Three Hypostases/One Ousia

[John Zain]

What does that mean?

Art thou from Cappadocia? I was there a month ago.

 

[bsd058]

There is one God. We are monotheists. Based upon the Old Testament and New Testament readings. We all know them. There are none beside our God. (Is 43:10)

We know that Jesus taught of the Father and interacted with the Father as though He were a separate person. We know the apostles spoke of the Father and Son as separate people.

We know that Jesus prayed to the Father to send us the Holy Spirit did the same with the Holy Spirit who was another helper. (John 14:16) Not the same helper.

Further, we know all three of the people are God, since the language of the Bible implies it. The Father is God (John 17:3), The Word is God (John 1:1), and the Holy Spirit is God (in Acts Ananias and Saphira lied to the Holy Spirit as described by Peter in the first instance and then later described their behaviour as lying to God).

So drawing from these basic principles of the Scriptures, there exists three persons as one God. If you want to read a book on it, I recommend 'The Trinitarian Faith' by Thomas Tenney. Well written.

 

[AHJE]

It is true that God IS Being ... "I AM."

God alone is His very Being. And we may say that the Father is Being Personified or Hypostasized.

God the Father is Being Personified for He is Unbegotten and the Necessary Being and Origin of all Life and eternity. He IS existence Hypostasized.

That was concerning BEING. (God the Father)

Are you with me so far?

 

[Cappadocious]

It is true that God IS Being ... "I AM."

God alone is His very Being. And we may say that the Father is Being Personified or Hypostasized.

God the Father is Being Personified for He is Unbegotten and the Necessary Being and Origin of all Life and eternity. He IS existence Hypostasized.

That was concerning BEING. (God the Father)

Are you with me so far?

Only if I were a Thomist.

 

[Cappadocious]

Art thou from Cappadocia? I was there a month ago.

No, just a fan.

Hope it was a good trip.

 

[Knee V]

You're not going to get what you're asking for. You're asking us to make the early/historical church conform to Reformational standards, particularly sola scriptura. That was never the standard of the Church, and that is not what drove the Council of Nicea, nor the thought processes of the fathers who refined the Nicean terminology.

The language of hypostasis and ousia, particularly their standard definitions that we have been using since Nicea, is not going to be spelled out in Scripture. Scripture does not deal with every possible error, nor does it give us ways to handle those new errors. Arius used the language of Scripture to twist the Gospel and present a false Christ to the Church. What the Church did was to re-articulate the expression of the Her common experience with the risen Christ in such a way that Her mode of expressing the Gospel became more specific and less loose. The Church had to do that in subsequent councils as well as new heresies reared their heads. The hypostasis/ousia language re-presents the Truth found in Scripture in a way that rules out the possibility of the heresy of Arianism. It is what the Church has always done.

 

[Cappadocious]

Knee-V,

This guy is on to something here.

He's referring to the use by quasi-modalists in the west.

Not just another bible thumper.

 

[Crandaddy]

But I'd say that God is beyond being and non-being. Beyond existence and non-existence.

And I'd say this is nonsense, quite literally. What it literally asserts (if taken in any interesting sense) is that (the existing) God has the property of removal from existing. You can't predicate removal from existence of God because his existence is presupposed by your mere assertion of him as your subject. You can't assert an existent and then predicate its removal from existence.


God is the highest, most absolutely perfect being that we are able to conceptualize, and this is why we say that he is ipsum Esse subsistens, subsistent Being himself. We can't go any higher than this lest we outstrip our cognitive and linguistic capabilities, and we can't go any lower lest we make God into a creature.

It is true that God IS Being ... "I AM."

God alone is His very Being. And we may say that the Father is Being Personified or Hypostasized.

God the Father is Being Personified for He is Unbegotten and the Necessary Being and Origin of all Life and eternity. He IS existence Hypostasized.

That was concerning BEING. (God the Father)

I don't think this is quite correct either. God is ipsum Esse subsistens in his Ousia, and this is shared by all three of the Divine Hypostases. God the Father absolutely IS, God the Son absolutely IS, and God the Holy Spirit absolutely IS because they all three share the exact same Divine Nature, which is to absolutely BE.

 

[Cappadocious]

And I'd say this is nonsense, quite literally. What it literally asserts (if taken in any interesting sense) is that (the existing) God has the property of removal from existing.

This has yet to be demonstrated.

God is the highest, most absolutely perfect being that we are able to conceptualize, and this is why we say that he is ipsum Esse subsistens, subsistent Being himself.

