Impact on Topics

“He is a friend of God.” That is about the best thing a person can say about someone. In the mouth of God himself, Isaiah says, “Abraham my friend” (Isaiah 41:8; cp. James 2:23; 2 Chronicles 20:7). In scripture, friendship implies several things about relationship to God. Jesus tells us what he is doing: revelation (John 15:15); so friends better describes us than slaves or servants does. Besides, he cares about us—a lot, enough even to die voluntarily an excruciating death for us (John 15:13-15; Romans 5:6-8, etc.). That implies doing for us whatever else we really need and cannot do for ourselves; that is what a friend does (Romans 8:32; 1 John 3:17). Friendship with God separates us from people that are at cross purposes with him: “Friendship with the world is enmity with God” (James 4:4; 1 John 2:15); so we have the same values and purposes that he does. Experience tells us what ideal friendship is like and how it operates.

            Interpersonalism characterizes the defense of the Christian faith in three ways. First is its need-answer-use that persons have for what Christianity offers. Apologetics—the defense of the faith—takes place in a reciprocating pattern around three poles: (1) a person’s present sense of need, (2) the conceptual and past historical basis for answering that need, and (3) the present verification through experience of the behavioral and existential correlates in that answer. The verification by experience can come back around to qualify present perception of need and to assist in the awareness of what scripture means by what it says. The process incorporates a need-answer-use triangular format that can move back and forth as well as begin at any one of the three poles.

The material realm does not stand in opposition to the spiritual realm but in subordination to it. That arrangement can be the case because the material realm derived by creation from the spiritual, or personal, one. Our bodies, then, stand in a subordinate relation to ourselves/spirits/personhood as the creation does to God.

             As a matter of standard procedure, baptism is an act of personal identification with Jesus Christ, which means commitment to his lordship, values, and purposes. In consequence of that identity with Christ, God forgives sin, gives his Spirit, and adds us to the body of Christ.

This presentation proposes a way to help fulfill two responsibilities that we tend to put in tension with one another: our responsibility for representing Christian truth and our responsibility for facilitating Christian unity. The proposal stems from believing that interpersonalism prioritizes what naturally occupies central place in Christianity. We can draw on that observation to help us in the quest for unity in Christ.

This article encourages using interpersonal principles in the quest for Christian unity.¹ We are reflecting on the role of attitude in creating an atmosphere for conflict resolution in the body of Christ today.

I. The Importance of Christian Unity

              As with any ritual or formal act, the Lord’s Supper means for us only what we mean into it. The bread and the grape juice are transformed in our minds into the body and the blood of the Lord. The elements represent rather than are. “This is my body” uses “is” in the way a new grandfather does when he pulls a snapshot out of his wallet and says, “This is my grandson.”

            Interpersonalism shows how people can befriend people they disagree with without feeling that they are compromising convictions in doing so. Accepting persons transcends approving of their ideas or even their deeds in some cases. Presence is not approval. So, interpersonal considerations provide a format for conflict resolution. We have to relate to people to have any influence on them, and we can do that on the basis of their potential for change. This approach underlies God’s effort at the reconciliation process (salvation).

Scripture makes clear that Jesus the Messiah possessed deity in the distinctive, ontological sense. From the standpoint of theory, it may not contradict the salvation enterprise for us not to understand that fact fully or with complete accuracy. His sinlessness relative to God’s will for him in the flesh appears to be the essential element for salvation purposes. It would be best, then, not to regard as “enemies of Christ” those who misperceive him as the first created being (who created everything else, Colossians 1:15-16) yet affirm his sinlessness and everything scripture says about him.

Interpersonalism puts the personal ahead of the impersonal. Person and personal aspects like mind, will, emotion, and conscience do not arise epiphenomenally from the impersonal, but by virtue of mind operating through will, the personal creates the impersonal (Genesis 1:1-5ff) and orders it (Genesis 1:26-31; 2:7-15). The personal is eternal, but the impersonal has beginning and end.

We walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7). Faith and sight are two ways to know. Sight means knowledge by direct perception; faith is knowledge through the testimony of other people. We know about the past, the future, the distant, and the invisible only by testimony, if at all. In short, most knowledge comes from revelation either by God or some other person. In either case, it is interpersonal—by faith.

