Theological Primer: Perichoresis
From time to time I make new entries in this continuing series called “Theological Primer.” The idea is to present big theological concepts in around 500 words. Today we look at the doctrine of perichoresis.
It is a recurring theme from the lips of Jesus that the Father dwells in the Son, that “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:10-11). All that Jesus asks in the high priestly prayer is rooted in the reality that the Son is in the Father, and the Father is in the Son. The apostle Paul, likewise, testifies that in the incarnate Son “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Col. 1:19).
We usually understand these verses to be about Christ’s deity. And rightly so. But they also speak to the mutual indwelling of the persons of the Trinity. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct persons—distinguished, respectively, by paternity, filiation, and spiration. And yet, we must not think of the three persons as three faces in a yearbook. The Father indwells the Son; the Son indwells the Spirit; the Spirit indwells the Father (and you could reverse the order in each pair).
The Greek term used to describe the eternal mutual indwelling of the persons of the Trinity is perichoresis (in Latin, circumincession). The word circulatio is also sometimes used as a way of metaphorically describing the unceasing circulation of the divine essence, such that each person is in the other two, while the others are in each one. At the risk of putting things in physical terms, perichoresis means that “all three persons occupy the same divine ‘space.’”[1] In other words, we cannot see God without seeing all three persons at the same time.
The mutual indwelling of perichoresis means two things. First, the three persons of the Trinity are all fully in one another. And second, each person of the Trinity is in full possession of the divine essence. To be sure, the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father. Perichoresis does not deny any of this. What perichoresis maintains is that you cannot have one person of the Trinity without having the other two, and you cannot have any person of the Trinity without having the fullness of God. The inter-communion of the persons is reciprocal, and their operations are inseparable. As Augustine put it: “Each are in each, and all in each, and each in all, and all are one.”[2]
Like many aspects of Trinitarian theology, this one can be hard to grasp; we have to rely on careful verbal definitions rather than concrete analogies. We must not think of perichoresis—as some have suggested from the etymology of the word—as a kind of Trinitarian dance. Such an analogy, and its social Trinitarian implications, undermines the truth that perichoresis means to protect. Here’s the problem: How can three persons simultaneously share the same undivided essence? The answer is not that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit waltz in step with each other, but that they coinhere in such a way that the persons are always and forever with and in one another, yet without merging, blending, or confusion. Only by affirming the mutual indwelling of each in each other, can we worship our triune God as truly three and truly one.
[1] Gerald Bray, Doctrine of God, 158.
[2] Augustine, On the Trinity, 6.10.
Kevin DeYoung (PhD, University of Leicester) is senior pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, Council member of The Gospel Coalition, and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte). He has written numerous books, including Just Do Something. Kevin and his wife, Trisha, have nine children: Ian, Jacob, Elizabeth, Paul, Mary, Benjamin, Tabitha, Andrew, and Susannah.
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What Will Still Be True When the Election Is Over
We may know by early morning who will be president. Or we may not know until the end of the year which side will be celebrating come Inauguration Day. But whether we have hours or days or weeks left, the 2020 election season will come to an end. And when it is over—after countless tweets, posts, articles, and punditry; after being exposed to a steady stream of advertising, befuddlement, and outrage; after all the ballots have been counted and you feel relieved, grateful, or despondent—don’t forget what will still be true:
God will still be on the throne, and he will be working all things according to the counsel of his will (Eph. 1:11). God will be our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble (Ps. 46:1). God’s dominion will be an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom will endure from generation to generation (Dan. 4:34).
Our God is not small, and his providential care cannot be stymied. The king’s heart will be a stream of water in the hand of the Lord, and he will turn it wherever he chooses (Prov. 21:1). Not a bird will fall to the ground, or a hair from your head, apart your Father in heaven (Matt. 10:29-30). Our God does whatever he pleases (Ps. 115:1).
There is no guarantee, for good or ill, regarding the future of the United States of America, but there is an unbreakable promise that Christ will build the church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it (Matt. 16:18).
Come tomorrow, all of the promises of God will still be Yes and Amen in Christ (2 Cor. 1:20). Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 8:39). The Lord will still know those who are his (2 Tim. 2:19), and if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ you will be saved (Acts 16:31).
We do not have to wonder about God’s priorities. Each new day, he will exalt about all things his name and his word (Ps. 138:2). God promises to oppose the proud and give grace to the humble (James 4:6). The poor in spirit, the mournful, the meek, the hungry, the merciful, the pure, the peacemakers, the persecuted—they will be blessed (Matt. 5:3-10). And the wicked will reap what they sow; God cannot be mocked (Gal. 6:7).
