Original Research

The church as a trinitarian hermeneutical community

Anna Cho

Received: 22 June 2023; Accepted: 02 Oct. 2023; Published: 12 Apr. 2024

Copyright: © 2024. The Author(s). Licensee: AOSIS.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This article examines the church as a trinitarian hermeneutical community through the insights of Vanhoozer and the speech act theory. Vanhoozer explained that through the speech act theory, the church should accept the Bible as a communication act of the Triune God and interpret the Triune God in it, and the church should live a life representing the Triune God. This article agrees with his argument, but as there is a point to revise and supplement his discussion from the speech act theory, it re-examines the church as a trinitarian interpretive community. This explains the unification of the epistemological (revelational), ontological and relational perspectives of the Triune God by not separating the immanent Trinity from the economic Trinity. Also, Trinitarianism as a communicator is used to account for the relationship and activity of the Triune God’s perichoresis in the church community and the church in the interpretive community.

Contribution: This article engages the church as a trinitarian hermeneutical community of Vanhoozer, and it redeems and reconsiders his argument in the speech act theory. By explaining the communication behaviour of the Trinity and the church, it describes the activities of the Triune God and the appearance of the church, living and working in the church community.

Keywords: Vanhoozer; trinitarian hermeneutical community; Trinity; church; speech act theory.

Introduction: The church as a hermeneutical community

Humans are interpretive beings. They think about something, understand it and express it in language. When the object of recognition is expressed in language through the process of interpretation, interpretation becomes an action. Interpretation implies various factors that maintain social structure and system, such as thoughts, ideology, rationality, values, traditions and customs hidden by language and exert influence on human lives. Thus, interpretation is related to the practical action of how interpreters should live in this world by interpreting the meaning and use of language and understanding of the object of recognition. Stated differently, interpretation is acting by expressing the relationship between the object of recognition and the interpreter in language (medium, channel). And it expresses the interpretation of the community, or the human as an interpretive community, along with social factors. In a strict sense, humans exist as interpretive communities. Christian daily life reveals life and the world through interpretation.

The church is no exception to this point.¹ The church exists as a hermeneutical community. The church presents a confession of faith in the Trinity and, by interpreting it, provides guidelines and directions for what kind of life the church community should live. The church interprets the Triune God, who is the object of recognition, and it is expressed in language to become doctrine, theology and faith and is a hermeneutical community that puts its contents into practice. If so, the important discussion here is how the church as a hermeneutical community understands and interprets the Triune God and how does the interpreted content translate into life. For this discussion to be valid, it must be a reality in which the ‘being’ and ‘acts’ of the Triune God exert influence on the church community. The church community interprets the Trinity and lives according to the contents of the interpretation. The church community reveals the existence and actions of the Triune God through interpretation.

Interpretation is the act of expressing the object of recognition and the interpreter in language. To interpret something, you need text, comprehension, author, language, interpreter and imagination. When we interpret the Triune God, it is God who speaks fundamentally in the biblical text (language). The church interprets the Trinity and the church (including both believers and faith communities) through the ‘relationship’ between God and the church. The important point in our interpretation of the Trinity is not simply to interpret the Triune God, who is the object of recognition, but to interpret the Triune God in the ‘relationship’ between the Triune God and us (church). It should be borne in mind that the basis for interpretation of the God lies in the relationship of personal love between human and the Trinity. The fact that the interpretation is based on relations clarifies that a more careful approach to the methodology of interpretation is necessary. The personal relationship between the object of recognition and the interpreter includes relational exchanges between them, that is, the ‘action of mutual communication’. The object of recognition is to exchange, communicate, breathe and exert mutual influence with the interpreter. In this respect, the speech act theory (abbreviated as SAT) becomes an important methodology for interpreting the Triune God and the church community.

Speech act theory is a branch of pragmatic theory that studies the language (text) that is the object of recognition and the ‘relationship’ with the interpreter. Through the ‘mutual communication behavior’ between the object of recognition and the interpreter, the object of recognition and the ‘presence’ of the interpreter ‘action’, and its various meanings, effects and influences are explored. Like Heidegger’s claim that ‘language is the house of being’, the SAT insists that ‘language (being) is an act’. Thus, from the point of view of SAT, an interpretive examination through the relationship between the Trinity and the church is to explore the existence and behaviour of the Triune God and the church community. In addition, it is possible to study how God appears in the church and how the community lives a life that fulfils the will of the Triune God. The link between the ‘being’, ‘act’ and ‘communication’ of the Triune God leads us to think of God and the church as an interpretive community through the methodology of SAT.

