From Eternity

In the beginning, God. These words from Genesis 1:1 instruct us on the eternal transcendent nature of God. From all eternity, the three persons of the Trinity enjoy relating to one another in the manner of perichoresis – a mutual indwelling or interpenetration, forming an eternal “community of being” [1] in loving relationship. In this relationship “all three persons of the Trinity mutually share in the life of the others, so that none is isolated or detached from the actions of the others”[2]. Zizioulas teaches about communion from the Trinity, saying, “God is not first One and the Three, but simultaneously One and Three”. Therefore, God is an “unbreakable koinonia (community) that exists between the three Persons.”[3]

The social Trinity is a perichoretic community of love, eternally sufficient, existing prior to the creation. The act of creation is not necessary in order to fulfil a need for, or a lack of, fellowship within God’s essential relational nature. The idea of love overflow from within the Trinity necessitating creation as an object of love is to be discounted. This may lead to an “emanation” model of creation which fails to identify the essential discontinuity between the creation and the creator. God creates out of love for, but not from absence of, fellowship. As Tracey notes, the nature of God can be essentially relational without being necessarily related to creatures – “God’s life is complete apart from his relation to his creatures, since the relatedness that is an essential property of God might not be his relatedness to creatures.”[4] This empowers the understanding of the freedom of the fellowship of the Spirit, and how the Christian experience is absolutely dependent on, and subsequent to, the eternal relationality of God.

[1] Alister E. McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction (Victoria: Blackwell, 2001), 325-6.
[2] McGrath, Christian Theology, 586.
[3] John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, http://www.orthodoxresearchinstitute.org/articles/liturgics/john_zizioulas_communion_otherness.htm. Accessed 13 June 2006.

[4] David Tracey, God Action and Embodiment. (Grand Rapids: Eardmans: 1984), 178.