No matter who controls the Senate or the presidency, the Great Commission will still be accomplished through the ordinary means of word and sacrament (Matt. 28:19-20; Luke 24:48; Acts 1:8). As for man, his days will be like grass (Ps. 103:15). The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will remain forever (Isa. 40:8). Whichever party occupies the White House or the governor’s mansion, the most solemn charge laid upon every pastor will be the same: to preach the word in season and out of season (2 Tim. 4:1-2).
Republicans and Democrats will come and go, but Christ’s reign is secure. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords (Rev. 19:16). There is only one name given among men whereby we must be saved (Acts 4:12). And one day—maybe soon—the kingdom of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever (Rev. 11:15).
Politics matters. Policies matter. Presidents matter. They really do. But let us never forget that some things matter much, much, eternally much more.Kevin DeYoung (PhD, University of Leicester) is senior pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, Council member of The Gospel Coalition, and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte). He has written numerous books, including Just Do Something. Kevin and his wife, Trisha, have nine children: Ian, Jacob, Elizabeth, Paul, Mary, Benjamin, Tabitha, Andrew, and Susannah.
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Is Christmas a Pagan Rip-off?
We’ve heard it so many times that it’s practically part of the Christmas story itself.
The Romans celebrated their seven-day winter festival, Saturnalia, starting on December 17. It was a thoroughly pagan affair full of debauchery and the worship of the god Saturn. To mark the end of the winter solstice, the Roman emperor established December 25 as a feast to Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun). Wanting to make Christianity more palatable to the Romans and more popular with the people, the church co-opted these pagan festivals and put the celebration of the birth of their Savior on December 25. For whatever the Christmas holiday has become today, it started as a copycat of well-established pagan holidays. If you like Christmas, you have Saturnalia and Sol Invictus to thank.
That’s the story, and everyone from liberal Christians to conservative Christians to non-Christians seem to agree that it’s true.
Except that it isn’t.
For starters, we should distinguish between roots that suggest a rip-off and roots that suggest a rebuke. The presence of some connection between a Christian celebration and a pagan celebration could imply a synchronistic copy-cat (“Hey, let’s Christianize this popular pagan holiday so as to make our celebration more palatable”), or it could mean a deliberate rejection (“Hey, this pagan holiday is horrible, so let’s put something distinctively Christian in its place”). After the conversion of Constantine in the fourth century, Christians did sometimes adapt and Christianize pagan festivals. Whether they did so wisely and effectively is open to historical debate, but the motivation was to transform the paganism of the Roman world rather than raze it to the ground. Even if Christmas was plopped down on December 25 because of Saturnalia and Sol Invictus, that by itself does not entail that the Christian celebration of Christ’s birth really began as a pagan festival.
But in the case of Christmas, there is good evidence that December 25 was not chosen because of any pagan winter holidays. This is the argument Andrew McGowan, of Yale Divinity School, makes in his article “How December 25 Became Christmas” (first published in Bible Review in 2002). Let me try to distill McGowan’s fine historical work by addressing three questions.
When did Christians first start celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25?
Unlike Easter, which developed as a Christian holiday much earlier, there is no mention of birth celebrations from the earliest church fathers. Christian writers like Irenaeus (130-200) and Tertullian (160-225) say nothing about a festival in honor of Christ’s birth, and Origen (165-264) even mocks Roman celebrations of birth anniversaries as pagan practices. This is a pretty good indication that Christmas was not yet on the ecclesiastical calendar (or at least not widespread), and that if it were, it would not have been tied to a similar Roman holiday.
This does not mean, however, that no one was interested in the date of Christ’s birth. By the late second century, there was considerable interest in dating the birth of Jesus, with Clement of Alexandria (150-215) noting several different proposals, none of which was December 25. The first mention of December 25 as Jesus’s birthday comes from a mid-fourth-century almanac called the Philocalian Calendar. A few decades later, around AD 400, Augustine would indicate that the Donatists kept Christmas festivals on December 25 but refused to celebrate Epiphany on January 6 because they thought the latter date was a recent invention. Since the Donatists, who arose during the persecution under Diocletian in 312, were stubbornly opposed to any compromise with their Roman oppressors, we can be quite certain they did not consider the celebration of Christmas, or the date of December 25, to be pagan in origin. McGowan concludes that there must have been an older North African tradition that the Donatists were steeped in and, therefore, the earliest celebrations of Christmas (we know about) can be dated to the second half of the third century. This is well before Constantine and during a time period when Christians were trying to steadfastly avoid any connections to pagan religion.
