1

Individuality and the Theological Debate about Hypostasis

Johannes Zachhuber

The purpose of this essay is to elucidate ways in which Christian theology in late
antiquity contributed to the conceptualisation of the individual. It is often alleged that it
did and, more specifically, that the major trinitarian and Christological debates of the
Patristic period inspired some of the most significant and lasting innovations theology
bequeathed to the Western intellectual tradition. By looking at these doctrinal
developments against the backdrop of earlier and contemporary philosophical theories, I
shall seek to come to an evaluation of such claims.
I am aware that my approach, which is focused largely on the history of ideas,
simplifies a more complex picture. It abstracts from the various contexts in which these
ideas developed and which, no doubt, influenced or even determined them. Arguably,
theories about the individual and about individuality are never detached from the social
and cultural constructions of the individual and from attitudes to it. Early Christianity
evidently has much to teach us in that regard.1 While Ancient Christianity, of course,
was not a religion of the individual let alone a religion of individuality, it was a new,
and hence non-traditional religion and therefore, for much of antiquity at least, a
religion of individual or small-group conversions. 2 In that regard, late ancient
Christianity was very different from early medieval Christianity in the West, for
1

Cf. G. Stroumsa, Cor salutis cardo: Shaping the Person in Early Christian Thought, History of

Religions 30 (1990): pp. 2550 and the contribution by Alexis Torrance in the present volume.
2

N. McLynn/A. Papaconstantinou/D. Schwartz (eds), Conversion in Late Antiquity: Christianity, Islam

and Beyond (Farnham, 2013).

example, which was much more characterised by an alignment of religious, political,

and cultural homogeneity.3 At least until the fifth century, Christianity presented itself
to the individual as an option in a way unknown to European societies throughout much
of their history, and whatever the reasons were for taking this particular option, they
would inevitably tend to align religious existence and personal biography, as is
evidenced by prominent examples from Justin Martyr4 to Augustine.5
How did theological and doctrinal debates in the Early Church influence
conceptions of the individual? Scholars examining this question have often turned to the
Trinitarian debates of the fourth century. There, they have argued, and especially in the
final settlement reached in the final third of the fourth century by the so-called
Cappadocian theologians, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus and, especially,
Gregory of Nyssa, in the final third of the fourth century, that a novel and immensely
rich notion of individuality or even personality was born. The reasoning is simple: as it
became necessary to achieve a finely tuned balance between unity and trinity in the
Godhead, the individual person was inevitably promoted to the status of a
fundamental ontological category, for the first time in Western history.6
As we shall see, the truth is somewhat more complex. It is the case that
Cappadocian reflection about the Trinity led to a particular theory of individuality but
the real transformative development occurred during the later Christological debates. In
fact, the Cappadocian framework, which was widely taken for granted by Greek
3

C. M. Cusack, Rise of Christianity in Northern Europe, 3001000 (London-New York, 1998).

Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 3 (PG 6.477481).

Augustine, Confessions 8.12 (PL 32.762).

J. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood NY, 2002), pp.

3941.

theologians of later centuries and applied to the more recent Christological quarrels,
proved only partly helpful for the novel challenges posed by that doctrinal development,
and the various theories of the individual that arose in its course were all marked by
more or less conscious deviation from the view originally proposed by those fourthcentury theologians.
In order to advance this interpretation, I shall start from some terminological and
conceptual clarifications, before moving on in a second part of my argument to an
elucidation of the Cappadocian position. I shall subsequently show how this theory
faces considerable difficulties when applied to the Christological problem. I end by
pointing to two rival theories emerging form this conundrum: they both represent
considerable conceptual innovation with wide-ranging consequences for the foundations
of philosophy and theology.

1. Terminological and Conceptual Foundations

a) Philosophical Background
The problem of the individual or of individuality is more equivocal than might appear at
first sight. In fact, there are at least two separate issues, and for the purposes of my
argument it is crucial to distinguish between them. On the one hand, there is the need to
identify individual items. The sixth-century comedian Epicharmus of Kos offered a
famous example which subsequently became popular with philosophers: a man refuses
to pay his debt with the argument that the person who took the loan was not he but
someone different.7 At issue here is the diachronic identity of an individual. At the same

A reconstruction of Epicharmus fragmentary text is attempted in D. Sedley, The Stoic Criterion of

Identity, Phronesis 27 (1982): pp. 255275.

time, however, we must be able to tell apart similar but distinct particulars (identical
twins are a notorious example). In extremis, the outcome of a court case may well
depend on establishing the truth in a case of mistaken identity. Apparently, we need
conceptual tools protecting the identity of one and the same thing through its extended
temporal and spatial existence while allowing it to be distinguished from other,
potentially similar items.
Besides this need to identify the individual, there exists a different question as
well, however: is the individual special or unique? And if so, in what does this
uniqueness consist? Is uniqueness what matters about an individual and even makes it
interesting? The two questions are not, of course, unrelated. Only when we have found
ways of identifying the individual can we even consider the possibility that its
individuality is something special and worthy of consideration.
Broadly speaking, we can say that while ancient philosophy has shown great
interest in the former issues, the latter never became a pressing concern for these
thinkers.8 There was a general preference for the universal over against the particular;
the fact that sensible being existed in the form of separate individuals was usually seen
as indicative of its lower ontological rank, not as something inviting specific reflection
let alone celebration. Even Peripatetics, such as Alexander of Aphrodisias, for whom
particular being was, in one sense, ontologically foundational, had ultimately little to
say about individuals qua individuals. This can hardly come as a surprise if one recalls
the way the very term individual (atomon) was first introduced into philosophical
language in Aristotles Categories. While Aristotle there refers to individuals as

