The Church Fathers had to explain the content of the Christian revelation that says there is one God in 3 persons, and make it clear that it is neither narrow Jewish monotheism nor pagan Greek polytheism (Basil and Damascus). The Greek language, famous for its ability to repel the darkness of meanings - as Berkeley said - was incapable of performing what was intended. It was necessary to create new terms, the main words are:

1- The essence of ousia

 2- hypostasis

3- The nature of physis

4- He and the Father have one and the same essence, homoousios.

5- prosopon person.

These words with multiple meanings need to invent new meanings based on subtle differences. The issue is difficult: One God in three persons actually exists in reality, not in a purely theoretical vision. The Holy Trinity is God. When we mention God, we mean the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Gregory the Theologian, Sermon 45:4, etc.).

The Greek language is the language of the mind and mental abstractions. Greek philosophy is a philosophy of “essences” and “categories”. The founder of personalism, the contemporary Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, who died in 1948, said: “Christian revelation could never express itself with regard to the person, in the categories of Greek philosophy.” His fellow French personality, Emmanuel Mounier, agreed with him (35).

The first three words have multiple meanings and are sometimes synonymous. The meaning of a single word may differ between the same philosophical schools of thought, as is the case in ousia johar, for example. But linguistic derivation allows each of them to be developed separately.

The word is derived physis nature From the verb “born”, “grew”.

The word is composed hypstasis person (36) From two clips: hypo under And stasis situation, position, condition...of meanings hypstasis The situation is under, Securitization, What is placed under, What is in depth, Basis, a base, Transfer, Failed (Collected by sediments such as coffee grounds, for example)... and it was mentioned in Aristotle in the sense stent (any corner, support, recline).

It was mentioned by Aristotle, the Impostor, and others, meaning “essence“, (37) “What it is“, “The same thing(i.e. its reality, not its imagination).

This last meaning was mentioned in the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament (Psalm 38:6 and 39:5 in Arabic and other translations; Epistle to the Hebrews 1:3). It was mentioned by the ancients and in some verses of the Bible, meaning “Guarantee“, “Bail” (Ruth 1:12, Ezekiel 19:5, Psalm 38/39:8/7; 2 Corinthians 9:4, 11:17, and Hebrews 3:14, 11:1).

As for derivation, it is derived from the verb hyphistimi  Which contains the meanings mentioned in the first paragraph and others.

Among the expanded meanings: “is found, He was, He stood up“. It is stated philosophically in the sense of “Equal to God in dignity“So it means”Equivalent“.

A word person It accepts, then, development towards the theological meanings that we sculpt for it, as a meaning.”True personal existence“. And it will be “Hypostasis" he "That which exists in truth and reality, which has essence or nature as its cause, possesses it as an undisputed master, as a resigned master.“.

he existant. The true essence is found in it. There is no essence outside of it.

Hypostasis Everything is indivisible, transferable, or impossible.

But The hypostasis is not an individual. The concept of the individual is related to individuals. There are many members of the human race. Each of them is alienated from the other. Each of them is an object.

In the Holy Trinity, the essence is one and the being is one, not 3 entities.

Concept Hypostasis = the person He accepts that God is one being.

The concept of the individual does not accept this.

The divine essence is the all-perfect existence of the Holy Trinity in its unity (38).

 At the same time, the three hypostases and their one essence is one divine being.

The hypostasis is the only owner of existence, its principle and its purpose.

The true content of his existence is the living essence. We cannot talk about a person if he does not have substance, content.

Each of the hypostases possesses the complete divine essence. The essence is not divided between them.

Thanks to the unity of essence, each hypostasis resides in the other two hypostases without mixing or dissolving (The Secret of Divine Management 180-183).

essence:

Aristotle used the word a lot. He defined it in his sayings (Chapter 5):

“Basically, firstly, in the true sense, we call essence ousia that which is not said in any entity and is not in any entity, for example, this man or this horse. We call second essences the genera in which the first essences are found with the corresponding species, and so on: “This human being is generically a human and qualitatively an animal. So, we call the “second essence” human and animal. In other words, the first substance means the individual entities, that is, the existing individual. As for the second essence, it is the essence: in the real meaning of the word (39).

