Christian Foundations for Faithful Thinking: Hypostatic Koinonia
If the Trinity is the fundamental reality of all of life, then one particularly significant aspect of that reality is what I am calling hypostatic koinonia. Or, in other words, personal communion.
The relationship between the three members of the Godhead is sometimes referred to as perichoresis, or coinherence (sometimes, "interpenetration"). Perichoresis refers to (in theological distinctions) the Trinity in its essence, in terms of mutual dependence, interrelation, and partnership. Each Person of the Godhead is distinct, yet each is ineffably united to the other, which union is characterized by love.
I have coined the (so far as I know) neologism, hypostatic koinonia as a referrence to perichoresis, but also wanting to avoid an unwarranted direct extrapolation from the holy Godhead to fallen humanity. In Church thought, fallen humanity retains the image of God, though it is only through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit through the Son in the Body of Christ that we are recreated and restored to his likeness. Thus to refer to the human experience of the perichoretic reality of the Trinity as also perichoresis would be a confusion.
Another reason to insist on the phrase hypostatic koinonia instead of just the rightly well-worn koinonia is because koinonia has been misused to refer to a fellowship around activist ideas, or ideological creeds. This is absolutely not what the New Testament means. Thus I have added the term hypostatic, which is from the Greek and indicative of the person. But here, in Christian terms, hypostasis carries connotations that relate not only to the Godhead, but to Christology and ecclesiology as well.
In Trinitarian discourse, the hypostases of the Godhead are the specific Persons of the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In Christological terms, hypostasis refers to the union, in one Person, of the divine and human natures of Christ. It is precisely this union that makes salvation possible for humankind. If Christ were not wholly divine and human we would still be lost in sin. Christ is, quite literally, the bridge between sinful humanity redeemed in Christ and the holy and righteous Father. But more to the point, this bridging that takes place in Christ, does so only in the Church which bears his humanity with him.
So, the perichoretic reality of the Trinity fuels the hypostatic koinonia which grounds all of human existence. To be human means to be in personal communion, in ways analagous to and made possible by the gracious energies of God.
If Metropolitan JOHN Zizioulas speaks of being as communion, then, in terms of faithful Christian thinking, knowing is communion. There can be no separation between the intellectual and the personal. Indeed, the phraseology of knowing in biblical terms is precisely just this sort of intimate personal knowing. The knower cannot be separated from the thing in which he is in a relationship of knowing. To be sure, there is a distinction between knower and known. Hypostatic koinonia absolutely requires personal distinction. This is not philosophical monism. But the relationship established in the act of knowing makes all knowing personal at the same time it makes it revelatory.
Hypostatic koinonia collapses the Enlightenment bogey of objective/subjective dichotomy. There is not some distanced, detached knower looking on the object of knowing, uninfluenced by and not influencing the thing known. Nor is Truth lost in the monistic maze of subjective experience. Rather, Truth is both objective and subjective. Kierkegaard was more right than Descartes and Kant, but he was still mistaken. Or, to speak yet more correctly, Truth is personal, with the distinctions of subjective and objective meaningless in light of the ultimate reality that is both subjective and objective without confusion or intermingling, separation or division.
Truth is personal communion, because humans are utterly contingent upon the mercies and gifts of God. We have no autonomy to claim, no point at which we can stand in pure objectivity. We are dependent on God, which makes all our reality personal, all our knowing a form of communion.
We do not just know facts, we relate to them and they to us. Facts do not merely convey information, they convey meaning. The fact that it is 8:00pm on Sunday does not merely convey the fact of the time marker at a given point. It means that I will be helping my wife put our daughter to sleep. The fact has a different meaning for someone else. There are no independent, objective facts. There are only innumerable meanings.
But that these facts have innumerable meanings does not mean that Truth or knowing is merely arbitrary or utterly relative. Remember, the fundamental reality which grounds human knowing is the Trinity. In the Trinity all these contingent facts and events are known fully and completely. Human knowing is indeed fragmentary because humans are fallen. But insofar as we are ever more deified, which is to say, ever more like the God with whom we have to do, the more we grasp the meaning of the facts and events which make up our individual realities.
