Hypostatic union

Use in the book

II.32 tests the usual reasons offered for requiring a divine redeemer. Traherne first grants that an innocent substitute must undertake the office voluntarily. He then repeatedly entertains possibilities: an angel might consent, might suffer infinitely through losing the divine love it prizes, and might undertake more than its existing duty required. The proposal that an angel could be united to human nature belongs to the same hypothetical series.

His purpose is to challenge a too-quick inference from a mediator’s necessary capacities to Christ’s exclusive eligibility. Even sustaining infinite punishment does not, on this line of argument, settle the issue: almighty power could sustain a creature under the punishment almighty power inflicted. The two millstones make that disturbing possibility vivid. Traherne therefore asks the reader to search higher for the reason Christ is preferred.

The next meditation supplies that higher reason in the honour of the office and the Father’s judgment that only the Son is worthy of it. The experiment in II.32 is thus a stage in a Christian argument for Christ’s pre-eminence. It does not report angelic incarnations, teach that angels actually redeemed humanity, or dissolve the distinction between Christ and creatures.

Places to read

1. II.32The hypothetical personal union occurs among concessions testing the conventional qualifications of a mediator.
2. II.33The argument advances from possible capacity to the Son’s unique dignity and willing undertaking.

In this edition

The supplied 2026 note describes the theological teaching Traherne is testing. Preserve the repeated qualifications in his argument: a provisional possibility is not an asserted event. Hypostatic union is the explanatory headword; the text uses the adverb hypostatically.

Use in the book

The preceding pages explain the sequence. Silver or gold, reduced through the first matter, is sown into its mother or field, and both are brought together towards a silver-making or gold-making Stone. The resulting medicines remain specified by the silvern or golden kind. On p. 97 the catholic matter receives this specification in the first artful composition and the natural mixture and union that follow. It then remains joined to its metal, the properties of the two being communicated on either side.

The phrase does two kinds of work. It insists that the resulting agent is not a casual juxtaposition whose terms subsequently separate; and it carries the theological vocabulary of the union of natures into the account of natural-artful preparation. The latter significance is not an invention of the modern translation: both the Latin term and the accompanying communication of properties are present in the primary passage. Nevertheless, the book gives no separate doctrinal exposition of hypostasis at this point. One should describe the transfer precisely rather than supply an entire Christological system on its behalf.

The contrast immediately following matters. The next route takes the purified catholic matter by itself, without silver or gold throughout. Thus hypostatic union here is not a generic synonym for any perfected Stone. The specified route has a particular union of catholic matter and metallic kind; the simple universal route is introduced by explicitly removing such an addition. The later indissoluble union in philosophical fermentation on p. 101 can be compared, but Khunrath does not repeat Vnione hypostatica there.

Places to read

1. 1599 p. 95Metal and first matter are treated together as seed and mother or field
2. 1599 p. 96The product is a specified silver-making or gold-making Stone
3. 1599 p. 97The two natures communicate their properties and remain in hypostatic union
4. 1599 p. 98The contrasting universal route excludes every silvern or golden addition
5. 1599 p. 101Later fermentation is described as an indissoluble union without repeating the hypostatic term

Translation in this edition

Retain “hypostatic” rather than reducing it to “close” or “permanent.” The modern apparatus identifies the theological technical background; the primary passage itself supplies the expression but no historical account of its origin. The lookup phrase “communication of properties” should be kept beside the Latin so that the accompanying clause is not lost behind the better-known title.