When was it first suggested that Christmas grew out of pagan origins?
None of the church fathers in the first centuries of the church makes any reference to a supposed connection between Christmas and Saturnalia or Sol Invictus. You might think, Well of course they didn’t. That would have been embarrassing. But if the whole point of basing your Christian birth holiday on an existing pagan birth holiday is to make your religion more popular or more understandable, surely someone would say something. Besides, as McGowan points out, it’s not like future Christian leaders shied away from making these connections. Gregory the Great, writing in 601, urged Christian missionaries to turn pagan temples into churches and to repurpose pagan festivals into feast days for Christian martyrs.
There is no suggestion that the birth of Jesus was set at the time of pagan holidays until the 12th century, when Dionysius bar-Salibi stated that Christmas was moved from January 6 to December 25 to correspond with Sol Invictus. Centuries later, post-Enlightenment scholars of comparative religions began popularizing the idea that the early Christians retrofitted winter solstice festivals for their own purposes. For the first millennium of the church’s history, no one made that connection.
Why do we celebrate Christmas on December 25?
The first answer to the question is that some Christians don’t. In the Eastern branch of the church, Christmas is celebrated on January 6, probably for the same reasons—according to a different calculation—that Christmas came to be celebrated on December 25 in the West. Although we can’t be positive, there is good reason to think that December 25 became the date for Christmas because of its connection to the (presumed) date of Jesus’s death and to the date of Jesus’s conception.
There are three dates at play in this calculation. Let’s start with the date of Jesus’s death.
Around AD 200, Tertullian of Carthage noted that Jesus died on the 14th day of Nisan, which was equivalent to March 25 in the Roman solar calendar. In the East, they made their calculation using the 14th day of the first spring month in their local Greek calendar. In the Roman calendar, this was April 6. So depending on who you asked, Jesus died on either March 25 or April 6.
In both the West and the East, there developed the same tradition that Jesus died on the same date he was conceived. An anonymous Christian treatise from fourth-century North Africa stated that March 25 was “the day of the passion of the Lord and of his conception. For on that day he was conceived on the same he suffered.” Augustine in On the Trinity mentioned that same calculation. Similarly, in the East, the fourth-century bishop Epiphanius of Salamis maintained that on April 6 Christ took away the sins of the world and on the same date was “shut up in the spotless womb of the holy virgin.” The fact that this curious tradition existed in two different parts of the world suggests it may have been rooted in more than mere speculation. If nothing else, as McGowan observes, these early Christians were borrowing from an ancient Jewish tradition that said that the most important events of creation and redemption occurred at the same time of the year.
From the date of Christ’s death, to the (same) date of his conception, we can easily see where the date of Christmas could have come from. If Jesus was conceived on March 25, then the best date to celebrate his birth must be nine months later on December 25 (or, in the East, January 6). While we can’t know for certain that this is where December 25 came from—and we certainly can’t be dogmatic about the historicity of the date—there is much better ancient evidence to suggest that our date for Christmas is tied to Christ’s death and conception than tied to the pagan celebrations of Saturnalia and Sol Invictus.Kevin DeYoung (PhD, University of Leicester) is senior pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, Council member of The Gospel Coalition, and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte). He has written numerous books, including Just Do Something. Kevin and his wife, Trisha, have nine children: Ian, Jacob, Elizabeth, Paul, Mary, Benjamin, Tabitha, Andrew, and Susannah.
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Why Reformed Evangelicalism Has Splintered: Four Approaches to Race, Politics, and Gender
It’s no secret that America is suffering from ever-deepening division and polarization. Many of us are concerned about the increasing animosity, belligerence, and violence in our body politic. What concerns me even more are the divisions in the church, in particular, the growing factionalism in the conservative evangelical Reformed world I inhabit. Whether the problem is on the right or on the left (or both), there is little doubt that our Young, Restless, and Reformed tribe is less young (and maybe less Reformed?), but certainly as restless as ever.
