The Self in Relationship
Chris Lewis
Part 5 of a 5-Part A Christian Counselor on Becoming Series
If all the “Self” talk during the first four parts of this series sounded a bit Self-absorbed, perhaps some theological and psychological unpacking is in order. Because personhood is not a Self-actualization project. Rather, the true Self is oriented towards God, relationships, and community. Let’s quickly review the ground we’ve covered:
- The core Self gratefully accepts validation from others without needing this validation to prop up an anxious ego or “reflected sense of self.”
- The core Self affirms its own well-being by risking more authentic vulnerability, instead of maneuvering for emotional security or “completion” through other people.
- We come to know our core Self only through relationship with others – and yet, people only experience intimacy to the degree that they are “differentiated” (Self-defined).
A Trinitarian View
The differentiated person’s defined emotional boundaries allow for a safer, simultaneously “separate-and-together” experience in relationships, says psychologist David Schnarch. That’s because loving another person does not entail losing yourself.
Where else is this Self-in-relation better imaged … than in the Trinity?
The struggle for partners to define healthy relationship has also been a painful labor for the Church. Fierce theological debate about the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – tracing back to the Nicene Creed, early Church councils, and the controversial filioque doctrine – contributed mightily to the eventual 11th-century East-West Church schism that persists today.
Three-In-One, One-In-Three
This is not an attempt to directly correlate marital relationships and the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (because created humanity cannot be unified in precisely the same way as Creator God).
Nevertheless, the relational psychology of differentiation and communion is beautifully hinted at in what modern Orthodox theologians call the “social Trinity.”
It was the 4th-century Cappadocian Fathers, scrambling to articulate the mystery of God against heretical teachings, who first seriously theologized the dynamic, relational nature of the Trinity. They did so by emphasizing God’s distinction in unity: God is three defined persons (Greek: hypostases) in one being (ousia). They are of the same divine essence/being, yet also unique.
True Persons
Despite being diverse “persons,” the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not autonomous or individualistic. That’s because “personhood” is established by belonging and togetherness. There is no such thing as a person in isolation: persons are realized only through mutual, reciprocal giving and receiving. This is the heartbeat of God – persons-in-relation who turn towards one another in communion, who hold/contain one another, while still maintaining their distinct other-ness. Contemporary theologian Colin Gunton writes:
“The Father, Son, and Spirit are persons because they enable each other to be truly what the other is: they neither assert at the expense of, nor lose themselves in the being of, the others.”
Similarly, marriage partners enable each other to express who they most truly are – through a reciprocity that also respects one another’s boundaries.
The Dancing God
Early Christian tradition adopted a word to describe the paradox of God’s diverse unity, this relational personhood: perichoresis. It comes from a Greek word describing two seemingly contradictory movements: to “contain” or “make room for” another, and also “to go.”
Thus, perichoresis depicted the centrifugal, centripetal (inflowing-outflowing) embrace of love and communion both within and between the Holy Three, which pours out into creation and also draws creation unto itself. Theologians use words like “interpenetration,” “inter-animation” and even “interdependence.” (Not independence or co-dependence!)
Sometimes it is simply referred to as, “the dance.” While this liberal interpretation stems from a similar but different Greek word, the interweaving movement of perichoresis is certainly evocative of a dance. I imagine the Holy Three playfully winking at philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who famously said in his rebuke of Christianity, “I would believe only in a god who could dance.”
The Holding and Giving Self
There is a kind of interdependent, perichoretic presence inherent in healthy marriages. It bears witness to the other’s becoming, without taking responsibility for it.
“Holding the space” (as a doula would say) for your partner’s ‘birthing’ can only happen if you are holding on to yourself.
Why? Because you can only surrender yourself to the extent that you have a grounded and differentiated “Self” to give. You cannot truly offer the Self that is not mature enough first to be Self-aware of the cost, then to fully own and freely embody this choice. Otherwise, surrender is reduced to mere ‘submission’ or sacrifice.
Perichoresis and Kenosis
When we’re not living from our core Christ-in-me Self, our giving is motivated by strings-attached ego anxiety, by our expectations of tit-for-tat equality. (C.S. Lewis talks about human love being a “need” love versus God’s “gift” love.)
The problem with what we call “selfless giving” is precisely that it’s Self–less – and without a grounded Self, the anxious ego “needs” to feel completed by the partner’s affirmation of its sacrifice.
The Self-giving interplay of perichoretic and kenotic energies is important. The oft-quoted, poetic “Kenosis Hymn,” from the Apostle Paul’s writing in Philippians 2, describes how Jesus emptied himself (Greek: kenosis). He never “grasped” at “equality” with God, but instead “made himself nothing” to serve humankind.
An Emptying Fullness
But this “nothing” was quite something. The incarnation was not about Jesus emptying his divinity – no more than the Cross can be over-simplified as a symbol for our “dying to” Self.
To paraphrase theologians like Gordon Fee and Sarah Coakley, Jesus’ emptying was less a statement of loss or negation, and more a reflection of his identity and life in God. His true relational nature found its fullest expression in giving himself instead of ‘grasping’ for power. Coakley defines kenosis not as weakness, but as a subversive and edifying “power-in-vulnerability.”
Jesus needed to have and to hold on to a Self in order to surrender it.
The Self Stays Intact
Kenosis and perichoresis never imply the loss of Self, but its “transformation and expansion into God,” Coakley notes. She believes that women and marginalized peoples especially have suffered from a traditional discipleship model of Self-negation.
Ironically, this is how many theologians define “sin”: that which negates or diminishes Self. Being less-than your core Self in Christ. Sin works itself out through the anxious, controlling, lowercase ego-self that is still being healed and conformed to God’s image. Augustine imaged this under-developed, sin-prone self as curving inward (incurvatus in se) and bent back on itself – instead of towards genuine relationship.
Christian Counseling: the Practice of Person-ing
Saint Irenaeus, a 2nd-century Church Father, wrote: “The glory of God is man fully alive.”
The goal of Christian counseling is to invite the discovery of the unique core Self united with God, so that we can creatively cooperate with the conforming work of God in us. This work, infused with perichoretic and kenotic energy, seeks to integrate our splintered selves into a whole person – a transformative process that happens only through relationship with others.
In the dance of relationship, it can be difficult to take steps of trust, to celebrate our becoming, and to find safety and communion. I am open to joining you in this work – you are welcome to contact me here.
Credits
– Coakley, Sarah. (2002). Powers and Submissions. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
– Fee, Gordon. (1995). Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
– Gunton, Colin. (2003). Father, Son and Holy Spirit: Toward a Fully Trinitarian Theology. New York, NY: T&T Clark.
– Schnarch, David. (2009). Intimacy & Desire. New York, NY: Beaufort Books.
Photos
“Don’t Let Go,” courtesy of Sam Caplat, Flickr CreativeCommons (CC BY 2.0); “A paean of old days,” courtesy of monkeywing, Flickr CreativeCommons (CC BY 2.0)