Cf. M. Frede, Der Begriff des Individuums bei den Kirchenvtern, Jahrbuch fr Antike und

Christentum 40 (1997): pp. 3854; esp. p. 39.

primary substances, their individuality does not seem to concern him at all. Individuals, as their name suggests, are merely the smallest parts into which more
universal being, species and genera, are divided. Their definition is thus a purely
negative one: a primary substance is a being that is neither said of a subject (
) nor in a subject ( ) (2a 123).9 It is thus, as it were,
unsayable. Indeed, we may find the later idea of the individual as the truly ineffable
being (individuum est ineffabile)10 foreshadowed in Aristotles definition, and Porphyry
consciously followed the classical paradigm when, in his influential introductory
writing Isagoge, he stated that no knowledge was possible (
11) of individuals because they exist in infinite number.
A very different approach to the problem of individuality was taken by the Stoics
who held that each individual is characterised by a unique individual quality (
).12 This seems to indicate a greater interest in individuality but, as David Sedley
has shown, the Stoic theory was developed in response to a sceptical argument (the socalled or Growing Argument) challenging precisely the
identifiability of the individual. It is thus once again the former of our two questions
that is in view. A consequence of Sedleys link between the Stoic theory and the

Cf. M. Frede, Individuen bei Aristoteles, Antike und Abendland 24 (1978): pp. 1639.

10

Cf. B. Sandkuhle, Individuum est ineffabile: Zum Problem der Konzeptualisierung von

Individualitt im Ausgang von Leibniz in W. Grb/L. Charbonnier (eds), Individualitt: Genese und
Konzeption einer Leitkategorie humaner Selbstdeutung (Berlin, 2012), pp. 153179.
11

Porphyry, Isagoge (CAG IV/1.6.16 Busse).

12

Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, ed. H. von Arnim, vol. 2 (Stuttgart, 1903), no. 395 (130.445). Cf.: E.

Lewis, The Stoics on Identity and Individuation, Phronesis 40/1 (1994): pp. 89108; T.H. Irwin, Stoic
Individuals, Nos 30, Supplement: Philosophical Perspectives, 10, Metaphysics (1996): pp. 459480.

is that he sharply distinguishes between the individual quality and

any theory of definite description. We can easily see why: part of the force of the
Sceptics argument seems to lie in the aporia that an enumeration of individual
properties would always either be too vague to exclude mistaken identity or so
prescriptive that it jeopardises an individuals diachronic identity. For this reason,
Sedley dismisses out of hand the derivation of Porphyrys influential notion of the
individual as a bundle of properties from the Stoic theory, as suggested in a passage in
Dexippus Commentary on the Categories.13
Yet while Sedleys reasoning is cogent as far as the original, anti-sceptical context
of the Stoic theory is concerned, Porphyrys own contribution appears in a different
light once it is integrated into its (proper) Aristotelian framework. It is Porphyrys aim,
in the Isagoge, to introduce species and, notably, the individual as further predicables in
addition to the ones Aristotle had originally allowed. This interest, as Riccardo
Chiaradonna has shown in a subtle analysis of a central passage of the Isagoge, led
Porphyry to draw on and modify the Stoic notion of the individual quality. The result
is a dual understanding of the individual: on the one hand, there is the particular (
): the individual, concrete object underlying the properties. The term
individual (), on the other hand, is used for a definite description that can identify
such an object (this white thing, and this person approaching, and the son of
Sophroniscus14) as well as the individual nature that corresponds to such a definitional

13

Dexippus, In Aristotelis categorias commentarium (CAG IV/2.30.2327 Busse).

14

Porphyry, Isagoge (CAG IV/1.7.2021 Busse). I accept the textual emendation proposed by Francesco

Ademollo in: Sophroniscus son is approaching: Porphyry, Isagoge 7.201, Classical Quarterly 54
(2004): pp. 2225.

account.15 This idea is recurrent in Boethius, who, to illustrate it, famously introduced
abstract terms derived from proper names (Platonitas16); via Boethius it subsequently
influenced medieval and modern theories.17 Ultimately, there is little evidence that even
Porphyrys interest went beyond the problem of individuals identification and their
logical function. His conceptual and terminological differentiations could be used,
however, by Christian authors whose theological needs prompted a very different kind
of concern for the individual.

b) Theological Background
In order to appreciate the specifically theological theories about the individual that came
to be developed in the Greek speaking church of the first millennium, it is essential first
of all to consider what appears to be a veritable terminological idiosyncrasy. As we
have seen, the philosophical tradition provided a number of established technical terms,
such as individual () and particular ( ). Greek-speaking theologians,
however, while not exactly shunning these two words, came to choose and retain an
altogether different one, namely hypostasis. 18 For us, this usage seems intuitively

15

R. Chiaradonna, La teorie dellindividuo in Porfirio e l stoico, Elenchos 21 (2000): pp.

303331, (here p. 307).

16

Boethius, In de interpretatione 2.7 (137.37 Meiser). Cf. also Julie Brumberg-Chaumonts contribution

to the present volume.

