Perichoresis
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Perichoresis (from
Modern authors extend the original usage as an analogy to cover other interpersonal relationships. The term "co(-)inherence" is sometimes used as a synonym.[5]
"Circumincession" is a Latin-derived term for the same concept.[3]
Etymology
"Perichoresis" is derived from the Greek peri, "around" and chōreō, "to go, or come". As a compound word, it refers primarily to "going around" or "encompassing", conveying the idea of "two sides of the same coin".[6] Suggested connections with Greek words for dancing ("choreia", spelled with the short letter omicron not the long omega) are not grounded in Greek etymology or early Christian use, but are modern in origin.[7][8] The Latin equivalent circumincession comes from the Latin circum, "around" and incedere meaning "to go, to step, to march along",[9][10] and was first used by Burgundio of Pisa (d. 1194).[3] The form "Circuminsessio" developed from the similarity in sound.[3]
Usage
The relationship of the
If, as is properly understood, the Father is he who kisses, the Son he who is kissed, then it cannot be wrong to see in the kiss the Holy Spirit, for he is the imperturbable peace of the Father and the Son, their unshakable bond, their undivided love, their indivisible unity. – St. Bernard of Clairvaux, in Sermon 8, Sermons on the Song of Songs[12]
The devotion of themselves to each other in the Spirit by the Father and the Son has content. Not only does the procession of the Spirit from the Father to the Son and from the Son to the Father[13] express their mutual love, as they breathe after each other, but also it gives each to the other. In the procession of the Spirit from the Father, the Father gives himself to the Son; in the procession of the Spirit from the Son to the Father, and in this use of the word "procession" from the Son is meant the sending of the Holy Spirit as the Son teaches that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, the Son gives himself to the Father in prayer, for the procession of the Spirit, like the begetting of the Son, is the going forth of the being of the Father to the Son and the going forth of the being of the Son to the Father as the Holy Spirit.
The property of divine grace in the Trinitarian mission is distinct for each person or hypostase of the
Social trinitarianism
Church Fathers
The relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit was not explicitly expressed in the writings of Ante-Nicene Fathers exactly as it would later be defined during the First Council of Nicaea (325)[dubious ] and the First Council of Constantinople (381), namely as one substance (ousia) and three persons (hypostaseis). A hermeneutic of the one-in-three principle slowly approached the synthesis understood today as perichoresis.[citation needed]
Human body as icon of the communio personarum
The crucial point, in a word, is that the relation to God, and to others in God, that establishes the individual substance in being is generous. The relation itself makes and lets me in my substantial being be. This "letting be" implies a kind of primordial, ontological "circumincession", or "perichoresis", of giving and receiving between the other and myself. What I am in my original constitution as a person has always already been given to me by God and received by me in and as my response to God's gift to me of myself ― indeed, has also, in some significant sense, been given to me by other creatures and received by me in and as my response to their gift to me.
- ― David L. Schindler, "THE EMBODIED PERSON AS GIFT AND THE CULTURAL TASK IN AMERICA: Status quaestionis" Communio 35 (Fall 2008)[15]
Pope John Paul II taught a series of catecheses on the mystery of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the sacramental life of the faithful Christian. The anthropological aspects of the agency of the human heart—its capacity for the gift of love and to give love in return—lived out in moral acts of social justice has since become known as his
Interpretations of the incarnational mystery of the perpetual virginity of the Mother of God were frequently executed by artisans in relational form, most recognisably as
... these analyses implicitly presuppose the reality of the Absolute Being
- ― Pope John Paul II in "Memory and identity: Conversations at the Dawn of a Millennium"
This existential, social aspect of divine grace indwelling in human action is what heals the divisions of a society rent by the irrational dictates of reductionist relativism of mind over matter that equates the physical impulse with vice and cerebral indifference with virtue:
Were this... to be taken to extremes, the essence of Christianity would be detached from the vital relations fundamental to human existence, and would become a world apart, admirable perhaps, but decisively cut off from the complex fabric of human life.
- ―
Pope Benedict XVIon the nature of love in "Deus Caritas Est" (God is love)
Radiation of Fatherhood
The
Doctrinal differences
Protestant and Catholics differ in their interpretation of communio as model of ecclesial unity binding on members of the Mystical body of Christ. A dyadically reduced trinitarianism underpins the Barthian school of thought.
