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What Is 'Perichoresis'—And Why Does It Matter?

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What Is 'Perichoresis'—And Why Does It Matter? ERT (2015) 39:2, 144-156 What is ‘Perichoresis’—and Why Does It Matter? Perichoresis as Properly Basic to the Christian Faith John Jefferson Davis I Perichoresis: Central to ‘properly basic’ to the Christian faith, Christian Faith I am arguing that it is a primordial or fundamental concept that describes Perichoresis is hardly a term that is ‘how God essentially and eternally is’. part of the working vocabulary of most As such, perichoresis is a doctrine that Christians today. This biblical concept, is not so much argued to as argued based on statements of Jesus such as from. Perichoresis will be seen to of ‘I am in the Father and the Father is fer a vision of community and deeper in me’ (Jn 14:10), and others like it— connection with other persons—often referring to the mutual indwelling of sought for in modem society, but rarely the Father and the Son—is generally realized in the face of the fragmenta considered to be of interest only to aca tion and busyness of modem life, even demic theologians—an enigmatic and with the aid of social media. esoteric idea with little practical sig This article will first, briefly review nificance for Christian living. the history of the usage of this term in It is the purpose of this article to Christian theology; second, a working argue, on the contrary, that perichoresis definition of the term will be offered; belongs not on the margins of Christian third, the New Testament data will be faith, but at the very centre, and should examined, with special reference to the be recognized as a vital biblical truth life of Jesus in the gospel of John, and that illuminates the nature of Christian the ‘in Christ’ language of the apostle salvation , the believer’s personal rela Paul; fourth, a philosophical analy tionship to Christ and the meaning of sis of the meaning of ‘person’ will be genuine fellowship in the church. presented, in fight of the biblical data, In arguing that perichoresis is together with a proposal for a new Con or. John Jefferson Davis (PhD, Duke), an ordained Presbyterian minister, is professor o f Systematic Theol ogy and Christian Ethics at Cordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, USA. He is a frequent public speaker and press columnist and is the author o f several well-known books, including Evangelical E th ics (2004), The Frontiers o f Science and Faith (2002), Worship and the Reality of God (2010), Meditation and Communion with God (2012), and numerous articles in scholarly journals. What is ‘Perichoresis’—and Why Does It Matter 145 cept of the ‘extended Self’; and fifth, The interpenetration of the natures and finally, some practical implications was understood to be the ground of the of perichoresis for the doctrines of so- interchange of the attributes.3 teriology (salvation), anthropology (na Maximus the Confessor, who stud ture of man), and ecclesiology (fellow ied Gregory’s writings, adopted the ship and ministry in the church) will be concept, and was the first to use the suggested. noun perichoresis to describe this move ment of penetration in the person of Christ of the divine nature toward the II P e ric h o re s is : S o m e human nature.4 In the seventh century Historical Trajectories John of Damascus took up the concept, The concept of perichoresis was first being the first to apply it to the mutual introduced into theology by Gregory interpenetration5 of the three persons of Nazianzus in his Epistle 101, when of the Trinity: he used the verb perichoreo to speak of (T)hese are indivisible and insepa the union of the divine and human na rable from each other and united tures in Christ: ‘Just as the natures are into one, and interpenetrating one mixed, so also the names pass recip another without confusion ... they rocally into each [perichorouson) other are three although united, and they by the principle of this coalescence.’1 are distinct, although inseparable.6 Gregory here speaks of the inter In the twelfth century, John of change of names and attributes be Damascus’ The Orthodox Faith was tween the two natures that later came translated into Latin, and the concept to be called the communicatio idioma- of perichoresis entered into Western tum or ‘communication of attributes’.2 Trinitarian theology under the term circumincessio. Other Latin theologians 1 As cited by Verna Harrison, ‘Perichoresis such as Thomas Aquinas affirmed the in the Greek Fathers’, St. Vladimir’s Theo logical Quarterly 35 (1991): 53-65 at page 55. For the history of perichoresis in Christian 3 A widely recognized biblical example of this theology I have drawn on Harrison and G.L. ‘communication of attributes’ is found in Acts Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London: 20:28 , where Paul speaks