Ah, that being god out there. That being god who first is, then exists as father, son and holy spirit.

What a fascinating deistic idol.

 

[Crandaddy]

This has yet to be demonstrated.

How 'bout you demonstrate how the notion that God is beyond being/existence makes any sense at all?

It's not my place to demonstrate that your claim is incoherent nonsense. It's your place to demonstrate that it's not. Just try coming up with a coherent concept of anything at all that's beyond all being/existence. Try formulating a statement about anything you fancy that neither utilizes any existential terms (e.g. “exists,” “is,” “am,” “are,” “be”), nor is translatable into one that does.

Good luck!

Ah, that being god out there. That being god who first is, then exists as father, son and holy spirit.

I don't know of anyone who claims such a thing. In God there is only one act, the actus purus, and God in his one pure act of existence is tri-personal.

What a fascinating deistic idol.

Hey, at least I claim that God actually exists.

 

[Cappadocious]

How 'bout you demonstrate how the notion that God is beyond being/existence makes any sense at all?

You do realize we're talking about a God who created the world knowing it would fall, then entered into that world in order to be that world to himself, then brought that world to the end of history in order to wed himself to that world...

And you are claiming that you can portray that God in way that makes reasonable sense?

Good luck!

Try formulating a statement about anything you fancy that neither utilizes any existential terms (e.g. “exists,” “is,” “am,” “are,” “be&#8221, nor is translatable into one that does.

I do not claim to be able to do this. I do, however, endorse making many contradictory claims about God.

In God there is only one act, the actus purus, and God in his one pure act of existence is tri-personal.

Nope. God supra-non-exists in a myriad of divine acts, phenomena, and ecstasies.

 

[Crandaddy]

You do realize we're talking about a God who created the world knowing it would fall, then entered into that world in order to be that world to himself, then brought that world to the end of history in order to wed himself to that world...

With the phrasing "in order to be that world," I might note that we ought keep in mind a proper distinction between God and creature. Besides that, yes.

And you are claiming that you can portray that God in way that makes reasonable sense?

I do not claim that we can have exhaustive, comprehensive knowledge of God, but knowledge of God is not entirely inaccessible to natural human cognition, even in its fallen state. To hold otherwise is deadly.

I do not claim to be able to do this.

You can't do it, and you won't ever be able to do it. I know this because what I ask you to do is impossible. I don't throw around the term "nonsense" cavalierly, nor do I call what I might lack sufficient knowledge to understand "nonsense." But to place anything at all beyond all being is true nonsense because being is the very bedrock of our cognition. Being is the very foundation of thought itself. If you take even being away, you have absolutely nothing left whatsoever. I call such a claim nonsense, therefore, not because I lack understanding, but because I can understand that it's nonsense, as I can understand that 2+2=5 is nonsense.

I do, however, endorse making many contradictory claims about God.

Really? Such as?

 

[Cappadocious]

With the phrasing "in order to be that world," I might note that we ought keep in mind a proper distinction between God and creature. Besides that, yes.

I was referring to the Incarnation.

I do not claim that we can have exhaustive, comprehensive knowledge of God, but knowledge of God is not entirely inaccessible to natural human cognition, even in its fallen state. To hold otherwise is deadly.

Yes, but God ultimately condescends to become accessible to human reason, emotion, sensation, etc., through his Icon and Word, Jesus Christ, and by His Holy Spirit. Not by the Father becoming himself the god of Plotinus and following various deistic proofs for that false god.

But to place anything at all beyond all being is true nonsense because being is the very bedrock of our cognition. Being is the very foundation of thought itself. If you take even being away, you have absolutely nothing left whatsoever.

We can encounter God in contradictory and diverse ways which reveal to us, to the degree that we can comprehend it, that He is beyond created dichotomies and the dialectic of opposites. God is not merely the unchanging, impassible, immovable, "is". He is beyond even those things. You cannot say that God changes but does not change, or does not change, but changes. You cannot say that he is immanent, but not transcendent. You cannot say that he is impassible, and inconceivable, without also saying that he is passible and conceivable.

We must affirm the divine antinomies, because we encounter God in these contradictions.

It is in this context that we declare God is somehow beyond existence and non-existence. Because then we can say that God chooses to exist in the manner he does, he chooses the way in which he shines forth his essence. He is not bound by his own being or nature or essence, because the Person of the Father is the foundation of the divine nature and essence.

So God is not defined as all those "a" words in Greek that negate, nor is he merely "prime mover", the being who is, and then is personal. That was my main point. Person first; and that is why he is. This is why St. Gregory Palamas referred to God's person and relational ecstasies as "hypertheos", beyond the Divine Nature.