Aristotle's definition does not differentiate between humans and horses. Each of them is an individual, not a person. His second definition limits man to species, but man is an animal by species. We remain within the limits of abstraction, not exactly as Loski said: “in the realistic meaning of the word.” (40). We will return to the topic.

nature of physis:

Its qualitative derivation allows it to be developed towards denoting meanings that refer to properties and actions. Therefore, Aristotle linked action to nature, making nature the principle of action (Physics 2: 9 and 10). Each nature has its own action.

The New Testament attributes specific actions to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Church Fathers inferred from the unity of action the unity of the essence of the Trinity because it has one action. They also concluded the divinity of the Son and the Holy Spirit, since the essence is one, just as the Father is one.

They said that the Son and the Spirit do everything that the Father does, and that they possess his essence, because unity of action means unity of essence.

The Cappadocian fathers Basil, his brother Gregory of Nyssa, and their friend Gregory the Theologian often used the word “nature” (physis) instead of the word “essence” for the Holy Trinity. Thus, they emphasized that the unity of action, which means the unity of nature between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, is evidence of equality in divinity. (41)Rather, they have one specific nature.

In Aristotle's own language: one action is evidence of one nature. Al-Dimashqi mentioned that all the fathers said that.

It is impossible to say that there is no action in nature. Therefore, we say in Christ that He has two natures, each of which has the effect of the natural (The Secret of Management 183-184). There is no meaning to the existence of nature without action.

person prosopon:

Tertullian, well versed in Greek, carved Latin theological terms. The Latins used the word person. Its literal translation is Greek prosopon. This word prosopon means: face, mask, theatrical role, appearance...

Translating hypostasis into Latin means substantia.

Greek speakers imagined that the Latins were following the heresy of Sabalius, who said that one God sometimes appears in the form of the Father, sometimes in the form of the Son, and thirdly in the form of the Holy Spirit. The Latins imagined that the Greeks would say there are three essences, meaning three gods, because the unity of God is based on the unity of essence.

Athanasius the Great, at the Council of Alexandria (362), favored the Easterners and used the phrase “one essence in 3 hypostases,” while he used the word essence synonymous with hypostasis.

The Latin Jerome was skeptical about the Greeks' use of the phrase 3 hypostases in the Vencerin wilderness (between Hama and Aleppo to the east). In the years 377-380, Rome and Antioch approached, and peace was concluded. In the year 380, Pope Damasus held a Roman council in which he declared the unity of faith with the East, and the words “person” and “hypostasis” were synonymous. Gregory the Theologian considered the battle over words a trivial battle as long as the meaning was the same. Nyssa supported this. A council was held in Antioch in the year 382, clearing up the confusion.

At that time, the West was following the East theologically. De Reunion admitted this and said that the Latins were disciples of the Greeks (The Secret of Dispensation, pp. 24-27).

homoousios:

Arabic translation is ineffective. The meaning in Greek is that the Father and the Son are one and the same essence. The word is compound: omo itself, same. Ousios intrinsic, derived from essence. He used it in the Constitution of Faith enacted by the First Ecumenical Council of Nicene (325), and said: “And in the one Lord Jesus Christ... who is equal in essence to the Father.” The word “equal” is weak, as is “equal”. The correct one is: “He who has one and the same essence.”

individual atomon:

Greek philosophy is devoid of meanings of person. We saw above Aristotle defines the individual. But in the tree of Porphyrius and its evil by his student Ammonius, the word “fard” appears. We saw with Aristotle that the horse is an individual: is the human person a sheep in a flock of spoils? (42) In the end, they remain in the world of the abstract and superficial, without ever arriving at the Christian personal concept. Basil the Great used phrases that mimic their expressions in some ways, but the difference is very large.

Basil distinguished between “essence” and “hypostasis.” He gave man as an example: what all human beings have in common is human nature. Private is human persons. The common is the “essence”. The particular is the “hypostasis.” Peter, Paul, and Silvanus are persons. Basil demanded that this distinction be transferred to the Holy Trinity (43).

