Perichoresis Overload?

Princeton’s Bruce McCormack protests against the “uncritical expansion of the concept of perichoresis today on the past of a good many theologians.” He suggests that the term “is rightly employed in trinitarian discourse for describing that which is dissimilar in the analogy between intra-trinitarian relations among the divine ‘person’ on the one hand and human to human relations on the other. Nowadays, we are suffering from ‘creeping perichoresis,’ that is, the overly expansive use of terms which have their home in purely spiritual relations to describe relations between human beings who do not participate in a common ‘substance’ and who, therefore, remain distinct individuals even inthe most intimate of their relations. This surely has to be true of the relation of the human believer to the human Jesus as well.”

A salutary caution against overinflating the terminology. But ?EJesus clearly points to the similarity between divine perichoresis on the one hand, and our relationship with Him and the Father and with one another on the other. What else are we to make of John 17:21ff: “that they all may be one, even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in us.” The unity of the disciples is “even as” the unity of the Father and Son, which is a perichoretic unity; and the unity of disciples with the Father and Son is also an “in” relationship, not only with “them” in “Us,” but also “I in them, and Thou in Me.” It appears that Jesus wants to emphasize the analogy rather than the dissimilarity.