Theol. [ad. med.L. circumincēssiōn-em, lit. ‘going round,’ f. CIRCUM- round + incēdĕre to move, proceed, go. Introduced as a translation of Gr. περιχώρησις (lit. ‘circuition, rotation’) as employed by Damascenus (8th c.) in his explication of the text ‘I am in the Father, and the Father in me,’ it became a standard term of scholastic theology. The difficulty of getting the sense in which the term thus came to be used, out of the literal ‘going round,’ led in later times to its frequent alteration to circuminsession, as if = ‘an insitting or indwelling (insessio) in rotation or reciprocally’: see β.]
1644. Digby, Nat. Bodies (1657), 143. Who can look upon … the incomprehensible circumincession … reserved for Angels eyes?
1656. Blount, Glossogr., Circumincession (from circum and incedo), a going or walking round about; As it is used among Divines it signifies the reciprocal being of the persons of the blessed Trinity in each other.
a. 1716. South, Serm. (1717), IV. 318. These men … have by their Modalities, Suppositalities, Circumincessions, and twenty such other Chimeras, so misrepresented this … Article of the Trinity to men’s reason.
1751. Chambers, Cycl., Circumincession, in theology, a tern whereby the schoolmen use to express the existence of three divine persons in one another, in the mystery of the trinity.
1873. F. Hall, Mod. English, 38. A callow student of theology confesses that he is fairly gravelled by the hypostatic circumincession.
β. written circuminsession.
1678. Cudworth, Intell. Syst., I. iv. 590. These Platonists … attribute to their Three Divine Hypostases, just such an ἐμπεριχώρησις, Circuminsession, or mutual In-being, as Christians do.
1697. State Philadelph. Soc., 19. A mutual Inhabitation, or Circuminsession, of Christ and the Soul.
1721. Bailey, Circuminsession [1731–1800 Circumincession].
1887. H. S. Bowden, trans. Hettinger’s Dante, 258. The bliss of the Divinity consists in the everlasting circuminsession of the Father in the Son, of the Son in the Father, of Both in the Holy Ghost.