Through the insight of the SAT, Vanhoozer has explained and argued consistently in his several books (see Vanhoozer 1998, 2002, 2010, 2019) that the church should accept the Bible (language, text) as a communication act of the Trinity and interpret the Triune God in it. And that the church should live a life representing the Triune God as a community of interpreters. He said in First Theology: (1) the theological interpretation of Christianity must be trinitarian. (2) The Triune God is a personal and transcendent communication agent. (3) The Bible is a trinitarian communication act for humans. (4) The church community is a communicator as an interpreter. (5) God’s act of communication requires individuals and communities to practice the Word of the Triune God (Vanhoozer 2002:23–25). Vanhoozer is interpreting the Bible in a trinitarian way through the SAT and presented the church as a hermeneutical community that represents the Triune God by allowing the church community to see the Triune God, the Bible and the interpretation as a single speech act.² This is revealed as the climax in the drama of doctrine of his book, and as a theatre where the salvation drama of the Triune God is reproduced and staged, and the church functions as a community of interpretation and practice.³ I greatly appreciate the interpretive insights and benefits that SAT brings, and most agree with Vanhoozer’s arguments, but there are some points to be supplemented with Vanhoozer’s theory. Firstly, it is the problem of the tension and gap between the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity. Vanhoozer’s interpretation of the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity is divided and insists on the economical Trinity in which the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit uniquely serve as communicators and communicate and share with each other (Vanhoozer 2010:293–294). However, the insight of the SAT can explain the unity of the epistemological (revelational), ontological and relational perspectives of the Trinity God by not separating the immanent Trinity from the economic Trinity. Secondly, through the unity of the intrinsic Trinity and the economic Trinity, the Trinity theory as a communicator can be explained through the perichoresis, relations and activities of the God in the community. Finally, it is necessary to explain the transformation of the church as a trinitarian interpretive community of Vanhoozer into a more practical interpretive community, supplemented with the concept and application of perichoresis through insight into the modern trinitarian theory and SAT. To this end, this article draws on Vanhoozer’s major works, Is there a Meaning in this Text, First theology: God, Scripture & Hermeneutics, Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion, and Authorship, Hearers and Doers: A Pastor’s Guide to Making Disciples Through Scripture and Doctrine as primary sources and examine the church as a trinitarian interpretive community through SAT. Of course, secondary materials that accept and criticise Vanhoozer’s views are also needed, but they are omitted in this article because they cannot be covered in detail because of space reasons. This article presents new theological implications and insights regarding the trinitarian interpretive community through Vanhoozer’s theology and SAT and attempts to address Vanhoozer’s failure to sufficiently use and explain SAT from an interpretive perspective, so it is impossible to look at secondary sources. Therefore, this article considers the church as a trinitarian hermeneutical community, using the SAT, agreeing with most of Vanhoozer’s arguments, but complementing the parts he did not mention and could not explain.

The church and the speech act theory

Why speech act theory?

The SAT⁴ was actively studied by Austin’s pupils Searle and Evans, centring on him, an ordinary linguistics school at Oxford University in 1950, and is being used as a methodology in several academic fields. In theology, systematic theologian Vanhoozer, biblical theologian Thiselton and religious philosopher Wolterstorff studied theological interpretation works and their religious and theological implications through the SAT. Gradually, research using the SAT as a methodology of theology is increasing, but more research is needed because the amount of research is not yet large. The SAT is the study of the relationship between language and language users and explores the use and meaning of language and its effects. Thus, it studies communication behaviour through interaction between text (author or speaker) and interpreter (reader or listener). Here, interaction is an act of communication within the ‘relationship’ between the text and the interpreter. Basically, the relationship in the SAT is based on mutual trust and personal relationship.

