Within One Another: The Strange Beauty of Trinitarian Perichoresis

 

Perichoresis (Greek perichōrēsis) is the old theological term for the mutual indwelling, coinherence, or interpenetration of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The three divine persons do not exist alongside one another as three centers of deity, each occupying His own little metaphysical patch of ground. The Father is in the Son, the Son is in the Father, and the Spirit eternally shares the same indivisible divine life. Each person is fully the one God, while remaining irreducibly Father, Son, or Spirit. One small clarification is worth highlighting because it gets repeated constantly: perichoresis does not literally mean “the divine dance.” As D. Glenn Butner points out, perichōrein derives from chōrein, “to go,” “make room for,” or “contain,” not choreuein, to dance in a chorus. The dance can function as a modern metaphor, perhaps, but it is not the etymology (Butner, Trinitarian Dogmatics, 133–35; cf. Beeke and Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology, 1:892).

The idea is older than the technical terminology. Athanasius and the Cappadocians already spoke of the profound mutual indwelling implied by the Nicene confession of the Son and Spirit as fully divine. Gregory of Nyssa used related language of circular movement and the verb perichōrein, particularly Christologically; Maximus the Confessor developed the concept in speaking of Christ’s two natures. A work falsely attributed to Cyril of Alexandria appears to have been the first to use perichōrēsis explicitly of the Trinity, but John of Damascus in the eighth century made it a substantial feature of Trinitarian theology. From there it entered the Latin West through Burgundio of Pisa’s twelfth-century translation of John, eventually yielding circumincessio and circuminsessio, terms emphasizing reciprocal interpenetration and mutual indwelling respectively (Butner, Trinitarian Dogmatics, 135–38; Letham, Systematic Theology, 108).

The word is postbiblical; the doctrine is not. Its clearest soil is Johannine. Jesus declares, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), then explains this unity in strikingly reciprocal language: “the Father is in Me, and I in the Father” (10:38; cf. 14:10–11). The same grammar reappears in the high-priestly prayer of John 17:21–23. Paul adds another dimension when he speaks of the Spirit searching “even the depths of God,” knowing what belongs to God from within the divine life itself (1 Cor. 2:10–11). Beeke and Smalley therefore describe perichoresis as the complete mutual embracing and encompassing of the persons, a sharing of the whole divine life and glory without the dissolution of personal distinction (Beeke and Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology, 1:892). Butner similarly begins his treatment with John 10:38 and regards these texts as the exegetical foundation for speaking of reciprocal divine indwelling (Butner, Trinitarian Dogmatics, 133, 144).

That placement matters. Perichoresis is not a substitute for homoousios, nor is it the thing that somehow produces the unity of God. The doctrine presupposes the more basic grammar of one indivisible divine essence and three distinct hypostases, together with the eternal processions that distinguish Father, Son, and Spirit. Then it tells us something more: these distinctions never become separation. Butner puts the point nicely: perichoresis “qualif[ies] divine unity to preserve distinction, while qualifying divine plurality to preserve unity.” It thus belongs naturally alongside consubstantiality, eternal generation and procession, divine simplicity, and the doctrine of inseparable operations. Because the persons mutually indwell one another and possess one numerically identical divine nature, creation, providence, redemption, and consummation are never the independent projects of three gods. The external works of the Trinity are indivisible (Butner, Trinitarian Dogmatics, 144–45; Letham, Systematic Theology, 108–09).

And this is where an apparently abstruse Greek word begins to breathe. The God who saves us is eternally communion in Himself. Salvation therefore brings us, through union with Christ and the indwelling Spirit, into fellowship with the Father, though never in precisely the same manner in which the divine persons indwell one another. That distinction is crucial, and we need to tread carefully here. Father, Son, and Spirit are one by nature; we participate in the divine life by grace. Our union with Christ and our communion with one another are created analogues, not extensions of the divine essence (Butner, Trinitarian Dogmatics, 145–50). Still, the analogue has teeth. Beeke and Smalley move from Trinitarian communion to the stubbornly practical business of reconciliation, fellowship, peace, and shared life among the saints: theology becoming doxology, then becoming church life. Perichoresis finally reminds us that Christian salvation is not merely rescue from something. By the Son and in the Spirit, we are brought to the Father, into communion with the triune God whose eternal life is inexhaustibly full before there ever was a world (Beeke and Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology, 1:899–900).