hypostatic

In my gift-ontology, hypostatic means “pertaining to hypostasis,” that is, personal in the mode of subsisting. The term is used to keep “relation” from being heard as a detachable structure. When saying that origin-fromness is hypostatic, the intended claim is that origin-fromness is the personal way the one divine life subsists as Father, Son, and Spirit. It is not an attribute added to an underlying deity, and it is not a mere relational role that could be abstracted away from the persons. The word must do real work: it must immediately cash out into the concrete provenance of Father unoriginated, Son begotten, Spirit proceeding. Used correctly, hypostatic thickens relational language into personal reality, without turning persons into parts or turning God into a substrate plus relations.