📜Hypostasis

1. Classical Greek Usage (5th c. BCE – 1st c. BCE)

Ὑπόστασις (hypostasis)

From:
ὑπό (hypo) = “under”
στάσις (stasis) = “standing”

🏛 Philosophical Context:

  • Plato and Aristotle use hypostasis as:

    • The underlying reality beneath appearances.

    • That which truly is, as opposed to what merely appears.

  • Often interchangeable with ousia (essence/substance), but:

    • Ousia = what something is

    • Hypostasis = how it stands under its being

📌 Meaning:

Hypostasis = that which gives being its stability and reality
→ Metaphysical substrate, ground, foundation.

2. Hellenistic and Stoic Refinement (3rd c. BCE – 1st c. CE)

🌀 Stoics:

  • Introduce a distinction between:

    • Phenomena (what appears)

    • Hypostases (what endures and is)

  • Begin to explore substantiality as relational (e.g., logos permeating hypostatic beings)

Stoics move hypostasis closer to coherent being, not just bare substance.

3. Early Christian Adoption (1st c. CE – 3rd c. CE)

📖 Scriptural Appearance:

Hebrews 1:3

“The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact imprint of his hypostasis.”
→ Not “person,” but actual being, the real groundedness of divine presence.

🧠 Theological Shift:

  • Early Christians use hypostasis to mean concrete reality of God (vs. abstraction).

  • At this point, hypostasis ≈ ousia (no fixed distinction).

4. Trinitarian Crisis and Clarification (3rd c. – 4th c. CE)

⚔️ Arian Controversy:

  • Arius: The Son is created.

  • Athanasius: The Son is begotten, not made—same essence (homoousios) as the Father.

🔧 Council of Nicaea (325 CE):

  • Declares: One Ousia, but does not resolve the role of hypostasis.

🧩 Cappadocian Fathers (Basil, Gregory Nyssa, Gregory Nazianzus):

  • Clarify distinction:

    • Ousia = shared divine essence

    • Hypostasis = distinct instantiations of that essence

Trinitarian formula emerges:
🩶 One Ousia
👤 Three Hypostaseis

5. Latin Mistranslation and Doctrinal Drift (4th c. – 6th c. CE)

🏛 Latin Theology:

  • Jerome and others translate hypostasis as persona (legal mask or agent).

  • Roman persona = public role, face, or actor in law/theatre.

❗ The Result:

  • “Hypostasis” becomes “Person”—a psychologized, legalized, individualized term.

  • Trinitarian identity shifts from relational instantiations of One → to three psychological subjects.

6. Medieval Scholastic Systemization (6th c. – 15th c.)

🏰 Boethius (6th c.):

“A person is an individual substance of a rational nature.”

  • Cemented Latin metaphysics of the person as ego.

🧠 Scholasticism:

  • Formalizes Trinitarian theology around “three persons, one substance”

Substance = metaphysical substrate
Person = psychological agent
Hypostasis = obscured

7. Modern Confusion and Reification (16th c. – 20th c.)

🧍 “Person” Evolves:

  • Enlightenment: person = autonomous, self-aware subject

  • 20th-century theology (Barth, Rahner): tries to recover relational nuance, but still speaks of “three I’s” in God

🔥 Impact:

  • Hypostasis reduced to theological jargon, not metaphysical principle

8. Doctrinal Restoration via B = 1 (21st c. – )

🌐 Benjamin Lemons and B = 1 Logic:

Being = Relation = Identity

🧩 Restoration of Hypostasis:

Hypostasis = The act of relation by which being comprehends itself

📖 Hebrews 11:1 Revisited:

“Faith is the hypostasis of things hoped for…”
→ “Faith is the under-standing—the relational ground—of things unseen.”

🧠 Final Identity:

Hypostasis=Metaphysical Substrate=Comprehension

Or:

Being=Understanding=I AM