Perichoresis

Perichoresis ( gr perichoresis, lat circumincessio ) is the complete interpenetration, which leads to a unit without fusion. The term is derived from the verb perichorein what go around literally walk through, penetrate, and is transferred to someone. It is mainly used in Christian dogmatics. He explained in the Trinitarian unity of the three divine persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit through the metaphor of mutual penetration. It is the identity of the persons be said without giving up their differences. The Trinitarian model of perichoresis clear that God's nature is rich in associations. The relationality of Father, Son and Spirit is comprehensive and radical. In Christology he refers to the union of the human and divine nature in Jesus Christ.

Philosophy and theology in the ancient world

Etymologically is the noun perichoresis in Greek from peri, so around something, and chorea, ie swing. It thus describes a dynamic relation. Even the Stoic natural philosophy developed the idea of ​​a unit at the same time integrity of the united objects. Examples of this were the mutual compenetration of in the mixture of water and wine, or in the heating of iron and fire. The basic idea of ​​the father and son perichoresis can be traced back to the Gospel of John in the proportion of people when it is said that the Father in the Son and the Son is in the Father, Jn 10,38 EU, EU 14,11 and 17, 21 EU. Christology has this notion also been taken early, especially in the metaphor of the iron -baked. Divinity and humanity in Christ form a unit, but they do not fuse, but they also preserve their integrity in the unit.

The verb perichorein was first used by Gregory of Nazianzus in a theological context. For him, does not mean the unit perichoretic that the hypostases, Father, Son and Holy Spirit were synthesized together. For they would cease to be what they are. Gregory of Nazianzus describes the dynamic unity ago by the three hypostases and begins with the father as the epitome of divine unity,

" [ ... ] From the run out of others, and to which they return, not to mix, but so that they are connected. "

The noun perichoresis clear then in Maximus the Confessor, that the unity of the person of Jesus Christ is compatible with the duality of natures as true man and true God, just because the two natures as complete as in a glowing sword of fire and iron each other and penetrate.

Pseudo- Cyril transfers later, the idea of ​​perichoresis on the Trinity. The interpenetration of the three divine hypostases, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, he describes the Trinity as a state between separate Nebeneinandersein and complete fusion.

John of Damascus

John of Damascus took over the concept of perichoresis of pseudo - Cyril. Father, Son and Holy Spirit dwell and live according to John together. They were inseparable and unmixed with each other, without merging or melt away. The Son is in the Father and the Spirit, the Spirit is in the Father and the Son and the Father is in the Son and in the Spirit, without a Zerfließung, merger or amalgamation would take place. There was unity and identity in the movement. The three persons had only one movement and only one activity. John described an identity and not a similarity: an identity of the movement and activity of the essence, the effectiveness of the will, the power, the strength and goodness. With all the identity but there is also difference. The unbegotten Father witness the son who was so different from him. He let emerge the spirit which is thus also distinguished from him. Procreation and forth transition are different relations, so also the Son and Spirit are distinguished. In proceeding of procreation and is principal relationships that may not be thought of space and time, neither movement, nor activity, essence, will, power or force. Johannes difference between a fact and a logical- conceptual level:

" In all the creatures of the difference of the hypostases is considered factual. Thus, Peter and Paul, considered objectively, separated from each other. The commonality, however, the togetherness and unity be viewed logically and conceptually. Because we think with the understanding that Peter and Paul are of the same nature and have a single, common nature. [ ... ] In the sacred, over substantially Most High, incomprehensible Trinity, but it is vice versa. Because here is the common and considered a factual account of the direct eternity and the identity of the essence, the effectiveness of the will, because of the conformity of thinking and the sameness of power, strength and kindness. I spoke not of similarity but of identity and unity of action. Because it is an entity, a quality, a force, a will, an activity, a power that one and the same, not three mutually similar, but one and the same work of three people. Each of them has indeed no less unit to the other as with themselves, that is, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are all one, except the Ungezeugtheit, the Gezeugtsein and the output. Conceptually, however, they are distinguished. For we know in one God. Only in the peculiarities of fatherhood, sonship and the output, in terms of the principle [ie, the cause ] and the Prinzipiierten [ that is, of Induced ] and the perfection of the hypostasis, namely the manner of existence, we think the difference. "

Greek Orthodox doctrine

In the Greek Orthodox tradition, the perichoresis will eventually also be further extended to the relationship between man and God. According to the Greek Fathers of the Church believes that there is a relationship between man and God the interpenetration. God is in us and we are in God in the sense of mutual participation, not separated in the Creator and the creature, but we are also distinguished from each other. The creatureliness of man can not be exceeded. With all beings distance God from man but this can learn more about the knowledge of God, the gifts of the spirit and enlightenment, and to share in the divine attributes. This is not a privilege less, but basically every man according to the measure of his personal devotion and appeal possible. However, it can not be enforced by its own power. Participation in the beginningless energy than their own life of God is the human being inaccessible by nature, but is promised as a gift. This grace is the energy in the self-communication of God to man and the participation of the people is expressed in God. The participation in God is possible, because in the life of his spirit takes man into it, such as in particular emphasize the Makarios falsely ascribed homilies whose real authors are unknown:

"God has been pleased to grant us a share in his divine nature. [ ... ] It has fallen into its unlimited, indescribable and incomprehensible love and his tender compassion, to live in this work of his hands. "

Especially influential to the present dogma of the Orthodox Churches was the teaching of Gregory Palamas: Through divine grace, the light fills the mind and the soul, and it takes place a perfect perichoresis of the Creator with his deified creature. The man becomes an instrument of the Holy Spirit, because he is filled with the energy that is identical to the energy of the deifying essence.