Under the (inter)personal worldview, there is eschatology because the future is going somewhere intentional. Predestination guarantees the meaningfulness of history by providing destiny. The possibility of making all things new contrasts with the myth of eternal returns, the cyclical view of history. A creating God who originates by willing can bring about the truly new. The future is not limited to the possibilities of the past, nor is the future sheer eventuation; the future is foreordained by a Person who chooses destinies. There is more to tomorrow than one experience leading to the next.

            I. Ethics, morality, and goodness pertain to behavior in personal relationships.

I.   Objects of Evangelism (See also comments on the scope of salvation under interpersonalism essay “Salvation.”)

The Priority of Interpersonal over Formal Matters

1. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27; cp. Exodus 23:12d; Deuteronomy 5:14c)

Faith belongs to the interpersonal circumstance because it is something one person puts in another person. Faith trusts in another. Scripture applies the faith principle to two areas: salvation (consequences) and knowledge (information). In both applications a second person stands in the gap (a) between the doer and the result and (b) between the learner and what’s learned. Habakkuk 2:4 serves as the gateway into the whole Christian system: “The just will live by faith/trust.”

Freedom means moving in accordance with reality. Freedom is not detachment from everything; that would be lostness. It means moving in conformity with what is there. The interpersonal connection lies in acknowledging the presence of God and other persons and in living with them instead of striving after an unreal individualism. Fulfillment comes from association; people must live in conformity with the fact that they are persons designed for relationship with persons. A certain amount of individual limitation is necessary to be free because other reality exists. Proper relationship to God sets the stage for proper relationship to everything else. Divine fellowship sets the stage for objective freedom.

Interpersonalism applies to the ultimate frame of reference in that deity forms a three-person unity. In philosophy, “God” refers to ultimate reality. In scripture, this reality is personal because he is counselor who has no counselor (Psalm 11:3-4), his pleasure is what measures all doing, and his glory is the effect of everything that happens (Ephesians 1:11; Psalm 19:1). Interpersonalism represents the most complex form of existence. It stands to reason that if it exists in the created realm, it should be present in what originated everything in the created realm. The stream, we say, cannot rise above its source. The most inclusive understanding of God is at the “corporate,” or triune, level. The traditional doctrine of trinity combines into one concept unity, diversity, equality, and order and puts it before all other reality. Note the title The Eternal We, by Harold J. Green (Chicago, Ill.: Loyola University Press, 1987). Trinity is not just any kind of threeness-in-oneness; it is an interpersonal threeness-in-oneness.

Divine guidance takes place with people; hence, it includes choices, thinking, feelings, and other personal factors with both God and people. God does not make all our choices for us; he treats us like friends more than like slaves. Pushing the idea that God has a special plan for each person may be nothing more than (1) the old self-centeredness in religious garb; self-centeredness is not interpersonal. (2) It may be a kind of laziness, because people do not want to put out significant effort in deciding or taking responsibility for their decisions. Submitting to God does not mean being submissive. “Super-spirituality” is not interpersonal spirituality.

Interpersonalism establishes a theological method. Interpersonalism impacts hermeneutics by establishing a programmatic for interpreting the Bible. What does not deduce from interpersonalism must be firmly established by primary proof. Primary proof is the kind of proof that requires one conclusion, while secondary evidence confirms what comes from primary. Primary proof that does not arise from the nature of the case (interpersonalism ultimately) must rest on positive commandment rather than moral law, because moral law refers to what comes from the nature of the case. Interpersonalism establishes what is to be regarded a priori as central. It becomes a way of shouldering appropriately the positive burden of proof on many issues. Interpersonalism calls for doing theology in the interpersonal mode because it goes on in an interpersonal context.

  I. The gift of the Spirit is first of all an interpersonal relationship.

Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are performative acts, acts by which the performer “says something.” Their meaning comes from what we mean into them; otherwise, they have no meaning. That indicates that they are not rituals done to us by which grace comes to us automatically by virtue of the ritual itself somehow or by virtue of the legitimized authority of the administrator. There is value that comes on us, but it comes on us from God on the prior condition of our commitment to him as communicated by the performative act.

