Prayer for Divine Guidance

Heavenly Father, I ask that your Holy Spirit bless and enlighten me as I read, reflect and rest in the boundless riches of salvation that Christ Jesus has won! Abba Father, draw me closer into the Divine Dance with You, Your Son, and Holy Spirit to continually transform my life here on earth to taste life with you in Heaven! Amen.

Reflection

Early Christians searched for words in wanting to communicate the staggering beauty of God’s redeeming love. They understood the limits of language that the apostle Paul faced in trying to describe the wonder our salvation: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable his ways! (Romans 11:33). They drew on the Greek word perichoresis to express the ineffable, intimate union that Jesus reveals in John 14:20: “On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”

Like the word ‘Trinity’ you will not find the word ‘perichoresis’ in the Bible. However, it was a word early Christians came to use for declaring the communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit mutually indwelling each other, wanting to draw us into their eternal union. Ponder the greatness of God’s self-giving love: Jesus is in the Father; we are in Jesus; and Jesus is in us!

Perichoresis is a compound word derived from the Greek peri, meaning “around”, plus choreo, meaning “to encompass”, “to make room”, and “to go forward”. Perichoresis is the union of self-giving love, of shared life between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in which we are invited to participate. Each person is indwelling the other in loving intimacy. Perichoresis is at the heart of Jesus’ prayer for us on the night before He laid down His life: “[I pray] that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us” (John 17:21). Here again is unfathomable mystery and glory: Jesus’ oneness with His Father and our oneness with them!

Contemporary theologian Stanley Grenz describes perichoresis as “the intimate communion of three persons, whereas each dwells in the other in a 7 relationship of mutual interpenetration and indwelling. This understanding highlights the notion that God’s very being is a relational reality.” (Stanley Grenz, Rediscovering the Triune God) When the Bible declares, “God is love”, it reveals that God is not solitary but is a communion of love. Love is not merely one of God’s attributes but His very essence and being. Creation is the bursting forth of God’s love that could not be contained, but had to be shared. God created us in His image (Genesis 1:26), not because Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were lonely or in any need, but simply because they wanted to share their love. “God’s ultimate purpose for us is that we should be drawn within the circle of the perichoretic knowing and loving of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” (Thomas Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God)

Although perichoresis is rooted in the word choreo meaning “to encompass”, “to make room”, “to go forward”, it sounds like the Greek word perichoreuo, which means “to dance”. Although not intended as a pun, theologians and preachers began to speak of the perichoresis as the “Divine Dance” of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit delighting in one another and going forward in love.

C. S. Lewis does not use the word perichoresis but does use the metaphors of dance and mutual inviting love. Lewis writes: “The whole dance, or drama or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each one of us. Or (putting it the other way round) each of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in the dance. There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made.” (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)

Theologian C. Baxter Kruger writes in his book, The Great Dance: The Christian Vision Revisited: “It is this relationship that holds the secret of the ‘why’ of creation, the ‘why’ of your life and mine, the ‘why’ of babies and baseball and all things human. The great dance of life shared by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is the womb of creation.” (C. Baxter Kruger, The Great Dance: The Christian Vision Revisited) The beauty and wonder of perichoresis humbled the minds of early Christians, set their hearts on fire, propelling them to the ends of the earth to tell the Good News.

Can’t you hear the music! Why not join the dance! Let God love you and be swept up into Triune love and life!