17

Cf. C. Erismann, Lindividu explique par les accidents. Remarques sur la destine chrtienne de

Porphyre, idem./A. Schniewind (eds), Complments de substance. tudes sur les proprits
accidentelles offertes Alain de Libera (Paris, 2008), pp. 5166.
18

For the earlier history of the concept cf. H. Drrie, , Wort- und Bedeutungsgeschichte,

Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Gttingen. Philosophisch-Historische Klasse (1955):

plausible since we are so much accustomed to speaking of the Persons of the Trinity
and therefore think that hypostasis was simply one Greek equivalent for this expression.
However, this connection is of a secondary nature and only arose after Basil of
Caesarea had decided to adopt hypostasis for his own trinitarian theology in precisely
this sense. As important as it is to realise that the words commonly used by
philosophers for the individual referred to their participation in the species, it is crucial
for the further theological debate to realise that hypostasis, when used by philosophers
and theologians between the second and mid-fourth century, referred to the actual
existence of a given thing. It is therefore more common to speak of a things hypostasis
meaning either the fact, or the origin of, its existence, than to call something a
hypostasis although it is easy to see how the former gave rise to the latter usage.
Hypostases would then be things that in a real or full sense existed. The question, of
course, of which things or which kinds of things existed in this way was controversial
between the philosophical schools, and it is for this reason that one sometimes gets the
impression of a confusing variety of actual uses of the term.19
When Origen introduced the term hypostasis into Christian theology for the first
time, it was evidently his intention to press home precisely this point: Father and Son
are two not only in thought or conception (), but in reality ( ).20 This
use of hypostasis in trinitarian theology, then, supported an anti-monarchian agenda
pp. 3592; J. Hammerstaedt, Hypostasis in Reallexikon fr Antike und Christentum, vol. 16 (Stuttgart,
1994), pp. 9861035.
19

Cf. M. Frede, Begriff des Individuums, pp. 4244.

20

Origenes, Contra Celsum 8.12 (229.31230.2 Koetschau). The analogous pair is

employed, e.g. by Alexander of Aphrodisias: In Aristotelis metaphysica commentaria B 5 (229.31320.1

Hayduck).

against those people who mitigated the difference between Father and Son in order to
maintain the unity in the Godhead it was to be maintained that those two had, in
whatever precise sense, separate existence or subsistence. The same interest was
paramount in those Origenist bishops who, in the later third and throughout the fourth
century, emphasise the need to call Father, Son, and Spirit hypostases: they did so in
order to emphasised their full, eternal, separate existence against their opponents who,
in their view, compromised this principle.21
Things really only changed when Basil of Caesarea, around 370, decided for
partly political reasons22 to adopt this very terminology within the framework of a
trinitarian theology whose primary interest consisted in an emphasis on the equality of
the Trinitarian Persons. Insofar as they are God, he contended, they are all equal. To
underwrite this point, he pioneered for the first time the idea that certain predicates
would mark out unity and difference in the Trinity. To the extent that properties
characteristic of divine nature could be said of all three Persons, the latter are the same
while their respective individuality was expressed through predicates that could only be
said of one of them.23

21

Cf. the so-called Second Antiochene Creed: Athanasius, De synodis 23.6 (249.33 Opitz) = A. Hahn,

Bibliothek der Symbole und Glaubensregeln der Alten Kirche (Breslau: Morgenstern, 3rd edition, 1897),
154.
22

V.H. Drecoll, Die Entwicklung der Trinittslehre des Basilius von Csarea. Sein Weg vom

Homusianer zum Neunizner (Gttingen, 1996), pp. 337338.

23

Cf. Basil, Adversus Eunomium 1.19 (PG 29.556AB): ,

,
, ,
,

10

It is precisely this combination of the Origenist tradition of divine hypostases

i.e. independently existing entities within the Trinityand Basils interest in the
intratrinitarian differentiation by means of properties that gave birth to the specifically
theological notion of the individual as hypostasis. For Basil found it convenient to apply
to the Trinity the analogy of individual and species or genus:
If you ask me to state shortly my own view, I shall state that ousia has the same relation to
hupostasis as the common item has to the particular. For each of us partakes of being ()
through the common formula of being ( ), but he is one or the other through
the properties attached to him. So also there (sc. in the Godhead) the formula of being is the
same, like goodness, divinity and what else one may conceive of: but the hupostasis is seen in
the properties of fatherhood or sonship or the sanctifying power.24

All this may have seemed innocent enough at the time, yet it had in fact farreaching consequences. Henceforth, the preferred term for individual in Greek
theology was a term, which in its original meaning signified what really or truly existed.
We shall see how this influenced further development of the concept of individuality,
which became inextricably tied to precisely this notion of subsisting being.

2. The Cappadocian theory of individuality

The innovative Cappadocian settlement to the Trinitarian debate provided the backdrop
for the first theological theory of the individual, cast as a definition of hypostasis. It is to
be found in a writing that has been transmitted in the collection of Basils letters as

, .
, ,
.
24

Basil, Letter 214.4.915 (3.205 Courtonne).

11

Epistle 38 though many scholars today ascribe it to his brother Gregory of Nyssa. For
the present purpose a decision about the authorship is not essential.25
This theory has two elements corresponding, more or less, to the two aspects
Chiaradonna identified in Porphyrys account. On the one hand, there is the individual
as the particular thing (). Such an object, according to the Cappadocian author is
the concrete realisation of a nature ( ), a universal which, as a whole,
encompasses all its individual members. This universal nature is also essence (ousia): it
contains the being for the whole class in its entirety which, therefore, is homoousios.
For its concrete existence, however, nature is dependent on individuals. In this
sense, precisely, the latter are hypostases: they individuate the universal which without
them would have no existence of its own. The author argues that, due to its universality,
ousia lacks stability (: the word is meant to allude to hypostasis) and therefore
needs the hypostasis. In this sense, he contrasts the use of the universal term with that of
the proper name:
For he who says man produces in the ear a somewhat scattered notion on account of the
indefiniteness of its signification so that the nature is indicated from the name, but the
subsisting thing (), which is specifically indicated by the name, is not signified. But he
who says Paul shows that the phusis subsists in the thing indicated by the name.26

Why is the meaning of the universal term indefinite ()? The answer, it
seems, must be that the author does not here think of its signification as this is
25

J. Zachhuber, Nochmals: Der 38. Brief des Basilius von Csarea als Werk des Gregor von Nyssa,

Zeitschrift fr antikes Christentum 7 (2003), pp. 7390.