Karl Barth

According to Karl Barth God's being to think concretely. Then God is event way a distinguished and differentiated in itself being. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are distinct from one another to the extent that they are related to each other. The self-absorption of the divine being is grounded in the relationships of the three divine modes of being with each other. It is to think as a community, in the being of God is done in practice. This community is represented by the full participation of each mode of being to the other modes of being. Being and Becoming are here originally together. The concrete unity of God's being is the unity of oneness, which is always a one-ment. The relatedness of the ways of being done to each other than attending to each other: as perichoresis. There is a mesh below, through the intervention by a mode of being is excluded for another. After Barth causes perichoresis,

" [ ... ] The divine modes of being are mutually dependent and so completely penetrate that always take place in the other two as the other two in her. "

The purpose of the doctrine of perichoresis is under to understand the unity of the modes of being of God as the concreteness of God's being. The unity of the Father, the Son and the Spirit among themselves their unity corresponds to the outside. God's being is to be understood as an event. He reveals Himself as Father, Son and Spirit, because He is God as Father, Son and Spirit. In the self-centeredness of God's being, the divine modes of being passed back to each other. This is the devotion of God, in which he is ours, allows and mapped in advance. For Karl Barth the being of God is being revealed as a historical event concretely in God. For the communion of God with man occurs in the self-communication of God. Here are all three divine modes of being at work. God's being can only be understood from his work as a revealer, revelation, and being revealed and thus the distinctiveness of three modes of being of God, as is made ​​explicit in the distinctiveness of the works of creation, reconciliation and redemption.

Jürgen Moltmann

After the trinitarian Moltmann connects the perichoresis ingenious way the trinity and unity, without the Trinity to be reduced to the unit or to dissolve the unity in the Trinity. In the eternal perichoresis the trinitarian persons lies the unity of the Trinity. The perichoretic God's life was the reason for the intervention of the triune God in history and in creation.

"In the strength of her eternal love, the divine persons exist so intimate with each other, for each other and each other that they constitute themselves in their unique, incomparable and complete unit. [ ... ] The intra-Trinitarian relations and the Trinitarian perichoresis behave complementary to each other. "

The perichoretic unity of the Triune God is a welcoming and unifying unit in this regard. It is thus also a human and cosmopolitan unit. The ratio of the divine persons is so far that the whole world had room in it.

Hans Urs von Balthasar

Also Hans Urs von Balthasar understands the Trinity of God perichoretically. He uses a dialogical model, with which it can be distinguished from Hegel's dialectic: while the dialectic negation of the Other to do a, then both together in a higher synthesis, will encounter the Other dialog appreciatively. The Others remain as such invincible, it will consistently stand. This encounter as love would come to no end principle. Trinitarian self enforcement if they so for the execution of mutual gift giving more of a divine being. The essence of persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit let out to be her Ineinandersein, describe their circumincessio. This Ineinandersein is personal and at the same time essentially. In the Priority corridors and in the perichoresis the holding by a divine self-giving: God is love. In the Love of God which His people are as relations in virtue of their being. The nature of God is not a rigid identity block. It is a transition:

" [ ... ] A in father communicator, together in the Son Received from father and son a gift of the spirit, of the Son and Spirit Verdanktes. God's nature is not outside this process of emergence and Bringing Sired. "

The essence of God is thus not divided by the people into three different forms of existence. The own relational subsistence of the people shares the nature of God as the one with divinity. The people are from each other alone distinguished relational, but not real. The divine beings are inherently people by wearing it in and possess.

Gisbert Greshake

Greshake describes the divine unity so that in and with each person the others are given without them losing their uniqueness. Everyone has to go their whole being only of the other and forth on the other. Your own being is mediated in and through the other. Every single person can not be conceived without the other, and is not without it. The whole of the relation system, like the other people are present in every individual person. Precisely this is expressed through the traditional concept of perichoresis.

Perichoresis becomes a Trinitarian interplay of love. In their rhythm each person is only in the other herself in the enforcement of their own personhood, it brings the other people in it and embraces it. Greshake compares the divine communion with a game that takes place in the divine love. Any person games quite, but not alone and of itself. The perichoretic game entpuppe concretely as a dance in which dance around the lovers. In the mutual relatedness of individuals to each other, both the unit and the difference of the persons are justified:

" The Trinitarian interpenetration ( perichoresis ) is the fundamental and supreme archetype of life as a community where unity and diversity are fully and simultaneously expressed. "