perichoresis and trinity and spirit and circuminsession and circumincession

I was minding my own business reading through the various "peri's" in the Century and OED, and I gradually realized that about 95% or more of them have technical meanings in human anatomy (e.g., peridental--"around the teeth") or plant life (e.g., pericarp--the layer of the fruit around the seed). But then there were a few "peri's" that glistened with a rare effulgence and beckoned me to look more closely into them. This and the next twoo essays concern one of those terms: perichoresis (the Latin word is circumincession or circuminsession). Before I get going on it I should tell you that it has a theological significance dealing with how the three Persons in the Trinity relate to one another, so those of you uninterested in that area can either quietly or noisily withdraw. I think if you stay, however, you might be surprised, and learn something in the process.

Getting Started

The verb perichoreo appears infrequently in ancient Greek literature and means to "go around." The pre-Socratic philosopher Anaxagoras used the term in that sense. Herodotus, the 5th century historian, used it to describe the kingship (basileie) being transferred to Darius. It appears in the Septuagint (Greek translation of the OT) to refer to those who "dwell around" a town (Gen. 13:10), and one reference in the Gospel of Matthew (14:35) has that same meaning. Thus we can see that the term is a sort of pedestrian term, doing its work unobtrusively in the world like a faithful and sturdy worker. Indeed, the Century only seems to know this usage for it, for it defines perichoresis as "a going about; a rotation." It is only in the OED that we begin to explore the mystery and extent of this term. But, as we will see below, in order to delve into its mysteries we must read the 7th Cent. theologian John of Damascus.

First, to the OED. It has the following entry. Perichoresis is the "interrelationship or interpenetration of the Persons of the Trinity; the manner in which the three Persons are regarded as conjoined or interlinked without each one's distinct identity being lost. Cf. 'circumincession'" (the Latin translation of the term). Yet even with this definition, we have an example of the more pedestrian meaning of perichoresis. From W.H.Auden we have: "Join the dance as it moves in perichoresis, turns about the abiding tree."

But we soon get a sense of its difficulty when used in theology. I chuckled when I came across one attestatin from Gibbon, a man who never could conceal the scorn he felt for orthodox Christianity. "The periochoresis, or circumincessio is perhaps the deepest and darkest corner of the whole theological abyss." Samuel Coleridge, much more sympathetic to orthodox Christianity, called perichoresis the ultimate "Circle-act." And then, in a suggestive quotation from 1993, which I will return to in the final essay, Ian Bradley (The Celtic Way) says: "The intertwining ribbons of the Celtic knot represent in simple and graphic terms the doctrine of perichoresis--the mutual interpenetration of Father, Son and Holy Spirit."

Why Perichoresis?

No one who reads the New Testament could imagine that the doctrine of perichoresis would ever develop. In order to "get there" from the New Testament, you would have to imagine not only that the one God of Judaism, YHWH, could somehow be supplemented by one or two other divine figures but that these figures were in some sense "equal" and that they "related" to one another. Judaism believed in one God, a deity who no doubt created angels and other intermediary beings but one who was unique and solely responsible for making and governing the world. The language of Sonship for Jesus derives from the OT and really has nothing to do with sharing of divinity--it has to do with being a figure of earthly authority who was specially anointed or chosen by God for an important task.

Thus, there was really nothing in Judaism, except some vocabulary, that would have led to the doctrine of the Trinity, much less the more complex doctrine of perichoresis, or how the "persons" of the Trinity "relate" to each other. Only when the early Church began to be populated by Greek-speaking and Greek-thinking people did a vocabulary and method of logical thinking arise that would lead to the doctrine of Trinity and of periochoresis.

It took "Greek thinking," if I can use that term, to ask the question of who Jesus actually was, not in terms of his death to forgive sins but of his "essential nature." Talking about essences is quintessentially Greek talk. And so the debates in the 2nd and 3rd centuries centered around who Christ "really" was and how he related to God. There was no question that he was human, and even fully human, because the testimony of the Gospels was so clear in establishing that point. But Jesus also must have been more than human, they thought, both because he made some statements about himself in the Gospels which seem to suggest this and because of the role that thinkers like St. Paul ascribed to Jesus. Greeks could draw upon a fairly sophisticated philosophy of emanations or intermediary creatures that somehow "emerged" from the "One" or the uncreated source of the universe in order to have the terminology and conceptions to "understand" Jesus. But still there was a raging debate concerning whether this Jesus was lesser than God or fully equal with the One. That was a debate that came to a head in the 4th century, when the "winners" decided that Christ would be fully equal with God.

But then you have the problem of the "Spirit." The Spirit or Holy Spirit didn't receive much attention in the first few centuries of our era because of the attention on Christ. And, it might even be theologically appropriate to say that the Spirit was relatively ignored, since the Spirit's "task" is to point the spotlight on others. The self-effacing Spirit. But, since Jesus said that he would send the Spirit, and since the Spirit was seemingly an important, though necessarily shadowy, entity for Paul, also, a role for the Spirit along with the other two--God (the One) and Christ--was deemed appropriate. So we have the Trinity. And the fun is just beginning.

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