26

[Basil], Letter 38.3.28:

, ,
.
.

12

reasonably clear for a word like man. Rather, he thinks of its referential function: a
word like man does, after all, refer to a human individual but it does so with a certain
vagueness. If several people are present in the same room, the use of the term man,
while excluding furniture and (potentially present) animals, can not be unequivocally
related to any one particular person. This I take to be the meaning of the authors
somewhat enigmatic claim that what subsists and is specially and peculiarly indicated
by the name is not signified by the universal term. By contrast, the use of the proper
name demonstrates, by way of its reference to a specific object (), that a nature
exists or subsists (!) in one particular thing. Once again, there is a clear
allusion to the technical term hypostasis. The individual, we might say, is the nature
considered in its concrete existence.
It is helpful at this point briefly to recall the theological motivation for this
approach. The Cappadocians defended the formula of Nicaea, still controversial at the
time, according to which the Son is homoousios with the Father. One of the most
common objections to this phrase throughout the fourth century was that its use would
imply the existence of a further item, an antecedent substance, ontologically prior to
both Father and Son. This was meant as reductio ad absurdum as it was generally
accepted that God the Father himself had to be the fundamental ontological principle,
the arche.27
A popular Nicene reply to this charge was that the Father, in fact, was the
substance properly speaking and the Sons consubstantiality consisted in his derivation

27

Cf. Athanasius, De synodis 51.3 (274.35275.4 Opitz); Contra Arianos 1.14.1 (123.313 Tetz); R.

Williams, The Logic of Arianism, The Journal of Theological Studies 34 (1983), pp. 5681 (here p. 66);
and P. Widdicombe, The Fatherhood of God from Origen to Athanasius (Oxford, 1994), pp. 172175.

13

from the Fathers ousia.28 For certain reasons the Cappadocians were unwilling to use
this line of argument. All the more, everything depended on their ability to develop the
relationship between universal nature and individual person in perfect symmetry:
accordingly, the individuals are nothing other than the universal nature in its concrete
existence (hence they all are of the same being), while the nature exists or subsists
exclusively in its hypostases. In the case of the Trinity, there are three, neither more
nor less; in the case of humanity there are many more but their number, as we know
from Gregory of Nyssa,29 is by no means infinite. Human nature exists as a limited
number of individuals and once their fullness () is reached, history as we know
it will come to an end.
The author of Epistle 38, then, presents the individual as the nature in its concrete
existence. Yet there is another aspect of his theory and one that appears dominant in the
one passage that most closely resembles a definition of hypostasis. The word
hypostasis, the author there states succinctly, indicates that which is said specifically
( ). This same point is then further developed:
This, then, is hupostasis. It is not the indefinite notion of ousia, which finds no stability
() on account of the community of what is signified. It is that notion which sets before
the mind a circumscription in one thing () of what is common and uncircumscribed by
means of such properties as are seen with it (30).31

28

For this interpretation cf. Apollinarius of Laodicea in: [Basil], Letter 362.423; J. Zachhuber,

Derivative Genera in Apollinarius of Laodicea: Some remarks on the philosophical coherence of his
thought in S.-P. Bergjan (ed.), Apollinaris von Laodiza und die Folgen (Tbingen, forthcoming).
29

Gregory of Nyssa, de anima et resurrectione (PG 46.128CD).

30

Here: appear on the surface cf. LSJ, s.v. (e.g. of the Platonic idea in its images).

14

While this text is not easily interpreted, it seems clear that the author here aims at
an individuals intellectual content rather than its concrete reality. We thus find in the
Epistle 38 a duality analogous to the one which, according to Chiaradonna, existed in
Porphyrys Isagoge as well. The parallel can hardly surprise: after all, the Cappadocian
author shares, albeit for different reasons, the twin-interest of the Platonist philosopher:
on the one hand, the Trinitarian Person for him is, and has to be, a hypostasis, a really
and truly existing reality in the Origenist tradition. On the other hand, the doctrine of
idiomata, introduced by Basil, requires the emphasis on a definite description making
the individual divine Person distinct from the other two.
Let me conclude this part of my paper with two observations. First, while it is
evident that the Cappadocian settlement of the Trinitarian controversy in the late fourth
century necessitated for the first time a subtle and thorough, specifically theological
theory of the individual, this theory does not decisively move beyond the framework
established by Porphyry in his influential Isagoge. While individuals (hypostases)
must of necessity exist to individuate universal natures, their mere hypostatic
existence is in practice all that matters for them. Their difference from each other is
only relevant to the extent that it permits their mutual distinction. While it is true that
God and man are both one and many, for what they are, for their being or nature, their
unity is clearly more important than their plurality. The Cappadocians agree with
Porphyry in their denial of any essential difference between individuals of the same
species. In fact, this is absolutely fundamental for their defence of Nicaea: the three

31

[Basil], Letter 38.3.812: ,

,
.

