When it comes to describing God, words fall short. This should not surprise us. If God is truly God, then we should expect that words will only take us so far. It is difficult enough to verbally describe another human person whom we know well. How much more complicated is it to describe the infinite, eternal, sovereign God?

Thankfully, God has not left us to our own devices. God has revealed Godself to us in redemptive events and the God-inspired words that communicate the significance of these events. In spite of the ultimate insufficiency of words in respect to God’s indescribable greatness, God has given us words with which to speak of God.

God’s supreme redemptive event is the sending of the Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world. The life of Jesus is preserved for us in the sacred scriptures compiled and preserved by faithful eyewitnesses. From the church’s beginning, these documents have been the primary source for the church’s reflection on the significance of Jesus in regard to our perspective of God. As a result of this sustained theological reflection over the course of history the church has developed an increasingly technical vocabulary in its attempts to communicate about the nature of God.

Among the two most important words are circumincessio and perichoresis. Each term attempts to describe the dynamics of the intratrinitarian life of God. Because of their significance, we will study these words with the goal of better understanding the nature of God.

Circumincessio: Shared Life of Mutual Indwelling

Circumincessio describes the shared life of mutual indwelling between Father, Son, and Spirit. It attempts to capture the profound reality communicated by Jesus in statements such as, “You, Father, are in me, and I in you” (John 17:21).

Circumincessio is a Latin term that literally means “seated in another, filling the space of another.” It highlights both the distinction between the persons of the Trinity and their mutual coinherence.

God is one divine being eternally existing as three distinct persons. The Father, Son, and Spirit are eternally God and yet, eternally distinct from one another. Circumincessio communicates the truth that, though distinct, the whole of God indwells each person, and thus, each person is fully God.

The Father exists in the Son, the Son in the Father, and both of them in the Spirit, just as the Spirit exists in both the Father and the Son. By virtue of their eternal love they live in one another to such an extent, and dwell in one another to such an extent, that they are one. It is a process of most perfect and intense empathy.[1]

Father, Son, and Spirit share the divine life without the loss of their own distinct identity. Indeed, it is the mutual sharing of life that distinguishes them from one another. The Father is not Father without the Son; the Son is not Son apart from the Father. The Spirit is the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ.

Circumincessio also speaks of the intimate sharing of life that occurs among the persons of the Trinity. Each person of the Trinity wholly indwells the others. As such, each person is fully present in the others. Therefore, when we receive Jesus we also receive the Father and the Spirit. Likewise, when we participate in the life of the Spirit, we participate in the life of the Father and Son. It is for this reason that the Spirit is called the “Spirit of God” and “the Spirit of Christ.”

Circumincessio points to the perfect intimacy, the complete oneness, of the three persons of the Trinity. It communicates the Son’s deep experience of intimacy while residing in the bosom of the Father (John 1:18). It helps us understand the significance of Jesus’ statement, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). Though the Father and Son are one in essence, they are distinct from one another while fully sharing in the life of the other. For this reason, Jesus could charge his disciples to “know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father” (John 10:38). It was his disciples’ slowness in grasping Jesus’ complete and perfect intimacy with the Father that caused him to say (with what appears to be a fair amount of frustration), “Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me? …the Father abiding in me does his works” (John 14:10).

Perichoresis: Shared Love of Mutual Delight

The divine experience is not simply a shared life of mutual indwelling. It also consists of a shared love of mutual delight. Perichoresis is the Greek term that captures this aspect of intratrinitarian experience.

Perichoresis is a compound word. Peri means “around” (think of the word perimeter). Choreia shares the same root from which we get our word, “choreography.” It means “to dance.” Taken together, the word literally means “to dance around.”

Unlike the word circumincessio that points to the Trinity’s shared life of mutual indwelling, perichoresis suggests dynamic activity and excitement within God’s being. The divine persons not only live in one another; they dance in one another’s presence! Each person experiences an eternal joyous movement toward the other. This joy is an expression of the love each feels for the other.

This love is the unique experience between Jesus and the Father. At the beginning of Jesus’ earthly ministry the Father affirms his joyous love in the Son: “This is My Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well-pleased” (Matthew 3:17). Later in Matthew, Jesus speaks of his exclusive intimacy with God the Father: “All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son, except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father, except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal him” (Matthew 11:27). Jesus claims a unique and exclusive knowledge of the Father that he alone possesses. This knowledge is a source of joy and delight to him. Furthermore, he makes it clear that he is willing to share it with others.

The unique love between Father and Son is also emphasized in John’s Gospel. John, often called “the apostle of love,” reveals in his Gospel that the greatest love affair is not first and foremost God’s love for humanity (which is only explicitly mentioned once in the gospel of John: John 3:16). The greatest love of all is that which is experienced between God the Father and God the Son: “The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hand” (John 3:35); “For the Father loves the Son, and shows him all things that he himself is doing” (John 5:20, cf. 10:17).

In his final prayer with his disciples before his crucifixion, Jesus prays, “Glorify me together with yourself, Father, with the glory which I had with you before the world was… for you loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:5, 24). This astounding statement takes us all the way back to a previous staggering statement at the beginning of John’s Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). In light of Jesus’ prayer, we now realize that the experience of “the Word with God” was “love before the foundation of the world.” From eternity past, love between Father and Son has been the passionate experience of God.

The good news is that we are invited to share in this love by abiding in the Son through the Spirit (cf. John 14:16-23; 16:13-15). When we do so, we receive that which the Son desires us to share the most – the love of God: “You love them, even as you love me… You loved me before the foundation of the world… that the love with which you love me may be in them” (John 17:23, 24, 26).

