The Dance of God, the Dance of Life

Peter J. Leithart, September 26, 2003

Here's lectures notes on the first of my lectures on the Trinity at the upcoming Ministerial Conference in Moscow. The next two posts will be notes for my other two lectures.

Lecture #1: The Dance of God, the Dance of Life:
Perichoresis in Creator and Creature

INTRODUCTION
Since the patristic period, "perichoresis" has been a technical term to describe the interrelations of the Persons of the Trinity. The noun comes from a Greek verb (perichorein) that means "to contain" or "to penetrate," and describes the three Persons of the Trinity as mutually "indwelling," "permeating," or "interpenetrating" one another. Each person both wholly envelops and is wholly enveloped by the others. A similar Greek word, perichoreuein, which means "to dance around," has been used as a metaphor for the relation of the Persons. In Latin, the equivalent term was circumincessio ("moving around") or circuminsessio ("sitting around").

In this lecture, we'll first explore the biblical basis for the doctrine, and then examine some of its implications for Christian thought and practice. In the latter portion, both the notions of "indwelling" and "dancing" will be in play.

I IN YOU, THOU IN ME
John's gospel provides the biblical basis for an understanding of perichoresis, and for John the mutual indwelling and mutual exhaustiveness of the Triune Persons is integral to the gospel. John begins his gospel by stating that "no man has seen God at any time" (John 1:18). This is a problem. For John, seeing is knowing (6:40; 11:45; 14:7), and knowing/seeing the Father and Son is eternal life (John 17:3). If there is no way for us to see the Father, there is no way that leads to life. We need some way to behold Him. The good news is that there is such a way, and that the name of that Way is Jesus.

When John speaks of the invisibility of the God, he is not primarily making a philosophical claim. God is invisible (see Colossians 1:15-16; 1 Timothy 1:17), but John's main point has to do with the progress of salvation in history. John first brings out a contrast of the Old and New in 1:14. The word translated as "dwell" can be translated as "tabernacled" or "pitched a tent." The eternal world has pitched a tent in human flesh, and shown the glory of God. But notice: When the glory came into the tabernacle in the Old Testament, everyone evacuated the tent (Exodus 40:34-38; 1 Kings 8:10-11). Now, the glory descends in the flesh and "we beheld His glory" (1:14).

He is making the same contrast in 1:17-18. John's statement that "no one has seen the Father" refers back to the experience of Moses on Mount Sinai. When Moses asked to see God, the Lord responded that "You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live" (Exodus 33:20). Moses was therefore shown the "back" of God's passing glory, but not His face (Exodus 33:22-23). Having become flesh, the Word expounds the Father to us (1:18; see 2 Corinthians 3). It is thus no longer true that "no man has seen God." On the contrary, Jesus says that those who have seen Him have seen the Father (John 12:45; 14:9), and claims that His words and works display the Father's words and works (John 5:19; 12:49).

JESUS, THE DWELLING OF THE FATHER
In chapter 14, Jesus goes further to explain that His "exegesis" of God is rooted in His eternal relation to the Father. The issue that dominates the discussion at the beginning of chapter 14 is the "way." Jesus has said He is returning to the Father (13:33; 14:2), and tells the disciples know "the way where I am going" (14:4). Jesus Himself is "the way" to the Father (14:6). And He is the way to the Father because the Father, the destination, is already and has always been "in" the way, that is, in the Son (14:7, 9-11). How can Jesus "show us the Father"? Because the Father is eternally in Him and He is eternally in the Father.

This point is reinforced when we consider what Jesus says about the "dwelling places" that He is preparing in His "Father's house." Though often taken as a reference to heavenly dwelling places, this is not what Jesus meant. Rather, the "Father's house" in John refers to the temple that is the body of Jesus (2:16-22). This is the "Father's house" in the sense that it is the place where the Father resides (14:10-11): The Son is the permanent and eternal "home" of the Father, as the Father is the eternal home of the Son. When the Son comes into the world, we get a glimpse of the "home life" of the Father.

The Father's house is also a home for believers. Jesus goes away to prepare a place in His Father's house, in the temple of His body, for believers (14:2-3). But this doesn't contradict the idea that Jesus is also the dwelling of the Father. The only other place in the NT where this word "dwelling places" is used is John 14:23, where it describes the believer as the place where Father and Son take up residence. Because Jesus is the home of the Father and the home of believers, He is the "house" where the Father and His children live together. Indeed, every member of His body becomes an "abode" for the Father, Son, and Spirit.

