Introduction
The fragment edited, translated, and commented upon here was recently found by Nadezhda Kavrus-Hoffmann in an incomplete parchment manuscript, the MS Typ 46 of Houghton Library (Harvard),Footnote 1 which she classified as the eighteenth witness of the so-called “philosophical collection” and, accordingly, dated to the late ninth century.Footnote 2 The manuscript consists of eight misbound quires, has lacunas between folios, and is extensively damaged by mold, which makes it difficult to read and obliterates some areas of text. It contains mostly incomplete works composed by, or ascribed to, Nemesius of Emesa (De natura hominis, CPG 3550), Gregory Thaumaturgus (Confessio fidei, CPG 1764, and the spurious Ad Tatianum de anima, CPG 1773/7717), Gregory of Nyssa (De anima et resurrectione, CPG 3149), and John Philoponus (De Paschate, CPG 7267). Except for Thaumaturgus’s Expositio fidei and Philoponus’s De Paschate, the selection of the writings copied seems to have been driven by a certain interest in the relationship between the human soul and the body.Footnote 3
The last folio of the manuscript (59r–59v) contains an excerpt titled “How it is necessary to face those who ask us whether there is an anhypostatos nature” (Πῶς ἀπαντᾶν δεῖ τοῖς ἐπερωτῶσιν ἡμᾶς εἰ ἔστι φύσις ἀνυπόστατος), where the form-body imagery serves to argue that indeed there is no nature that is “non-subsistent” or “without hypostasis,”Footnote 4 and that nature and hypostasis cannot be identified. Kavrus-Hoffmann ascribes it to Cyril of Alexandria because its explicit reads: καθ’ ἃ φησιν ὁ δοκιμώτατος Κύριλλος· τὴν γὰρ τ<ῶν> <συν>ουσιαστῶν ἐνδεῖξαι θέλων δόξαν ἐπὶ λέξεως ταῦτα λέγει (translation below). However, the excerpt is anonymous, because this line means that the passage from the work of “the most excellent Cyril” where he treated the “opinion of the Synousiasts,” that is the Liber contra Synousiastas,Footnote 5 should follow, but it is missing, and this despite the fact that the verso of the folio has left several lines empty for a quotation to be copied.
Above all, our fragment has nothing to do with Cyril because, as we will see, its central part consists of an almost verbatim quotation of a well-known passage from Leontius of Byzantium’s Contra Nestorianos et Eutychianos concerning the distinction between hypostasis and enhypostaton. Indeed, the argument that there is no anhypostatos nature became one of the tools endorsed by Miaphysites, such as Timothy Elurus, Philoxenus of Mabbug, and Severus of Antioch, to demonstrate that the Chalcedonian doctrine of the two natures contradicted Cyril’s teaching and was in fact nothing other than Nestorianism.Footnote 6 The earliest pro-Chalcedonian solutions were devised by John the Grammarian and Leontius of Byzantium while specifically challenging this dictum by distinguishing between hypostasis and enhypostaton.
