded by men, die to God but continue to live in the world; while if they do not do what is commanded by men they will not