Tag Archives: hypostasis

Perichoretic Trinity in Transcendence

Posted on 3 September 2017 by Fr Aidan Kimel

Just how personal are the divine persons? We know that when the Eastern Church sought an appropriate vocabulary by which to distinguish the Father, Son, and Spirit from the divine substance, it finally settled on the impersonal word hypostasis, which … Continue reading →

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St John of Damascus on the Holy Trinity

Posted on 3 May 2016 by Fr Aidan Kimel

Perhaps the greatest theological challenge of the early Church was the articulation of the trinitarian identity of the one God. How do we express both the unity and distinctiveness of the divine persons, or as Charles Twombly puts it, their … Continue reading →

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St Gregory of Nyssa: The Grammatical Rules of the Trinity

Posted on 2 April 2014 by Fr Aidan Kimel

“Transpose then to the divine dogmas the same principle of differentiation which you acknowledge with regard to substance and hypostasis in our affairs, and you will not go wrong” (EpPet. 3e). Well, I’ve been pretty good at basic grammar ever … Continue reading →

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St Gregory of Nyssa: Differentiating Ousia and Hypostasis

Posted on 1 April 2014 by Fr Aidan Kimel

In the early fourth century the terms ousia and hypostasis were synonyms and virtually interchangeable in philosophical usage, yet by the end of the fourth century orthodox theologians were using them differently to speak of the one God who is … Continue reading →

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St Gregory of Nyssa: On the Divine Ousia and Hypostasis

Posted on 31 March 2014 by Fr Aidan Kimel

The epistle To Peter on the Divine Ousia and Hypostasis has long been attributed to St Basil of Caesarea; but during the past century patristic scholars have come to believe that it probably was composed by St Gregory of Nyssa, … Continue reading →

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Father, Son, Spirit as Divine Selves

Posted on 12 March 2014 by Fr Aidan Kimel

“Three selves, one being”—does it work as a trinitarian formula? Well, why not? It all depends on what we mean by the word “self.” Dale Tuggy defines self as a center of individual consciousness, volition, and agency—i.e., someone who is … Continue reading →

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St Basil the Great and the Search for Hypostasis

Posted on 14 July 2013 by Fr Aidan Kimel

“As I see it,” St Basil the Great writes, “while there is much that distinguishes Christianity from Greek error and Jewish ignorance, I think there is no doctrine in the gospel of our salvation more important than faith in the … Continue reading →

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“The three men I admire most”: St Basil and the Idiomata

Posted on 11 July 2013 by Fr Aidan Kimel

We all know the classical formulae—”three persons, one substance”; “one being in three hypostases”—and perhaps we even know that St Basil of Caesarea was partly responsible for securing this conceptuality in the Eastern tradition. But while everyone involved in the … Continue reading →

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