Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 9

We ought to regard Simon the Magician as representing the Libyan who became a god faster than any man. Indeed, if he truly bears the likeness, and if the magician has suffered a passion like that of Apsethus, then let us try to teach Simon's followers that Christ was not Simon, who stood, stands, and will stand; rather, he was a human being born from seed, the offspring of a woman, born of blood and fleshly desire just like everyone else. We will easily demonstrate these points as our discourse proceeds.

Simon claims to be translating the law of Moses, but he does so foolishly and wickedly. Moses declared that God is a consuming fire (Deuteronomy 4:24), yet Simon received this word incorrectly and teaches that fire itself is the first principle of all things. He failed to grasp that God is not fire, but a consuming and destroying fire. In doing so, he distorts not only the law of Moses but also plagiarizes the obscure Heraclitus.

Simon calls the first principle of all things 'infinite power,' and he declares: 'This letter is a declaration of voice and name from the great infinite power.' Therefore, it will be sealed, hidden, covered, and laid in the dwelling place where the root of all things is established. He identifies this dwelling place as the human being born from blood, saying that the infinite power — which he calls the root of all things — dwells within him.

According to Simon, this infinite power is fire, but it is not simple. Many suppose the four elements and fire itself are simple, but Simon insists that fire has a double nature. Of this double nature, he calls one part hidden and the other visible; the hidden things are concealed within the visible fire, and the visible fire has been produced by the hidden things. This distinction corresponds to what Aristotle calls potentiality and actuality, or what Plato calls the intelligible and the sensible.

The visible part of fire contains within itself everything one might conceive or even inadvertently overlook among visible things. The hidden part comprises everything one might grasp intellectually that has escaped perception or been passed over without being thought. In short, the heavenly fire is a treasury of all existing things — both sensible and intelligible — which Simon labels hidden and visible. It is like a great tree, such as Nebuchadnezzar saw in a dream, from which all flesh is nourished.

Simon says the visible fire corresponds to the trunk, the branches, the leaves, and the outer bark. All these parts of the great tree, having sprouted from the all-devouring fire, are consumed by flame. But the fruit of the tree, if it takes on its proper form and shape, is placed in a storehouse, not thrown into the fire. For the fruit, he says, was produced to be stored, while the chaff — which is the trunk — was produced not for its own sake but for the sake of the fruit.