15

divine Persons, like any number of human individuals, share one and the same
substance; it is only in their separate existence (hypostasis) that they are distinct. While
the Cappadocians are famous for introducing idiomata characteristic of the Trinitarian
Persons, such as unbegotten for the Father and begotten for the Son, this amounts to
little more than that one is distinct from the other qua hypostasis.
My second observation concerns the relationship between the two elements
constituting the Cappadocian theory, the concrete individual item and the intellectual
content characteristic of it. It seems evident to me that for the Cappadocians these two
elements are merely two sides of the same reality: individuals hypostatise nature by
means of specific properties. By mentioning the bundle of properties, therefore, we
speak of the concrete thing and of nothing else. In other words, the two elements were
meant as complementary accounts of the same reality, not as competing interpretations
of it.
It appears plausible, however, to assume that these two elements would become
tensional once the question arose whether something truly was an individual. This,
precisely, was the novel issue raised when Christology became a major topic of
controversy beginning from the late fourth century. In this debate, which continued with
unabated intensity until the end of the eighth century if not longer, a question came to
prominence for the first time which hitherto had been of no great interest to either
philosophers or theologians. The specific problem was how Jesus Christ, the God-man,
could be understood as one individual or hypostasis; in order to formulate an answer,
however, it seemed necessary to tackle the broader issue of what in general made an
individual an individual. Attempts to give a doctrinally acceptable answer, as we shall
see, led theologians to radically new decisions which transformed not only the

16

framework offered by the Cappadocians but stretched to breaking point the foundations
of ancient ontology.

3. The New Challenge: Christology

The Cappadocian theory soon became widely accepted, and when the Christological
controversy gathered pace all major participants started from the assumption that the
conceptual and terminological tools offered by Basil and the two Gregories should be
applied to the new problems as well. Part of the reason must have been that Gregory of
Nyssa himself, towards the end of his life, became embroiled in a debate about
Christology with Apollinarius of Laodicea and in this context pioneered this approach.
The central question on which, in many ways, the controversy turned concerned
the possibility for one and the same individual to partake equally of divine and human
natures. A corollary of this main argument, however, may be even more instructive for
the present purpose. Gregory, in order to explain how Jesus Christ could partake of two
natures, made ample use of the logic he had previously employed in the Trinitarian
context. In anticipation of the language used by the Council of Chalcedon in 451, he
applied the term homoousios to the relationship between Christ and universal human
and divine nature: as far as he is human, Christ is homoousios with us and thus part of
human nature32 apparently in the same way his divinity is related to the divine substance
of the Trinity.33 On closer inspection, however, it appears that he drew on only one half
of his original theory. For it is only its abstract side, the distinction between universality

32

Gregory of Nyssa, Antirrheticus adversus Apollinarium (GNO III/1.165.714 Mueller).

33

Gregory implies this in his argument at Antirrheticus adversus Apollinarium (GNO III/1.157.27158.9

Mueller).

17

and particularity by means of properties, that he uses in his Christological argument. By

contrast, its other aspect, according to which individuals are concrete realisations of
universal natures, has entirely vanished in the present context, and Gregory now
pretends that all it takes to call something, for example, man is its participation in
universal humanity. His position, in other words, has now become entirely essentialist;
the need, so fundamental for the defence of Nicene trinitarianism, to understand the
individual as the concrete realisation of a universal naturein order to exclude the
possibility of an antecedent substanceis no longer recognised.
What does this mean for the theory of individuality? A particular strength of the
original Cappadocian view was that it provided a reason for the existence of individuals:
they were needed for the hypostatic realisation of natures; universal being could only
exist in and through hypostases. The new, essentialist position has apparently given up
on this tenet. The individual is now a brute fact whose existence and internal unity are
merely presupposed.
The conceptual difficulties that began to emerge in Gregory of Nyssa came to
dominate the complex and subtle theological debates from the sixth century onwards.
This of course raises the question of why the original theory, developed by Basil and his
theological companions, and expressed classically in the Epistle 38, had to be changed
in the first place? The answer, I believe, is crucial and of direct relevance for an
understanding of the development of theories of individuality in ancient Christian
theology. Ultimately, the Cappadocian theory, much like earlier philosophical theories,
was not interested in individuals as something special or unique. We might say it was
interested in individuals more than in the individual. The former were important within

18

a broader metaphysical system but for this to work they could perfectly well be more or
less homogeneous parts making up the world in its entirety.
I am, then, taking a rather sceptical view of the grand claim made by some
scholars, according to which the Cappadocians pioneered a new appreciation of
individuals.34 Without even a closer look at contemporary debates in philosophy, which
would in any case be needed for such a comparative statement, it appears that the
ontological appreciation of the hypostasis, which indubitably existed in Basil and
Gregory, is considerably mitigated by the limited function assigned to them within the
larger ontological framework the Cappadocians employ. Individuals are precisely not
primary beings, but merely hypostases, existing instances of universal natures. As such
their mutual distinctness (and thus far individuality in the sense we usually attach to this
term) is of relatively minor importance.
Significantly, the Cappadocian view leads to a sense of equivalence between
particular and universal being, which is arguably distinct from otherwise predominant
Platonic patterns.35 Trinitarian doctrine required an equal emphasis on both, ousia and
hypostasis, thus universal and particular become mutually complementary in a novel
way. This leads to considerable ontological and theological innovation which can be
observed, for example, in the eighth-century theologian Maximus Confessor who offers
an extended and embellished but essentially faithful version of the fourth-century
Cappadocian position. For Maximus, it is as true to say that universal being consists of

34

L. Turcescu, Gregory of Nyssa and the Concept of Divine Persons (Oxford, 2005).

35

Thus far, Zizioulas is right. Cf. n. 6 above.

19

particulars (and could not, in that sense, exist without the latter), as it is to stress that
individuals could not be without their species and genera.36
By contrast, it was the Christological controversy that raised a fundamentally new
concern with the individual qua individual. At the same time, the specific setting of the
issue, the need to explain how one person, the saviour, could be both God and man
meant that reference to universal natures alone could not settle the issue. What was
needed was a theory capable of explaining the radical singularity and uniqueness of the
individual. For such a theory, as we have seen, precedent was lacking, and the
theologians who sought to develop it therefore had to become innovative as it turned out
that an answer to this particular question implied novel approaches to a wide range of
logical and metaphysical problems.

