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GREEK
FATHERS*
Verna Harrison
The word has served several important pur
poses in Christian theological conceptualization. It provides a
way of attempting to express how unity and distinction are
combined in the Trinity, in the incarnate Logos and in creation
as reunited with God. However, although it was employed to
articulate ideas with deep roots in Scripture and in earlier Greek
patristic writings, it became a technical term rather late. It was
first used theologically by St Gregory Nazianzen and sub
sequently adopted by St Maximus the Confessor, a close student
of his writngs. Then it appeared in a treatise On the Trinity
by an anonymous seventh century author known to scholars as
Pseudo-Cyril of Alexandria and became a standard item in the
vocabulary of St John of Damascus, who incorporated large
excerpts of this treatise in his De fide orthodoxa1 as well as
drawing from the earlier fathers. Through John, the concept
achieved currency in both East and West.
and the related verb have
been understood in two different days. G. L. Prestige has argued
*A shorter version of this paper was read at the Annual Conference of the
North American Patristic Society in Chicago, May 24-26, 1990.
^his De sacrosancto Trinitate was included by Migne, PG 77.1120ff.,
among the "Dubia et Aliena" of St Cyril of Alexandria and shortly after
its publication in the seventeeth century was already recognized by Petavius and
Bellarmine as spurius. It embodies the work of an important seventh century
Chalcedonian theologian who stands between Maximus and the Damascene.
See J. de Guilbert, "Une source de saint Jean Damascne de fide orthodoxa"
Recherches de science religieuse 3 (1912) 356-368; Keetje Rozemond, La
Christologie de saint Jean Damascnet Studia Patristica et By iantina 8 (Ettal:
1959), pp. 57-59; and B. Fraigneau-Julien, "Un trait anonyme de la sainte
Trinit attribu S. Cyrille d'Alexandrie," Recherches de science religieuse 49
961) 188-211,386-405.
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that in the earlier writers their meaning is "alternation" or "rotation," and that the sense of "interpntration" does not occur
unequivocally until Ps.-Cyril and John. Julian Stead adopts
substantially the same position, and it is reflected in the Lampe
Lexicon, where the earlier Christological uses of the verb are
said to mean "interchange with" or "pass into reciprocally"
while the noun refers to "reciprocity." Only the later uses are
identified as "interpntration" but with a note that "it is often
difficult to distinguish whether is used in sense
1 or 2." 2 Lampe's hesitation may reflect the fact that a majority
of scholars differ with Prestige and see perichoresis as meaning
"interpntration" from the beginning of its use as a theological
term, a view with which I agree. August Deneffe distinguishes
a static sense of perichoresis as "coinherence" or "mutual indwelling," Ineinander sein, and a dynamic of "interpntration,"
Ineinander gehen. In the Medieval West, these two meanings
translated into two slightly different Latin words, the static
circuminsessio and the dynamic circumincessio3 Deneffe and
many other researchers have linked perichoresis to the Stoic
concept of mixture, , which means a com
plete mutual interpntration of two substances that preserves
the identity and properties of each intact. In an excellent article,
Peter Stemmer observes that in the Stoic vocabulary, the verb
, which covers a broad range of meanings including
"go," "extend" and "contain," was often used to describe this
kind of mixing. He suggests that since this concept of mixture
was central to Gregory Nazianzen's Christology, he probably
used the compound form in this sense with the
prefix expressing the completeness (* ) of the
mutual interpntration.4
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