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Perichoresis: New Theological Wine in an Old Theological Wineskin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Michael G. Lawler
Michael G. Lawler*
Affiliation:
Creighton University
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Abstract

The history of theology demonstrates that theological exploration, seeking to understand fully an already given theological concept, regularly brings forth unexpected insights. This article seeks to do just that. Reflecting on an ancient theological word, perichoresis, coined in its original Greek to express the intimate communion of, first, the two natures in the one person of Jesus and, second, the three persons in one God, the article seeks new theological insight into the communion that is essential in, first, Christian marriage and then, church. The analysis underscores communion-through-perichoresis as essential to the definitions of God, marriage, and church, and relates the three one to the other.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , Spring 1995 , pp. 49 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1995

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References

1 See Lonergan, Bernard J. F., Method in Theology (New York: Herder, 1972).Google Scholar

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9 Ibid., 1165.

10 Ibid. 10, PG 77, 1144.

11 Ibid. 12, PG 77, 1148.

12 Sermo 52, 6, PL 38, 360.

13 Comm. in Rom. 1, 6. Cited from Lubertanz, George, Saint Thomas Aquinas on Analogy: A Textual Analysis and Systematic Synthesis (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1960), 270.Google Scholar See Summa Theologiae, 1, 3 Preface.

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18 Denzinger-Schönmetzer, , Enchiridion Symbolorum Definitionum et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum, Editio 33, 1965, 1330–31.Google Scholar Cited henceforth as DS.

19 Kress, Robert, “The Church Communio: Trinity and Incarnation as the Foundations of Ecclesiology,” The Jurist 36 (1976): 140.Google ScholarHill, William offers the same mistaken derivation in his influential The Three-Personed God (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1982), 272.Google Scholar

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34 We can note with profit here that the Vulgate frequently translated koinonia as communicatio (Acts 2:42; 2 Cor 13:14; Phil 1:5). It is clear, however, from the various contexts that communicatio does not have its modern meaning of transmission of information but of communion.

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40 In its letter, “Some Aspects of the Church as Communion” (II, 9), the CDF reverses Lumen Gentium's formula, ecclesia in et ex ecclesiis, the church present in and formed out of the churches, to read ecclesiae in et ex ecclesia, churches present in and formed out of the church. This reversal needs to be challenged for clarification, but such a development is not within the scope of this essay.

41 See the study commissioned and received by the Joint Working Group between the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches, The Church: Local and Universal (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1990).Google Scholar

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46 Popes continue in our times to address their encyclical letters to “Patriachs, Primates, Archbishops, Bishops … at peace and in communion with the Apostolic See” (see, e.g., Acta Apostolicae Sedis 54 [1962]: 481;Google Scholaribid., 56 [1964]: 609). This conjunction and equivalence of peace and communion is an ancient one. Athanasius proudly claims that more than 500 bishops accept him in koinonia kai agape, communion and love (Apologia Contra Arianos, PG 25, 281). He also claims that the Egyptian bishops are united among themselves and with him in agape kai eirene, love and peace (Epist. Encyclica, PG 25, 225). It is clear from the contexts that koinonia, eirene, and agape, alone or in combination, are all used as synonyms for what I have called throughout communion.