4. Chalcedon and the Christological Problem

The Council of Chalcedon, held in 451, has attracted radically divergent evaluations.
While for many it has been, and continues to be, the climax of ancient doctrinal
development, 37 others have pointed out its near-universal rejection in the Eastern
Church which was only partly overcome through the massive political pressure exerted
by the Byzantine Emperorto the East of the Roman Empire few Chalcedonians could

36

Maximus, Ambigua 2.10.42 (PG 91.1189BC). For the broader point cf. J. Zachhuber, Universals in the

Greek Church Fathers in: R. Chiaradonna/G. Galuzzi (eds), Universals in Ancient Thought (Pisa,
forthcoming 2013).
37

For a summary see M. Edwards, Catholicity and Heresy in the Early Church (Farnham, 2009), pp.

137138.

20

ever be found.38 Whatever its merits, the Council caused the first major schism in the
Christian Church the effects of which continue to the present day.39
The major stumbling block for many of the Councils critics was its affirmation
that the Incarnate Christ existed in two natures ( ), divine and human.
While it is unlikely that the uncompromising and very nearly fanatical rejection of this
formula by so many in the Greek-speaking East had merely theological and
philosophical reasons, the conceptual difficulties the Councils opponents could muster
were considerable. They were, we should note, directly connected to the Councils
explicit endorsement of the logic Gregory of Nyssa had originally used in his antiApollinarian polemic and according to which Christ was consubstantial (homoousios)
with God according to his divinity and consubstantial with us according to his
humanity.40
We have seen how, in Gregory already, this logic jarred with the carefully
balanced theory that had been developed in the Trinitarian context. Its unique emphasis
on the essentialist side of the original theory totally neglected the notion that
hypostasis was meant to denote the universal nature in its concrete existence. The latter
principle however seemed to imply that, if Christ was to have two natures, divine and
human, according to the Council of Chalcedon, he must have two hypostases as well
this was the problem referred to (fairly or unfairly) as Nestorianism.
38

Cf. for a particularly harsh judgment A. von Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, vol. 2

(Tbingen, 4th edition, 1909), p. 397.

39

A grandiose survey is offered by A. Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, vol. 2 in four parts

(London, 19872013).
40

Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum 2.1.2 (129.267 Schwartz):

21

A second difficulty concerned predication (grammatical, logical and ontological

issues were always closely related). According to the Cappadocian position, all
predicates would either apply to the universal or to the particular level. If the former,
they would be true for all members of the class, if the latter, only for one individual. In
this way, they thought they could explain how the common divinity was characterised
by shared properties contained in an account of being ( ) that could be
equally predicated of all three Persons, while each hypostasis was distinct by virtue of
their individual property (). Gregory pointedly rejected the idea that, apart from
universal natures and individuals there could also be individual natures.41 Note then
how an opponent of the Council of Chalcedon, quoted by Leontius of Byzantium in the
sixth century,42 begins his attack on the Councils teaching:
By assuming a human nature, did the Logos assume it as it is seen in the species or in the
individual?43

It is easy to see how this way of putting the question would create difficulties for
the Chalcedonians: if they affirmed that Christs human nature was a universal (which
clearly was Gregory of Nyssas view and also the implicit teaching of Chalcedon), it
would seem to follow that being God incarnate was a property of humankind in
general, but this was apparently not the case.44
41

Gregory of Nyssa, Ad Graecos (GNO III/1.23.413 Mueller).

42

He is called Acephalos in the dialogue but this probably is a placeholder for Severus of Antioch. Cf. R.

Cross, Individual Natures in the Christology of Leontius of Byzantium, Journal of Early Christian
Studies 10/2 (2002), pp. 245265 (here p. 254).
43

Leontius of Byzantium, Epilysis 1: , ,

; (PG 86.1916D1917A).
44

The same objection is made in more detail in: Severus of Antioch, ap. John of Caesarea

(Grammaticus), Apologia Concilii Chalcedonensis 14 (8.7275 Richard): Si vero dicitis Christo duas

22

The same problem existed on the divine side as well. While Christianity would
seem to hold that in Christ God became human, this was not meant to say that all three
trinitarian persons had become incarnate. Rather, it meant that in the Incarnation of the
Logos, the second person of the Trinity, God had become man (John 1.14). This again
was different from saying that the Logos had become incarnate only insofar as he was
different from the other two persons.
Leontius, however, pretended not to see the challenge and simply rejects the
alternative: the nature of which the Council had spoken, he argued, was indeed
universal but as such it was one in the whole class as well as whole in every single
individual.45 Yet this is hardly an answer. According to the theory introduced by Basil
and Gregoryand Leontius clearly takes it as authoritativea universal nature could
only exist as individuated in and through hypostases. Individuals in this theory had to be
there because the universal only existed in this particular way. At the same time, it is
only through hypostases that universals are individuated. Either way, the dogma
Leontius defends does not, prima facie, allow for Jesus Christ as a human individual
unless one is prepared to admit the Nestorian assumption of a human hypostasis as
well.
The problem, however, is not merely theological. By embracing the purely
essentialist argument of Gregorys anti-Apollinarian treatise, Leontius and his
collaborators abandon the full theory of individuality that was found, for example, in
the so-called Epistle 38. They sever the link the Cappadocians established between
esse substantias, necessario dicendum est et Patrem et Spiritum et, ut summatim dicamus, ipsam sanctam
Trinitam toti humanitati incarnatam esse, id est humano generi.
45

Leontius of Byzantium, Epilysis 1 (PG 86.1917AB). A similar argument is used later by Anastasius of

Antioch, Oratio 3 (54.1528 Sakkos).

23

nature and hypostasis and in this way lose any plausible explanation for the
individuation of natures and for the necessity of individual being.

