To his Brother Gregory, concerning the difference between οὐσία and ὑπόστασις .

1.  Many persons, in their study of the sacred dogmas, failing to distinguish between what is common in the essence or substance, and the meaning of the hypostases, arrive at the same notions, and think that it makes no difference whether οὐσία or hypostasis be spoken of.  The result is that some of those who accept statements on these subjects without any enquiry, are pleased to speak of “one hypostasis,” just as they do of one “essence” or “substance;” while on the other hand those who accept three hypostases are under the idea that they are bound in accordance with this confession, to assert also, by numerical analogy, three essences or substances.  Under these circumstances, lest you fall into similar error, I have composed a short treatise for you by way of memorandum.  The meaning of the words, to put it shortly, is as follows:

2.  Of all nouns the sense of some, which are predicated of subjects plural and numerically various, is more general; as for instance man.  When we so say, we employ the noun to indicate the common nature, and do not confine our meaning to any one man in particular who is known by that name.  Peter, for instance is no more man, than Andrew, John, or James.  The predicate therefore being common, and extending to all the individuals ranked under the same name, requires some note of distinction whereby we may understand not man in general, but Peter or John in particular.

Of some nouns on the other hand the denotation is more limited; and by the aid of the limitation we have before our minds not the common nature, but a limitation of anything, having, so far as the peculiarity extends, nothing in common with what is of the same kind; as for instance, Paul or Timothy.  For, in a word, of this kind there is no extension to what is common in the nature; there is a separation of certain circumscribed conceptions from the general idea, and expression of them by means of their names.  Suppose then that two or more are set together, as, for instance, Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, and that an enquiry is made into the essence or substance of humanity; no one will give one definition of essence or substance in the case of Paul, a second in that of Silvanus, and a third in that of Timothy; but the same words which have been employed in setting forth the essence or substance of Paul will apply to the others also.  Those who are described by the same definition of essence or substance are of the same essence or substance²⁰²³

2023 ὁμοουσιοι.

3.  My statement, then, is this.  That which is spoken of in a special and peculiar manner is indicated by the name of the hypostasis.  Suppose we say “a man.”  The indefinite meaning of the word strikes a certain vague sense upon the ears.  The nature is indicated, but what subsists and is specially and peculiarly indicated by the name is not made plain.  Suppose we say “Paul.”  We set forth, by what is indicated by the name, the nature subsisting.²⁰²⁴

2024 ὑφεστῶσαν.  & 195·πόστασις is derivatively that which “stands under” or subsists, ὃ ὑφέστηκε.  cf. my note on Theodoret, p. 36.

This then is the hypostasis, or “understanding;” not the indefinite conception of the essence or substance, which, because what is signified is general, finds no “standing,” but the conception which by means of the expressed peculiarities gives standing and circumscription to the general and uncircumscribed.  It is customary in Scripture to make a distinction of this kind, as well in many other passages as in the History of Job.  When purposing to narrate the events of his life, Job first mentions the common, and says “a man;” then he straightway particularizes by adding “a certain.”²⁰²⁵

2025 Job i. 1, LXX.

2026 Job ii. 11.

2027 The mss. vary as to this parenthetical clause, and are apparently corrupt.  The rendering above is conjectural, but not satisfactory.

4.  Now the proper way to direct our investigation seems to me to be as follows.  We say that every good thing, which by God’s providence befalls us, is an operation, of the Grace which worketh in us all things, as the apostle says, “But all these worketh that one and the self same Spirit dividing to every man severally as he will.”²⁰²⁸

2028 1 Cor. xii. 11.

2029 ὁ μονογενὴς θεός is the reading of the Sinaitic and Vatican mss. in John i. 18.  The insertion of the words οὐδὲ ὁ υιἰος, adopted by R.V. in Matt. xxiv. 36, but of which St. Basil knows nothing, as appears from his argument on the difference between the statements of St. Matthew and St. Mark on this subject in Letter ccxxxvi., is supported by these same two mss.

2030 John i. 3.

2031 Col. i. 17.

2032 ἀνάρχως.

2033 ἀγεννήτως καὶ ἀνάρχως ὑφεστῶσα.