Applying the insights of the SAT to the interpretation of the Trinity (as the Triune God is revealed through the biblical text), it can be said to be an act of communication between text or author or The Triune God and the interpreter or reader or believers or church. In general, when we say that we interpret the Triune God, it is not simply to know who the Triune God is, and what God did in the Bible, but the intention (meaning) that the Triune God speaks to us. It should even include how we must live and respond to the Word of the Triune God. Namely, we must deal with the existence and actions of the Triune God, the intentions and contents of the Word and even the reflection of the practical life of believers. Thus, looking at the church as an interpretive community based on the Triune God is to find the will and intentions of God and respond to the Word of God through the personal communication between the Trinity, the author and speaker and the believers, expressed through biblical language. It extends to the ‘response of the call’. However, unfortunately, the previous theological interpretation methodology did not pay attention to the act of communication through the relationship between the Triune God (author, text) and the believer (church). It made it impossible to properly explain the practical aspects of the church as a community of interpretation. Therefore, this article attempts to examine the Trinity and the community of faith as a hermeneutical community from the perspective of communication behaviour through insight into the SAT.

Communicating is not an act of speaking, conveying or sharing information about something, but a series of interpretive works. For example, when A says something to B, A’s specific purpose, intention and will toward B are implied. At the same time as A speaks, A carries out A’s purpose and intent and B must interpret A’s intention, that is, A’s words. If B understands A’s intentions and responds appropriately to A’s words, this means that the communication between A and B is successful. In this way, the act of communication is both an ‘interpretive work’ and a ‘hermeneutical life response’ at the same time. These communication behaviours are accompanied by mutual ‘cognitive understanding’ and ‘practical actions’. Communication behaviour takes place when the three elements that enable communication, the speaker, the listener and the mediator (medium), cooperate with each other. The three different elements cooperate with each other to faithfully carry out their duties and missions while maintaining their own unique characteristics in ‘one unity’, in which the speaker, listener and mediator are communication behaviours. Mediation includes spoken language, text and non-verbal elements, and communication between the speaker and the listener is possible because of the mediation. ‘The God of the Christian Scriptures is a God who relates to human beings largely through verbal communication’, says Vanhoozer (1998:205) and argues that language is God’s act of communication towards humans. He (1998:317) regards the relationship between the Trinity and the community as an act of communication between the Triune God as the speaker and the church community as the listener through the Bible (language). The church exists and works as an interpretive community that communicates with the Triune God through the Bible and interprets the will and purpose of the Triune God and puts it into practice. For the Triune God to communicate with the church, God, the Bible (language) and the church (interpreter), which are elements of the Triune communication, must cooperate with each other. This in turn makes the trio of ‘being’, ‘action’ and ‘communication’ of the Triune God, which Vanhoozer asserts (2010), expressing the church as the interpretive community of the Triune God.

The relationship between the Triune God-Bible-interpreter

The Triune God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God and have diversity within unity. The three Persons of the Triune God have a unity that includes diversity, which forms both immanent (ontological) and economical diversity and is perichoresis to each other. This means that each of the persons of the Trinity correlates, cooperates and communicates with each other. In addition, the Triune God indwells the believer to accomplish God’s redemptive work on earth. Vanhoozer (2010:456) argues that God is revealed in the economy of salvation through the unity of communicative acts. He says that the Triune God is the one who communicates through the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This Vanhoozer understanding is not new, it is an old Christian tradition. However, until the 19th century, the interpretive aspect of the Trinity was not applied to the interpretation of the Bible, the lives of believers and ecclesiology, and much research is still needed. This did not fully explain the relationship and activity of the Triune God, and how the Triune God is mutually intrinsic with humans and accomplishes economic ministry in human lives. However, Vanhoozer’s trinitarian interpretive approach through the SAT is considered to have contributed greatly to explaining the ministry, interpretation and ecclesiology of the Triune God. Thus, how can we interpret the Triune God (from the point of view of communicative action) and how can that interpretation relate to the church as interpreter? And how does that interpretation reveal the work of the Trinity in believers lives now, and can the church fulfil its mission as an interpreter and agent of the communication actions of the Triune God?

When we say something, the SAT accompanies a specific action, which is a communication action between the speaker and the listener and asserts that the listener interprets the speaker’s intention and responds to the speaker’s words. What makes this possible is the performance of language, and in the SAT, the performance of language is classified into locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act (Austin 1975:94–101). A locutionary act is a simple speech act, an illocutionary act is actual meaning and fulfils the intention of a locutionary act. And a perlocutionary act is the result of an illocutionary act. In the SAT, the performance of language is classified into three categories, but these speech acts cannot be divided from each other within the perspective of communication behaviour; they cooperate and indwell each other to form a complete verbal behaviour. Each of them maintains the characteristics of language and realises communication behaviour with diversity according to the performance of language within the unity of ‘one speech act’.

