I would, of course, align myself with the intersubjective reality camp. And as a rhetorician, I wouldn’t say that God as Audience is Othering Him in the least. Even our ol’ pal Aristotle saw argumentation and persuasion as a joint activity — you speak *with* a listener (rather than “to”).

I’ve recently realized that the “faith community” with whom I’d lived, worked, and ministered for 2 decades had really forgotten that God was participating in their messages at all. They presume not that God is there moving and changing them, but that their position is identical with God’s (so why bother consulting Him at all?). Rhetoric, then, becomes a weapon. “You can’t do such-n-such because that’s not appropriate.” Becoming just like the materialists they scorned in the 1920s, they can’t see the Spiritual. I’m still a little stunned by it all. Deists! They are just Deists!!!

So I am struggling, as a rhetorician, with how to say, “Don’t be so obsessed with the rhetorical!” One way I think I’d say it *now* is to say, “Don’t be so pagan!” But that may be off-putting.

I think you are onto something, here. May we step a bit farther from Burke, and drop “audience” in order to avoid confining God in an Other role?

I would suggest that, if a rhetorical understanding sends us away from “objectivity,” the notion of an arbitrary subjectivity is still folly: even the secular world recognizes the intersubjective construction of “reality”; it would seem the believer in the Creator God fully present in Christ has a vastly expanded “interpretive community” which goes far to remove the quotation marks from reality. And Scripture is true, no matter how many “truths” we wrest from it, breaking them in the process.

think – talk – believe – act

that is kinda how I see it…..

I am actually getting a lot of flac from some people because I am studing theology, and particpating in converstations about it. Their thought is “it is right there in the Bible, just read it and believe it”. I get that, but it is the thinking and discussing and even arguing about what it says that really makes it affect/change me. Does that make sense?

In the most general sense, rhetoric is the use of symbols to influence other people. Aristotle called it a study. Cicero called it a builder of civilizations and culture. Quintillian said an orator was a good person speaking well. Kenneth Burke in the 20th-century said it was a strategic use of ambiguity.

I could go on and on. Essentially, it’s figuring out how talk changes us and how we can best use that skill.