THE CHURCH'S BELIEF IN THE TRIUNE GOD-"WE BELIEVE IN ONE GOD WHO IS THREE PERSONS IN ONE ESSENCE"-IS FOUNDATIONAL FOR CHRISTIAN FAITH. THIS TEACHING IS FULLY SPELLED OUT IN THE ATHANASIAN CREED. OF COURSE, THIS DOCTRINE IS A MYSTERY, TRANSCENDING HUMAN MATHEMATICAL LOGIC. HOWEVER, IT IS PERHAPS THE MOST PRACTICALLY IMPORTANT FUNDAMENTAL TEACHING OF THE FAITH, FOR IT CLARIFIES WHO THE TRUE AND LIVING GOD IS, AND WHAT HE IS LIKE. IN PARTICULAR, IT REVEALS THAT HE IS A PERSONAL, RELATIONAL GOD.
This God who acts is not only a God of energies, but a personal God. When humans participate in the divine energies, they are not overwhelmed by some vague and nameless power, but they are brought face to face with a person. Nor is this all: God is not simply a single person confined within His own being, but a Trinity of three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each of whom 'dwells' in the other two by virtue of a perpetual movement of love. God is not only a unity but a union.
o Timothy Ware (Bishop Kallistos of Dioklesia), "The Orthodox Church", p. 209This mutual indwelling of the Persons of the Trinity has been known as "PERICHORESIS." We use a word that comes from this-"choreography"-to describe the art of dance. The image brought out in the term perichoresis is that of dynamic movement and loving interaction, as in joyful dancing. As Peter Leithart describes it:
The unity of the Tri-unity should not be understood as "sitting together," as if the Persons were merely in close proximity. Nor should perichoresis be understood as a static containment, as if the Son were in the Father in the way that water is in a bucket.
Rather, perichoresis describes the Persons as eternally giving themselves over into one another. It is not that the Father has (at some "moment" in eternity past) poured Himself out into the Son, but that He is continually pouring Himself into the Son, and the Son into the Spirit, and the Spirit into the Father, and so on. To talk about God's "perichoretic" unity is to talk about a dynamic unity, and to talk about a God who is always at work, always in motion, pure act. It is to say that the life of God is peri-choreographed.
o "The Dance of God, the Dance of Life," Leithart.comMore about the Trinity here, here, and here.
