The problem you are having needs a little light...
But it's not me who's having a problem, you see. It's the low-context pan-European derivative and late-emergent English language that is the problem; having no direct word-to-word translation for the scope and subtlies of the thus-irreducible Greek term hypostasis.
One would never utilize "person" in translation instead of "confidence" or "assurance" or "substance". Person doesn't carry anywhere near the breadth and depth of meaning as hypostasis. Not even close.
"That which underlies" or "foundational reality of existence" or "substantial objective underlying reality" or any other such combination of English phraseology would be necessary to represent hypostasis.
One would never say faith is a "person". There is NO English translation that renders hypostasis as "person" in Hebrews 11:1; and hypostasis only has 5 usages in the NT (none of which are remotely associated with the Son or Holy Spirit, BTW).
Clearly, "person" is in no way a representative term for hypostasis on a stand-alone basis; and that's the problem with the modernity of the Orthodox formulaic. There is literally no means of distinguishing a multi-hypostatic singular ousia and multiple ousios.
THAT's sleezy slime-ball epistemology that eclipses any and all other examples of such. There is no greater blight upon the Christian faith than the English term "person/s" to attempt to translate hypostasis/es; and that's saying a LOT, considering the many extremes of binary doctrines like Dispensationalism, Supralapsarianism, and Universal Atonement, etc.
It's worse than the appalling Filioque and all the historical Theology Proper anathemas. There is NOTHING more egregious than translating hypostasis/es as "person/s". Nothing. It overshadows Jehovah Witness and Latter Day Saints cult beliefs. It's more heinous than Universalist Unitarianism and the modern plethora of New Age hybridized practices invading all the One World Church flourishing in non-denominationalism. Worse than Pantheism. Worse than ancient occultic Dualistic religions from the Mesopotamian Basin.
You fuss incessantly about words I use, but you insist the one unerring term that can be applied from creation and existence to the uncreated and pre-existent HAS to be "person". If God can't be defined with all the other terms you reject as cataphatically restrictive, then "person" can't be the defining absolute for God when it can't and doesn't even begin to approach the scope of meaning to legitimately translate hypostasis.
And since hypostasis and ousia and physis and prosopon cannot be separated (because Simplicity means God is neither divisible nor comprised of constituent parts), then there's no danger of considering God "impersonal" as a thing or force or nebulous entity or a realm or a transcendent unknowable whatever.
I will NOT acquiesce nor concede to defining God with the English term "person" in ANY quantity. "Person" is a term from creation and from the third-lowest-context language (among 1000s) in human history. I will never budge one micrometer on this issue, and I don't care who agrees or disagrees. The absolute irrefutable fact is that God cannot be defined with the English term "person" as humans can.
Period.
God created man body first, then added breath... So that the ousia of the body is anterior to the hypostasis directing the soul...
The ousia is not the body and the hypostasis is predominantly the soul (along with the functionalities of spirit/body faculties); but okay, I clearly agree.
So that for HUMAN beings, there is no person without an hypostasis that is inherently combined with the ousia of flesh... And every dictionary addresses the definition of a person as that of a human being...
EXACTLY!!!!
In a human being, until the separation of the soul from the body at death, the hypostasis and the ousia are indeed combined, so that one cannot think of them separatedly, because they do not exist separately...
EXACTLY!!!!
At death, the soul separates from the body, and the body decomposes, and the soul heads for the first judgement... So now we have the hypostasis and the ousia of the soul separated from the body... And each of us has this soul according to their earthly lives where our manner of life across a lifetime...
With grudging caveats of minutiae, but..... EXACTLY!!!!
So that a person does not exist without an ousia.
EXACTLY!!!!
Nor does the Person Who is God, and this because the unknowable Ousia of God, the Divine Essence, is that which makes God O Theos, or simply God... And the Nature of God, the Physis of God, is not physis, but instead is God, and cannot be known...
EXACTLY!!!!
We only know that the Logos-God
WHOA, WHOA, WHOA. The "Logos-God"? The Logos is God's own literal Logos. THIS is a huge part of the disconnect. I've asked over and over and over for you to delineate exactly how the Son is the Logos, and you've never once even hinted at answering.
The Logos isn't automatically an individuated hypostasis. There has to be some valid cohesive exegetical foundation for it, and that can't be personal pronouns, pros accusative (John 1:1), or arthrous substantives (Matthew 28:19). And it SURELY can't be the likely-spurious Comma Johanneum; and not just because of (lower) textual criticism, but the passage itself doesn't even come close to providing multiple hypostases and I can affirm the passage myself.
How is the Logos the Son? And what does that mean for the Father? Does He not have intelligence for expression?
incarnated as one Person having two natures, and in the humility of His condescension for us, emptied Himself of any arrogance that might accrue in consequence of His BEING God WHILE incarnate... He did not stop Himself from being Who He IS, but limited Himself to His human personhood and became fully human. He became the New Adam...
Except for the term "person"... absolutely agreed.
So your complaint, that in English, person is a combination of being and hypostasis doesn't seem to make a lot of sense...
Seriously?! You just affirmed that in English every individuated "person" is ALSO an individuated "being"; AND that every individuated hypostasis is an individuated ousia. You don't seem to understand the problem with the historical bare assertion of a multi-hypostatic ousia (or however that needs to be technically worded).
There's simply no such thing as a multi-hypostatic ousia.
English CANNOT differentiate
between hypostasis and ousia
by the term "person".
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It can and does differentiate, but does not separate hypostasis or person from the being of the hypostsis or person...
Right. Exactly. Because they can't be separated. And hypostasis is not "person". Person can never be utilized for confidence or assurance or faith. Hypostasis is irreducible and untranslatable with any single English word.
And this because the ousia of the person is in a state of formation while we are incarnate, according to our free-will
Whoa. We have a boule, but there's no such thing as "free" will. We are either servants to one master or another. No neutral; only drive or reverse.
decisions and doings regarding good and evil... To be fully human is to be a son of God, because Adam was the son of God, and fell... To regain Adam's original state is to regain sonship... And in Christ, we go even further, being conjoined not only to full humanity, but to God by Grace, according to God's Will...
Yep.
So perhaps much of your dilemma is connected with how you translate ousia - Being? Or Essence?
No. I have no dilemna. English IS the dilemna. The term "person" is a dilemna unto itself.
I have no problem with ousia. Every individuated ousia is underlied by a hypostasis.
Because essentially, we are hypostases having being...
Yes, and Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not three gorilla-glued god-guys as interconjoined celestial siamese triplets.
Good AND evil in Adam... The hypostasis is the person having an essence and having being...
So back at ya!
Arsenios
Yep. The hypostasis is individuated identically with the ousia. One for one.
AND COULD YOU PLEASE CITE
ANY DIRECT EXEGETICAL EVIDENCE FOR GOD AS THREE INDIVIDUATED HYPOSTASES!!!! ESPECIALLY THAT THE SON AND HOLY SPIRIT ARE INDIVIDUATED HYPOSTASES.
Where are the multiple hypostases in scripture and their singular ousia? There's more inferential evidence for Tritheism than for Multi-Hypostaticism as a form of Monotheism.
I blame Origen and Tertullian for the whole ridiculous mess. It's been 1800 years of obfuscational smoke and mirrors.