"The Father remains the sole principle, because the Son has nothing he has not received from this source. But the Trinity is asymmetrical reciprocity, not a symmetrical hierarchy proceeding from the Father. Its asymmetry is precisely the root of its dynamism as eternal Act, eternal "perichoresis"[20] On this logic, Barth's pneumatological minimalism cannot be inherently rooted in the filioque. My own hunch is that Barth's binitarianism is more deeply planted in that other culprit Jenson identifies: the "merely two-sided understanding of human community and so of historical reality, inherited from the 'I-Thou' tradition of 19th-century German philosophical anthropology"
- ― Aaron Riches, "Church, Eucharist, and Predestination in Barth and de Lubac: CONVERGENCE AND DIVERGENCE IN COMMUNIO" Communio 35 (Winter 2008).[21]
References
- ^ "Liddell & Scott". perseus.uchicago.edu.
- ^ Prestige, G.L. God in Patristic Thought SPCK (1964) p. 291
- ^ a b c d Cross, F.L.; Livingstone, E.A., eds. (1974). "Circumincession". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (2 ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- ^ Ott, Ludwig. Manual de Teología Dogmática Barcelona: Herder (1969) p. 131
- ^ Prestige, G.L. God in Patristic Thought SPCK (1964) pp. 290ff;
& Bettenson, Henry. The Early Christian Fathers OUP (1976) p. 286;
& Brown, Colin Karl Barth and the Christian Message London:Tyndale (1967) p. 74;
& Catholic Culture.org Dictionary - JSTOR 23950946. Retrieved February 4, 2021 – via JSTOR.
- ^ "Liddell & Scott". artflx.uchicago.edu.
- ^ "Why Choose such a Word as Perichoresis?". Trinity in You. Retrieved February 4, 2021.
- ^ Online Latin lexicon, Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary at Perseus; entry for "incedo"
- ^ Kenneth Baker, S.J., Fundamentals of Catholicism: God, Trinity, Creation, Christ, Mary New York, Ignatius Press (1983) p. 108
- ^ Generation and Spiration: The Processions of the Trinity Thomas L McDonald of the Catholic Channel at Patheos.com "Hosting the Conversation on Faith"
- ^ "Sermon 8 on the Song of Songs" St. Bernard of Clairvaux, (Retrieved 10/3/11)
- ^ [https://www.prca.org/prtj/apr2000.html "The Holy Family:God As Truly Three" by David J. Engelsma in the Protestant Reformed Theological Journal, April 2000, Volume 33, Number 2. Retrieved 9 April 2021.
- ^ http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s2c1p2.htm#IV Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) IV. THE DIVINE WORKS AND THE TRINITARIAN MISSIONS
- ^ http://www.communio-icr.com/articles/PDF/schindler35-3.pdf "THE EMBODIED PERSON AS GIFT AND THE CULTURAL TASK IN AMERICA: STATUS QUAESTIONIS" Communio 35 (Fall 2008) online pdf reprint
- ^ Location blog citation in "Idea of a University" chapter entitled "University Preaching"
- ^ Text of "Idea of the University" online treatise at Newman Reader
- ^ "Traite de la Predication" by Francis De Sales, online Google books, in original Latin, see Caput V
- ^ Analecta Biblica (69) "Interiority and Covenant A Study of ει̂ναι εν and μένειν εν in the First Letter of John" Edward Malatesta (1978)
- ^ "Trinity and Creation: An Eckhartian Perspective", Communio:International Catholic Review 30, no. 4 [Winter, 2003]: 696–714
- ^ "Past Issues | Communio". www.communio-icr.com.
Bibliography
- DURAND, Emmanuel. La périchorèse des personnes divines : immanence mutuelle – réciprocité et communion, Paris: Cerf (Cogitation Fidei; 243), 2005, 409 p.
- Hikota, Riyako C., "Beyond Metaphor: The Trinitarian Perichōrēsis and Dance", Open Theology 8 (2022), p. 50-63, Open Access: Beyond Metaphor: The Trinitarian Perichōrēsis and Dance
- Lane G. Tipton, "The Function of Perichoresis and the Divine Incomprehensibility", Westminster Theological Journal, Fall 2002.
- David J. Engelsma, Trinity and Covenant, Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2006.
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chambers, Ephraim, ed. (1728). "Perichoresis". Cyclopædia, or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1st ed.). James and John Knapton, et al.
- Stamatovic, Slobodan, "The Meaning of Perichoresis", Open Theology 2 (2016), p. 303-326, Open Access: The Meaning of Perichoresis
External links
- The dictionary definition of perichoresis at Wiktionary