The eternal experience of God is a shared life of personal love between Father, Son, and Spirit. This is the basis for John’s unique declaration in his first epistle: God is love! (1 John 4:8, 16) We often forget how absolutely amazing this affirmation really is. It has absolutely no equal in the whole of ancient literature. It is therefore worth repeating: God is love! John is not simply emphasizing that God loves; John proclaims that God is love. Love is not merely a function or expression of God; love is the very essence of God. The constant experience of God is love. Ultimate reality – the divine reality – is love.

God, Creation, Sin, and Salvation

The shared life (circumincessio) of eternal love (perichoresis) between the Father, Son, and Spirit is the “dance of eternity.” This dance is the constant experience of the Triune God. We are invited to participate in this divine dance through union with Christ. This has staggering implications in respect to our understanding of God, creation, sin, and salvation.

God. Love is at the heart of reality. God’s eternal experience and expression of love is absolutely holy – love of another kind, a set-apart love. It is love that is glorious; absolutely pure, absolutely good, and absolutely beautiful. This is what God’s holiness ultimately alludes to: the absolute beauty of God’s otherworldly love. This is glory: the matchless splendor and brilliance of God’s eternal passion.

Creation. This holy and glorious love is the source and goal of all things. God did not create out of any sense of lack or need. God created out of the fullness of loving relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit. God did not create in order to love; God created out of the fullness of love in order that we might share in God’s love.

It is for this reason that we are made in God’s image. As image-bearers, we have been created to reflect the shared life and love of God. We are persons who find our life in relationship to others. It is not our rational faculties that mark us as image-bearers; it is our relational capacities. It is for this reason that loneliness, the loss or death of loved ones, and the absence of significant relationships can be so personally devastating. We have been created for relationships. Without them we lose all purpose and meaning.

When we recognize that love is at the heart of reality, we realize that humanity was created by love and for love in order to give, receive, and share love. The act of creation reveals God’s original desire to open up the divine circle of love in order that we might join the dance of eternity.

Sin. Having been created for loving relationships with God and one another, we stray from God’s purpose and will when we selfishly turn inward and pursue our own will to the harm of others. Ultimately, sin is not a matter of breaking laws but a matter of turning away from God. As such, sin is relational. It is turning from the love and life of God, resulting in alienation and death.

Salvation. If sin is turning from the love and life of God, resulting in alienation and death, then salvation is turning back to God who shares his love and life with us in Christ through the Spirit. When we turn to God in faith, we are drawn into God’s experience of circumincessio: “they may be in us” (John 17:21); we are embraced into God’s experience of perichoresis: “you love them, even as you love me” (John 17:23).

Participation in the divine dance is at the heart of salvation. John describes it as possessing “eternal life” (cf. John 17:3; 14:16-20). Paul speaks of it with the phrase that pervades his writings: “In Christ,” and its corollary, “Christ in you” (cf. Gal. 2:20; Col. 1:27). The author of Hebrews speaks of it as “bringing many sons to glory” (Heb. 2:10). And Peter is bold enough to speak of Christians as “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).

Because Paul’s writings possess such a priority in evangelical theology, it is helpful to reflect upon Paul’s precise meaning in regard to his use of “union” language (“Christ in you” and “in Christ”). Clearly, the doctrine of union with God in Christ through the Spirit is central to Paul’s theology. Far more than any other theme (including justification), Paul speaks of union with the divine. What is Paul’s perspective of union?

Too often, we read Paul through the popular Evangelical interpretative grid that emphasizes forensic categories. Consequently, we assume that Paul’s theology of union refers primarily to abstract, legal, and positional truths. This is tragic. It is a fundamental misreading of Paul’s theology. Paul’s delight is not in abstract concepts, but in mystical experience. Paul’s “in Christ” and “Christ in you” statements communicate personal, relational, and experiential realities. For Paul, union with Christ is not abstract, but experiential. It is not merely positional, but personal; not just legal, but relational.

Perhaps an illustration will be helpful. When I married my wife, Elizabeth, I entered into a legal union with her. Our relationship has a forensic quality. It is legally authorized and affirmed by the state of Indiana. Though this is true, this is not the point of our relationship. The essence of our union has significance that far transcends its legal beginnings. Thus, the joy of our marriage is not experienced by pulling out the marriage license and declaring, “Look, we are legal. Our standing – our position – is that of married couple.” The delight of our marriage is not found in our forensic standing; it is experienced in our shared delight in one another. Our union is not primarily legal (although that aspect is not wholly absent); our union is primarily personal, relational, and experiential. It is these things because it is a union that arises from love and for love.

In the same fashion, the phrase, “in Christ,” expresses the most intimate union possible between a Christian and Christ. It points to a personal, relational, intimate, loving, and life-giving union.

A Personal Invitation to Join the Dance

The glorious truth revealed in and through Jesus is that God has made it possible for us to share in the dance of eternity. It is for this reason that we were created: to participate in God’s shared life of mutual indwelling and shared love of mutual delight. This is the very reason Christ came: that we might join the dance of eternity at the heart of reality!

How can a mere human being participate in this divine dance of eternity? Is it even possible? Is it blasphemous to entertain this thought? The answer is supplied by the gospel: a human being already participates in this life, joy, fellowship, and love! How do we know this? Because Jesus, who is fully human and fully divine, now shares in the divine dance of eternity. The God-man makes possible our participation as well.

In our next session, we will consider the significance of Jesus’ humanity in making possible our participation in the divine dance…

© Richard J. Vincent, 2005

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