John dealt with the objection of Severus that there is “no anhypostatos nature” in his Apologia concilii Chalcedonensis, written between 514 and 518.Footnote 7 His answer has survived as a piece of the Συνηγορίαι of Eulogius, Chalcedonian patriarch of Alexandria, in the kephalaion of the Doctrina Patrum, which bears almost exactly the same title as our fragment.Footnote 8 By applying the Cappadocian distinction between οὐσία/φύσις and πρόσωπον/ὑπόστασις to the christological problem, John articulated his challenge to Severus and laid down the foundations of his concept of enhypostaton and of his formula of “two natures ἐνυπoστάτως united.”Footnote 9 As John explains:
we do not call our ousia in Christ enhypostatos, as being a characterized hypostasis on its own (ὑπόστασιν καθ᾽ ἑαυτὴν χαρακτηριστικήν) and a prosōpon, but insofar as it exists (ὑφέστηκε) and is. For sometimes the hypostasis means the existence (τὸ ὑφεστηκέναι), which is ousia, as has been shown, when it is deprived of its characteristic properties (χαρακτηριστικῶν ἰδιωμάτων) and of what is seen around the prosōpon.Footnote 10
In short, by defining the human nature in Christ’s hypostasis as enhypostatos, John means that it exists concretely, yet not as a hypostasis but as an ousia.Footnote 11
Leontius’s reply, which will be discussed with reference to our fragment below, became particularly significant, as it was appropriated in different ways by different Chalcedonian authors between the sixth and the seventh centuries.Footnote 12 Our anonymous author is representative of this tradition. What makes him of particular interest is that he is the only one who utilized the Leontian passage on hypostasis and enhypostaton directly, though not verbatim, as a defence against Miaphysite Tritheism.Footnote 13 Our author asserts that the human nature of Christ is not anhypostatos—that is, non-existent or without hypostasis—and is enhypostatos—namely, as he interprets Leontius, existing not as a hypostasis but as an ousia. By doing so, he sets out to neutralize the Tritheist assertion that there are three different substances in the Trinity inasmuch as it stems from the Miaphysite postulation that “every nature by all means has a distinct hypostasis” and therefore that “every hypostasis has a distinct substance” (¶1).
The latter is the most telling element in the fragment for establishing a terminus post quem for the composition of our fragment. The references to certain Miaphysites who, having acknowledged “three individual substances” (idikai ousiai), “do not refrain from saying that there are three gods” (¶1) and “blaspheme against the great Trinity having divided [ … ] three substances” (¶3) make it clear that our text was written in the aftermath of the Tritheist Controversy that plagued the Miaphysite churches in the second half of the sixth century. Ostensibly, this occurred at an advanced stage of its development, when Tritheism became a matter of some concern on the Chalcedonian side. Indeed, scholars tend to distinguish a primitive stage of Tritheism, which began in 557 with John Askotzanges, a Jacobite from Apamea, from a more advanced one, which was initiated by the composition of a treatise against Tritheists by Theodosius of Alexandria, another Miaphysite, no later than 564.Footnote 14 The plurality of substances within the Trinity was already an issue in earlier Tritheism. According to Michael the Syrian, John Askotzanges “confessed as many natures, substances and godheads as hypostases” and collected “a book of extracts (to show) that the Fathers taught a plurality of natures and godheads in the Trinity.”Footnote 15 Yet, two distinctive factors must be highlighted at this point: first, the “dogmatic writers on the Chalcedonian side” knew “nothing at all about the earlier stages of tritheist doctrine”;Footnote 16 second, the concept of idikai (or merikai) ousiai became of central importance specifically in the formulation of John Philoponus and in the Chalcedonians’ reaction to it.Footnote 17 We will see shortly that there are further aspects of the description of the Tritheist stance in our fragment that confirm that John Philoponus’s doctrine is under question.Footnote 18 Accordingly, since his Tritheistic writings date to the late 560s,Footnote 19 our fragment must have been written after 570.
Regrettably, there are no solid elements that help us set a precise terminus ante quem. However, it is difficult to see how our fragment has anything to do with the late Chalcedonian reaction against Tritheism by Maximus Confessor (d. 662) or John of Damascus (d. 749),Footnote 20 who appear to be distant witnesses to the debates that caused the involvement of Chalcedonians up to Eulogius of Alexandria (d. 607).Footnote 21 Moreover, if we admit that our author’s uncomplicated reading of Leontius’s distinction between hypostasis and enhypostaton is evidence of an earlier reception of it vis-à-vis those of other Chalcedonian authors who employed it, in one way or another, against Philoponus’s theory of idikai ousiai in the Trinity, this then provides us with a reason to date our fragment not later than the very first decades of the seventh century.Footnote 22
Text and TranslationFootnote 23
[59r] Πῶς ἀπαντᾶν δεῖ τοῖς ἐπερωτῶσιν ἡμᾶς εἰ ἔστι φύσις ἀνυπόστατος.