Just because someone is impossible doesn't mean that we, impossible ourselves, cannot somehow glorify them. You affirm what you can and what you cannot, as you can.

 

[Crandaddy]

Yes, but God ultimately condescends to become accessible to human reason, emotion, sensation, etc., through his Icon and Word, Jesus Christ, and by His Holy Spirit. Not by the Father becoming himself the god of Plotinus and following various deistic proofs for that false god.

So do you endorse a clean, Tertullianesque break between Athens and Jerusalem? Does natural theology hold no value at all in your view?

We can encounter God in contradictory and diverse ways which reveal to us, to the degree that we can comprehend it, that He is beyond created dichotomies and the dialectic of opposites. God is not merely the unchanging, impassible, immovable, "is". He is beyond even those things. You cannot say that God changes but does not change, or does not change, but changes. You cannot say that he is immanent, but not transcendent. You cannot say that he is impassible, and inconceivable, without also saying that he is passible and conceivable.

We must affirm the divine antinomies, because we encounter God in these contradictions.

Are you really so sure that there can be no solutions to such difficulties as you propose?

Take change, for example. Might there not be a sense in which God can be said to change and a sense in which God can be said to be immutable? Are you certain that no such solution can be had?

It is in this context that we declare God is somehow beyond existence and non-existence. Because then we can say that God chooses to exist in the manner he does, he chooses the way in which he shines forth his essence. He is not bound by his own being or nature or essence, because the Person of the Father is the foundation of the divine nature and essence.

So what do you make of the Euthyphro dilemma? Might God have chosen to create a race of (what we would consider to be) moral monsters who delight in torturing babies? Or might he have chosen to create a world in which everyone is consigned to eternal hellish torment without any hope of escape?

So God is not defined as all those "a" words in Greek that negate, nor is he merely "prime mover", the being who is, and then is personal. That was my main point. Person first; and that is why he is. This is why St. Gregory Palamas referred to God's person and relational ecstasies as "hypertheos", beyond the Divine Nature.

Why does one of them have to come first? We run into problems either way. If we put Being before Person, then we render Being impersonal; Being then becomes something not unlike a brute fact and hardly anything like what we rightly call "God." If, on the other hand, we put Person before Being, then we render God wholly unintelligible; we outstrip our cognitive and linguistic capabilities and render the term "God" meaningless babble.

The solution is to say that to absolutely BE--i.e. to be, or to exist, most perfectly, most supremely--just is to be Personal. There can be no separation between the Divine Persons and Being any more than there can be separation between, e.g., the being Barack Obama and the person Barack Obama. Being and Person are really the same.

And lest it be charged that what I propose is modalism, I maintain that this is quite consistent with saying that the Divine Persons are really distinct from each other. The Father is a really distinct Person from the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Son is a really distinct Person from the Father and the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is a really distinct Person from the Father and the Son. This despite there being one and the same Being common to all of them.

 

[Cappadocious]

So do you endorse a clean, Tertullianesque break between Athens and Jerusalem? Does natural theology hold no value at all in your view?

No, but I do think that Athens' insufficiency as a static system should be acknowledged. That's how we dialogue with new philosophies.

Take change, for example. Might there not be a sense in which God can be said to change and a sense in which God can be said to be immutable? Are you certain that no such solution can be had?

I don't see a problem to solve!

So what do you make of the Euthyphro dilemma? Might God have chosen to create a race of (what we would consider to be) moral monsters who delight in torturing babies? Or might he have chosen to create a world in which everyone is consigned to eternal hellish torment without any hope of escape?

The Father's relationship with the Son and Spirit is reflected in the created world. Just because I deny the foundation of God's being in a set of natural properties to which he is bound does not mean that I disregard the way in which he exists as reflected in creation.

If, on the other hand, we put Person before Being, then we render God wholly unintelligible; we outstrip our cognitive and linguistic capabilities and render the term "God" meaningless babble.

That's a bit of a non sequitur.

And to clarify, Person-as-Hypostasis (ὑπόστᾰσι&#962 as the foundation of φύσις and οὐσία.

The solution is to say that to absolutely BE--i.e. to be, or to exist, most perfectly, most supremely--just is to be Personal. There can be no separation between the Divine Persons and Being any more than there can be separation between, e.g., the being Barack Obama and the person Barack Obama. Being and Person are really the same.