My memory may be too rosy, but in my estimation—having been “in the room” for most of this history—the early 2000s, up until 2014, saw a remarkable coming together of a variety of Reformed and Reformedish networks, ministries, and church leaders. Of course, the “Reformed resurgence” or “New Calvinism” or “YRR” was always divided along some obvious lines. There were the usual disagreements about the sacraments and spiritual gifts and polity and approaches to worship. But the “team” was held together by a number of important theological convictions: historic Christian orthodoxy, inerrancy, penal substitution, Calvinist soteriology, the Reformation solas, complementarianism, and the centrality of expositional preaching. Across the almost decade of (apparent) unity, there was also a shared sense of what the movement was NOT: we were not liberals, not Arminians, not Emergent, not seeker sensitive, not prosperity gospel, not egalitarians, not revisionist on sexual ethics, not Catholics, not watered-down evangelicals, and not compromisers on unpopular doctrinal truths.
For about a decade, it seemed, amazingly, that more pastors, more churches, and more networks were coming to share these convictions. Importantly, many brothers and sisters embraced being Black and Reformed. Christian hip hop was widely celebrated as rich theological wine being poured into new wineskins. “Big God Theology” was not only on the rise and on the move; it was bringing people together who had previously been apart.
And yet, on the other side of Ferguson (2014), Trump (2016), MLK50 (2018), coronavirus (2020–2021), George Floyd (2020), and more Trump (2020–2021), the remarkable coming together seems to be all but torn apart. Obviously, the biggest issue is race and everything that touches race (e.g., police shootings, Critical Race Theory, Trump), but it’s not just race that divides us. It is more broadly our different instincts and sensibilities, our divergent fears and suspicions, our various intellectual and cultural inclinations. Yes, there are important theological disagreements too, and these demand the best attention of our heads and hearts. But in many instances, people who can affirm the same doctrinal commitments on paper are miles apart in their posture and practice.
Toward One Way of Understanding Our Differences
Why?
That’s what I’ve been thinking about over the last year or more. I don’t have the last word on how to assess the problem, let alone all the next steps toward addressing the problem. But attempting to understand what’s going on is an important start.
It seems to me there are at least four different “teams” at present. Many of the old networks and alliances are falling apart and being re-formed along new lines. These new lines are not doctrinal in the classic sense. Rather, they often capture a cultural mood, a political instinct, or a personal sensibility. You could label each team by what it sees as the central need of the hour, by what it assesses as the most urgent work of the church in this cultural moment. Let’s give each group an adjective corresponding to this assessment.Contrite: “Look at the church’s complicity in past and present evils. We have been blind to injustice, prejudice, racism, sexism, and abuse. What the world needs is to see a church owning its sins and working, in brokenness, to make up for them and overcome them.”
Compassionate: “Look at the many people hurting and grieving in our midst and in the world. Now is the time to listen and learn. Now is the time to weep with those who weep. What the world needs is a church that demonstrates the love of Christ.”
Careful: “Look at the moral confusion and intellectual carelessness that marks our time. Let’s pay attention to our language and our definitions. What the world needs is a church that will draw upon the best of its theological tradition and lead the way in understanding the challenges of our day.”
Courageous: “Look at the church’s compromise with (if not outright capitulation to) the spirit of the age. Now is the time for a trumpet blast, not for backing down. What the world needs is a church that will admonish the wayward, warn against danger, and stand as a bulwark for truth, no matter how unpopular.”Notice that each “team” is labeled with a positive word. Although I’m closer to 3 than to any other category, I’ve tried my best to label each group in a way that expresses the good that they are after. Most of us will read the list above and think, “I like all four words. At the right time, in the right place, in the right way, the church should be contrite, compassionate, careful, and courageous.” The purpose of this schema is not to pigeonhole people or groups, nor is it to suggest that if we could just mix in 25% from each category then all our problems would be solved. I realize that the danger with schemas like this is that people may further divide by placing others into rigid categories or that people may stumble into moral equivalency as if there are no right approaches or right answers.
Having made those important caveats, I believe that conceptual groupings can help us see more clearly that our disagreements are not just about one thing, but about the basic posture and way in which we see a whole lot of things. Although any categorization tool will be generalized, simplified, and imperfect, they can still be useful, especially if we realize that some categories can have a left wing (moving toward the next lowest number) and a right wing (leaning toward the next highest number).
With that in mind, think about how the four teams assess a series of contemporary issues in two broad categories.
