HYPOSTASIS • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Hypostasis

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noun

Hypostasis n. (pl. hypostases)

That which forms the basis of anything; underlying principle; a concept or mental entity conceived or treated as an existing being or thing.

(Theol.) Substance; subsistence; essence; person; personality; used by the early theologians to denote any one of the three subdivisions of the Godhead, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Note: The Council of Alexandria (a. d. 362) defined hypostasis as synonymous with person.

Principle; an element; used by the alchemists in speaking of salt, sulphur, and mercury, which they considered as the three principles of all material bodies.

(Med.) That which is deposited at the bottom of a fluid; sediment.

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Etymology of 'Hypostasis'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Hypostasis" Quotes from Famous Books

... contemptuous remarks of some later critics as little as he did the savage attacks of the half-lunatic Ritson. But he was rather indolent; his knowledge, though wide, was very desultory and full of scraps and gaps; and, like others in his century, he was much too fond of hypothesis without hypostasis, of supposition without substance. He was very excusably but very unluckily ignorant of what may be called the comparative panorama of English and European literature during the Middle Ages, and was apt to ...

— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things not seen." In the authorised version, "substance" stands for "assurance," and "evidence" for "proving." The question of the exact meaning of the two words, [Greek: hypostasis] and [Greek: elegchos] affords a fine field of discussion for the scholar and the metaphysician. But I fancy we shall be not far from the mark if we take the writer to have had in his mind the profound psychological truth, that men constantly feel certain about things for which ...

— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley