So is the term PERSON off your table here?
In the nominal simplistic sense of predominant English perception, yes. If it's carefully qualified with semantics secondary to their true underlying meanings (get it? underlying? hypostasis?), no.
A hypostasis is not exclusively a person, for faith is a hypostasis and confidence or assurance are referred to as a hypostasis.
Hypostasis is... Absolute assured foundational underlying substantial objective reality as subsistence for existence, and is outwardly presented by/as a prosopon.
Hypostasis is irreducible to a great extent, at least as a single word-for-single word English reduction after a compromised pitstop in Latin for its first layer of translational misrepresentation as persona/ae.
When applied to God or humans rather than other animate life (or inanimate objects), a hypostasis is thus "personal", as determined by the prosopon. Neither the hypostasis nor the prosopon is wholly the "person"; and in English (which everyone erroneously thinks all terms should be reduced to, though a plethora of English words are exactly their donor term IN English) ALL persons are beings by etymology and definition (though all beings aren't persons).
Especially after the hypostases being turned into little more than gorilla-glued anthropomorphic beings CALLED "persons", NO the term "person" should not be used without MUCH scrutiny.
Can you not substitute person for hypostasis in your explanation?
Why would I do that? And why would others accept bazillions of Greek terms like "diagnosis" (from the Greek "dia-" and "gnosis") for daily use, but demand the term used for the very underlying transcendent reality of existence for God and us to be dumbed down for the sake of a pan-European, late-emergent, derivative and low-context language being the greatest expression of that?
Seriously? Reduce a few Greek terms like diagnosis to a singular English word without using dia- or -gnosis in the SINGLE English word. And then do that for every unreduced Greek and Latin word in English.
But nooooooooooooooo... We have to have a reduced misrepresentational English word for hypostasis to please the dullard heretics who've conceptualized three Durabonded God-Guys as discreet individuated sentient beings playing heavenly Canasta around a celestial card table that are called "persons" and declared (wink, wink) as a singular being.
Nope. And I was lost for 28 years because of this nonsense. It is the nature of a personal being to have a mind/will for sentience and volition. Since all created persons are beings, that isn't a problem of understanding regarding humanity.
Without going further into the fallacy, the mind is relative to the physis of the ousia, both underlied by the hypostasis. (Oh, no; do I have to reduce those Greek terms to English, even though zillions of "English" words are directly Greek or Latin, etc. IN English?)
We partake of God's divine nature by being hypostatically IN Christ. That's how we're renewed in the spirit of our mind, for our breathed existence as an ousia is the human spirit. Our body is the outer portion of our prosopon, the inner being the sarx as it conjoins to the soul. And the soul is the functionalities of the spirit's mind and will faculties, along with the functionalities of the body's emotion and desire faculties.
Combined with the functionalities of both the spirit's faculties and body's faculties, the hypostasis is the soul. The "I"ness underlying the ousia as the "am"ness.
The hypostasis wouldn't have the mind/will itself, but it's resulting functionalities. Noema, not nous. Phronema, not phronimos. Boulema, not boulomai (thelema for God, with boulema as subset). The -ma suffixes should give this away.
The mind is not relative to the hypostasis, though the functionality OF the mind faculty would be the hypostasis in economy of action regarding the mind. So to have a multi-hypostatic God that is one ousia, there would be only one mind relative to the ousia, and the functionality of that mind faculty could then be relative to each hypostasis.
This is why I don't cringe so much at those professing Trinitarians who maintain an appropriate ousiac singular mind that has perichoretic "chorus" functionalities by the alleged multiple hypostases. If each has a mind, they are multiple ousios, regardless of declaration.
And since God is Uni-Hypostatic and Omni-Phenomenal rather than Multi-Hypostatic and Dyo-Phenomenal (Orthodoxy), it's wrong anyway.
Can you not use plain language?
Sure I can. Hypostasis is "plain Greek language", just like many other Greek terms that are "plain language". This simplistic approach is naive and peevish. Unless you're going to rid the English language of all Greek and Latin imports, this tact is patently absurd.
Why such a demand for reduction of an irreducible term? Why cater to the devices (noema) of Satan with low-contextualizing?
I mean, I have never seen you use person and personal in your rants on this topic...
Sure I have. Here...God is a PERSONAL hypostasis. Personal can be adjectival as a descriptor, but it can't wholly define a "person". There are no non-embodied hypostases running around, invisible in their intangibility. All hypostases have their own proper prospon, and are thus visible and recognizable to be distinguished from other animate beings and other impersonal things. That's what phenomena is all about, and God is omni-phenomenal as a PERSONAL hypostasis.
There. Personal. Right there for you to see I don't fallaciously consider God an object or force or power, or some other nebulous whatever.
Yet the primary feature of ANY direct encounter with God is that one has encountered a PERSON Who IS God...
Really? They directly encountered prosoponless hypostases? There's no such thing. Every hypostasis has its own proper prosopon. Not to mention, these encounters are via physical senses. God is not empirically reducible, either. Why would you trust someone's physical senses to build doctrine, especially without considering all possibilities? And how would they/you know these encounters weren't modal manifestations?
God's inherent transcendent prosopon is in-shining within created heaven, as He dwells in that unapproachable light. The processed Logos as the Son has a sempiternal prosopon that is "shared" with the qualitatively-distinct, hypostatically co-inherent Holy Spirit.
Then the Son hypostasized to take on flesh, and at His baptism we see that co-inherent Holy Spirit descending upon His human schema in a bodily shape to "Christ" Him for His earthly mission as an heir who has fulfilled the righteousness of the Law and personified it in the flesh.
The Father and His inherent literal Logos are the same hypostasis, and that Logos proceeded forth as the Son when/as created phenomena was instantiated into existence from God's noumena. In creation, God's eternal Logos is the eternal Son. They're coterminous.
And the primary feature of demonic theologies is their relegating God to attributes, powers, features, actions, love, and all manner of things that avoid speaking of God as a Person...
That should obviously not apply to me. I despise such de-personalizations. But a hypostasis isn't wholly the "person" apart from the inclusion of the prosopon. No binaries as false dichotomies. The mask is as much the "person" as the underlying reality of existence.
And a three-hypostasis ousia would be the height of naive non-intuitive silliness if you ever understood the omni-phenomenal truth of God's constitution. It's in inspired scripture if anyone would have ever dug it out. Paul knew, and this is what he discipled as his Gospel, entrusted to him by God.
So the Greek term hypostasis, meaning the PERSON behind the prosopon, the MASK of personality which CONCEALS the person, should be your vocabulary, and it is not...
Arsenios
No, it should not. And IF it were, God's singular mind should be relative to the ousia rather than multiplied.
You don't realize it, but that's functional Tritheism. And it's why Trinitarians drive others deeper toward anathema when they see that semi-Pagan silliness, however well-meaning Trinitarians might think they are.
A Multi-Sentience Multi-Hypostatic Trinity is anathema, and a Single-Sentience Multi-Hypostatic Trinity is barely acceptable. The problem is, few are the latter because of the absurd English word "person" (which is unarguably a being by etymology and definition) and the silly naive demand to reduce hypostasis to that term.
It's beyond sad, and many are likely lost as I was. Unacceptable. Anathema.