Hypostasis
The Greek word Christian theology settled on for what English calls a divine “person” — one of the three who are the one God. It is contrasted with ousia, the single nature or essence all three share.
Greek hypostasis, “that which stands under”, from hypo, “under”, and stasis, “standing”.
Fourth-century Greek theology had to distinguish what is one in God from what is three, using words that had until then been near-synonyms. *Ousia* was fixed on the first — the essence, what God is, shared entirely by all three. *Hypostasis* was fixed on the second: the concrete individual existence, the *who*.
Debby uses the word as a count-term, not a personality-term. Arguments about "why exactly three" are arguments about how many hypostases, and the standing residual in this corpus is that proving three *roles* or three *slots* does not yet prove three hypostases. Collapse into one occupant filling three roles is the failure-mode named modalism.
The mistaken everyday reading is "person" as a human personality — a centre of feelings, a social role, a mask. A hypostasis is not a personality, a mode, or an aspect. It is one of the three who are the one God, and the whole difficulty of the doctrine is holding those two counts together without letting either collapse into the other.
Where this comes up
Sources
- Debby research packet OTC-002