5. The individual in miaphysite theology: Severus of Antioch and John Philoponus

It is helpful at this point to cast a glance at the miaphysite opponents of the Council of
Chalcedonso called because of their adherence to the view that divine and human had
become one nature in the Incarnate. Apart from rejecting theologically the formula of
Chalcedon, the leading thinkers from that camp also had their own views about
individuals and individuation. Their major representative, Severus of Antioch (c. 465
c.542), denied that the Incarnation could be explained on the basis of universal natures;
instead he advocated the introduction of the concept of individual natures. Their
postulation was in principle nothing new. Philosophers had used them for centuries to
explain how it is correct that, when Socrates dies, we say that a human being dies.
Universal human nature apparently does not die, but neither does Socrates death
concern only his individual features. Rather, it is somehow his own humanity,
complete with generic and individual properties, that ceases to exist. This individual
nature, then, can be healthy or ill, rich or poor without any immediate logical
implications for universal humanity.46
In precisely this sense, Severus argues, God has become human in the
Incarnation: God in this statement denotes divine nature as individuated in the second
Person of the Trinity. Man likewise would signify the individual humanity of Christ

46

Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, Quaestiones 1.3 (7.238.12 Bruns).

24

even though in the actual Incarnation both became a single nature.47 Gregory of Nyssa,
as we have seen, rejected individual natures; the position of Severus and his miaphysite
friends has therefore usually been seen as a conscious break with the Cappadocian
tradition.48 Yet this is to simplify things. While Severus advocacy of individual natures
does indeed depart from Cappadocian teaching, this deviation is caused by his concern
to preserve the other main aspect of the Cappadocian theory, precisely the one that had
been lost on the Chalcedonian side: in his affirmation that natures only exist
individuated in hypostases, Severus is fully and completely in agreement with the
Cappadocian Epistle 38. The Chalcedonians gave up that tenet in the interest of what I
have called here a purely essentialist theory. They thus detached the individual from
its connection with universal being and reduced it, in practice, to the notion of pure
existence. In Severus, on the other hand, the unity of being and existence is preserved
but at the price that being is increasingly individual being whose identity with that of
other individuals cannot any longer be really affirmed.
The weak flank of Severus theory, then, is that it tends to particularism. There is,
as far as I am aware, no evidence that he himself ever contemplated this philosophical
option. His major opponent, however, the Chalcedonian John the Grammarian, saw the
writing on the wall and argued that, pursued to its logical conclusions, Severus theory
would lead to tritheism.49 In this he proved prophetic: only one generation after Severus,
47

Severus of Antiochien, Contra impium grammaticum 2.22 (187188 Lebon). Cf. also: J. Lebon, La

christologie du monophysisme syrien in A. Grillmeier/H. Bacht (eds), Das Konzil von Chalkedon.
Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3 vols (Wrzburg, 1954), vol. 1, pp. 454467.
48

Cf. Cross, Individual Natures, p. 253 with n. 29.

49

John of Caesarea (Grammaticus), Apologia Concilii Chalcedonensis 14 (8.7680 Richard): Putant

enim [sc. adversarii, i.e. Severus] divinitatis substantiam divisioni subiacere eiusque partem quidem in

25

there arose those among his disciples who felt that Trinitarian theology too needed to be
reconsidered in view of more recent theological and philosophical insights.50 The most
influential among them was the philosopher and theologian John Philoponus. He took
Severus intuitions to their logical conclusion. In order to understand the individual as
the concrete realisation of a nature, he flatly and unequivocally rejected universal nature
as ontologically real:
Now, this common nature of man, in which no one differs from any other, when it is realised
in any one of the individuals, then is particular to that one and is not common to any other
individual []. Thus that rational animal that is in me is common to no other animal.51

It is sometimes alleged that Philoponus theory in its entirety was due to his
philosophical schooling and hence to his philosophical convictions about universals and
particulars.52 Yet this is unlikely. While his philosophical training cannot have been
without an impact on his doctrinal position, his ultimate motivation seems to have come
from a theological reflection which, in continuity with Severus and the miaphysite
tradition, sought to preserve the unity of nature and individual, and thus of being and
existence, under the conditions created by the latest developments of the Christological

Patre, partem autem in Filio, partem autem in Spiritu sancto apparere, ita ut unaquaeque ex
hypoastasibus in parte, non autem in omnibus iis, quae divinitatis propria sunt, concipiatur.
50

A. van Roey/P. Allen (eds), Monophysite Texts of the Sixth Century (Leuven, 1994), part II; R.Y.

Ebied/A. van Roey/L.R. Wickham (eds), Peter of Callinicum. Anti-Tritheist Dossier (Leuven, 1984).
51

John Philoponus, Arbiter 7 = John of Damascus, Liber de haeresibus

(5.5255 Kotter). ET: C.

Erismann, The Trinity, Universals, and Particular Substances. Philoponus and Roscelin, Traditio 63
(2008), pp. 277305 (here pp. 289290).
52

Cf. Erismann, The Trinity and, for a different interpretation, U. Lang, John Philoponus and the

Controversies over Chalcedon in the Sixth Century. A Study and Translation of the Arbiter (Leuven,
2001), pp. 5557.

26

debate. Theology needed the ability unambiguously to express that the Son, the second
Person of the Trinity, had been incarnate, more precisely the Son in his divine nature
(Philoponus could go so far as to speak of the one incarnate nature of God the
Logos53). Uwe Michael Lang summarises Philoponus doctrinal reasoning as follows:
The common nature of the divinity that is recognised in the Trinity has not become incarnate,
otherwise we would predicate the Incarnation also of the Father and the Holy Spirit. Neither
has the common intelligible content of human nature been united with God the Logos,
otherwise the whole human race before and after the advent of the Logos would have been
united to him.54

Philoponus option for particularism seemed inevitable thenas much as it had

been looming in the background of Severus argument alreadydue to conceptual
necessities created by the Christological debate, specifically the development of a novel
account of the individual as a radically unique being. Both Severus and Philoponus, in
this situation, rejected the solution propagated by Leontius and other Chalcedonians, a
solution that vacated the individual of being and turned individuality into purely factual
existence (hypostasis!). Instead, they opted for a theory that made individuals the
paradigmatic, and ultimately the only, beings properly speaking thereby giving up the
principle, equally central for Basil and Gregory, of the identity of nature in all
individuals of the same species.

