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THE PERSON IN THE ORTHODOX TRADITION (cpt. 6)
© Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos

In what follows I would like us to take a look at how the holy Fathers came to apply the term ‘Prosopon’ to the Trinitarian God.

Various philosophising theologians, in their attempt to clarify the relationship between the Father and the Son, ended in a variety of dangerous and heretical teachings. In opposition to the gnostic polyarchy there developed two ‘monarchian’ parties: the patropaschites and the adoptionists. The former teach that the Son is identical with the Father, while the latter deny the divinity of the Son or Word. The heresy of the patropaschites was shaped and developed further by Sabellios, who maintained that the Christian God is one, but at times He took on a different prosopon, a different mask. So in the Old Testament he is presented as Father, and in the New Testament as Son and in the period of the Church as Holy Spirit. In reality Sabellios was identifying the substance with the hypostasis. This teaching overturns and distorts the revealed truth about the Trinitarian God. And if it had prevailed, it would have had dreadful consequences for theology, the Church and for man’s salvation2.

The holy Fathers confronted this heresy, which confused the hypostatic characteristics of the Persons of the Holy Trinity and in effect broke up the Trinitarianness of God. I should like to refer briefly to the teaching of st. Basil the Great on this subject so as to show the process by which the theology of the person was settled.

In his texts Basil the Great refers many times to the teaching of Sabellios. He writes that Sabellios regarded God as one, but transformed by different masks: “...that the same God, though one in substance, is transformed on every occasion according to necessary circumstances, and is spoken of now as Father, and now as Son, and now as Holy Spirit”3. Thus the persons of the Trinitarian God are really without substance, they lack ontology. Commenting on this, Basil the Great observes: “For not even Sabellius rejected the non-subsistent representation of the Persons”4. Also in other texts of Basil the Great we can find this teaching of Sabellius which regards the person as a mask which is not connected with the hypostasis5.

Basil the Great, however, is not content simply to present the teaching of Sabellios, but he refutes it and at the same time expresses the revealed truth in the terms of his time. In what follows I should like us to look at the theological views of Basil the Great relating to the Person of God.

He writes that just as anyone who does not accept the common essence falls into polytheism, so also anyone who discards “the distinction of hypostases”, is led to Judaism6. We as Christians believe in the Triune God, who has a common essence and distinct hypostases. But in order to reach this point and express himself as perfectly as possible, Basil the Great does two very important things.

First he separates the essence (ousia) from the hypostasis. Until then the essence was identified with the hypostasis, and this still appears also in the dogmatic formulation of the First Ecumenical Council. Basil the Great says that the essence or nature is what held is common in the Trinitarian God and that the hypostases are the particular ways of being of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. On this subject he says: “substance and person have the distinction that the general has with reference to the particular; for example, just as ‘a living creature’ has with reference to ‘a particular man’. For this reason we confess one essence for the Godhead, so as not to hand down variously the definition of Its existence, but we confess a person that is particular, in order that our conception of Father and Son and Holy Spirit will be distinct and perfectly clear to us”7. Making this distinction was a great effort, and I might say that it was a great “revolution”, which finally prevailed, thanks to the great influence of the personality of Basil the Great.

Secondly, Basil the Great identified the hypostasis with the person. Thus while until that time ‘person’ had meant something “unreal”, the mask, from the time of Basil the Great, and thanks to his own efforts, the person has acquired ontology and substance. The person is identified with the hypostasis, and is not something abstract, it is not a mask. St. Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea, writes characteristically: “For it is not sufficient to enumerate the difference in the Persons, but it is necessary to confess that each Person subsists in a true hypostasis”8. Referring to the term ‘homoousios’, he says that it is the most suitable for expressing the relationship of the Son to the Father: “This term also sets aright the error of Sabellios; for it does away with the identity of person (‘hypostasis’) and introduces a perfect notion of the Persons of the Godhead”9. Thus the ‘prosopon’ - when identified with the hypostasis - which is the essence with the particular peculiarities - takes on great value, losing its impersonal and abstract character and acquiring ontology.

These two elucidations, that is to say the separating of the essence from the hypostasis and the identifying of hypostasis with person, were necessary in order to combat the heresies about the Trinitarian God. Anyone who identifies essence with hypostasis necessarily accepts the teaching of Sabellios. Basil the Great writes felicitously: “Those who say that substance and persons are the same are forced to confess different Persons only, and in hesitating to speak of three Persons, they find that they fail to avoid the evil of Sabellius, who even himself, although often confusing his notions, tried to distinguish the Persons by saying that the same Person changed its appearance according to the need arising on each occasion”10.