Table 1 (Race)White Supremacy
Systemic Racism
Police Shootings
Critical Race Theory
Black Lives MatterContrite
Essential to American history, Whites must repent
Rampant— disparities imply discrimination
Evidence of continuing racism and injustice
Full of good insights
Say it, wave it, wear itCompassionate
More prevalent than we think, Whites should lament
Not the only explanation, but should be seen and called out
First step is to weep with those who weep
Chew on the meat, spit out the bones
Support the slogan, not the organizationCareful
A sad part of American history but not the whole story, we should all celebrate what is good and reject what is bad
Open to the category, but racial disparities exist for many reasons
Let’s get the evidence first before jumping on social media
Core concepts are deeply at odds with Christian conviction, but let’s not throw around labels willy-nilly
Black lives are made in the image of God, but given the aims of the larger movement, using the phrase in an unqualified way is unwiseCourageous
Sadly, a part of our past, but lumping all Whites together as racists is anti-gospel
A Marxist category we must reject
The real problem is Black-on-Black crime
The church’s path toward liberalism
What about Blue lives? Unborn lives? All lives?Table 2 (Politics and Gender)
Trump
Christian Nationalism
Wearing Masks
Sexual Abuse
Gender RolesContrite
No! The church’s allegiance to Trump is the clearest sign of its spiritual bankruptcy.
One of the biggest problems in our day, a dangerous ideology at home in most conservative white churches
I feel unsafe and uncared for when masks aren’t worn—besides Covid affects minority communities worse than others
It’s about time the church owned this scandal, believes victims, and calls out perpetrators and their friends
The problem is toxic masculinity and unbiblical stereotypesCompassionate
A matter of Christian liberty, but there are good reasons to criticize Trump
Too many Christians are letting their politics shape their religion
It’s one small but important way to love your neighbor
Sympathize with victims, vow to do better
Traditional views are good, but many dangers come from our own mistakesCareful
A matter of Christian liberty, but there are good reasons someone might have voted for Trump
Christian symbols and rhetoric supporting insurrection is bad, but the term itself needs more definition.
Probably overblown and a bit frustrating, but let’s just get through this
Each case and each accusation should be looked at on its own merits
We need a strong, joyful celebration of biblical manhood and womanhoodCourageous
Yes! He’s not perfect, but he stood up to the anti-God agenda of the left.
A new label meant to smear Christians who want to see our country adhere to biblical principles
A sign of the government encroaching on our liberties
A real tragedy, but so is demonizing good people
The problem is feminism and emasculated menSo What’s the Point?
To reiterate, the point of this schema is not rigidity or relativism. I’m not suggesting that every Reformedish Christian can be neatly placed in one row all the way across, neither am I suggesting that we are all blind men with the elephant, each person no closer to the whole truth than anyone else.
One reason for the schema is to take a step toward understanding our current context. The loudest voices tend to be 1s and 4s, which makes sense because they tend to see many of these issues in the starkest terms and often collide with each other in ways that makes a lot of online noise. The 1s and 4s can also be the most separatist, with some voices (among the 1s) encouraging an exodus from white evangelical spaces and some voices (among the 4s) encouraging the woke to be excommunicated. The 2s and 3s are more likely to appeal to unity, or at least ask for a better understanding of all sides, which can make them sound too squishy for either end of the spectrum. The effort by the 2s and 3s to find middle ground is made difficult by the fact that many 2s want their friends among the 3s to call out the dangerous 4s, while the 3s would like their friends among the 2s to be less sympathetic to the 1s.
Just as important as understanding our context is understanding ourselves. We’d like to think we come to all our positions by a rigorous process of prayer, biblical reflection, and rational deliberation. But if we are honest, we all have certain instincts too. By virtue of our upbringing, our experiences, our hurts, our personalities, our gifts, and our fears, we gravitate toward certain explanations and often think in familiar patterns when it comes to the most complicated and controversial issues. Why is it that by knowing what someone thinks about, say, mask wearing that you probably have a pretty good idea what they think about Christian Nationalism and systemic racism? To be sure, friend groupings play a part, as does the totalizing effect of politics in our day. And yet, our own unique—and often predictable—sensibilities often play a bigger role than we think.
We won’t be able to put all the pieces of Humpty Dumpty back together again—and maybe some pieces shouldn’t have been glued together in the first place. But if we can understand what’s going on—in our networks, in our churches, and in our hearts—we will be better equipped to disciple our own people and reach out, where we can, to those who may disagree. Most importantly, perhaps we will be able to find a renewed focus, not on our cultural sensibilities and political instincts, but on the glory of Christ, the incarnate Son of God, who came from the Father full of grace and truth.Kevin DeYoung (PhD, University of Leicester) is senior pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, Council member of The Gospel Coalition, and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte). He has written numerous books, including Just Do Something. Kevin and his wife, Trisha, have nine children: Ian, Jacob, Elizabeth, Paul, Mary, Benjamin, Tabitha, Andrew, and Susannah.