Definition (house-style)
Hypostasis (Greek: ὑπόστασις, “substantial existence”, “underlying reality”) is in Trinitarian theology the term for each of the three distinct, individually subsisting Persons of the Godhead: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three hypostases of one divine ousia (essence/substance). This is the classical formula of the First Council of Constantinople (381 AD): “one essence, three hypostases” (mia ousia, treis hypostaseis). The term is distinct from its christological use in the hypostatic union (one Person, two natures in Christ). This corpus treats hypostasis primarily in the Trinitarian sense; for the hypostatic union as a christological concept, see the separate entry.
Author variants
Nee/Lee
Nee/Lee employ the hypostatic distinction as a defense against the modalism charge: the three Persons are distinct hypostases, not three modes of one Person. They stress that the three Persons are simultaneously present, not successive (which would be modalist):
“We know that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not three different Gods but one God, expressed in three Persons.”
[Nee/Lee, The Economy of God, Ch. 1]
The tension in Nee/Lee’s theology is precisely that the hypostatic distinction is affirmed on the one hand (three Persons, not tritheism), but functionally put under pressure on the other by the strong emphasis on unity (“the Father is not only the Father but also the Son”). Living Stream Ministry defends Nee/Lee’s orthodoxy by insisting that co-inherence — the mutual containing of the Persons — does not imply modalism: the Persons are distinct hypostases who mutually interpenetrate. The theological tension remains, however, because the formulation “the Father is also the Son” crosses a hypostatic boundary that classical Trinitarian thought is precisely meant to preserve.