Divinity is their essence. It's ousia. The hypostases are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Especially the hypostatic Son is the non-birth

Especially the hypostatic Son is birth

Especially the hypostatic Holy Spirit is emanation.

This is the hypostatic property. Nothing else distinguishes the hypostases.

The rest is all one. Everything that belongs to the Father belongs to the Son, except for paternity, and the Holy Spirit transmits it. We see that the Cappadocians moved in history towards a personal concept of God, so they defeated Plato, Aristotle, and all Greek philosophy. They focused on the existence of the hypostasis and destroyed Aristotle's statements.

Heretical men tried to understand Christianity in the light of reason and the Greek Aristotle. The Cappadocians and all their counterparts who fought heresies rejected Aristotle as an arbiter in matters of religion and to reduce inspired religion to the level of mathematical equations. Religion is a belief in a transcendent divinity. Irrationalism. John of Damascus said that Aristotle is the father of heresies. Gregory the Theologian accused his old friend Apollinaris of Latakia of Aristotelianism. Jan Meyendorff, a contemporary Orthodox theologian, accused Theodore of Masisa and his student Nestorius of trying to give a rational interpretation of the divine incarnation. d'Alès accused them all of Aristotelianism (The Secret of Management, pp. 185 and 29). In vain some people try to justify Nestorius. It does not acknowledge the Virgin’s motherhood to God. He says that the Father's fatherhood for the body of Jesus is adoptive fatherhood. His position is very dangerous in both cases: We say that the Virgin is the Mother of God because of the unity of the Hypostasis. On the other hand, we say that the Father is the Father of the Hypostasis and therefore the Father of divinity and humanity. Nestorius, therefore, rejected the motherhood of the Virgin to God and the fatherhood of the Father to the humanity of the Son, so he separated the two natures of Christ: a major heretic.

 

 

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(35) Berdiaeff, 5 revisions on Existence p. 180-1.

Mounier, Le Personnalisme, p. 10 et 13

 (36) The word hypostasis is Syriac and passed into Arabic.

(37) Confusion about the meanings of “Johar” appears in the dictionary of synonyms issued by the Ministry of Culture in Damascus (I do not have the power to mention it in detail). He comes out of reading - after reading several pages - not knowing exactly what the essence is.

(38) Because of the unity of essence, Christians are monotheists, not polytheists, as the Jews accuse them. The doctrine of the Trinity radically separates Christianity from Judaism as a new religion that strictly ties it to Judaism, even though the Old Testament is common to them, no matter how far the Jewish Talmud is completely from the spirit of the Torah.

(39) According to Loski, p. 49. However, Basil the Great used the word “essence” in a non-Aristotelian sense. Here he was influenced by Neo-Platonism with precise realism (The Secret of Management, p. 224). His concept of essence is not a theoretical, rational abstraction. The essence actually and realistically exists in the divine hypostases. This is what Loski did not notice.

(40) What Loski said is not true. Aristotle remains theoretical by dividing man into man as a species and animals as a genus. Gender and gender are among Aristotle's theoretical categories. Basilius blew it up.

(41) They used the word ousia, but preferred the word physis to it. So they made the ousia the essential being of God, unapproachable and incomprehensible.

As for nature, physis is the qualities.

As for the hypostasis, it has the qualities of personality (Sir al-Tabdir, p. 204, footnote 1). We will come back again. After these clarifications, I was surprised by Callistus Weir’s statement: “What is meant by the essence of God is His otherness and otherness. He is other than us...” (Knowing God 1:18). This is literature and poetry, not theology. He has many whims. We must not rush to every French or English book unconsciously and critically.

(42) No matter how spiritual or rational Greek philosophy may seem, it remains materialistic to a large extent, its character being analysis to form theoretical concepts. Plato moves the mind, not the heart.

(43) Gregory the Theologian and Cyril of Alexandria also gave an example to humans and their one nature, instead of the habit of representing the sun, rays, and heat.