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Hypostasis means, literally, that which lies beneath as basis or
Hence it came to be used by the Greek philosophers to denote reality as distinguished from appearances (Aristotle, "Mund.", IV, 21).
Previous to the Council of Nicæa (325) hypostasis was synonymous with ousia, and even St. Augustine (De Trin., V, 8) avers that he sees no difference between them.
Such a divinity could not properly be called an hypostasis or said to be in hypostasi (except indeed as brute matter in one sense may be called an hypostasis), and therefore it was, that that word had some fitness, especially after the Apostle's adoption of it, Hebr.
The word hypostasis neither means Person nor Essence exclusively; but it means the one personalGod {347} of natural theology, the notion of whom the Catholic corrects and completes as often as he views Him as a Trinity; of which correction Nazianzen's language ([on autos kata ten physin kai ten hypostasin], Orat.
Hypostasis, for instance, is used for substance as opposed to appearance or imagination, in Hebr.
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