Perichoresis/Perichoretic Co-Activity
Now that we have considered a few different ways of thinking out the threeness and oneness of God that have proved to be problematic, let us move on to a way of thinking out the Unity in Trinity in a way that is more indicative of the mainstream of theology in the early church. The problem, as should be clear from the ways people have tried to understand God’s Triunity, is that we have no way in which to understand how something can be both three and one at the same time. Depending on which analogies we apply to the problem, we tend to either collapse the three Persons into a solitary unity or separate them into different gods.
The concept developed by the early church came to be known by the term “Perichoresis.” Though the term was used in the fourth century by Gregory Nazienzen, it is not developed explicitly until the seventh and eighth centuries by John of Damascus. The literal meaning of the word is somewhat difficult. The standard interpretation is, “Dancing around together in a circle,” though it seems more appropriate to say that it means “to mutually contain,” which is far closer to its theological meaning.
Perichoresis is, at its very core, an attempt to take both the threeness and the oneness of God seriously. It is a difficult theological concept. How could it be otherwise when we are probing deeply into the very Being of God? And yet, we must make an attempt. One text that will help us to get ready to deal with this concept is John 14:9-10. “Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, “Show us the Father?” Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own initiative, but the Father abiding in me does his works.”
The idea that Jesus puts forward at this point is that he is in the Father and the Father is, at the very same time, in him. Perichoresis is a concept where we proclaim that three Persons of the Trinity are finally not separable from one another, but mutually indwell and mutually interpenetrate each other so that, wherever one Person is, the other two are present as well. This would mean that any attempt to understand the Trinity by saying, “God is a Trinity, but each of the three Persons are each God by themselves,” is not appropriate. To say that the Father is God without reference to the Son and Spirit is not conceivable. If we were to say something along those lines, it would imply that the Father can be considered apart from the Son, which has been claimed over and over again throughout this work to be impossible. How can we consider God the Father independently of his Son? How can we say that God the Son is God, even apart from the Father?
The conviction here is that, if we attempt to consider either the Father, Son, or Holy Spirit in isolation from the rest of the Trinity, we are considering something that does not exist. The Father does not exist except as the Father of the Son, the Son does not exist except as the Son of the Father, and the Spirit does not exist except as the Spirit of the Father and the Son. To say that we can consider any single Person by themselves would be to lapse into Tritheism, where the Persons are not just personally distinct, but truly separate. The one, undivided Being of God, which cannot be broken down into anything more basic, is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The three Persons are the one Being and the one Being is the Three Persons.
This is a difficult concept, but it may perhaps become clearer if we consider how this plays itself out in history. The concept of Perichoresis, that all three of the Persons are contained in each of them (that is, you cannot have one without the others), is accompanied by an understanding of all of God’s activity as the activity of the Triune God rather than the activity of each Person independently of the others. We say that God’s activity is truly a perichoretic co-activity, where each Person contributes to each of God’s activities in such a way that it cannot be attributed to one Person over another but that each Person participates in each activity in their own unique way.
Let us consider two central doctrines of the Christian faith and how they manifest the Perichoretic Co-Activity of God: Creation and the death of Christ as a sacrifice for sins. The first passage we read in the Bible speaks of creation as an act of perichoretic co-activity (though, it must be noted, that it is only because of the revelation of God in Christ that we can see the Trinity in this passage). “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light;’ and there was light.” Here we have the statement that God (the Father) created the heavens and the earth, but creation was not accomplished by the Father alone. The Spirit hovered over the surface of the waters (which has a part to play in the creation) and God spoke a word (It is the Word of God who became incarnate in Jesus Christ and was called the Son of God, John 1:14) to establish light. Each of the Persons of the Trinity are involved in such a way that each contribute in their own unique way, but yet the act is a unified act of the Triune God.
Another important moment in salvation history is the offering of Christ on the cross as a sacrifice for sins. It is clear that God the Son is very much involved in this act. It was a sacrifice that is ordained by God and endured by God. However, it was also offered to God the Father on our behalf and in our place. It also must be noted that, according to the book of Hebrews (9:14), it was through the eternal Spirit that Christ offered himself to God. The sacrifice of Christ was not the merciful act of the loving Son in order to appease the angry Father. Instead, it was the perichoretic co-activity of the Triune God, where each of the three Persons is involved throughout the entire act.
These are just two examples that help us to understand the general pattern of God’s activity. All of God’s acts are the acts of the Triune God and each of the Persons work together in absolute unity. It does not take too much effort to begin to see how other major activities of God are also perichoretic co-activities and we can even think of our basic Christian experience in these terms. We are accepted by God the Father because of the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ and the offering made on our behalf and in our place by Christ at every point of the process is mediated to us by the Holy Spirit.
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