Vanhoozer (1994:177) puts three performance languages into the existence of the Trinity, in the analogy of speech acts. He distinguishes between the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity and expresses the existence of the Triune God through the SAT as an economic Trinity. Vanhoozer’s discussion (1998:126) presupposes that traditional Christian doctrine is essentially a confession of trust in God that communicates with others in the form of a Trinity, God’s work of salvation, and that God is a person who interprets God’ self. He argues that the Trinity of God is a trinitarian communication act of God’s ‘self-revelation’, ‘self-transmission and ‘self-interpretation’. Barth (1975:299) argued that the Triune God appears as ‘The Revealer (Father), The Revelation (Son), and The Revealedness (Holy Spirit)’. Vanhoozer (1998:199) agrees with him and expresses it as follows in the SAT. ‘The Triune God is communicative agent (Father or author), action (Word or text), and result (Spirit or power of reception)’ or ‘speaker (Father), Word (Son), and reception (Spirit)’. God the Father is locutionary act as a speaker and revelator who proclaims the Word and reveals God’s will. God the Son is illocutionary act that performs the content of the locutionary act. God the Holy Spirit is related to the perlocutionary act, in which the meaning of God the Son has a specific effect on the believer. This is the power of the Holy Spirit to make the communication act of the Triune God effective, and it is the result of the illocutionary act (Vanhoozer 1998:456). Vanhoozer’s assertion is that the trine God perform mutual self-communicative actions. The Trinity is the one who reveals and speaks the Word to humans (the Father), the one who embodies (the Son) and the one who completes (the Holy Spirit). Therefore, God the Trinity performs self-communicative actions in the form of the economic Trinity in humans and in the world (Vanhoozer 2002:168).

According to Vanhoozer, the Triune God communicate with each other, form relationships with and interact with God’s people and carry out God’s work of salvation together. Through the Holy Spirit who fulfils the Word in the lives of the Father, who is the Word, the Son who carries out the Word and the believer, the believer can communicate with the Triune God, unite and know the will of God to live the life of the Word. Vanhoozer’s (1998:206) discussion presupposes the ‘design plan’ that God created human beings but created them with linguistic functions to communicate with and understand each other. Namely, the existence and relationship of the Triune God is revealed through the act of communication with human beings and divine acts. The communication behaviour of the Triune God is interpreted by God-word (Bible)-interpreter (believers, church) communicating and interpreting in a reciprocal relationship with each other forming a perichoresis (Vanhoozer 1998:206–208). Stated differently, when the relationship of God-word-interpreter (church) is united in a Trinity based on mutual trust, a complete act of communication is made and God’s will is revealed and fulfilled through the interpreter, the church. In summary, God the Father reveals God’s plan for the church community and the world, God the Son acts as a Redeemer by carrying out the contents of the revelation and God the Holy Spirit acts as the perfector of the divine plan in the believer and the church community (Vanhoozer 2005:35). In other words, in the church as a trinitarian interpretive community, a whole speech act is achieved when the speech act of the Trinity is carried out as a communication act within the ecclesial community. This is because the communication act of God is the transmission of the perichoresis of the Triune God and the invitation and unity therein, so the church as a Triune interpretive community naturally participates in the communication act of the Triune God (Vanhoozer 2005:38–68). Therefore, the church community lives as an interpretive community by interpreting the speech acts (communications) of the Trinity and lives the life of practising the Word of the Triune God.

Ontological-relational perspective of the interpretation of Trinity and church community

In general, the Trinity is divided into an immanent Trinity and an economic Trinity. The immanent Trinity refers to the inner relationships within the Trinity. On the other hand, the economic Trinity refers to the creation and salvation work of the Triune God (Rahner 1970:21). The distinction between the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity does not achieve the unification of the epistemological (revelatory), ontological and relational perspectives of the interpretation of the Trinity. There was a theological limitation that could not deal with the existence, relationship and activity of the Triune God and the mystery of Perichoresis together. Of course, there is a point of view that does not distinguish between the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity but looks at it as one unity but has not overcome the theological limitations mentioned above (Sanders 2001:177). This is a linguistic problem about theological statements rather than the absence of theological insight. Usually theological statements require propositional statements, while theology requires empirical statements by including the experience of faith and the mystery of God. However, because of the nature of the study, propositional statements are preferred over empirical statements, and propositional statements and empirical statements cannot be described together. Thus, the recognition of faith (revelation) and experience cannot be explained without separating them. In my opinion, the greatest benefit of the theological insight and interpretation of the SAT is that propositional statements and empirical statements are not separated and described together so that mysteries, and theological implications can be discovered and explained. Despite the benefits of the SAT, the interpretation of the Trinity as stated by Vanhoozer distinguishes between the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity. It has a limitation that has not properly explained the unity of the epistemological, ontological, relational perspective of trinitarian interpretation. This did not explain the relationship between the work of the Triune God and the church community in a dynamic and three-dimensional way. The working of God is the existence that is revealed through the church community and the life that fulfils the work of salvation.