2034 For similar statements by St. Basil, cf. De Sp. S. p.  cf. also Cont. Eunom. i:  ἐπειδὴ γὰρ ἀπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς ἡ ἀρχὴ τῷ υἱ& 254·, κατὰ τοῦτο μείζων ὁ πατὴρ ὡς αἴτιος καὶ ἀρχή.

2035 cf. notes, pp. 15, 24.

2036 μετὰ τὸν υἱ& 231·ν.  So the Benedictine text with four mss. in the Paris Library, and the note.  “μετὰ τοῦ υἱοῦ” is a reading which is inadmissible, repeating as it does the sense of the following clause καὶ σὺν αὐτῷ.  The sense in which the Son is both “after the Son” and “with the Son” is explained further on by St. Basil, where he says that the three Persons are known in consecution of order but in conjunction of nature.

2037 ὑποστῆναι.

2038 Rom. viii. 9; 1 Cor. ii. 12.

2039 Apparently a mistaken interpretation of the LXX. version of Ps. cxix. 131, εἵλκυσα πνεῦμα="I drew breath.”  A.V. and R.V., “I panted.”  Vulg., attraxi spiritum.

2040 ὥσπερ ἐκ αἰνίγματι.  cf. 1 Cor. xiii. 12.  ἐν αἰνίγματι or ἐξ αἰνιγμάτων, as in Æsch., Ag. 1113=by dark hints.  The bold oxymoron concluding this sentence is illustrated by Ovid’s “impietate pia” (Met. viii. 477), Lucan’s “concordia discors” (Phars. i. 98), or Tennyson’s “faith unfaithful.”

5.  Yet receive what I say as at best a token and reflexion of the truth; not as the actual truth itself.  For it is not possible that there should be complete correspondence between what is seen in the tokens and the objects in reference to which the use of tokens is adopted.  Why then do I say that an analogy of the separate and the conjoined is found in objects perceptible to the senses?  You have before now, in springtime, beheld the brightness of the bow in the cloud; the bow, I mean, which, in our common parlance, is called Iris, and is said by persons skilled in such matters to be formed when a certain moisture is mingled with the air, and the force of the winds expresses what is dense and moist in the vapour, after it has become cloudy, into rain.  The bow is said to be formed as follows.  When the sunbeam, after traversing obliquely the dense and darkened portion of the cloud-formation, has directly cast its own orb on some cloud, the radiance is then reflected back from what is moist and shining, and the result is a bending and return, as it were, of the light upon itself.  For flame-like flashings are so constituted that if they fall on any smooth surface they are refracted on themselves; and the shape of the sun, which by means of the beam is formed on the moist and smooth part of the air, is round.  The necessary consequence therefore is that the air adjacent to the cloud is marked out by means of the radiant brilliance in conformity with the shape of the sun’s disc.  Now this brilliance is both continuous and divided.  It is of many colours; it is of many forms; it is insensibly steeped in the variegated bright tints of its dye; imperceptibly abstracting from our vision the combination of many coloured things, with the result that no space, mixing or paring within itself the difference of colour, can be discerned either between blue and flame-coloured, or between flame-coloured and red, or between red and amber.  For all the rays, seen at the same time, are far shining, and while they give no signs of their mutual combination, are incapable of being tested, so that it is impossible to discover the limits of the flame-coloured or of the emerald portion of the light, and at what point each originates before it appears as it does in glory.  As then in the token we clearly distinguish the difference of the colours, and yet it is impossible for us to apprehend by our senses any interval between them; so in like manner conclude, I pray you, that you may reason concerning the divine dogmas; that the peculiar properties of the hypostases, like colours seen in the Iris, flash their brightness on each of the Persons Whom we believe to exist in the Holy Trinity; but that of the proper nature no difference can be conceived as existing between one and the other, the peculiar characteristics shining, in community of essence, upon each.  Even in our example, the essence emitting the many-coloured radiance, and refracted by the sunbeam, was one essence; it is the colour of the phænomenon which is multiform.  My argument thus teaches us, even by the aid of the visible creation, not to feel distressed at points of doctrine whenever we meet with questions difficult of solution, and when at the thought of accepting what is proposed to us, our brains begin to reel.  In regard to visible objects experience appears better than theories of causation, and so in matters transcending all knowledge, the apprehension of argument is inferior to the faith which teaches us at once the distinction in hypostasis and the conjunction in essence.  Since then our discussion has included both what is common and what is distinctive in the Holy Trinity, the common is to be understood as referring to the essence; the hypostasis on the other hand is the several distinctive sign.²⁰⁴¹