And lest it be charged that what I propose is modalism, I maintain that this is quite consistent with saying that the Divine Persons are really distinct from each other. The Father is a really distinct Person from the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Son is a really distinct Person from the Father and the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is a really distinct Person from the Father and the Son. This despite there being one and the same Being common to all of them.

The Divine Nature cannot precede or ground the Trinity, because Divine Nature and "being" in the abstract do not have any ontology apart from the Divine Persons.

To say that there is one God, some blob of being, who exists as Father, Son and Holy Spirit is to absolutely and tragically divorce the Trinity from anything resembling the God of the Hebrews. The foundation of Divinity is the Hypostasis of the Father, through his begetting of the Son and spiration of the Spirit.

I personally find this pure act god of yours quite dull. I could get that from Plotinus if I wanted it.

On one last note, recall that the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed reads "of same essence with the Father", not "of one essence with the Divine Nature".

 

[Crandaddy]

I do think that Athens' insufficiency as a static system should be acknowledged.

Agreed (I think).

I don't see a problem to solve!

How, exactly, does an apparent contradiction not stand in need of a solution?

The Father's relationship with the Son and Spirit is reflected in the created world. Just because I deny the foundation of God's being in a set of natural properties to which he is bound does not mean that I disregard the way in which he exists as reflected in creation.

But if the way in which God exists is by naught save divine fiat (as you seem to suggest), then how can you possibly know that he wouldn't create a hellish, nightmarish world? Your god seems so radically removed from reason as to be an evil Cartesian demon!

That's a bit of a non sequitur.

Well, if it doesn't follow, you've certainly done nothing to shed any light. To place anything at all beyond even being itself most cerainly smacks of nonsense. This is crystal clear. If you can't see why, then I don't know if anyone can help you.

The Divine Nature cannot precede or ground the Trinity, because Divine Nature and "being" in the abstract do not have any ontology apart from the Divine Persons.

The Divine Nature does not precede the Trinity. This is true. Whether or not it grounds the Trinity depends on what we mean by "ground." It is also true that there is no content to the Divine Nature, or Being (these are the same), apart from the Divine Persons.

To say that there is one God, some blob of being, who exists as Father, Son and Holy Spirit is to absolutely and tragically divorce the Trinity from anything resembling the God of the Hebrews.

I do not claim that God is a "blob of being." I do, however, claim that each of the Divine Persons actually exists, and that the existing of each is identical to the existing of each of the others. This way, we have three distinct Persons, but not three distinct gods.

The foundation of Divinity is the Hypostasis of the Father, through his begetting of the Son and spiration of the Spirit.

So "are" the Son and the Spirit "beyond being" too, or are they distinct beings (and thus lesser deities, it would seem, than the Father)?

I personally find this pure act god of yours quite dull. I could get that from Plotinus if I wanted it.

The God I worship is the end of all ends, the source of all goodness, and the supreme object of all desire, who dwells in infinite light and beauty. I find a god who dwells in impenetrable darkness and confusion repugnant.

On one last note, recall that the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed reads "of same essence with the Father", not "of one essence with the Divine Nature".

You think I have some problem with this?

 

[Cappadocious]

But if the way in which God exists is by naught save divine fiat (as you seem to suggest), then how can you possibly know that he wouldn't create a hellish, nightmarish world? Your god seems so radically removed from reason as to be an evil Cartesian demon!

Radically removed from reason? Not really.

In any case, we know that God would not create such a world because he revealed himself in his Icon, Jesus Christ, who didn't really act that way.

So "are" the Son and the Spirit "beyond being" too, or are they distinct beings (and thus lesser deities, it would seem, than the Father)?

No. Their Divinity and Hypostases are derived from the Father, but not therefore inferior to Him.

I find a god who dwells in impenetrable darkness and confusion repugnant.

I would rather know a God of contradiction than know about a god of proofs.

 

[PneumaPsucheSoma]

You're not going to get what you're asking for. You're asking us to make the early/historical church conform to Reformational standards, particularly sola scriptura. That was never the standard of the Church, and that is not what drove the Council of Nicea, nor the thought processes of the fathers who refined the Nicean terminology.

The language of hypostasis and ousia, particularly their standard definitions that we have been using since Nicea, is not going to be spelled out in Scripture. Scripture does not deal with every possible error, nor does it give us ways to handle those new errors. Arius used the language of Scripture to twist the Gospel and present a false Christ to the Church. What the Church did was to re-articulate the expression of the Her common experience with the risen Christ in such a way that Her mode of expressing the Gospel became more specific and less loose. The Church had to do that in subsequent councils as well as new heresies reared their heads. The hypostasis/ousia language re-presents the Truth found in Scripture in a way that rules out the possibility of the heresy of Arianism. It is what the Church has always done.

IOW... It was a plea to extra-biblical terminology to defend, at all costs, one eisegetic concept from another eisegetic concept. Gotcha. Agreed.

 

[PneumaPsucheSoma]

Knee-V,

This guy is on to something here.

He's referring to the use by quasi-modalists in the west.

Not just another bible thumper.

Thank you, my Brother of keen insight, methinks.

 

[PneumaPsucheSoma]

When the Scripture says "hypostasis", it is using the old hellenistic meaning of "hypostasis", which means "ousia". So it is really saying "exact character of the Father's nature/divinity" or something along those lines.

"What does that mean? An eternal additional hypostasis who hypostasized and took on a human nature? Two ousios as one prosopon among three hypostases in one ousia? By any definitions, how is it not convoluted?"

Not very complicated.

God eternally begets and speaks the Word.
God eternally sends the Spirit.

Absolutely understood and agreed.

The Word and Spirit each have a distinct ministry, and both relate to the Father in eternity. IN VIRTUE OF THIS ETERNAL RELATIONSHIP, they MUST therefore be persons, under the Christian, not pagan, definition of persons.

This (bolded) is what I cannot and do not agreed with, since it's pure attempted and declared deductive inference. (And I mean that in the sense that it defies legitimate hermeneutics. Attempted inference is NOT inference. It's an eisegetic conceptualization that is NOT exegeted from the text, but is taken TO the text FOR attempted inference.)

God's Word has a ministry to creation, for which he became incarnate. He was not "re-hypostasized", rather, who he was became human.

"And this was another additional hypostasis? Or God's Spirit."

Both, according to the Christian understanding of Personhood as Hypostasis.

And that's the understanding I challenge as invalid.

"Agreed. But were they three hypostases or not?"

Yes, but they ain't all the same, and the way they relate makes all the difference.

"But was the Son of God eternally preexistent as an additional hypostasis?"

Yes, but the Son of Word of God is *always* continually receiving his Hypostasis from God/the Father. Otherwise he would not be God's Word, he would be some kind of third abstraction in a triangle of nonsense.

But this is conceptual extrapolation or some such. And it's not an abstraction if one knows the valid truth to which what you've referred to is a fallacious alternative.

Eternal Word is a Hypostasis.
Eternal Word's Hypostasis becomes a human being.
That Hypostasis Re-hypostasizes humanity.


God's literal and actual Logos who relates as a Hypostasis in the Christian definition of Hypostasis.

Because of what Person means to human beings.

And that, so it seems, is the foundation for the fallacy of mutliple hypostases; the necessity of what it means to human beings. In an inadvertant and non-malicious sense, God in (a triplicate of) man's image.

I would simply ask you to read +Zizoulas's "Being as Communion" which does a better job of summarizing that thought.

Because it is in line with the creative Ministry of the Word as one of the two hands of God, and it is how we relate to God.

God's Spirit and Word, for us, phenomenologically define Hypostasis, because no one has seen the Father, and he is revealed through his Word and Spirit.

And I'd suggest that our derivation for definition based up phenomenological criteria IS the fallacy.

So it's not that we are defining the Word and Spirit and God as "persons"; it's that we define "persons" after how the Word and Spirit relate to the Father.

You dig?

Yes, and I think it's unintentionally egregious.

"My position is that the Son is the immanent prosopon of God's transcendent hypostasis. And that God is not ousia."

Sounds Orthodox to me so far, as long as by "prosopon" you don't mean some sort of facade or empty ontology.

Nope. Substantial, pending our agreement of semantics. Not docetic. Not emanational. Capiche?

"God isn't A being. God IS being. God IS existence. He is the I AM. All being and beingS derive from Him."

Yeah, that's the old Neoplatonic dig.

But I'd say that God is beyond being and non-being. Beyond existence and non-existence. He is not merely the abstract unmoved mover/emanation originator of Plotinus and Aristotle.

I agree, but I'd contend that He is actually both; and I can delineate how and why.

"All eternal, all uncreated, all distinct, all concurrent, all non-modal, all divine by ontological subsistence."

Thou art not far from the Christian definition of Divine Hypostasis.

I think you'll ultimately see that I both AM and AM NOT. There is one consideration that ALL views have omitted, from Philosophical to Gnostic to O/orthodox to Heterodox anathema. They can all be reconciled to the central truth of scripture.