It has, hasn't it? Good to talk again. From what I've seen you spend most of your FR time in the Religion forum, which is also where I spend most of mine, but you're on Orthodox threads and I'm on Protestant ones.
The fathers wrote, as I recall, that the Divine essence and nature are uniquely enhypostasized as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Likewise, human nature is uniquely enhypostasized in each human being (and was also uniquely enhypostasized in the hypostasis/person of Jesus Christ.)
I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this. Not that I actually disagree, but I also don't see where a tritheist would disagree. Not that I'm calling you a tritheist, of course. (Incidentally, have there ever been any heresies that held to tritheism? The Mormons sometimes make tritheistic sounding noises, but they're polytheists, or maybe heno-tritheists. Was there ever real tritheism, or is it just a hypothetical error a person could fall into and a false accusation against orthodoxy from Jews, Modalists, Arians, Muslims, and other varieties of unitarian?)
I would also say that God is one Being enhypostasized (it's unfortunate "impersonated" already means something completely different and we have to resort to a word like enhypostasized) in three Persons, and each human is one being enhypostasized in one person, although in Christ that One Being is the Being Who created the universe and is also enhypostasized in two other Persons Who are not human. Or whatever the right way to put it is, the Persons of the Trinity are One in a way humans are not, or rather humans are isolated from each other in a way the Persons of the Trinity aren't. And not just, I think, because of the Fall. Eve evidently thought God forbade touching the forbidden fruit, which means there was some sort of miscommunication between her and Adam. But maybe this won't be the case in Heaven, because the saved are being taken up into the life of Christ.
But I completely agree that it's the interconnectedness of humanity that makes the Incarnation of benefit to us. He is, after all, our Kinsman.
Uniqueness and community are not in dialectical opposition with each other, although some of the pagan Greek philosophers felt otherwise -- A.J. knows more about those guys than I do.
Something in the friend's response reminded me of Plato. :-)
It said: The INDIVIDUAL is characterized and defined/ defines himself in terms of his differences from other individuals. Individualism is inherently and inevitably atomistic (hence profoundly contrary to human nature -- see below). Where it is the dominant functional philosophy, society is always in flux between the extremes of anarchy and collectivism (which is the revenge human nature takes on radical individualism), leaving man with a choice between the life of the solitary wasp or that of the hive. The human PERSON, though unique, is defined in terms of his relation to other human persons.
Plato said the city would only be united if all men said "mine" and "not mine" at the same time, in relation to goods and even -- especially -- to people. Which is why the ideal city abolished the family. Particular relations with particular people also sets people apart; a man has one particular woman as wife rather than some other woman, one set of relatives, some people rather than others as friends, and so on. So Plato's ideal city got to extreme collectivism through atomized individualism.
I think Plato's view of love is interesting to note here. Take romantic love. I like girls who, beside being beautiful (everyone likes that) are intelligent and can hold up their end of a good conversation. Plato would say what I really like are Beauty and Intelligence and Good Conversation, and particular humans are merely fungible instantiations. But I don't like Good Conversation, I like having good conversations, and you can't have a good conversation with Good Conversation, you can only have one with a person.
Well, there aren't any Cicero or "Lives of the Caesars" threads like there were in the glory days, so the religion forum is what I find most interesting.
I'm not aware of any tri-theists actually existing, either. "On Not Three Gods" was written by St. Gregory of Nyssa precisely because it was what those who held Trinitarian belief were accused of.
The problemt that I would have with saying that "God is one Being enhypostasized" would be to ask "who is this 'one Being'?" The patristic "ordo theologiae" is to start with the Persons, which is how God is revealed to us -- personally. There seems, with your formulation, to be a danger of seeing in this "Being" a personal "it" beyond and above the three "he's" of the Holy Trinity -- a "God-in-general" as Lossky put it.
If it helps, St. Athanasius, as I recall, pointed out that the essence of God is not divided up between the Persons, but rather is, in its fullness, in each of the three Persons.
I don't think that the Fathers ever spoke of human beings as sharing a single essence ("ousia") -- but only a single nature ("physis.") Thus, as you say, there is a kind of unity of Persons in the Trinity that is not shared by humans who simply share a common nature. In Christ, this is of course transformed, and we can begin to approach it -- and will particularly do so in eschaton, but we Orthodox would believe that to the extent that we participate in the life of God (exemplified by the saints), we can taste of this closer unity while here on earth (although that unity will be most acutely experienced with those in heaven...)
Good thoughts on Plato -- I knew I could depend on you. We have been discussing various matters with RCs on other threads, and one of the things that strikes me is how deeply Platonized some forms of Augustinian theology can be. It really is not a healthy mix with Christianity. To take a very random jump, your words on "Intelligence" and "Good Conversation" reminded me of the Charles Williams novel "The Place of the Lion," with its artistic portrayals of Platonism. He was supposedly a Christian, but reading that novel (which I quite enjoyed), I really felt like I was encountering a foreign, paganized Christianity.
Regarding collectivism, the key is that Platonic philosophy seems to tend to lead one to simplicity and identification. Thus, one person is not similar to another, but *is* the same person as another -- (on the same line as "mine and not mine" being said simultaneously -- "me" and "not me" are one and the same.) This is not really "individualism" as we would generally think of it, but it is atomistic, I would suppose.