Interpersonalism integrates with the “mystery of God” because (a) the mystery factor is highest in the interpersonal categories. That is so because the other categories—nature, law, and logic—are deterministic; but persons, especially persons in relationship, are not fully predictable since they have rationality, creativity, and free will on both sides of the relationship.

Interpersonalism serves as a general criterion for deciding what is part of the faith. It is the touchstone for distinguishing “gospel from culture” and truth from preference.

Interpersonalism serves as a criterion for arranging things from central to less central within what is actually true about the Christian faith. The value of this observation lies in helping us decide what to emphasize in introducing someone to Christ (evangelism) and in arranging the sequence of virtues and duties in the process of sanctification.

1. Peace that passes understanding: Philippians 4:7

2. I am the way, the truth, and the life [truth is personal]

Language often develops its vocabulary relative to the personal-impersonal distinction. We see that in English, although it may be difficult to get a feel for how widespread or universal it is in languages generally. One example is “educate,” a word that would not likely be used for training an animal to do tricks; “train” would be the more likely word..

In 2 Corinthians 3:6 Paul declares that the “letter” kills, but the spirit gives life. His point appears to be that the absoluteness and inflexibility of law stifles and destroys persons in operation, especially in relation with each other. It drives people away even as the Israelites turned away from the glow on Moses’ face. The “spirit,” or purpose, of the Law corresponds with the Person who gave it. “Cutting someone a little slack” is a liberating experience. On this usage of “spirit,” compare John 1:17; 4:23; Romans 7:6; Galatians 3-4. Spirit appears to mean personal and interpersonal in contrast to letter.

Law and personal relationship do not have a (1) part-to-whole relationship. Legal process does not represent a secondary operation inside of interpersonal operation. Grace-faith does not function inside of law, and law does not provide mechanisms inside of interpersonalism. In Pauline terms, works are not part of the grace-faith-promise-spirit system. Likewise, legality and interpersonalism are not (2) parts of a common larger operation.1 Legal works do not supplement or combine with interpersonal actions in bringing about the interpersonal consequences needed by estranged persons. Legal operations are foreign to interpersonal process. The two systems are parallel, alternative, and mutually exclusive.2 If something is of law, it is no longer of faith (Galatians 2:12); if it is legal, it is not interpersonal. If it is of grace, it is no more of works (Romans 11:6). If inheritance is of law, faith is void and promise is of no effect (Romans 4:14). Grace, faith, and promise are aspects of interpersonal operation in contrast to works and debt, which belong to legal process (Romans 4:13-16; cp. Galatians 3:18). God has not established procedures for persons to go through to get salvation; he has given them a Person to identify with and commit to in order to receive it.

            Leading takes place in the interpersonal circumstance and has the purpose of helping people grow in their social skills necessary for getting the job done. Leadership is gained and exercised by interpersonal means. In the church, leadership does not come by heredity, force, being “pushy,” or by shortcutting, “riding in on another person’s shirt tail,” or bypassing lesser roles through formal education. People do not become leaders because they refuse to be involved otherwise—the “won’t-work-so-let-lead” syndrome.

Both vertical and horizontal relationships have the same interpersonal character. Experiencing the horizontal helps us understand the vertical; understanding the vertical motivates us to do the horizontal. In both directions, love is the characterizing feature. It includes most aspects of interpersonal associations and originates so many of the virtues involved in them.

  I. Among the several things we can do to manage our emotions, we can tap into vertical interpersonal resources through prayer and Bible reading.

 I. Interpersonalism applies first to mankind as an explanation of God’s purpose.

            Marriage is a specialized interpersonal relationship. Whatever we know about personal associations in general applies most crucially to matrimony. The products of love and the ways of expressing and developing it apply to marriage more than anywhere else because of the intensity and all-inclusiveness of that relationship. Marriage is primarily interpersonal with added distinctives.

Meaning addresses the connection between things. The meaning of a word refers to its connection with its referent—what it refers to. The meaning of a part in a system refers to the purpose it fulfills in connection with the rest of the parts that form the whole. Connectivity is the essence of the theory of meaning. Now to apply it to persons in relationship.

