Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume V/Hippolytus/The Refutation of All Heresies/Book VII/Part 23

by Hippolytus

Chapter XXII.—Doctrine of the Ebionæans.

The Ebionæans,^[1] however, acknowledge that the world was made by Him Who is in reality God, but they propound legends concerning the Christ similarly with Cerinthus and Carpocrates.  They live conformably to the customs of the Jews, alleging that they are justified according to the law, and saying that Jesus was justified by fulfilling the law. And therefore it was, (according to the Ebionæans,) that (the Saviour) was named (the) Christ of God and Jesus,^[2] since not one of the rest (of mankind) had observed completely the law. For if even any other had fulfilled the commandments (contained) in the law, he would have been that Christ. And the (Ebionæans allege) that they themselves also, when in like manner they fulfil (the law), are able to become Christs; for they assert that our Lord Himself was a man in a like sense with all (the rest of the human family).

Footnotes

1. See [vol. i. p. 352] Irenæus, i. 26; [vol. iii. p. 651] Tertullian, Præscript., c. xlviii.; [vol. iv. p. 429, this series] Origen, Contr. Cels. ii. 1; Eusebius, Hist. Ecclesiast., iii. 27; Epiphanius, Hær., xxx.; and Theodoret, Hær. Fab., ii. 2. Hippolytus is indebted in this article partly to Irenæus, and partly to original sources.
2. Or, “that the Christ of God was named Jesus” (Bunsen).