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.
Now you're making me feel guilty.
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.
I just remembered the Collyridians, who have the distinction of introducing one of the errors in the Koran, because Mohammed mistook them for ordinary Christians.
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.
I think if there were a personal "it" above and beyond the Trinity, then the Three in the Trinity would be less than persons; a person who did seriously hold that view would be a modalist and would have the problem all unitarians have of explaining how God can have lacked true interpersonal relations before creation and yet not be impersonal.
I looked up Lossky, and he says something interesting here (or I think this is the person you were quoting):
As we have already observed, in expounding the dogma of the Trinity, western thought most frequently took as its starting point the one nature, and thence passed to the consideration of the three persons, while the Greeks followed the opposite course— from the three persons to the one nature. St. Basil preferred this latter way, which in conformity to Holy Scripture and to the baptismal formula which names the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, starts from the concrete. Human thought does not run the risk of going astray if it passes from the consideration of the three persons to that of the common nature. Nevertheless, the two ways were both equally legitimate so long as the first did not attribute to the essence a supremacy over the three persons, nor the second to the three persons a supremacy over the common nature."
I don't think that the Fathers ever spoke of human beings as sharing a single essence ("ousia") -- but only a single nature ("physis.")
If I define a being as that which is alive and has a distinct or unique essence (which seems as good a definition as any), this is the same thing as what I was saying.
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.
Of course, Plato was Greek rather than American. So his atomistic cogs were civic cogs, working or fighting or ruling for the sake of the polis. An American atomistic cog produces and consumes for sake of the economy.
Wow, this is mind-stretching stuff.
Not surprisingly, with your re-statements, I think we are indeed on the same wavelength regarding the Persons of the Trinity and on what you mean by a Being.
The quotation that you found from Lossky was interesting -- I didn't recall that passage. I'm pretty sure that when he says "the Greeks" in this context, he means "the Greek fathers" as opposed to "the pagan Greek philosophers." That is what would make the most sense, anyway.
The quotation from Lossky that I was thinking of was one that I recalled during recent discussions with Roman Catholics about the filioque. I was able to find it on-line:
By the dogma of the Filioque, the God of the philosophers and savants is introduced into the heart of the Living God, taking the place of the Deus absconditus, qui posuit tenebras latibulum suum. The unknowable essence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit receives positive qualifications. It becomes the object of natural theology: we get "God in general," who could be the god of Descartes, or the god of Leibnitz, or even perhaps, to some extent, the god of Voltaire and of the dechristianized Deists of the eighteenth century. Manuals of theology begin with a demonstration of His existence, thence to deduce, from the simplicity of His essence, the mode in which the perfections found among creatures are to be attributed to this eminently simple essence. From His attributes they go on to a discussion of what He can or cannot do, if He is not to contradict Himself and is to remain true to His essential perfection. Finally a chapter about the relations of the essence — which do not at all abolish its simplicity — serves as a fragile bridge between the god of the philosophers and the God of revelation.
The Procession of the Holy Spirit in Orthodox Trinitarian Doctrine