Perichoresis

Thomas H. McCall offers some helpful analysis of “Moltmann’s Perichoresis” in a chapter of his Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism? Philosophical and Systematic Theologians on the Metaphysics of Trinitarian Theology , especially in drawing a distinction between “trinitarian perichoresis” and a “creation/soteriological perichoresis” that is analogical to divine indwelling.

Along the way, though, he makes an odd sort of argument. He offers this definition of perichoresis from Oliver Crisp: “For any x and y . . . x and y are perichoretically related if and only if x and y share all their properties in a common essence apart from those properties that serve to individuate x and y, or that express a relation between only x and y” (165). Based on this definition, he charges that Moltmann’s panentheism cannot sidestep the dangers of pantheism.

But, for starters, the definition he quotes is highly restrictive, and doesn’t cover even all the classical uses of “perichoresis.” As Crisp knows (see his “Problems with Perichoresis,” Tyndale Bulletin [2005]), the term was first used Christologically, to describe the relation between the divine and human in Christ. This use of perichoresis doesn’t fulfill the requirements of the definition that McCall uses, since the divine and human natures do not “share all their properties in a common essence.” On McCall’s definition, only Trinitarian relations could possibly fulfill the conditions. That result is built into the definition.

Oddly, too, McCall is aware that the definition is “more restrictive than Moltmann intends,” but he proceeds “on the assumption that it would be acceptable” (165). Then he charges that given Moltmann’s claim that God and the world stand in a “perichoretic relation,” and given his definition of perichoresis, “God and the world would share such properties as ‘being finite’ and ‘suffering the results of evil,’” as well as the properties of “being infinite,” and “being omnipotent.” That’s absurd; nothing can be both infinite and finite, both necessarily benevolent and evil. Therefore Moltmann’s use of perichoresis “entails monism” that blurs the Creator-creature distinction. But that only follows if we’re using the restrictive definition of perichoresis, one that McCall doubts would be acceptable to Moltmann.If fact, it’s hard to believe that Moltmann doesn’t operate with some (albeit vague, undefined, implicit, perhaps confused) distinction between Trinitarian the creational/soteriological perichoresis – which is the very distinction that McCall offers as a corrective.

I have no brief for Moltmann at this point. But the argument doesn’t work: He criticizes Moltmann for the consequences that follow from defining perichoresis in a way that Moltmann would almost certainly reject. That has all the appearance of a set-up.