Hypostasis

[I've explained it here before.  If you want the full document, ask me by mail
--Rex] 


   "Questions arise as we begin to think about LOGOS and what His inner
consciousness was composed of. We need to clarify the two natures of Christ
briefly.  The divine nature, which has existed eternally, did not undertake any
essential changes during the incarnation which would cause a conflict with the
attributes of God, the foremost of these being His immutability.  This would
mean that it remained impassable, that is, incapable of suffering and death,
free from ignorance and insusceptible to weakness and temptation.  In the realm
of the divine nature it is better to say that the Son of God became that which
was not absolute-and in Himself.  The result of the incarnation was that the
divine LOGOS could be ignorant and weak, could be tempted and suffer and die,
not in His divine nature, but by the derivation of His possession of a human
nature.
     This would mean that both the properties of the divine nature and the
human nature are properties of the person, and therefore ascribed to the
person. By this reason we can say that the person can be omnipotent,
omniscient, and omnipresent, yet at the same time be also a man of limited
power, knowledge, a man of sorrows, subject to human wants and miseries.  There
is, however, no penetration of one nature into the other.  Deity can no more
share the imperfections of humanity than humanity can share in the essential
perfection of the Godhead.
     We are not to assume that there is a double personality due to the
possession of the double natures.  Christ's human nature is impersonal, in that
it attains self-consciousness and self-determination in the personality of the
God-man.  We must now differentiate between the person and the nature of the
Man. Nature is defined:

"the distinguishing qualities or properties of something; the fundamental
character, disposition or temperament of a living being, innate and
unchangeable."

     Nature is then, in essence, the substance possessed in common, in as such
the Trinity have one nature.  There is also a common nature of mankind. 
Personality, on the other hand, is the separate subsistence of nature, with the
power of consciousness and will.  It is for this reason that the human nature
of Christ has not, nor ever had, a separate subsistence, that it is impersonal.
 LOGOS, the God-man, represents the principle of personality.  It is equally
important to see that self-consciousness and self-determination do not, as
such, belong to the nature.  It is for this reason that we can justifiably say
that Jesus did not have two consciousness or two wills, but rather one.  It is
theanthropic, an activity of the one personality which unites in itself the
human and the divine natures, being that neither the consciousness nor the will
are simply human or simply divine."


[The quotation given above is not identified, and it's not entirely
clear to me what position Loren is taking on it.  Just for clarity,
let me note that the view expressed in it is one of the classic
Christological heresies -- monothelitism.  That's the position that
Christ's two natures were not complete, in that there was only one
will.  In most cases (which I think includes this example), it was the
human will that was regarded as missing.

Normally people who talk about Christ's human nature as being
"impersonal" mean it in a somewhat more abstract sense.  That is, they
are using "person" as hypostatis, not in the usual English sense of
personality.  In this use, the doctrine is called "anhypostasia".
Personally I think anhypostasia is just a more sophisticated way of
denying that the Logos took on humanity fully.  However it has never
been formally ruled a heresy, and in fact has been held by influential
theologians both ancient and modern (e.g. Athanasius).  But the
quotation above appears to be going farther than even Athanasius went,
into the realm of the overtly heretical.