By: Jay Dyer

Many are confused about the meaning and terminology of the debates that have been occurring lately in regards to Calvinism, the Trinity, Nature, Person, etc. So, an explanation of what these terms have come to normatively mean in theological discourse is appropriate. If we grasp these terms, the rest falls into place in a cogent system for talking about the Trinity, Incarnation and soteriology. If we are to have fruitful debates and dialogues on these points, the terms need to be grasped.

(1) Persons- or Hypostases (also subjects). answering the question “Who is doing it?”
(2) Energies answering the question What is it that They are doing?”
(3) Essence or Nature or ousia, answering the question what are the they, that are doing these things.
(4) Manichaeanism is an ancient heretical system influenced by Persian Zoroastrianism where there are two eternal principles good and evil, ever at odds.

(5) Nestorius said there were two personal subjects in Jesus incarnate – the Son of God joined to a human person, Jesus of Nazareth. This was condemned at Ephesus and in St. Cyril.
(6) apokatastasis means restoration – the recapitulation of all things in Christ in the eschaton.
(7) classical orthodoxy has confessed one will in the Trinity, yet three Persons, and two wills in Christ yet one divine Person. This is because will is a faculty of nature.
(8) Theological voluntarism is the view that God makes an action right simply by willing it – not that it is so because of coherence with His nature. Hence, God could, if He had so chosen ordained that evil is good and good evil. The medieval debate exemplary of this was whether God could cast Mary from heaven if He so willed it. I.e., His nature does not bind His will in terms moral actions. This was popular among the reformers and nominalists and their view of sacramentology.
(9) Absolute divine simplicity (ADS or DDS) is the normative western (Catholic & Protestant) view that all relations and attributes and actions in God are irreducibly and isomorphically identified with His simple nature or essence. God is actus purus – pure act, with no potentiality. To will is to be in God, and the Persons are also identified with the simple essence. Simplicity in this sense means no distinctions and no composition – irreducibly one.
(10) Analogia entis – the standard Latin and medieval west’s way of reasoning from creatures to the divine essence/substance. This characterizes cataphatic, or positive statements about the divine nature as is found in western theology.
(11) Enhypostatized – the mode of a thing, in this case the mode of persons. Thus we say nature is enhypostatized, or exists only in the mode of particular persons or subjects. There is, then, no human nature that is not actually instantiated in some individual human person.
(12) Will is a property of nature.
(13) Human nature is universal and consists of mind, will, soul and body, but — is always enhypostatized in some single subject.
(13) Apophatic theology – is speaking about God’s ousia or essence in negative terms – as in “infinite” means to us, only not-finite. We do not know what it is to be infinite. This is part and parcel with the biblical doctrine of divine incomprehensibility and divine simplicity (not ADS), in that no single “attribute” or energy can be predicated of the simple ousia, as it would also collapse all other actions and attributes into the simple ousia and mean that the essence was that one thing – similar to Eunomius’ heresy.
(14) theosis or deification – the doctrine that we participate in the divine energies and that this is the chief end of man.
(15) Monothelite – the doctrine that in the incarnate Christ there is one will and energy – the divine. This heresy resulted from confusing nature and person and making will a property of person, thereby necessitating three wills in the Trinity and one will in Christ. This was condemned at the 6th council, which affirmed two wills and two energies in Christ.
(16) Beatific vision – western doctrine that eternal life consists in an intellectual vision of the divine ousia or essence. Uniformly condemned in all the East because of its obvious oddities, such as that the ousia cannot be seen by any creature and that salvation is not just intellectual vision.
(17) Perichoresis – the divine indwelling and inter-penetration of the Persons. This is not to be confused with the unity of the divine nature, but is related thereunto. Called circumincession in the West.
(18) Logoi – the many archetypes or meanings – the universals – of things. The many uncreated logoi are one in the uncreated Logos.
(19) Hypostatic properties/properties of origin – the eastern way of knowing the Persons – by relation to the singe source of the Father. Thus the Son is defined by generation, and the Spirit by procession. We do not know the difference between the two.
(20) Relations of opposition – The Augustinian/Thomistic way of defining the Persons – by relation of opposition to the other two. The Son is not the Father or Spirit. The Spirit is not the Father or Son.
(21) Energetic Manifestation – speaking of the Trinity as regards its manifestation, by which God’s glory radiates from the Father through the Son in the Spirit. At this level, there is a filioque. At the level Hypostatic/personal origin – a filioque is generally denied or is problematic because the Son would take on the Father’s defining property – that of being the monarchia, or sole cause.
(22) Mary is called Theotokos because she bore a single Divine Person, the Logos. The Person who came from her is God. Thus she is not Christotokos as Nestorius said, because the Logos already had personhood prior to the Incarnation. Thus, the personal Logos assumed impersonal human nature. Otherwise, Jesus would be two persons. Again, these things are condemned at Ephesus.