After SVS 2010: Cathy Zellmer, The Divine Perichoretic Mission of Love
After SVS 2010 is an extended dialogue with presenters from the first annual Society of Vineyard Scholars conference, held Feb 11-13, 2010. Monday through Friday until March 26th we’ll profile an SVS presenter and dialogue with them around their paper. Click here for a brief intro and link directory of the series. Full text of papers are available to SVS members.
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Cathy Zellmer: “The Divine Perichoretic Mission of Love”
Abstract
A review of the historical doctrines of the Trinity, perichoresis, and love reveals the centrality of these beliefs to our distinctively Christian understanding of God. Current theological trends with regard to the three doctrines show that their influence holds tremendous weight in the formation of contemporary work which sees humanity injected vertically into participation in the perichoretic circle, and horizontally into sharing the passionate perichoretic life, love, and activity of God with other. This is of particular importance if the church is to respond in God’s power to the missional call to love and justice.
My method entailed briefly showing the early theological origins and development of the Church’s thinking on the Trinity and perichoresis I move to current trends in Western Trinitarian and perichoretic thought, linking them to the Christian distinctive of ‘God is love.’ I show the centrality of love to the act of creation, Jewish belief, and Christian faith. I finish by binding all of these streams of thought together discussing the believer’s participation in the divine life of love and relationship both vertically and horizontally. Throughout the paper, the theologians I relied the most heavily on were Jürgen Moltmann and Joy Ann McDougall.
Interview With Cathy:
Q: How did you become interested in your topic?
A: In my very first seminary class the professor made what I consider a providential comment about perichoresis being one of the hottest topics in current theological thought. After toying with other topics for that first research paper, I finally went with it. As I delved into learning about the Trinity and their relationship to one another, I was just as enamored with them as Gregory of Nazianzus was when he said, “When I say God, I mean Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…No sooner do I conceive of the one than I am illumined by the splendor of the three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the one. When I think of any one of the three, I think of Him as the whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking escapes me.” It brought me to worship, which I consider part of my identity and heritage within the Vineyard.
Q: How do you think your paper is relevant to the Vineyard movement at large?
A: I think it’s relevant in that just as ‘God is love’ and ‘God is Trinity’ were foundational to the early church, those two truths should be intrinsic to us in the Vineyard as well. My hope is that somehow we might again bring to our flocks a greater understanding of the mystery of the Trinity. Absolutely everything God does is an expression of His/Their love, even things like judgment. As well, the members of the Trinity do nothing without the involvement of the others in the Godhead. This understanding adds depth of worship, as well as a greater understanding of God’s invitation to participate perichoretically with the Three—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—in their activity to redeem and restore the world. In addition, as we understand the great privilege of God living in us, the responsibility of housing Him in our human temples takes on a much more sacred weight(I Cor 3:16), adding greater depth, I believe, to our liturgical practices.
Q: What do you think might be the practical implications of what you’re exploring?
A: I’ll be really honest. I don’t think there is anything in our Christian experience that perichoresis doesn’t touch on, whether we recognize it or not, as one of the earliest definitions for perichoresis is “to make room for.” So take for example creation care. In my estimation, the responsibility to care for creation becomes more serious as we come to understand that the Trinity made room for creation in His being, and all of creation sprang from the currents of love and life within the Godhead.[1] Our relationship to the earth and other creatures should not be one of condescension or disregard, but of ensuring that its/their space is kept.
Or women in ministry, in particular in conservative Evangelical churches. An understanding of that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit make room for one another in the dynamic movement of the Godhead, and that they make room for us—male and female—as they invite us into relationship, leaves me at a loss as to how some men can bolt the door to allowing women into church leadership. That is an unfathomable position viewed from a perichoretic perspective, as within the Godhead the Three are the source of mutuality and egalitarian practice.
Or forgiveness. It is our job to ‘make room’ for one who has offended us, or repeatedly offended us, rather than push them away. Or—to make room for other church traditions through ‘a generous orthodoxy’ and embody the divine communion. Or….I really think the list could go on for quite a while. Making room is a sacred act and part of our identity as participants with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
[1] Paul Fiddes, Participating in God: A Pastoral Doctrine of the Trinity (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2000), 71-81.
Cathy will be available for further questions and dialogue in the comments
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Cathy Zellmer lives in Beaverton, Oregon, and is an MDiv student at George Fox Evangelical Seminar. By far, the greatest majority of research that she has done to date has been on the perichoretic life of the Trinity. Her passions are family and church life, seeing the conservative evangelical mold being broken by women in ministry, and concern for social and environmental justice. She lives in a complex household enlivened by people and animals, including her husband, Paul, and five of their six children. She has been part of the Vineyard for 27 years.
i agree with you cathy, i think basically touches almost everything!
i wonder, since we house such treasure in broken vessels, and certainly this can (and is) reflected in our liturgical practices and “making room for” others in our liturgies…does this also apply missionally? to me this resonates with what i understand the samaritan’s action in the ‘good samaritan’ story…not only did he make room for, but he did not pass by, and he came up close to the suffering, and then ‘made room for’ the one who suffered.