When we wish to speak about the Trinity, we are touching upon a great holy mystery that is truly beyond all human comprehension.
When I was a teenager, we spoke about the Trinity is being “one God in three hypostases," not “three persons.” We did not use the word "persons." I remember asking Father Ananiadis the meaning of this word "hypostasis." He did not think that it meant quite the same as "person," or rather, I should say he did not believe that the word "person" actually reflected the meaning of hypostasis.
Hypostasis is an interesting word. It comes from the clarification of wine. When you set wine to clarify, it becomes dense at the bottom of the container, and this density is called the hypostasis. If the density formed at the top of the wine, it could be called a hyper-stasis.
When the word is used to refer to the mystery of the Trinity, we can see it signifying an aspect of the Essence which has become uniquely visible without ceasing to be part of the essence. Christ, that is, God the Word, was uniquely visible in the Old Testament. That is because all of the theophanies in the Old Testament were God the Word and never God the Father, who has “never been seen by any man at any time.” God the Word was always of one Essence with the Father, but was visibly manifested on Mount Sinai, to Abraham at the Oak, to Jacob and as the 4th figure seen in the fiery furnace as the “Angel of Great Counsel.”
Why do we refer to Mary as the Theotokos? We remember that the heretic Nestorius, like the Protestant sectarians after him, refused to acknowledge that, since Christ is God, Mary is the “birth giver of God.” Christ took flesh from the Virgin, otherwise He would not truly be fully human as well as truly God.
Perhaps when we use the traditional expression “one essence in three hypostases” it is easier to understand, since the word “person” is too limiting, too narrow in its concept and meaning, and the word hypostasis much more clearly expresses the mystery.
In the Incarnation, God the Word assumed human personhood, since he was fully human as well as fully God. Since he never ceased to be of one Essence with the Father and the Spirit, He was one hypostasis of that Divine Essence.
Mary did not give birth simply to a human person but was the vehicle and vessel of the Incarnation of the Living God. In my mind, this cannot be properly expressed by the word “person”, but only by the concept of hypostasis.
Realizing that this could be misinterpreted as a kind of “modalism,” I should add the adjective “distinct hypostasis.” Of course, if one wished to misinterpret it, no amount of qualifications would prevent that.
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Hypostasis is being used metaphorically, so to translate literally into Latin or English – or German for that matter – would literalize the metaphor, and literalizing a metaphor always results in an idolatry.
From an Orthodox point of view, all human beings are part of the common human nature (ousia) – a nature that is fallen, susceptible to nature and to the laws of nature. Our hypostasis is what we can do with our own being – a personal being – and through which we have free will, etc.
I speak more about this in my book Freedom to Believe. The term "person" itself can lead to the same kind of idolatry if we see "three persons” as three radical individuals. Whichever word we may use, we have to understand precisely how it is being used and what, theologically, it actually means.
We speak of the three hypostases, not one hypostasis. But clearly, it describes – but does not define – an aspect of the one essence, and three hypostases of one essence is a description of the Holy Trinity.
And actually, this is what the conversation about the Theotokos was about. There are those who deny of the title Theotokos to the Virgin Mary because she was not the mother of God the Father and not the mother of the Holy Spirit, but rather of Jesus Christ. But what we are saying is that if you believe in Jesus Christ is God, “that in him dwelt the fullness of the Godhead bodily,” then Mary is the mother of God. If you deny that Jesus Christ is God, one hypostasis of the essence of God, then you will deny that Mary is the mother of God. The whole question is Christologocial--about whether Jesus Christ is God or not God. If one wishes to literalize and then misinterpret the use of the word hypostasis, that is their own affair.
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