of the ‘church of S.P.C.K., 1964), 282-302; Thomas F. Torrance, God which he bought with his own blood'— The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three where blood, a property of Christ’s human na Persons (Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1996), 175- ture, is attributed to Christ as God in his divine 202; and Jacques Fantino, ‘Circumincession’, nature. in Jean-Yves Lacoste, ed., Encyclopedia of 4 Fantino, ‘Circumincession’, 315. Christian Theology, v.l (New York: Routledge, 5 For the patristic usage of the noun pericho 2005), 315-16. resis and the verb perichoreo with the sense 2 A very careful recounting of the history of of ‘interpenetrate’, or ‘interpenetration’, see the concept of the communication idiomatum G.W.H. Lampe, ed., A Patristic Greek Lexicon from the patristic period through the Reforma (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 1077. tion and post-Reformation periods is provided 6 St. John of Damascus, The Orthodox Faith, in Wolfhart Pannenberg, fesus— God and Man III,5, in Nicene andPost-NiceneFathers: Second (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1968), 296-307, Series, v.9, eds. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace ‘Mutual Interpenetration of the Natures as a (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, repr. 1994), Way of Understanding the Unity of Christ'. 49. 146 John Jefferson Davis notion of the indwelling of the divine Ill Perichoresis: a W o rkin g persons of the Trinity, without using Definition: the term, as did the Council of Florence Before proceeding with a consideration (1431-45) in its Decree of Union with of the biblical data, a working defini the Jacobites.7 tion of perichoresis will be given, with There has been little dogmatic de a view to possible refinement in fight velopment of the concept of perichore- of the biblical and theological analysis sis in the East since the time of John of to follow. This working definition will Damascus, and little in the West since draw from three different, but related, the middle ages. In the West, this rela fines of thought: shared inferiority; re tive lack of theological attention to the ciprocal empathy; and the ‘Thou-Thou’ implications of perichoresis may be, in relationship. part, a consequence of the increasing In the first instance, perichoresis scholastic elaboration of the doctrine can be understood to involve a relation of the Trinity, after the introduction ship of shared inferiority, in which two of Aristotelean philosophy and the in (or more) persons share, at a deep lev troduction of many technical distinc el, their inner fives with one another. tions that tended to separate Trinitar It involves an ‘opening of the heart’ to ian doctrine from the lived experience the other, a giving of permission to the of Christians.8 As the doctrine of the other to ‘get inside’ my fife. Trinity became somewhat marginalized When Jesus says that ‘I am in the as a result, the pivotal concept of per Father and the Father is in me’, the ichoresis embedded within it tended to preposition ‘in’ does not refer to one drop out of sight as well. physical object being spatially inside With the renewal of interest in the the other, but rather, one person being doctrine of the Trinity of the last sev ‘in’ the other in a relational manner eral generations, sparked by the work that engages mind, will, and emotions. of Karl Barth, Karl Rahner, and others, Jesus and the Father are in a mutually it now seems that the time has come ‘open hearted’ relation with one anoth to give this neglected biblical truth er, that puts them ‘on the same page’ renewed theological attention, with a with one another, in a unity of under view to showing its significance not standing, purpose, and emotion. only for the Trinity and Christology, but Perichoresis can also be viewed for other vital areas of Christian theol as a personal relationship character ogy as well—notably, for the doctrines ized by mutual empathy, with empathy of salvation and the church. being defined simply as ‘the ability to feel another’s experience’.9 When the 9 This definition of empathy is borrowed from Sim Van der Ryn, Design for an Empathic World: 7 Fantino, 'Circumincession', 315, 316. Reconnecting People, Nature and Self (Washing 8 As argued by the Catholic theologian Cath ton, D.C.: Island Press, 2013). The term ‘em erine Lacugna in God for Us: The Trinity and pathy’ was coined in 1909 by the psychologist Christian Life (San Francisco: HarperSanFran- Edward Titchener, as a translation of the Ger cisco, 1991), 168-69. man Einfuhlung (‘feelinginto’). Whac is ‘Perichoresis’—and Why Does It Matter 147 apostle Paul admonishes the Chris ‘heart-to-heart’ or ‘heart-in-heart’ con tians in Rome to ‘Rejoice with those nection between two or more persons who rejoice’ and to ‘mourn with those characterized by reciprocal empathy.
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