Hypostasis

views updated

HYPOSTASIS

The theological equivalence of hypostasis with person is the result of a long development. The original meaning of the Greek word was substructure, support. Then it came to mean something real and objective as opposed to a mere appearance or abstraction. In Scripture it usually means moral support, assurance, conviction, e.g., in Heb 11.1: "Now faith is the substance [ὐπόστασις; Vulgate: substantia ] of things to be hoped for …" (cf. Heb 3.14; 2 Cor 9.4).

In patristic writings it was first used about the Trinity. Origen speaks of three hypostases in God—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Dionysius of Alexandria, writing against Arius and Sabellius, says that there are three hypostases in the unity of the divine monarchy. Gradually hypostasis came to be distinguished from οὐσία (ousia; being, reality), which was reserved for what was common to the three Persons, the divine nature. In the Council of Nicaea I, nevertheless, ousia and hypostasis are still roughly equivalent: "If anyone says … that the Son of God is from a different hypostasis, or ousia [than the Father], … him the Catholic Church anathematizes" (H. Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum [Freiburg 1963] 126).

The translation of hypostasis into Latin by its literal equivalent, substantia, aroused in the West the suspicion that the Greeks were Arians or tritheists, while the translation of the Latin persona into the Greek πρόσωπον made the West sound Sabellian to the East. The good sense of men like Gregory of Nazianzus brought East and West to see that they held the same faith despite the different connotations of the terms in Greek and in Latin. The acceptance of the term "person" as orthodox in the East can be seen in a synodal letter of Eastern bishops to Pope Damasus in 382: "in three perfect hypostases, or three perfect Persons [πρόσωπα]."

Hypostasis played an important part in the Christological controversies of the 5th century. apollinaris of laodicea held that the human nature of Christ does not include a human soul. One of his arguments was that this would make Him two hypostases and therefore not really a unity. cyril of alexandria expressed the union of the human and the divine in Christ as a union in hypostasis (ἕνωσις καθ [symbol omitted]ποστασιν), a phrase that meant for him, as Galtier has shown, merely that the union is one in reality, not in mere appearance. Cyril did not distinguish between physis (φύσις) and hypostasis, and his terminology laid him open to the charge of monophysit ism. The distinction between the two terms was formulated by Pope leo i as a unity in Person, or hypostasis, and a duality in nature, or physis. Chalcedon canonized the distinction as well as the equivalence of the respective Greek and Latin terms: "[T]he particular natures unite in the one person and one hypostasis" (H. Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum [Freiburg 1963] 302).

After Chalcedon the theologians' task was to convince the Monophysites that the decrees of Ephesus had not been abandoned and to explain the difference between person and nature. Boethius made clear that only a rational being could be a hypostasis: "We have found the definition of person, 'the individual substance of a rational nature.' Now by this definition we Latins have described what the Greeks call hypostasis" (Tract. theol. quintus 1.4). Leontius of Byzantium answered the Monophysite objection that nature without hypostasis is nothing, and hence one hypostasis in Christ means one nature, by saying that the human nature of Christ is "neither uncentered [anhypostatos ] nor self-centered, but 'encentered' [enhypostatos ] in God" (Hardy and Richardson, 375–376). Finally, John Damascene summed up the tradition of the earlier Fathers and further emphasized that hypostasis implies incommunicability (De fide orthodoxa 1.8; Patrologia Graeca [Paris 1857–66] 95:828) and that it signifies not what, but who.

Modern theological speculation on the hypostatic union has centered on the question of what the formal constituent of personality is and, more recently, on the relation between the human consciousness of Christ and the hypostasis of the Word.

See Also: jesus christ; trinity, holy; incarnation; incommunicability; person (in philosophy); person (in theology); subsistence; subsistence (in christology).

Bibliography: a. michel, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, ed. a. vacant et al. (Paris 1903–50) 7.1:369–437. v. hamp and h. diepen, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. j. hofer and k. rahner (Freiburg 1957–65) 5:577–579. a. grillmeier and h. bacht, Das Konzil von Chalkedon: Geschichte und Gegenwart (Würzburg 1951–54). e. r. hardy and c. c. richardson, eds., Christology of the Later Fathers (Philadelphia, Pa. 1954). p. galtier, "L'Unio secundum hypostasim chez s. Cyrille," Gregorianum 33 (1952) 351–398. m. nÉdoncelle, "Prosōpon et persona," Revue des sciences religieuses 22 (1948) 277–299. m. richard, "L'Introduction du mot hypostasis dans la théologie de l'incarnation," Mélanges de science religieuse 2 (1945) 5–32; 243–270.