[1] Οἱ ὄντες ἐλεεινοὶ καὶ μόνον εἰδότες τὸ κακοποιεῖν, τὸ δὲ καλῶς νοεῖν οὔ, βουλόμενοι πάντοθεν, ὡς οἴονται, συνάγειν ἡμῖν ἢ τὸFootnote 24 σὺν αὐτοῖς δοξάζειν μίαν τοῦ Χριστοῦ τὴν φύσιν ἢ πάντως δύο φύσεις λέγοντας διελέγχειν ἡμᾶς ὡς δύο δοξάζοντας κατὰ Νεστόριον ὑποστάσεις, προσέρχονται μετὰ τῆς συνήθους εἰρωνείαςFootnote 25 ὡς ἄν εἰ ἐπερωτῶντες ἡμᾶς εἰ ἔστι φύσις ἀνυπόστατος, ἵνα πάντως τὸ ἕτερον ἀκούσωσι παρ᾽ ἡμῶν. Καὶ εἰ μὲν δοίημεν εἶναι φύσιν ἀνυπόστατον, συνάγουσιν ἡμῖν τὸ παντελῶς ἀνύπαρκτον. τὸ γὰρ ἀνυπόστατον καὶ ἀνύπαρκτον πάντως· εἰ δὲ φαίημεν πᾶσαν φύσιν ὑπόστασιν ἔχειν, οὐκοῦν φήσουσι· “δύο λέγοντες φύσεις καὶ δύο πάντως δώσετε τὰς ὑποστάσεις.” ταὐτὸν γὰρ αὐτοῖς δοκεῖ φύσις καὶ ὑπόστασις εἶναι· τί οὗν δεῖ πρὸς αὐτοὺς λέγειν; ἆρα τὸ σαφὲς ἐξ εὐθείας ἢ συνδιαστρέψαιFootnote 26 αὐτοῖς ὡς στρεβλοῖςFootnote 27; καὶ τάχα τοῦτο. τί τοίνυν ἀποκριτέον αὐτοῖς λέγουσιν εἰ ἔστι φύσις ἀνυπόστατος; τί ἕτερον ἤ ὅτι “οὐδὲ ὑπόστασις ἀνούσιος; εἰ οὖν πάντως δοκεῖ ὑμῖν πᾶσαν φύσιν ἰδίαν ὑπόστασιν ἔχειν, ἀναγκαῖον ἐστὶ καὶ πᾶσαν ὑπόστασιν ἰδίαν οὐσίαν ἔχειν”· καὶ πάντως τοῦτο συμβήσεται· τῆς γὰρ οὐσίας μιᾶς οὔσης, εἰ τύχοι, πάντων ἀνθρώπων καὶ ἑνὸς ὁποίου, τῶν δὲ ὑποστάσεων διαιρουσῶν καὶ ἄλλης ἄλλου φαινομένης ἰδιαζόντως, εἰ οὕτω δοίημεν καὶ τὰς οὐσίας, οὐκ ἔτι πεπερασμένη κατὰ τὴν περὶ αὐτῆς δόξαν ἔσται ἡ οὐσία, ἀλλ᾽ εἰς ἀπειρίαν χεθήσεται [59v] καθ’ ἃ καὶ αἱ <ὑ>πο<στάσ>εις. [ …. ] γὰρ τῆς ἁγίας τριάδος ὀκν<ῶ> λέγειν· ἅπαξ γάρ τινες αὐτῶν δεδώκασι τρεῖς [.. ] οὐσί<ας> ἰδικὰς ὅθεν καὶ τρεῖς θεοὺς οὐκ ὀκνοῦσι λέγειν· πόσον δὲ εὐπε<τ>έστερον ἦν καὶ ἀληθ<έστε>ρον τὰ μὲν ἑτεροούσια μέν<ειν> ἐν τῇ κατὰ φύσιν ἰδιότητι <ὁμο>λογεῖν ἢ τὰ ὁμο<ούσ>ια διϊστάναι εἰς οὐσιῶν ἑτερότητα· τὸ γὰρ ἰδικὸν οὐ<κ> ἔστι κ<ο>ινὸν ὥσπερ οὐδὲ τὸ κοινὸν ἰδικόν.
