Everything in existence has some point of unity with every other thing. Every thing in existence has some point of distinction from everything else. Unity and distinction form the structure of reality, and it is so because that is the ontological essence of God and the way he has made all things. This enlightens us about all aspects of reality as we try to understand relationships. The examination of the biblical data in their salvation-historical progression leads us to concerns about the relationship of the parts to the whole, including the relationship of the OT to the NT. Unity and distinction, along with their perichoretic relationship, also points us to the relationship of biblical, systematic, and historical theology.
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For you hardcore theology nerds out there, an excerpt from this article by Graeme Goldsworthy over at Beginning with Moses.
The article is a response to Carl Trueman's article, which somewhat blames the dominance(?) of biblical theology for the paucity of doctrine in protestant churches.
The payoff, however, isn't so much in their discussion of that issue, but in the helpfulness of Graeme's thinking. He suggests that in theological discussion, thinking of balance between issues such as God's sovereignty and human responsibility is unhelpful. He suggests that unity and distinction are better categories to use.
I haven't just quoted it because it's saying what I've been saying for a bit, but because I think the whole paradigm of thinking that he uses is so much more helpful than the alternatives.
To return to the Trinity, perichoresis is a term used to describe the fact that we cannot assert the unity of God without also asserting the distinctions of the persons of the Godhead. Thus, Christian theism is neither a modalistic-monistic theism, nor a co-operative tritheism. In the words of Cornelius Van Til, unity and distinction are equally ultimate. I would add that to assert equal ultimacy is not served by balance as well as it is by coinherence or perichoresis. We can see the ravages of balance when we look at the Trinitarian and Christological heresies that led to so much systematic formulation in the early church. Balance suggests an interchangability that, in the end, produces modalism. The insight of the Council of Chalcedon in 451 was that, in the matter of the two natures of Christ, balance does not suffice. It was the nature of heresy to try to balance the two natures. Both Ebionism and Docetism said balance could never be achieved under any circumstances and, therefore, one or other nature had to be eliminated. Apollinarianism attempted to balance by removing the spirit of man from Jesus so that the Spirit of God had somewhere to fit in. The ultimate balancing act was Nestorianism, which asserted that the two natures of Jesus could only mean that he was also two people 'glued together' (as it were).
The Christian theistic understanding of the ontological Trinity, then, directs us to the way ahead in the question of all relationships.
As it is in the Trinity, says Graeme, so it is in all of reality. Unity and Distinction.