In and Around God

I found a wonderful post on the relationship to which God invites us over at connexions (via the the Methodist Blogs Weekly Roundup), titled Living in God. The author, Richard Hall, brings to us the word “perichoresis” used by early church fathers to describe the union of the human and divine in Jesus and then the trinity (details in the post and comments to it.

It’s not the big word that made me like this post so much, but the discussion of it. I rarely like the use of a Greek word in preaching and teaching. If you’re teaching in English, teach in English. Generally. Here, the very mystery of the word, and the mysteries it can be used to describe combine to help us think about mysterious things. And the trinity is indeed a mysterious thing, and so is the closeness of the relationship to which Jesus calls us. Often we forget that. One of the benefits of the doctrine of the trinity is simply that it makes us think constantly about relationships. It forces us to try to imagine relationships that are closer than any that we experience.

At the same time, it illustrates how much more there is to the atonement than substitution and the paying of debts. I do not reject the notion of substitution in the atonement. I think that substitution is a metaphor that can convey to us some of the meaning. But it is a metaphor, and it conveys only part of the picture. If we allow ourselves to spend time thinking about some of these other aspects, and taking seriously Biblical materials that reach beyond that point, we will find a richness in atonement and reconciliation that will enrich our relationship with God, and flow out into our relationship with others.

Our hope in both divine and human relationships should be this: They can be better.