[2] ἀλλ᾽ ἠγνόησαν οἱ σοφοὶ ὅτι οὐ ταὐτὸν ὑπό<στα>σις καὶ ἐνυπόστατον ὥσπερ οὐδὲ <οὐσ>ία καὶ ἐνούσιον. καὶ τοῦτο σαφὲς αὐτόθεν ἀπο<δ>είκνυται σὺν οὐδενὶ πόνῳ καὶ πολυλογίας χωρίς· ἡ μὲν γὰρ ὑπόστασις τὸν τινὰ δηλοῖ, τὸ δὲ ἐνυπόστατον τὴν οὐσίαν· καὶ ἡ μὲν ὑπόστασις πρόσωπον ἀφορίζει τοῖς χαρακ<τ>ηριστικοῖς ἰδιώμασι, τὸ δέ γε ἐνυπόστατον τὸ μὴ συμβεβηκὸς εἶναι παρίστησιν· τὸ γὰρ συμβεβηκὸς ἐν ἑτέρῳ τὸ εἶναι ἔχει καὶ οὐκ ἐν αὑτῳ θεωρεῖται· τοιαῦται δὲ πᾶσαι αἱ ποιότητες, ὧν οὐδέν ἐστιν οὐσία, πρᾶγμα καθ᾽ ἑαυτὸ ὑφεστός, ἀλλ᾽ ἀεὶ περὶ τὴν <ο>ὐσίαν θεωρεῖται, ὡς χρῶμα ἐν σώματι καὶ ὡς ἐπιστήμη ἐν ψυχῇ. ὁ τοίν<υν> λέγων· “οὐκ ἔστι φύσις ἀνυπόστατος” ἀληθῶς μὲν λέγει, οὐδὲ γὰρ ἔστιν, οὐ μὴν ἀληθῶς συμπεραίνει τò μὴ ἀνυπόστατον εἰς ὑπόστασιν εἶναι. σόφισμα γὰρ τò τοιοῦτο καὶ παραλογισμός· οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐπεὶ πᾶν σῶμα ἐσχημάτισται καὶ χωρὶς σχήματος εἶναι οὐ δ<ύ>ναται τò σχῆμα ἂν εἴη τò σῶμα· οὐ γάρ ἐστι σῶμα τòFootnote 28 σχῆμα κἂν ἐν σώματι θεωρεῖται καὶ ἄλλως οὐ δύναται· τοῦτοFootnote 29 δὲ ῥητέον καὶ ἐπὶ ἑκάστων τῶν συμβεβηκότων ὧν χ<ω>ρὶς εἶναι σῶμα μὴ δυνατόν. ἀνυπόστατος μὲν οὖν φύσις, τοῦτ’ ἔστιν οὐσία, οὐκ ἂν εἴη ποτέ. οὐ μὴν ἡ φύσις ὑπόστασις, ὅτι μηδὲ ἀντιστρέφειFootnote 30· ἡ μὲν γὰρ ὑπόστασις, οἷον ὁ Παῦλος, καὶ φύσις· ἡ δὲ φύσις, οἷον ὁ κοινὸς ἄνθρωπος, οὐκ ἔστιν ὑπόστασις· καὶ ἡ μὲν φύσις τòν τοῦ εἶναι λόγον ἐπιδέχεται, ἡ δὲ ὑπόστασις καὶ τòν τοῦ καθ᾽ ἑαυτòFootnote 31 εἶναι· καὶ ἡ μὲν εἴδους λόγον ἐπέχει, ἡ δὲ τοῦ τινός ἐστι δηλωτική· καὶ ἡ μὲν καθολικòν πρᾶγμα σημαίνει, ἡ δὲ τοῦ κοινοῦ τò ἴδιον ἀφορίζει·
[3] ὥστε παυσάσθωσαν σοφιζόμενοι τὴν ἀλήθειαν οἱ ταὐτòν λέγοντες εἶναι φύσιν καὶ ὑπόστασιν κἀκεῖθεν ἀναγκασθέντες βλασφημεῖν τήν με<γάλη>ν τ<ρι>άδ<α> [ … ] τρεῖς διελόν<τες> οὐσίας· τοσαύτης γὰρ ὑπ<ο>στάσε<ως> [ … ] δε κ[.. ]ον [ …. ]χ[. ] ἕνω<σ>ιν ἐκ δὲ ὑποστάσε<ων> λέγοντες καί τινες οἱ ἐγκαλ[ ….. ] <Ν>εστ<ορ>ί<ῳ> καὶ Θεοδώρῳ λέγουσι προϋποστάντι ἀνθρώπῳ τòν λόγον ἡνῶσθαι. ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἔστι ευτ[ … … ] καὶ πεισάτωσαν ὑμᾶς οἱ πατέρες οἱ γενναίως ὑπὲρ ἀληθεί<ας> ἀγωνισάμενοι· μίαν γὰρ τὴν ὑπόστασιν τοῦ σωτῆρος Χριστοῦ ἐδίδαξαν ἡμᾶς ἐκ δύο συγκειμένην οὐσιῶν ἤτοι φύσεων· καὶ τούτων [ …. ]μέν<ων> ἐν τῇ πρòς ἀλλήλας ἑνώσει μήτε συγχυθείσας μήτε φ<θα>ρείσας μήτε τ<ὴν> [ …. ] <ἀλ>λοίωσιν δεξαμένας· καθ’ ἃ φησιν ὁ δοκιμώτατος Κύριλλος· τὴν γὰρ τ<ῶν> <συν>ουσιαστῶν ἐνδεῖξαι θέλων δόξαν ἐπὶ λέξεως ταῦτα λέγει.
