anhypostasia

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Ancient Greek ἀνῠποστασία (anupostasía), from ἀνῠπόστᾰσῐς (anupóstasis, “unsubstantiality”) + -ίᾱ (-íā, suffix forming nouns). ἀνῠπόστᾰσῐς is derived from ἀν- (an-) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *n̥- (“un-”)) + ὑπόστᾰσῐς (hupóstasis, “existence; essence; substance”) (from ῠ̔πο- (hupo-, “sub-”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *upo (“below, under”)) + στάσις (stásis, “standing”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *stéh₂tis (“position, standing”))). By surface analysis, an- +‎ hypostasis +‎ -ia.

Pronunciation

(Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ænˌhaɪ.pəˈsteɪ.sɪ.ə/, /ænˌhaɪ.pəˈsteɪ.ʒə/
(General American) IPA^(key): /ænˌhaɪ.pəˈsteɪ.ʒi.ə/, /-ʒə/
Hyphenation: an‧hy‧po‧stas‧ia

Noun

anhypostasia (plural not attested)

(Christianity (Christology)) The quality of Jesus Christ's humanity, such that it has its existence entirely from the hypostatic union, rather than from any independent human personhood (or hypostasis). The concept does not deny Jesus's personhood, but denies that Jesus's humanity has any personhood apart from the one hypostasis in which his humanity and divinity are united.
- 1870, “a country parson” [pseudonym], The Thirty-nine Articles and The Creeds: Their Sense and Non-sense, part II, Ramsgate, Kent: Published by Thomas Scott, Mount Pleasant, →OCLC, pages 20–21:
  [H]e [Henry Liddon] observes, "The anhypostasia (impersonality) of our Lord's humanity is a result of the hypostatic union: to deny it is to assert that there are two persons in Christ, or else deny that he is more than man. At his Incarnation, the Eternal Word took on him human nature, not a human personality."
  In Liddon's work, the word anhypostasia is rendered in Greek as ἀνῠποστασία: see Henry Parry Liddon (1867) “Lecture I. The Question before Us.”, in The Divinity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; Eight Lectures Preached before the University of Oxford, in the Year 1866, on the Foundation of the Late Rev. John Bampton, M.A. Canon of Salisbury, London, Oxford, Cambridge: Rivingtons, →OCLC, section III.1 (The Catholic Answer […] Jealously Guards the Truth of Christ’s Manhood), footnote g, page 34.
- 1872, John M'Clintock [i.e., John McClintock], James Strong, “John of Damascus”, in Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, volume IV (H, I, J), New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, publishers, Franklin Square, →OCLC, pages 964–965:
  The doctrine of the person of Christ is argued with greatest fullness, and he [John of Damascus] evinces no little ingenuity and dialectic skill in treating of the personal unity in Christ's twofold nature (which he conceived as enhypostasis, not anhypostasis, of the human nature in the Logos), […]
- 1954 September, T[homas] F[orsyth] Torrance, “The Atonement and the Oneness of the Church”, in Scottish Journal of Theology, volume 7, number 3, Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 249; quoted in Thomas F. Torrance, “The Place of Christology in Biblical and Dogmatic Theology”, in Theology in Reconstruction, Eugene, Or.: Wipf and Stock, 1996 December 19, →ISBN, footnote 1, page 131:
  By anhypostasia classical Christology asserted that in the assumptio carnis the human nature of Christ had no independent per se subsistence apart from the event of the incarnation, apart from the hypostatic union. By enhypostasia, however, it asserted that in the assumptio carnis the human nature of Christ was given a real and concrete subsistence within the hypostatic union—it was enhypostatic in the Word. Anhypostasia and enhypostasia are inseparable. In the incarnation the eternal Son assumed human nature into oneness with Himself, but in that assumption Jesus Christ is not only real man but a man.
- 1986, J[ohn] B[ainbridge] Webster, “Christology: Exegesis and Dogmatics”, in Eberhard Jüngel: An Introduction to His Theology, 1st paperback edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 34:
  ‘Anhypostasia’ describes the conviction that the human nature of the incarnate Christ did not have a personal centre of subsistence, but was rather incorporated into the person of the eternal Word with which it was united at the incarnation. […] Thus ‘anhypostasia’ is a way of articulating the fact that Jesus is, as it were, so totally taken up with his proclamation of the Kingdom of God that his whole being could be defined by reference to that Kingdom.
- 1998, John Macquarrie, “Two Traditional Ideas Evaluated”, in Christology Revisited, London: SCM Press, published 2003, →ISBN, pages 44–45:
  Anhypostasia (the word means literally the ‘state of being without a hypostasis’) is the doctrine that although Jesus Christ had two natures, a divine and a human (as [the Council of] Chalcedon teaches), these ‘concur’ or are united in a single person (hypostasis), and this person is the divine Logos, so that the human hypostasis is superseded and replaced by the hypostasis of the divine Logos. Jesus Christ is therefore without a human hypostasis.
- 2013, David R. Law, “The Nature of Kenotic Christology”, in Kierkegaard’s Kenotic Christology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 46:
  Anhypostasia is the doctrine of the impersonality of Christ's humanity. That is, Christ's human nature does not possess a hypostasis or personhood in its own right. […] Christ's humanity is anhypostatic, then, in the sense that the Word did not unite himself with a previously existing human being. It is because he unites himself with human nature as such that the incarnation is of universal significance to all human beings.
- 2015, Andrew Purves, “Christology: The Mystery of Christ—the Homoousion and the Hypostatic Union”, in Exploring Christology & Atonement: Conversations with John McLeod Campbell, H. R. Mackintosh and T. F. Torrance, Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, →ISBN, page 90:
  [I]t was in view of a weakening emphasis on Jesus' individuality, on his particular humanity, in part stimulated by the fights against Arianism and Adoptionism, that the notion of Christ's impersonal humanity took hold. Two theological words were used to try to overcome the problem: anhypostasis, which refers to the divinity of Jesus' person, and enhypostasis, which insists that, nevertheless, Jesus was truly a human being. The anhypostasis was meant to protect the view that if the Word had not become flesh, Jesus would not have existed. The person of Jesus, in other words, lay in the Logos.

Alternative forms

anhypostasis

Derived terms

anhypostatic

Related terms