Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-m8s7h Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-23T06:32:49.271Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

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

2 Liddell, Henry and Scott, Robert, Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1964).Google Scholar

3 Or 18, 42, PG 35, 1042.

4 Or 22, 4, PG 35, 1135.

5 Ambig. Liber, 112b, PG 91, 1053.

6 Prestige, George L., God in Patristic Thought (London: SPCK, 1959), 293.Google Scholar

7 Opusc. Theol. et Polemica, 102, PG 91, 189; cp. Disput. cum Pyrrho, 187, PG 91, 337.

8 De Trin. 22, PG 77, 1162-63.

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.

14 Prestige, , God in Patristic Thought, 299.Google Scholar

15 De Fide Orthodoxa 1, 14, PG, 94, 860.

16 De Natura Comp. 1, 4, PG 95, 117.

17 Summa Theologiae, I, q.29, a.3, ad 1.

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

20 Kress, Robert, The Church: Communion, Sacrament, Communication (New York: Paulist, 1985), 18.Google Scholar

21 DS, 253.

22 Rahner, Karl and Vorgrimler, Herbert, Theological Dictionary (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965), 350.Google Scholar

23 See Gurvitch, Georges, The Social Frameworks of Knowledge, trans. Thompson, Margaret A. (New York: Harper & Row, 1971)Google Scholar, and Berger, Peter and Luckmann, Thomas, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966).Google Scholar

24 See Lawler, Michael G., Symbol and Sacrament: A Contemporary Sacramental Theology (New York: Paulist, 1987), 29–34.Google Scholar

25 See Barth, Markus, Ephesians: Translation and Commentary on Chapters Four to Six, The Anchor Bihle (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), 734–38Google Scholar, and Léon-Dufour, X., ed., Vocabulaire de théologie biblique (Paris: Cerf, 1970).Google Scholar

26 See Milhaven, John Giles, “Conjugal Sexual Love and Contemporary Moral Theology,” Theological Studies 35 (1974): 704–05.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 “In divinis omnia unum sunt ubi non obviat telationis oppositio.” See Lonergan, Bernard J. F., De Deo Trino: Pars Analytica (Roma: Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana, 1961), 191.Google Scholar

28 See Lawler, Michael G., Secular Marriage, Christian Sacrament (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1985).Google Scholar

29 Philips, Gérard, L'Église et son mystère au IIe Concile du Vatican (Paris: Desclée, 1966), 1:7, 59, and 11:24, 54, 159.Google Scholar

30 See its Final Report, “The Church, in the Word of God, Celebrates the Mysteries of Christ,” II, C, 1.

31 “Some Aspects of the Church as Communion,” 1, in Catholic International 3 (1992): 761.Google Scholar

32 Hamer, Jerome, The Church Is a Communion (London: Chapman, 1964).Google Scholar See also Lawler, Michael G. and Shanahan, Thomas J., Church: A Spirited Communion (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995).Google Scholar

33 Bori, Pierre Cesare, Koinonia: I'idea della communione nell'ecclesiologia recente et nel Nuovo Testamento (Brescia: Paideia, 1972), 33–38.Google Scholar

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.

35 Hamer, , The Church Is a Communion, 175.Google Scholar Emphasis in the original.

36 Moltmann, Jürgen, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 118.Google Scholar

37 See Mühlen, Heribert, Una Mystica Persona: Die Kirche als das Mysterium der Identität des Heiligen Geistes in Christus und den Christen; eine Person in vielen Personen (Munich: Schöningh, 1967).Google Scholar

38 “Some Aspects of the Church as Communion,” n. 11, in Catholic International 3 (1992): 764.Google Scholar

39 Ibid., II, 8.

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

42 See Hertling, Ludwig, Communio: Church and Papacy in Early Christianity (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1972), 16.Google Scholar

43 Congar, Yves M. J., I Believe in the Holy Spirit (London: Chapman, 1983), III, 5Google Scholar, and Moltmann, , The Spirit of Life, 1.Google Scholar

44 See Catholic International 3 (1992): 767.Google Scholar

45 Zizioulas, John D., Being as Communion (New York: Saint Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985), 140.Google Scholar

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.