How it is necessary to face those who ask us whether there is an anhypostatos nature.Footnote 32
1. Those who are pitiful and only know how to do ill but not to think well, willing from every side to prove us, as they believe, either to think with them that the nature of Christ is one or, since we say by all means that there are two natures, to refute us as if we maintained two hypostases in accordance with Nestorius, come with habitual dissimulation as if they were inquiring of us as to whether there is an anhypostatos nature in order to hear from us something completely different.
And if we granted that there is a non-subsistent (anhypostatos) nature, they (would) prove to us that it is altogether non-existent (anyparktos), for what is non-subsistent is necessarily non-existent as well. If we said, instead, that each nature has a hypostasis, then they will tell us accordingly: “by saying that there are two natures, you will no doubt also grant that there are two hypostases.” Indeed, to them, nature and hypostasis appear to be the same thing.
What should we say to them? Should we speak clearly and straightforwardly or be twisted together with those who are twisted? Perhaps the latter. What must one therefore reply to those who ask whether there is a non-subsistent (anhypostatos) nature? What more than that “not even hypostasis is non-substantial (anousios)? If, then, it seems to you that every nature by all means has a distinct hypostasis, it is also necessary that every hypostasis has a distinct substance.” And this, no doubt, will occur: since the substance is indeed one, for instance, of all men and of anyone, while the hypostases divide and one hypostasis appears to be distinctive of one man, another hypostasis of another man; if we also admit that the substances are like this, no longer will the substance be limited according to the opinion about it, but will flow to infinity, just as the hypostases (do). I refrain indeed from saying [ …. ] of the Holy Trinity, for once some of them conceded (that there were) three individual [.. ] substances so therefore they also do not refrain from saying that there are three gods.
How much easier and more truthful it would have been to confess that things of a different substance remain in their natural individuality rather than separating things of the same substance to the extent of acknowledging a difference between substances? What is individual is indeed not common, just as what is common is not individual.