Vanhoozer (2002:228–230) argues that the SAT can better understand Barth’s revelational trinitarianism from Barth’s expression of the Triune God as The Revealer (the Father), The Revelation (the Son) and The Revealedness (Holy Spirit). The Trinity God is the one who speaks (locutionary act: the Father), the one who practices them as they are (illocutionary act: the Son) and the one who fulfils them in the lives of God’s people (perlocutionary: the Holy Spirit). This shows that the immanent Trinity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit corresponds to the creation and redemptive work of the economic Trinity. Thus, in the SAT, the work of salvation and creation of the Triune God (the economic Triune) corresponds to the immanent self-communication of the Triune God. Vanhoozer (2010:293–294) believes that the way of communication of God reveals God’s intrinsic relationship, and the economic Trinity conveys the immanent Trinity to the world. He interprets God’s communication behaviour as realisation in the immanent Trinity and as actualisation in the economical Trinity. Realisation means the intrinsic reality of the Trinity, and actualisation means the economic work of the Triune God (Vanhoozer 2010:295). Vanhoozer argues for an economical Trinity in which each member of the Triune Gods acts as a communicator, communicate and cooperating with each other to achieve the work of salvation. Just as the act of self-communication of God (immanent Trinity) is the act of communication (economic Trinity) in relationship with the world (the other), the existence of God (immanent Trinity) and the working (economic Trinity) are seen in relation to the other. His view describes the Triune God, the Bible (the medium of communication) and the church. That is, when the church participates in the communication act of the Trinity, the economy of God is revealed and fulfilled through the church.

At first glance, Vanhoozer’s view seems to be dealing with a revelatory, ontological and relational view of interpretation in the relationship between the Triune God and the church, but this is not sufficient. From the point of view of communication behaviour, Vanhoozer could not explain that the SAT is a unity of epistemological ontological relational interpretation. This is because in the case of the sum of epistemological, ontological and relational interpretations, the implicit Trinity and the economic Trinity cannot be separated. From the point of view of SAT, communication actors and participants cannot be separated. In addition, when responding from a trinitarian perspective, each communication behaviour of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit cannot be separated and is regarded as a single communication activity. If so, let us take a closer look at this through the methodology of SAT.

In conclusion, if we re-examine the Trinity theory through the SAT, we can find a form of unity in which the epistemological-ontological-relational perspectives of the Trinity interpretation are not separated from each other. This form of trinitarianism appears as the unity of the immanent and economic Trinity, God working in the church community. To examine the Trinity theory through the SAT, it is necessary to base it on the text of the Bible that reveals the words and actions of the Triune God. However, as the expression of the ‘Triune God’ cannot be found in the Bible, it is assumed that God is Triune, and we will briefly examine it through the words of 1 John 3:23–24. The SAT asserts that language is an action, and the act of communication becomes an action through propositional expression of language and the performance of language becomes a real. Thus, the content of language (propositional expression, p) and the power to perform language (F) are regarded as meaning (interpretation) of language and formulated as F (p) (Searle 1971:39). If we express the words of 1 John 3:23–24⁵ as F(p), it can be described as ‘Jesus is the Holy Spirit God (p), love one another (F)’. The perception of ‘Jesus is God the Holy Spirit’ (p) shows all aspects of the ‘revelation-ontology’ of the Trinity. This is because verbal act is not a simple description, but a real language event. Therefore, the propositional expression of ‘Jesus is the Holy Spirit’ includes who the Triune God is, what attributes and nature he has, what he did, why he did it and what he would do. In other words, the existence and reality of the Triune God are revealed.