This is why the Godbearing Fathers and Elders of the Church are so rightly revered for their wisdom. Their clairvoyant knowledge (in those Fathers and Elders who manifest this gift) of those who come to them for counsel, is a result of their increasing deification. In taking on more and more of the nature of God through his energies, they come to see the facts and events of their world through the eyes of God. It is in this way that Peter could see the hearts of Ananias and Saphira, and know the lie they had promulgated. It is in this way that the God-man Jesus could both see and know Nathaniel from a distance, and could read the thoughts of the Jewish leaders opposing him. The more deeply we commune with the Trinity, the more wise we become.
Not only, then, is knowing communion, but precisely because this is so, we know that Truth is Personal.
[Next:i>Christian Foundations for Faithful Thinking: Truth is Personal]
Posted by Clifton at December 8, 2003 06:10 AM | TrackBackI am interested ion your work on perichoresis and hypostatic kiononia - I have experienced this in the form of epiphanies and the prophetics - I have been working on Cognitive Pneumatology and wrestling with "how do we know what we know" in the impact of the Holy Spirit working with our Human Cognitive faculties and engaging us in Revelation for some time.
I have been exploring themes surrounding pneumatic cognition (Greek: Pneuma - Spirit) to engage the prophetic in my life. I hold that a human being is made up of Body, Soul (Mind, Emotions, Will) and Spirit. I further hold that the Human Spirit has three attributions - Conscience (Witness, "Moral Energy", Understanding), Intuition (Spiritual Discernment, "Knowing") and Communion (Relationship, "Wisdom").
I am convinced that as Christians with a prophetic anointing we are engaging in a form of pneumatic cognition or cognitive pneumatology - whereby the Holy Spirit is speaking directly to us through our spirits - through our capacity for Communion - Relationship - which then engages our Volition or Will and then informs our Rational Cognition or Mind and that this is a trans-rational encounter which is a pneumatological process rather than a purely cognitive process.
So I decided that although my Soul/Mind/Psyche had the categories of Mind (Rational Cognition, Imagination, Memory (Inc. Subconsciousness/Unconsciousness), Volition(Will) and Emotions much of what I was experiencing in Words of Knowledge, Impressions, Thoughts, Visions, Stuff was being directly imparted to my Spirit by the Holy Spirit - usually in states of solitude and silence.
I then started to look at the categories of the Human Spirit - Conscience, Intuition, Communion (the capacity and need for Relationship) and to develop the thought that there is a form of Pneumatic Cognition that is different to Rational Cognition that is discussed in terms of Cognitive Psychology, Phenomenology (Philosophy of Perception and Intentionality) which is sanctified and redeemed through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.
Clearly, the Holy Spirit is acting as a Cognitive Agent in line 1 Corinthians 2: 6 - 12. So, we become engaged in an intentional form of knowing and acting which involves a Trans -Rational Cognitive Pneumatological process which precedes Rational Cognition, although informs and directs Rational Cognition and the way we "process" wisdom, revelation and direction from the Holy Spirit through our Spirits.
For me, my Will is engaged by the capacity for Communion in my Spirit with the Holy Spirit - God's Tabernacle (dwelt presence) within me and all the implications of that - and not the other way round. Actually, this is why each one of us is an expression of the Church on Earth (what Stephen prophetically called the "Church in the Wilderness") - where did John the Baptist come from - the wilderness, the Desert and what did he bring with him - the proclamation of the Kingdom, the Church - each one of us has a fore-runner anointing by simply being the church. Given that Hebrews 12 describes the Church in Heaven , that great cloud of Witnesses - even if you are alone - you are not the power of one but of many because the Church on Earth and the Church in Heaven cannot be separated - they are bound together in Jesus and you know what he said about "where two or three are gathered in my name..." - who said just on earth.
I am actually trying to do less thinking with my mind and more listening with my heart - I am certain that the Greek notion of Mind (rational abstract thought) is incorrect and the Hebrew notion of the Heart as the centre of being and the idea of true knowledge as "Yarda" (knowing through relating) is important and that prophetic people are actually receiving revelation directly through their spirits and that the renewing of the mind in Romans 12:1,2 literally is a spiritual process of revelation and revelatory insight as opposed to a rational cognitive process of engaging abstract truth.
This is the reverse of the Orthodox practice in that it is a kenotic process of moving from Spirit to Mind - not Mind "descending" into Spirit.
In the Lord Jeusu Christ.
Mark
Posted by: Mark Downham at August 16, 2004 11:06 AM