2. But these wise men did not recognize that hypostasis and enhypostaton are not the same thing, just as substance and enousios are not the same thing. And this is immediately proved to be clear, with no trouble and without many words. Indeed, the hypostasis signifies the someone, whereas the enhypostaton (signifies) the substance. And while the hypostasis defines a person with characteristic peculiarities, the enhypostaton describes that which is not an accident. For the accident has its being in something else and is not considered in itself. Such are, instead, all the qualities, none of which is a substance, a thing which subsists by itself, but is always considered in relation to a substance, just as color in a body or science in a soul.
Therefore, the one who says “there is no anhypostatos nature” speaks according to the truth, because there is not; however, he cannot correctly deduce from its not being anhypostatos that it is a hypostasis. Such a proceeding is indeed a sophism and a paralogism; for it is not because each body takes a certain form and cannot be without a form that the form would be the body; indeed, the form is not the body even though it is considered in the body and cannot be otherwise. It is necessary to say this also in the case of each of the accidents which the body is not capable of being without.
Therefore, there could never be a nature, that is a substance, without hypostasis. However, nature is not a hypostasis for they are not convertible: indeed, a hypostasis, such as Paul, is also a nature, but a nature, such as man in general, is not a hypostasis; and while nature admits of the definition of being, the hypostasis admits also of (the definition of) being by itself. One presents the definition of form, the other is indicative of someone; the former points out the universal thing, the latter distinguishes the individual from the common.
3. Therefore, let those who say that nature and hypostasis are the same thing and who, as a result, are forced to blaspheme against the great Trinity having divided [ … ] three substances, stop meddling with the truth. For so great a hypostasis [ … … … … …. ], but those who speak of union out of hypostases and some who [ … … …. ] Nestorius and Theodore say that the Logos was united with a preexisting man. But it is not [ … … … ] and let the fathers, who have nobly contended for the truth, persuade you for they taught us that one is the hypostasis of the savior Christ, composed of two substances or natures; and these [ … … … ] in the union to one another, neither confused, nor destroyed, nor susceptible to [ …. ] alteration.
Thus states the most excellent Cyril, for, when he wants to set forth the opinion of the Synousiasts, he says these things literally …
Comments
1. The “dissimulators,” who believe that nature and hypostasis are equivalent, are clearly Miaphysites. Their objective is to win over their adversaries regarding the confession of one nature and one hypostasis of Christ. Their ploy consisted in putting forward the problem of “whether there is an anhypostatos nature” in order to refute the Chalcedonians or to force their hand to fall in with Nestorius’s mistaken point of view:Footnote 33 to answer that nature is anhypostatos implies the denial of its existence (ὕπαρξις) altogether, and this is absurd; to admit that “each nature has a hypostasis” amounts to acknowledging two natures and two hypostases, that is, to Nestorianism. Thus far, our author’s argument recapitulates some key points which already featured in earlier discussions.Footnote 34
However, the target of our author’s discussion is the view of those Miaphysites who speak of three gods.Footnote 35 The line of argument that introduces it follows four steps and aims to show how the Miaphysite endorsement of the second meaning of anhypostatos, that is “not having a hypostasis,” leads “some of them” to Tritheism. First, it juxtaposes the claims that there is “no anhypostatos nature” and that there is “no anousios hypostasis,” implying that the latter is as true as the former:Footnote 36 by admitting that every nature has a “particular hypostasis,” a Miaphysite is compelled to deduce that each hypostasis has a “particular ousia.”Footnote 37 Second, it provides a recurrent distinction between substance and hypostasis: while substance is one for the entirety (all men) and every individual from a set of things of the same kind (every man),Footnote 38 hypostasis applies only to a particular instantiation of the same kind (one single man) and differs from any other hypostasis.Footnote 39 This allows our author to denounce the first inadmissible consequence of his opponents’ view: if one holds that a substance functions just as a hypostasis, then the substance “will flow to infinity,” because, since “hypostases divide,” it will not be “limited” and “one” anymore, and there will be an infinite number of substances. Third, the major consequence from the proposition that each hypostasis has a “particular ousia” is that it permits the blasphemous idea of postulating three “individual substances” (ἰδικαὶ οὐσίαι) and gods from the three hypostases of the Trinity. Fourth, our author connects the mistaken belief that things of the same substance (τὰ ὁμοούσια) separate becoming different substances to the confusion between what is common and what is individual,Footnote 40 which will introduce the following reworked quotation from Leontius of Byzantium.