Since the fourth century, then, person has been identified with hypostasis, and essence with nature. These terms are suitable for expressing the dogma of the Holy Trinity. Of course we must add that they do not help us to understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity. As the expression “mystery of the Holy Trinity” bears witness, we cannot understand this great mystery with our reason, but we can formulate it in these terms, even though they are completely inadequate, and therefore we often use apophatic expressions. Thus we can understand logically the dogma about the mystery of the Holy Trinity and not the mystery in itself, which transcends human reason and is a subject of revelational experience.

However, I should like us to look at the meaning of the person in the teaching of St. John of Damaskos, who summarised the whole theology of the Church on this subject. We need to do this in order to be able in some way to understand the terms which the holy Fathers used to express and formulate as best they could the relationships between the Persons of the Holy Trinity. In particular we shall look at the meanings of ‘essence’ ‘nature’, ‘hypostasis’, and ‘person’ as they are interpreted by St. John of Damaskos.

“Essence’(ousia) is a thing which subsists in itself” and has no need of another for its existence”. Likewise essence is everything that subsists in itself “and does not have its existence in another - that is to say, that which is not because of any other thing”, nor has need of another to be formed, but which is in itself. Essence (ousia) gets its name from being. Therefore it exists of itself, it does not owe its existence to anything else.

“The nature of each being is the principle of its motion and repose”. The nature is identified with the essence, since, according to St. John of Damaskos, “it is nothing other than essence”. Thus it is from essence that nature has such a potentiality, which is to say its motion and repose.

The term ‘hypostasis’ has two meanings. Sometimes it means simple existence. In this sense the hypostasis is connected with the essence, and this is why certain of the Fathers have said: “the natures, that is to say, hypostases”. At other times it means “the existence of an individual substance in itself”, and it signifies the difference of one individual from the other.

It must be pointed out here that these two meanings are given by St. John of Damascus because in the early Church there were two traditions about the meaning of hypostasis. Alexandrian theology associated the essence with the hypostasis, while Cappadocian theology associated the hypostasis with the person. Thus we see that in the Creed as formulated by the First Ecumenical Council the word hypostasis was used in the sense of essence, while finally in the Second Ecumenical Council the teaching was given that the hypostasis is connected with the person and is distinct from the meaning of essence. We see this position also in the Cappadocian Fathers, but we must point out that it was accepted by Athanasius the Great as well. It is a fact that we have no change in theology, but only in terminology. Finally it prevailed that essence is to be associated with nature and hypostasis with person.

In any case, essence cannot subsist by itself, since formless essence does not subsist, while in the hypostases, or individuals, are found both the essence and the intrinsic differences.

A ‘person’ according to the teaching of St. John of Damaskos, is “one who by reason of his own operations and properties exhibits to us an appearance which is distinct and set off from those of the same nature as he”, that is to say a person is one who appears as somebody in particular among the many of his kind. And St. John of Damaskos mentions two examples to make it clear. The archangel Gabriel who appeared to the Panagia and talked with her, while he was one of the angels and belonged to a particular species, was at the same time a particular individual “distinct from the angels consubstantial with him”. That is to say, it is a matter of a particular individual who belonged to a choir of angels. Likewise we have the other example, that of the Apostle Paul. When the Apostle was speaking to the people, “while he was one among the number of men, by his characteristics and operations he was distinct from the rest of men”. While he was a man, at the same time he was distinguished from the other men by the particular gifts and merits which he had.

It must be emphasised that, according to St. John of Damaskos, hypostasis, person and individual are the same thing. At one point he says: “hypostases or individuals”, and in another place he says: “One should know that the holy Fathers used the terms ‘hypostasis’ and ‘person’ and ‘individual’ for the same thing”11.

From this brief analysis by St. John of Damaskos it appears that the essence is associated with the nature and the hypostasis is associated with the person. And yet it appears that essence or nature cannot subsist without the person or hypostasis. When we speak of hypostasis or person, we mean the essence or nature with its distinctive features. And of course, as we mentioned before, the teaching about the person was formulated by the holy Fathers with regard to the Trinitarian God in order to clarify the relations between the persons of the Holy Trinity, because of the appearance of various heretical doctrines, which falsified the teaching of the Revelation.

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