Therefore, how can we explain the relational aspect of the Triune God? In ‘Jesus is the Holy Spirit God (p), love each other (F)’, ‘love one another’ (F) is God’s command (word) required of those who know and believe (p) that Jesus is God the Holy Spirit. To those who do not believe in Jesus as God the Holy Spirit, these words have no influence. Thus, in order to the communication act of God to become a reality, a personal relationship⁶ between the Triune God and the believer (church) must be established. Also, if we describe the words of 1 John 3:23–24 as a communication act F(p) where the proposition of cognition (p) and the force to do it (F) meet, it can express that ‘Jesus is God the Holy Spirit! My Lord! I am a Christian’. Recognition (p) and action (F) of God make the act of communication. This is an event of faith and an experience of faith. These verbal events are the determination and will to meet God personally and confess that He is my Lord, to accept His existence into my existence (to enter a relationship) and to participate in His communication activities to live a Christian life. The communication behaviour made in the speech act F(p) becomes real through cooperation and participation. Such an act of communication shows that the Triune God (immanent Trinity) as revealed in the Bible through our interpretative communication with the Triune God is then revealed to the world through us (economic Trinity) and that God will do what God says God will do.

A hermeneutical community implementing the speech act of the Triune God

The immanent speech act of the Trinity constitutes an economic speech act in the life of a believer. The unity of the epistemological, ontological and relational aspects of the trinitarian interpretation brings the dynamic salvation work of the Triune God and the church community, the people of God, to participate in the verbal acts of the Triune God. Thus, what does the church community look like? In conclusion, the church appears as a Triune church, an interpretive community that achieves the speech act of the Triune God. Here, the Triune church means that the Triune God and the church implement a complete communication behaviour with each other, and the trio of the Triune God, the Bible (mediated) and the church are united. When the Triune God and the ecclesial community achieve full communication behaviour, the church becomes an interpretive community that interprets and puts into practice the speech acts of the Triune God. Vanhoozer (2019:221) emphasises the importance of ecclesial community, saying that disciples are gathered to represent Christ in their own time and place, and that community is necessary to represent Christ (the Triune God). The church’s representation of Christ means to properly understand and interpret the verbal actions of the Triune God (Christ) and to put into practice what the church interprets. This is an event of faith and a language event in which the mystery of the perichoresis of the Triune God takes place within the church community.

The Church as a trinitarian interpretive community of Vanhoozer has its significance in allowing us to experience the working and mystery of the Trinity on earth and to follow the Triune God. However, if Vanhoozer’s argument is complemented by the concept and application of perichoresis through insight into the modern Trinitarian theory and the SAT, the church could be explained as a more practical interpretive community. The mystery of the verbal act of the Triune God lies in the immanent Trinity and the perichoresis appearing in the economic Trinity that works in the life of the believer. This is because the mystery of the Triune God’s perichoresis and God’s perichoresis indwelling the believer allows us to communicate with the Triune God and to live following to the word of the Triune God.

From the point of view of SAT, perichoresis is related to Evans’ God’s self-involving activity (Evans 1963). God’s self-involving activity refers to God’s verbal act, that is, God’s performing act. God in the Bible does not reveal God’s self as a propositional description but does a self-involving activity that voluntarily performs the content. In this sense, the Triune God interacts and cooperates (perichoresis) and executes self-involving commitments that indwell the believer to carry out the verbal acts of the Triune God. The speech acts of the Trinity in the Bible move God’s people to participate, and God fulfils God’s verbal acts in the life of the believer by taking responsibility and duty for God’s speech acts and making promises to God’s people. For example, in 1 John 4:16–21, ‘God is love (p) love one another (F)’, the word of the Triune God’s verbal act, can be expressed in the language of promise as ‘I am love (p) I will make you love one another’. This indicates that the speech act of the Triune God is faithfully carried out in the church community who fully participates in the speech act of the God. In other words, the perichoresis in the verbal act of the Triune God appears intact in the church community, and the Triune God indwells and unites with the church community and works with us so that the members of the church can love each other. The perichoresis of the Triune God is a mystery that fulfils the verbal act of the Trinity in the lives of believers. This is the driving force and power that enables us to know the will of the Triune God and live according to the will of God because of God’s self-involving activity. In other words, the Triune God’s perichoresis realises the Triune God’s speech acts on earth in a reciprocal relationship with the church community.

