Hypostasis (religion)

In Christianity, the Greek word hypostasis http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3D%23109195 is usually translated into Latin as persona and then into English as person. The Christian view of the Trinity is often described as a view of one God existing in three different hypostases/personae/persons. The word is used prominently in the original Greek version of the Nicene Creed in this sense. See also: Hypostatic union.

Related Topics:
Christianity - Greek - Latin - Persona - English - Person - Trinity - One God - Nicene Creed - Hypostatic union

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As evidence that the idea of multiple hypostases is borrowed from pagan sources, anti-trinitarians often cite the apologist for a modalistic conception of God, the Catholic bishop Marcellus of Ancyra, who wrote in On the Holy Church, 9:

Related Topics:
Anti-trinitarians - A modalistic conception of God - Marcellus of Ancyra

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Now with the heresy of the Ariomaniacs, which has corrupted the Church of God...These then teach three hypostases, just as Valentinus the heresiarch first invented in the book entitled by him On the Three Natures. For he was the first to invent three hypostases and three persons of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he is discovered to have filched this from Hermes and Plato. (Source: Logan A. Marcellus of Ancyra (Pseudo-Anthimus), On the Holy Church: Text, Translation and Commentary. Verses 8-9. Journal of Theological Studies, NS, Volume 51, Pt. 1, April 2000, p.95 ).

Related Topics:
Heresy - Valentinus - Heresiarch - Hermes - Plato

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Trinitarians defend their view of multiple hypostases in the single God by appeal to Jewish pneumatology (the "Spirit of God" and "Spirit of the Lord"), and angelology (the "Angel of the Lord"); a study of Jewish conceptions of the prophetic "word of the Lord" which comes to the prophets, and by the authority of which they declared "thus says the Lord"; the New Testament's doctrine of the identity of Christ which developed after the resurrection, and the pattern of prayer, devotion, and theological apologetics exhibited in the early Church. Trinitarians acknowledge the debt to pagan philosophy for the terminology and rhetoric of Trinitarianism; and they acknowledge that controversies in the Church have arisen on account of a transference of meaning through any term, like hypostasis, predicated of God, which is used by analogy to its proper meaning in philosophical paganism; but they deny that what the terminology is intended to express, originates in paganism.

Related Topics:
Trinitarians - Pneumatology - Angelology - Prophets - New Testament - Christ - Resurrection - Apologetic - Early Church - Rhetoric - Paganism

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