            If interpersonalism characterizes the Christian worldview, it follows that any deviation in its formulation is likely some departure from personal relationship as its most basic, central, decisive feature. It is instructive to survey the history of the church to see how it has departed. The departures have been into one of the other major categories or some combination of them, a prioritizing of something else over interpersonalism, or a reduction from the full set of factors in interpersonalism.

            Parenting takes place first by interpersonal means. It is on top of interpersonal process that any authority comes, and that authority is bounded in its application by the distinctive purposes at work in this special setting for interpersonal process. The interpersonal circumstance sets the attitude parents take toward their children. Children are smaller but not less. If love is the medium of interpersonal relationships, love becomes the medium for parenting. The means and manner of parenting are primarily interpersonal influence instead of physical force, intimidation, authoritative control, manipulation, and the like. One of the main means of interpersonal influence is modeling what we want to teach, commend, command, and so on.

            Christian growth (sanctification) relates to perseverance in Christ because continued growth safeguards against apostasy. The writer of Hebrews suggests interpersonal activity as a way to persevere. He speaks of fellowship with the faithful, imitation of the faithful, and service to all mankind (chs. 10-13).

 I. Prayer as interpersonal activity establishes the elements of prayer.

            Much of what applies to evangelism applies to preaching. Evangelism addresses the gospel to non-believers. Preaching addresses the gospel to believers by and large since most often the term describes teaching and exhortation in the gathered community of Christians. Evangelism tends to think of itself as cross-cultural; preaching usually addresses people in the same culture. Interpersonalism calls us to remember that preaching is communication to people; so it is not oratory, which emphasizes the form of delivery. It is also not recitation, which highlights the verbalizing of information and gives the impression that it does not come from the heart, that a person is saying words into the air rather than speaking into the listeners. It is not “heart to heart” talk. Reciters are performers; they are “saying their piece.” 

            Psychological strength comes from friendship. We often reference psychological strength to inner factors because it contrasts with outer flux; we can experience “inner peace” even during unstable circumstances. But psychological strength is not so much inner peace amidst outer chaos as it is “inter” strength from other persons. Our inner stability came from someone else. Furthermore, psychological strength ties to personhood in our commitment to an ever-present, immutable God and to others in relationship with us through him--fellowship. Strength persists in the face of destruction because of one person’s concern to help others by doing what may relieve them, save them, and give them peace, power, and joy.

  I. Revelation is interpersonal in that it is from one Person to another.

The Problem

         The possibility of spiritual growth (sanctification) comes from the nature of interpersonal process. Under the perfection demand of law, becoming perfect cannot occur after perfection is broken. But salvation before God deals with restoring a personal relationship, which means that development toward maturity can substitute for having already achieved it and always having to keep it. We can deal with each other directionally (growth) rather than positionally (perfection) because repentance-forgiveness can make up the difference between performance and perfection. That fact is part of Paul’s contrast between faith vs. works.

            Christians sometimes object to good self-image and feeling good about ourselves as somehow bad. The problem comes from an overreaction. To get people to see their need for salvation, Christians sometimes overdo how evil unsaved people are. Furthermore, they seem to think that feeling good about themselves makes God’s salvation unnecessary or it makes them feel them can save themselves. Interpersonalism keeps the balance between responsibility and dependence. We are responsible for responding on our side of the relationship, but our responses on our side of the relationship do not establish the relationship. We depend on the other Person to establish it from the other side—to accept us—because he is the offended party.

Efforts at Christian unity have variously stressed one or more bases: organizational union, common experience, or essential doctrine. Roman Catholicism exemplifies the concern for unity through the church as an institution, which is particularly fitting because Catholic theology conceives of grace as flowing through the church by way of duly ordained clergy: “where the bishop is, there is the church.” Because of the emphasis on tongue speaking, pentecostalism can illustrate the common-experience approach. Erasmus among others advocated a minimum set of essential doctrines as foundational for Christian unity.

            In scripture, “spirit” vs. “flesh” stands for the interpersonal center of life in distinction to an egocentric or ethnocentric one. It is the transcendent vs. the imminent. The terminology evidently came about because flesh takes something into itself to find fulfillment. Persons, however, must give of themselves to find fulfillment. “Flesh” stands for an individualism that fosters a competitive mentality. “Spirit” stands for an interpersonalism that fosters unifying love.