The practical meaning of the church as a Triune interpretive community that achieves the verbal act of the God is that in the unity of the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity, the mystery of the Trinity, perichoresis, appears in the church community. It is interpreted, practised and applied in our lives. Beeley (2008:150) said that limited human language, by the nature of the Trinity, does not reach its goal, and that only when we fully participate in the Trinity can it be said that the purpose of Trinitarianism has been achieved. This implies that understanding and interpreting the Trinity responds to the speech acts of the Triune God and that our lives are transformed and reformed as Christians in the world. Thus, we must strive to be light and salt in the relationship with the world and society as Christians in unity and communication with the Triune God. As Boff (2000:xiv) argues, we believe in the eternal interrelationship of the Trinity and the infinite perichoresis, so we must live a life that reflects and resembles the Triune God in social relations. For Boff, Perichoresis is an intimate unity, a style that exists entirely within each other and is an exchange and communication of attributes. Thus, the term Boff’s perichoresis is used in contemporary Trinitarian theology as a concept to express an attitude of inclusion, respecting and accepting unity, equality and difference. This is the basis for resolving the pain caused by the gap between the rich and the poor, social problems, race and class conflict (Boff 1998:131–132). Therefore, the mystery of the unity of perichoresis, shown through the verbal actions of God and the church from the point of view of the SAT, is that the church reflects the life of the Triune God and practices love for the world and others as a trinitarian interpretive community. This will contribute to establishing a church that practices love for the world and others as a trinitarian interpretive community.

Conclusion

So far, we have looked at the church as a trinitarian interpretive community through the insights of Vanhoozer and the SAT. Through the act of communication with the Triune God, the church presents guidelines and directions for the life of the church community by interpreting and confessing faith in the Triune God. Through the SAT, Vanhoozer consistently explained that the church should accept the Bible (language, text) as a communication act of the Triune God and interpret the Trinity in it, and that the church should live a life representing the Triune God. His insight into the church as a trinitarian interpretive community through the SAT provided valuable theological insight into the mystery (perichoresis) and activity of the Triune God at work through the church. However, from the viewpoint of the SAT, there is a need to revise and supplement his discussion, so this article attempted to re-examine the church as a trinitarian interpretive community with the SAT.

When we explore the Triune God and the church community through the insight of SAT, we find that the epistemological (revelational), ontological and relational perspective of the Triune God is united by not separating the immanent Trinity from the economic Trinity. Also, through the unity of the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity, the theory of Trinity as a communicator was explained through the communication of perichoresis and the perichoresis of the Trinity God in the church community, relations and activities. Finally, the church as a trinitarian interpretive community of Vanhoozer was supplemented with the concept and application of perichoresis through the insights of the modern trinitarian theory and SAT, suggesting a more practical interpretive community.

The interpretive examination through the relationship between God and the church community is to explore the existence and conduct of the Triune God and the church community. This made it possible to study how the Trinity appears in the church and how the ecclesial community lives a life that fulfils the will of the Triune God. From the point of view of the SAT, the mystery of the Triune God’s perichoresis will contribute to establishing a church that reflects the life of the Triune God and practices love for the world and others as a Triune interpretive community.

Acknowledgements

A big ‘Thank You’ goes to my beloved husband Seongil Kwon, who is my best friend and my unchanging supporter for his moral support and love.

The author declares that no financial or personal relationships inappropriately influenced the writing of this article.

A.C. is the sole author of this research article.

This article followed all ethical standards for carrying out research without direct contact with human or animal subjects.

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and are the product of professional research. It does not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated institution, funder, agency, or that of the publisher. The author is responsible for this article’s results, findings, and content.

References

Footnotes

1. The church referred to in this article contains the concept of believer and community together. Because the church is a community of believers.

2. In this article, communication behaviour and speech act are synonymous. This is because speech act and communication behaviour are essentially the same in the SAT.

3. I understand the core ideas and arguments of Vanhoozer’s theology of drama, but I am not entirely satisfied with the arguments given by him, which is explained by substituting the communication behaviour of the Triune God as an analogy to the drama. The core of this thesis is the church as an interpretive community through the communication action of the Triune God, so it is to examine the communication action of the Triune God and the church, not the theology of drama in Vanhoozer.

4. As there are various papers on the concept and methodology of the SAT, this article will briefly explain only the basic things necessary for discussion about the concept and methodology of the SAT.

5. ‘And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit, he gave us’.

6. This relationship is a personal relationship with God who has experienced regeneration.