Several elements of the doctrinal outline of our author’s opponent can be straightforwardly traced back to the Tritheism of John Philoponus.Footnote 41 For him, indeed, hypostases amount to particular substances/natures, because a common substance is either nothing at all or a posterior creation of the abstracting mind,Footnote 42 and substances exist only in individuals provided with peculiar properties.Footnote 43 As John Philoponus says in one of the fragments from his Tritheist writings: “None of the things that one calls κοινός has its own existence, nor does it exist before the ἰδικά.”Footnote 44 Moreover, by having their reality in each hypostasis, he argues that natures multiply indefinitely with them, while, at the same time, he acknowledges in the Trinity only three individual substances and gods.Footnote 45 On the basis of their individual features, Philoponus held that the three individual substances in the Trinity are of different species (ἑτεροειδεῖς) and yet consubstantial in that each is God and substance, even though there is no common divine substance existing as oneFootnote 46 and of its own apart from the three hypostases.Footnote 47
2. Regardless of whether our fragment had as its specific aim John Philoponus’s doctrine, as I believe, its author was convinced that the best counter-argument to his interlocutor’s objection was the difference between hypostasis and enhypostaton established by Leontius of Byzantium and leveled by him against Nestorians.Footnote 48 This serves the purpose of our author’s argument that the human nature of Christ is neither anhypostatos nor a hypostasis, but enhypostatos, and helps him argue that the identification of nature and hypostasis, which stands as the basis of the Tritheists’ error in that it stems from the confusion between common and individual, is a mistake of logic. Since our author does not quote Leontius word for word, it will be profitable, first, to have them paralleled in their entirety and, second, to see how our author’s argument runs and differs from its source.Footnote 49
In the first lines of this paragraph, our author follows Leontius both in introducing a new double pair of terms, enhypostatos/hypostasis and enousios/substance (and in leaving the latter undeveloped), and in the definition of hypostasis. Just as it was taught by the Cappadocian Epistula 38, hypostasis is said to connote the individual, for it “signifies the someone (tis)” and “defines a person with characteristic peculiarities.”Footnote 51
As to the following lines, there is a foundational difficulty in comparing our fragment to Leontius’s text. As is well known, indeed, both ancient readers and contemporary scholars have offered different interpretations of Leontius’s passage, and one of the main reasons for these disagreements is the sentence τὸ δέ γε ἐνυπόστατον τὸ μὴ εἶναι αὐτò συμβεβηκὸς δηλοῖ, ὃ ἐν ἑτέρῳ ἔχει τὸ εἶναι καὶ οὐκ ἐν ἑαυτῷ θεωρεῖται, as it leaves open the issue of whether ὃ refers to ἐνυπόστατον or συμβεβηκός. In other words, is it the enhypostaton or the accident that has its being in another and is not seen in itself? Leaving aside the assortment of differentiated answers to this question,Footnote 52 our author ascribes these attributes to the accident, as he clearly states that the enhypostaton manifests “that which is not accidental” and that an accident, just like any quality, “has its being in something else”—namely, in a “substance, that is a thing which subsists by itself”—and “is not considered in itself … but always in relation to (περί) a substance, just as color in a body or science in a soul.” The prominence of the Aristotelian substance/accident framework in his interpretation of Leontius was thus apparently facilitated by the typical Aristotelian examples of color and science as accidentsFootnote 53 and, at the same time, must have determined the omission of the otherwise superfluous Leontian distinction between οὐσιώδεις καὶ ἐπουσιώδεις qualities. The Aristotelian imprint in our fragment is made evident also in the definition of οὐσία as πρᾶγμα καθ᾽ ἑαυτὸ ὑφεστός, which replaces Leontius’s πρᾶγμα ὑφεστώς: noteworthy, in this as well as in referring the clause ὃ ἐν ἑτέρῳ ἔχει τὸ εἶναι καὶ οὐκ ἐν ἑαυτῷ θεωρεῖται to συμβεβηκός, our author significantly agrees with Pamphilus.Footnote 54 At any rate, claiming that “being καθ᾽ ἑαυτό” defines the hypostasis, and not the οὐσία, later on in both our fragment and in Leontius’s work, makes the contradiction in the former evident.Footnote 55 Despite this, by his appropriation of Leontius, our author means to say that the (human) nature of Christ is enhypostatos in that it concretely exists on its own, but not as a hypostasis, that is not as an individual provided with qualities and accidents.