Christian stewardship belongs to the interpersonal system. In relationships, people do not live to themselves or die by themselves even as in marriage the right over one’s body does not lie in the one alone but in the other also (1 Corinthians 7:4). In social relationships, each gives of self for the joy of the others. In that same fashion, God has given of himself in creating, sustaining, and redeeming us. We are not our own; we have been bought for a price, so to speak, so life itself is ours as a stewardship to glorify God with. We give ourselves to the Lord, who first gave himself for us (2 Corinthians 8:5).

                  Will is an aspect of people that links mind, emotion, and action to create what we call “person.” In addition to other factors, personal relationships impact the will, the mind, and the emotions to produce action. Will contrasts from stimulus-response; so we are more than a set of complicated electro-chemical processes. We can decide; we do not have to respond to the strongest environmental stimulus. Since we can decide, we find ourselves living by values more than by drives and stimuli. We are not the determined creatures depicted by Skinnerian behaviorism, but persons created in the image of God.

            Scripture treats the problem of pain like being disciplined by a parent (Hebrews 12:5-11 < Proverbs 3:5). Since a personal, all-powerful, all-knowing God controls the universe, everything that happens here he either initiates or allows. Everything that occurs passes through his omniscience, his will, and his power. We can be confident that the experience will not be more than we can handle (1 Corinthians 10:13).

            Temptation tries to get us to exchange the welfare of everyone for the welfare of self. In so doing, it attempts to call us from an interpersonal to an individualistic frame of reference. Temptation tries to get us to exchange the intangible (personal) for the tangible (material) framework. It tries to get us to exchange the eternal for the temporary and the immediate for the delayed.

I. Theologically the church is an interpersonal system.

            What makes things the way they ought to be and what helps things improve to even better levels is also what corrects what is not the way it should be. The characteristics of interpersonalism give it a problem-solving power for personal problems. Inasmuch as interpersonalism has the full range of characteristics existent in persons and associations between persons, it has the potential for solving all the problems that persons in relationship can have.

Sets the character of doctrines

            Interpersonalism refers to the fundamental character of reality. As such, it is a claim about worldview. Interpersonal refers to the presence of the interpersonal element, but the addition of ism describes the pervasive nature of things. The same goes for legal vs. legalism, for determined vs. determinism, for scientism, and so on. In the latter instance, the word no longer describes an aspect, but characterizes the whole. It becomes that by which a person integrates as much as possible of what belongs to the whole. Only after that exercise does he bring in secondary matters to account for exceptional or practical matters.

            The unevangelized have a frame of reference by which they can approximate God’s intentions for human behavior. They experience relationships with other persons (ethics) and can read from that how broken friendship is overcome (salvation). The “noble pagan” can practice the Golden Rule (The Second Great Commandment) and “grope” after God to find him (Acts 17:27) since deity must be superior and personal (The First Great Commandment). So the unevangelized can be accountable and judged in relation to their limited perspective.

            Isaiah declares that a wayfaring fool need not err in the way of the Lord (35:8). We, being evil, know how to give good gifts to our children (Matthew 7:11 = Luke 11:13). Jesus’ comment is a cue and clue that the way of the Lord is not that hard. At least the basics of revelation we ought to catch onto from personal experience as we “feel after God to find him” because “he is not far from every one of us” (Acts 17:27).

Weaker brother situations come up with people who differ from us. Weaker brother matters deal with issues not wrong in themselves: eating shamble meat (Romans 14; 1 Corinthians 8), practicing vegetarianism, observing holidays (Romans 14:5), drinking wine (Romans 14:21). They are wrong depending on how we look at them and how we do them.

Worship is an interpersonal act in the vertical direction. It requires awareness, imagination, and concentration in contrast to habit or a stimulus-response elicited by form, place, or atmosphere. There is no required posture of the body, just a posture of the heart and mind. There is no necessary location such as one mountain or city (John 4:21). Instead, God wants people to worship him in spirit and truth because he is spirit and truth. Spirit lies inside interpersonalism. It does not require a temple, church building, or prayer room. It does not call for quietness or loudness, stillness or movement.