6. The Chalcedonian solution: individual natures and the anhypostaton

A particularist theory of the individual was not, however, the only one produced by the
post-Chalcedonian debates. The Chalcedonians too, after spending some considerable

53

Philoponus, Arbiter 7 = John of Damascus, liber de haeresibus (52.8653.87 Kotter).

54

Lang, John Philoponus, p. 62.

27

time in a state of denial, developed a theory which was as novel and innovative as the
one emerging on the miaphysite side of the debate. As we have seen, Leontius of
Byzantium roundly rejected the need for individual natures; eventually, however, the
later Chalcedonians took a different view on this issue. The notion they introduced
under this name, however, had little in common with the eponymous concept used by
their opponents; instead, it shared considerable similarities with the bundle of
properties advocated by Porphyry and adapted in the Cappadocian Epistle 38. Yet
while the Cappadocian author held this bundle to be identical with the concrete
individual, the upshot of the later theory is that, on the contrary, this abstract essence
can, at least in principle, be distinguished from the hypostasis. It is this consideration
that makes possible the notion of an unhypostatised individuala complete set of
generic and individual properties yet without actual existencethat was needed for the
final working-out of the Christological doctrine.
In parallel with this theory of individual nature, the idea of hypostasis is
increasingly reduced to the notion of pure existence. Both tendencies emerged centuries
ago: they are clearly visible in Leontius argument, whatever his precise position on
individual natures, but can be discerned in nuce, I would argue, already with Gregory of
Nyssas essentialist turn in his anti-Apollinarian writing and in the Council of
Chalcedons use of this kind of language.55 The result was the full separation between a
things essence and its existence: unlike at any point in previous ancient thought, the
individual nature of later Chalcedonian theory permits conceiving of an individual in

55

Grillmeier notes this development and commends it as overcoming the Cappadocian bundle theory in

favour of the theologically more suitable notion of hypostasis as existence: A. Grillmeier, Christ in
Christian Tradition, vol. II/2 (London, 1995), p. 282 and passim.

28

abstraction from its actual realisation.56 Characteristically, Leontius of Jerusalem, one of

the early advocates of individual natures among the Chalcedonians, defends their
conceptual independence from their hypostatic reality by citing examples of people who
lived in the past:
We are not ignorant of the being of Enoch and Noah, but do we therefore claim to know them
as persons? It is not, therefore, necessary as you [sc. his Nestorian opponents] claim to
know a nature always through a hypostasis.57

The argument is designed to support Chalcedonian Christology against its

Nestorian detractors but it also cements a new way of thinking about the individual and,
ultimately, about being. In this perspective, the conception of an individual, its
intelligible content can be perfectly separated from its existence; essence and existence
are set apart in a way unprecedented in earlier ancient thought. It now seems no longer
far-fetched to argue, as Immanuel Kant will one thousand years later, that existence is
not a property. While it would be too bold to claim that this consequence would have
been clear to Leontius of Jerusalem or to John of Damascus, but the fact remains that, in
the interest of solving the Christological problem, they introduced concepts that
changed not only the understanding of the individual but, ultimately, shook the
foundations of ontology itself. It must be counted as one of the great ironies of the
history of ideas that this innovation, which, for all we can perceive, was introduced in
56

For an insightful argument along similar lines cf. C. Erismann, A World of Hypostases. John of

Damascus Rethinking of Aristotles Categorical Ontology, Studia Patristica 50 (2011), pp. 269287.
57

Leontius of Jerusalem, Contra Nestorianos 2.19 (PG 86.1580AB):

, ; , [sc.
the Nestorians], Cf. D. Krausmller, Divine Self-Invention:
Leontius of Jerusalems Reinterpretation of the Patristic Model of the Christian God, The Journal of
Theological Studies 57 (2006), pp. 526545.

29

the interest of defending the most central dogma of the Church, ultimately paved the
way towards one of the most severe crises of Christian theology throughout its history.

7. Conclusion
Christian theology in late antiquity produced three major theories of individuality. The
first was developed in the late fourth century by the Cappadocian theologians, Basil of
Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa. According to this view, the individual is the concrete
realisation of a universal nature to which corresponds an intelligible content, a notion
expressive of its particular quality. This theory was originally intended to explain
relationships within the Trinity; it could without too much difficulty be applied to the
world as a whole as long as the latter was seen as a largely organic cosmos consisting of
homogeneous parts. As in most other ancient theories of the individual, the emphasis of
this theory is on their identity not on their individuality or their distinctness as such.
This theory, which in many ways was in continuity with contemporary
philosophical theories, came under severe strain once the Christological problem was
felt in its full intensity. The miaphysite opponents of the Council of Chalcedon sought
to hold fast to the Cappadocian identity of being and concrete existence but gave up on
the universal character of beingmost radically in John Philoponus particularism. The
Chalcedonians, on the other hand, transformed the original theory into a pure
essentialism. They radically separated individual hypostases from any necessary
connection with being and reduced them, as such, to mere existents. This provided the
opportunity to introduce individual natures as the purely abstract concept of a universal
nature with added individual properties. Their hypostatic existence, consequently,
became strictly contingent.