2041 The scientific part of the analogy of the rainbow is of course obsolete and valueless.  The general principle holds good that what is beyond comprehension in theology finds its parallel in what is beyond comprehension in the visible world.  We are not to be staggered and turn dizzy in either sphere of thought at the discovery that we have reached a limit beyond which thought cannot go.  We may live in a finite world, though infinite space is beyond our powers of thought:  we may trust in God revealed in the Trinity, though we cannot analyse or define Him.

6.  It may however be thought that the account here given of the hypostasis does not tally with the sense of the Apostle’s words, where he says concerning the Lord that He is “the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person,”²⁰⁴²

2042 Heb. i. 3.

7.  My opinion is, however, that in this passage the Apostle’s argument is directed to a different end; and it is looking to this that he uses the terms “brightness of glory,” and “express image of person.”  Whoever keeps this carefully in view will find nothing that clashes with what I have said, but that the argument is conducted in a special and peculiar sense.  For the object of the apostolic argument is not the distinction of the hypostases from one another by means of the apparent notes; it is rather the apprehension of the natural, inseparable, and close relationship of the Son to the Father.  He does not say “Who being the glory of the Father” (although in truth He is); he omits this as admitted, and then in the endeavour to teach that we must not think of one form of glory in the case of the Father and of another in that of the Son, He defines the glory of the Only-begotten as the brightness of the glory of the Father, and, by the use of the example of the light, causes the Son to be thought of in indissoluble association with the Father.  For just as the brightness is emitted by the flame, and the brightness is not after the flame, but at one and the same moment the flame shines and the light beams brightly, so does the Apostle mean the Son to be thought of as deriving existence from the Father, and yet the Only-begotten not to be divided from the existence of the Father by any intervening extension in space, but the caused to be always conceived of together with the cause.  Precisely in the same manner, as though by way of interpretation of the meaning of the preceding cause, and with the object of guiding us to the conception of the invisible by means of material examples, he speaks also of “express image of person.”  For as the body is wholly in form, and yet the definition of the body and the definition of the form are distinct, and no one wishing to give the definition of the one would be found in agreement with that of the other; and yet, even if in theory you separate the form from the body, nature does not admit of the distinction, and both are inseparably apprehended; just so the Apostle thinks that even if the doctrine of the faith represents the difference of the hypostases as unconfounded and distinct, he is bound by his language to set forth also the continuous and as it were concrete relation of the Only-begotten to the Father.  And this he states, not as though the Only-begotten had not also a hypostatic being, but in that the union does not admit of anything intervening between the Son and the Father, with the result that he, who with his soul’s eyes fixes his gaze earnestly on the express image of the Only-begotten, is made perceptive also of the hypostasis of the Father.  Yet the proper quality contemplated in them is not subject to change, nor yet to commixture, in such wise as that we should attribute either an origin of generation to the Father or an origin without generation to the Son, but so that if we could compass the impossibility of detaching one from the other, that one might be apprehended severally and alone, for, since the mere name implies the Father, it is not possible that any one should even name the Son without apprehending the Father.²⁰⁴³

2043 The simpler explanation of the use of the word hypostasis in the passage under discussion is that it has the earlier sense, equivalent to οὐσία.  cf. Athan., Or. c. Ar. iii. 65, iv. 33, and Ad. Apos. 4.

8.  Since then, as says the Lord in the Gospels,²⁰⁴⁴

2044 John xiv. 9.

2045 Col. i. 15.

2046 This phrase is not in the Epistles, nor indeed does the substantive ἀγαθότης occur in the N.T. at all.  “Image of his goodness” is taken from Wisdom vii. 26, and erroneously included among the “words of the Apostle.”

2047 cf. John xiv. 11.

E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH