Nice try Wormwood!
If I recall you ceased our discussion some time ago because my hermeneutics was not written in Trinitarian terms (nor should it be!), and your comprehension of a the true Gospel was not possible. Now re the above, you imply the Reverend's words were not understood by me, and to prove so you run off to the nearest theological dictionary to find a philosophical definition for the word hypostasis.
What about its other uses?
A. Greek Usage.
Preliminary. Formed as a verbal noun from hyphístēmi, hypóstasis reflects some of the meanings of the intransitive and middle hyphístamai, namely, “support,” “concealment,” “deposit or sediment,” “existence or reality,” and, technically, “lease.” The use is mostly specialized in the early period. The
philosophical use grows out of an earlier scientific use, and the later range of meaning hardly goes beyond the scientific and
philosophical senses.
Medical and Scientific Use. In medicine hypóstasis rarely means “support,” e.g., a hip as a support for the body. More common is the use for “sediment,” e.g., for urine. The word can also denote fluid or solid excrement. More generally anything that settles is hypóstasis (cf. curds, or the slimy bottom of stagnant water, or the deposit of moist air, or any kind of residue).
Or:
a. Stoicism. Stoicism first brings the term into
philosophy to denote what has come into being or attained reality. In contrast to ousía, which is eternal being as such, hypóstasis is real being as this is manifested in individual phenomena. Because being is primal matter, its coming into existence may be viewed as a physical process, and thus hypóstasis offers itself as a suitable term for the resultant reality. The distinction from ousía, however, is only a theoretical and not a practical one. ousía exists in its actualization, hypóstasis is ousía in its actuality, hypóstasis is not the real, concrete phenomenon as such but the reality behind it.
Hmmm sounds familiar.
b. Peripatus. Dependence on Stoicism is evident in the Peripatetic use. There is reality only in individual things; these have essence and reality in themselves.
c. Middle Platonism. References here are few, but in Albinus hypóstasis denotes the actualization of the ground of being relative to the intelligible world.
d. Neo-Platonism. Neo-Platonic development has no significance for biblical usage but is important later, hypóstasis now bears no relation to matter. As a term for the actuality derived from the one, it is synonymous with ousía. While deriving from ultimate being, it also has ultimate being. This understanding lies behind the use in the later doctrine of the Trinity.
Its all a load of hogwash wormwood and instead of turning to
philosophical expressions of the divine writ why don't you seek Gods wisdom from above?
(shaking my head)
The Church, in its teaching concerning the
Dogma of the Trinity, uses the
philosophical concepts essence, nature, substance, hypostasis and person (cf. Caput Firmiter of the 4th Lateran Council (1215): Tres quidem personae, sed una essentia, substantia seu natura simplex omnino). The
concepts essence, nature and substance characterise the physical essence of God common to the Three Persons, that is, the totality of the Perfections of the Divine Essence. An hypostasis is an individual complete substance existing entirely in itself, an incommunicable substance (substantia singularis completa tota in se or substantia incommunicabilis). A Person is a hypostasis endowed with reason (hypostasis rationalis). The classical definition comes from that of Boethius (
De duabus naturis 3): Persona est naturae rationalis individua (= incommunicabilis) substantia (a Person is the individual (incommunicable) substance of a rational nature). Hypostasis and nature are related to each other in such a manner that the hypostasis is the bearer of nature and the ultimate subject of all being and acting (principium quod), while the nature is that through which the hypostasis is and acts (principium quo).
Where is God's Word in all this Wormwood
