50 The Triunity of God [CH. 



impersonal conception of the being of the Logos before 

 the Incarnation which was so characteristic, in a differ- 

 ent form, of the theology of the Eastern Fathers 1 . With 

 such a point of view I cannot agree. Valuable though it 

 is in laying stress upon the reality of the kenosis and the 

 gradual growth of our Lord's human personality, any- 

 thing which seems to depersonalise the Holy Trinity in 

 any degree appears to me essentially mistaken. I pro- 

 pose to use the terms hypostasis and person as almost 2 

 interchangeable; and indeed we shall find that, as our 

 argument proceeds, the personal nature of each hypo- 

 stasis becomes more and more marked. Thus, though we 

 use the word Logos, and indeed start from a conception 

 of the Logos almost Philonic, from the very first we 

 shall have always in the back of our minds the personal, 

 not the impersonal idea of His nature. In each hypo- 

 stasis, then, is the whole nature of Godhead revealed. 

 Each is a Person, in the modern sense of the term, fully 

 self -revealing, not a persona, the mask that conceals the 

 common clay of the actor, as the original word meant, 

 nor even an actor in the drama of the universe, as it 

 later came to mean 8 . In the modern sense a Person is a 

 complete self-identity, fundamentally different from all 

 others; conscious of others; with his own peculiar 

 experience, yet able to share the experience of others. 

 A person is self -revealing, penetrable, penetrating; 

 manifesting attributes by which he-may be apprehended 

 by others. Yet in the closer relationships the appre- 

 hension is largely, and can be imagined completely, 



1 For these, as for other points of detail, I am indebted to 

 Professor H. R. Mackintosh's admirable work on The Person of 

 Jesus Christ. 



1 Not quite. See the discussion of the emphasis of each hypo- 

 stasis, ch. iii. pp. 1 08 seqq. 



* In Trinitarian doctrine the word was introduced by Tertullian 

 from Roman Law. Ottley. op. cit. p. 578. 



