Hypostatic union

Hypostatic union (in Greek: ὑπόστασις, hypóstasis, 'person, subsistence') is a technical term in Christian theology employed in mainstream Christology to describe the union of Christ's human nature and divine nature in one composed hypostasis, or individual personhood.

Quotes about

• The holy Mary has called us together, that underfiled treasure of virginity, the rational paradise of the second Adam,the workshop of the union of the natures, the market place for the salutary exchange, the bridal chamber wherein the Word espoused flesh...the most pure fleece of heavenly rain (Judges 6:37), from which the Shepherd clothed the sheep-handmaid and Mother, Virgin and heaven, the only bridge of God to men. She is awe-inspiring loom of the Incarnation, whereon in a way unspeakable was woven the garment of the hypostatic union, with the Holy Spirit as weaver; the overshadowing power from above, the connecting thread (erithos); the ancient fleece of Adam, the wool; the undefiled flesh from the Virgin, the threaded woof; the shuttle, the immeasurable grace of her who bore, with the Logos as Artist...

• Saint Proclus of Constantinople, Encomium on the All-Holy Mary, Mother of God, 1, 1 (Acta conciliorum oecomenicorum, 1, 1, 1, 103; ed. Schwartz; Berlin and Leipzig; 1914 ff.). As reported in Father Paul Palmer, SJ, Mary in the Documents of the Church, p. 53 (of 129), Lowe and Brydone (printers) Ltd, London L.W. 10, for Burns Oates and Washbourne Ltd, 28 Ashley Place, London, S.W.I. (with nihil obstat by E.A Cerny, S.S, D.D., and imprimatur by Franciscus P. Keough, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore, given on 23 November 1951). OCLC 3286267. Ch. The Loom of the Incarnation (c. 429).

• Radiant and paradoxical is the subject matter of the present festival [Christmas]: radiant, because it has brought salvation to all men; paradoxical, because it ran counter to nature's law. For nature no longer acknowledges a virgin after childbirth, but grace] made her parent and kept her virgin; grace made her a mother and did not violate her virginity...O earth unsown that flowered forth fruit that saves! O Virgin who surpasses Eden's garden if delights!...The Virgin is made more glorious than paradise. For paradise was cultivated by God; but Mary cultivated God Himslef according to the flesh, willing as He did to be united to human's nature.

• Thedotus of Ancyra, On the Nativity of Our Savior, 2 (Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum - ACO, 1, 1, 2, 80-81; ed. Schwartz; Berlin and Leipzig, 1914 ff.). As reported in in Father Paul Palmer, SJ, Mary in the Documents of the Church, pp. 51-52 (of 129), Lowe and Brydone (printers) Ltd, London L.W. 10, for Burns Oates and Washbourne Ltd, 28 Ashley Place, London, S.W.I. (with nihil obstat by E.A Cerny, S.S, D.D., and imprimatur by Franciscus P. Keough, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore, given on 23 November 1951). OCLC 3286267. Ch. Mary. God's Eden (January 6, 432; second homily on the Lord's Nativity, delivered at the Council of Ephesus).

• Incarnation, central Christian doctrine that God became flesh, that God assumed a human nature and became a man in the form of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the second person of the Trinity. Christ was truly God and truly man. The doctrine maintains that the divine and human natures of Jesus do not exist beside one another in an unconnected way but rather are joined in him in a personal unity that has traditionally been referred to as the hypostatic union.

• The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, in Incarnation,Encyclopædia Britannica.

• Blessed is the one who has reached the knowledge that cannot be abolished (beyond what cannot be, it cannot be gone).

• Skemmata, Kephalaia Gnostika 3.88
  • Evagrius Ponticus, Explanatory note: The knowledge that cannot be abolished or surpassed or outdone is the supreme knowledge of the Trinity, the end of the path of gnosis. There is no higher knowledge that can replace it, and it goes together with the final theosis (θέωσις).

• Salvation is Christ’s accomplishment, but had it not been communicated to another person, what good would it have been? Mary is witness that divinization in no longer out of reach. Christ is a divine hypostasis incarnated; Mary is a human hypostatis divinized.

• Father David Meconi and Carl E. Olson, Called To Be The Children Of God – The Catholic Theology Of Human Deification, p. 282, in the section entotled Liturgy and Divinization, Mary as Liturgical Person. Quoted in Guy McClung, Mary: Deified Human Hypostasis, catholicstand.com, 20 January 2019.

• The manner in which we [the Orthodox and the West] exist has become ontologically different … the Orthodox Christian does not live in a place of theological and conceptual conversations, but rather in a place of an essential and empirical lifestyle and reality as confirmed by grace in the heart [Heb 13:9]. This grace cannot be put in doubt either by logic or science or other type of argument … However, the change of man’s essence, theosis by grace, is a fact that is tangible for all the Orthodox faithful. Grace is not only obtained through the transformed relics of the saints which is totally inexplicable without acceptance of the divine. Grace also radiates from living Saints who are truly in the likeness of the Lord [Luke 8:46] (Patriarch Bartholomew, 1997).

• Nicea II, A.D. 787; as qtd in. “The Past in the Present Tense” p.24.

See also

• Deification