Yet, these are not the only features that characterize our author as “more Aristotelian” than his source. This is suggested, to a lesser degree, by the logical jargon displayed by our author’s claim, which is absent in Leontius, that deducing that nature and hypostasis are the same thing from the assertion that there is no anhypostatos nature is a sophism and a paralogism, namely, a false inference and a logical mistake.Footnote 56 Missing in Leontius’s passage is also the statement that the body cannot be without accidents, which originates from the analogy between form and accident and is based on the Aristotelian rationale that a form of a thing can be only if it is in matter.Footnote 57
What follows relies and expands on the logical value of this imagery and of its use in the Cappadocian Epistula 38:Footnote 58 there is no anhypostatos nature, but nature and hypostasis “are not convertible.” The technical meaning of ἀντιστρέφειν, which is Aristotelian,Footnote 59 marks the transition from the logical aspect of the issue to a more strictly predicative one, as is made clear by the following pairs of definitions (λόγοι) of nature and hypostasis, which seek to show that the former do not coincide with the latter, as they bear different definitions. It is indeed on the basis of the theory of the transitivity of predication expressed in the Categories that Leontius, just as the Cappadocian Epistula 38, articulates the relationship between common—eidos—nature and individual—tis—hypostasis exemplified in our fragment by the “common man” and “Paul”: “nature admits of the definition of being … hypostasis also of the definition of being by itself,” and the relationship between these definitions is not reversible.
It is striking therefore that, despite his apparent attention to correct reasonings, our author does not think that ascribing the definition of “being by itself” to both the substance and the hypostasis changes the purpose of his handling of Leontius’s passage in any way. In particular, he does not seem to be aware of the risk of positing a fourth subsisting element, namely, the common ousia, in addition to the three hypostases of the Trinity, a problem which Pamphilus recognized.Footnote 60 Apparently, this was the result of his attempt to hold together the Cappadocian definition of hypostasis and the Aristotelian substance/accident scheme.Footnote 61
3. The final section is the least readable of the three. The first sentence is fully understandable: the identification of nature and hypostasis is again linked to the Tritheist mistake. The meaning of the second sentence is not immediate, but it seems clear—as I presume that either ἐγκαλοῦντες or ἐγκαλούμενοι (“those who accuse” or “are accused by”) precedes Νεστορίῳ καὶ Θεοδώρῳ—that both the followers of Nestorius and Theodore, “those who speak of union of hypostases,” and some of their Miaphysite opponents, those who speak of three idikai ousiai, are charged with holding that “the Logos was united to a preexisting man.”Footnote 62
The concluding “declaration of faith” is unequivocal in authenticating the imprint of Cyril of Alexandria, who is behind the fathers’ teaching that Christ has one hypostasis,Footnote 63 “composed of two substances or natures,”Footnote 64 united but not “confused, nor destroyed, nor susceptible of alteration.”Footnote 65
Finally, we can only wonder whether the quotation from Cyril’s Liber contra Synousiastas served only to confirm this “confession” or provided our fragment with more weighty matter on its core question.
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