PERICHORESIS, CHURCH, MISSION
Jesus also talks about the mutual penetration of Father and Son in John 17, and extends the notion in an ecclesiological direction. Jesus offers a chiastically structured prayer for "those who believe in Me through their word" (vv. 20-23):

A. [I ask concerning] those who believe in Me through their word
B. that they may be one
C. even as Thou, Father,
D. art in Me,
D'. And I
C'. in Thee
B'. that they may be in us
A'. that the world may believe that Thou didst send me.

The text moves from the scattered hearers of the word, gathering them into a unity (B) that reflects the perichoretic unity of the Father and Son (C-C') and is rooted in the disciples' dwelling-in the Father and Son (B'), which unity manifests Jesus' identity and mission to the world.

Several things follow from this. First, the unity of the church is modeled on the unity of the Father and Son ("just as"). Members of the church indwell one another in a way that mimics the exhaustive indwelling of the Divine Persons. Second, the church is unified in this way because she has become a participant in the indwelling of Father and Son (B'). The church is not merely image of the eternal dance, but is introduced to the dance as the human partner. Third, this perichoretic unity of the church is integral to the church's mission (A'). If the church is not a place where the members "dwell within" one another's lives, the world will not believe that the Son "dwells within" and "came forth from" the Father.

PERICHORESIS AND THEOLOGY PROPER
Before looking at the implications of perichoresis for a Christian view of things in general, we shall examine the implications for our understanding of God. Here the "dancing around" idea is most prominent. The unity of the Tri-unity should not be understood as "sitting together," as if the Persons were merely in close proximity. Nor should perichoresis be understood as a static containment, as if the Son were in the Father in the way that water is in a bucket.

Rather, perichoresis describes the Persons as eternally giving themselves over into one another. It is not that the Father has (at some "moment" in eternity past) poured Himself out into the Son, but that He is continually pouring Himself into the Son, and the Son into the Spirit, and the Spirit into the Father, and so on. To talk about God's "perichoretic" unity is to talk about a dynamic unity, and to talk about a God who is always at work, always in motion, pure act. It is to say that the life of God is peri-choreographed.

Perichoresis has also been used historically to describe God's relationship to the world, as a way of expressing the immanence and transcendence of God. It is true, on the one hand, that God is contained by nothing, and is instead the One in whom we live and move and have our being �Ei.e., everything is contained by Him. Yet at the same time God is within all things, "omnipresent." As Hilary of Poitiers put it, the Father is both "without" and "within" all things. This mutual indwelling and containment is a created extension of the mutual indwelling and containment of the Triune Persons.

VESTIGES OF PERICHORESIS
There are several areas where we can identify "vestiges" of perichoresis in the creation:

-Personal identity: How can I be a distinct person, and at the same time be the product of all these influences from people who are other than me? "I see his father in him" people say about children, and this goes behond physical resemblance. We "indwell" one another in a way that palely reflects the reality of the full indwelling of the divine persons within each other. The Father and the Son are "mutually constitutive": there is no Father except that He has a Son, and no Son except that He has a Father. So also, our identities are constituted by relations with others, by their "dwelling in" us and we "dwelling in" them.

-Metaphor: Creation contains objects that are really distinct and separate from one another. Day is not night, waters above are not waters below, water is not land, birds are not fish, and so on. At the same time, Scripture indicates that one thing can stand for, represent, or symbolize other things. Things in creation indwell other things. We say that a "righteous man is like a tree" not because we invent similarity between two essentially unlike things. Rather, there is a real mutual relation between them. The Son is the express image of the Father, and yet is not the Father. This perichoretic "is/is not" (man is/is not tree) structure is inherent in God, and is the very nature of metaphor.

-Covenant Headship: Perichoresis is also the basis, as Van Til pointed out, for the notion of "representation." The Son can come into the world and "exhaustively represent" the Father to us, and the Spirit comes and "exhaustively represents" the Father and Son." The reflex of this in history is the covenant headship of Adam and Christ, who are each "indwelt" by humanity ("in Adam" [1 Corinthians 15:22] and "in Christ" [1 Corinthians 15:22; Ephesians 1:3, 4, 6, 9; Colossians 1:17]).

-Time: Time is divided into past, present and future, and yet we know that these are not wholly distinct. Jerome Begbie has pointed out the analogy with music: The present moment, like a musical note, is what it is because of what has gone before and is in turn shaped by what comes after. This is not merely a subjective experience of "memory and desire" looking backward and forward, but is a feature of time itself (as it is a feature of music). The eternal background of this is again perichoresis: The past indwells the present, and the present will indwell the future. In fact, according to the NT, the present is indwelt also by the future, as the "age to come" becomes present in the power of the Spirit.