Abstract

For centuries in the Christian era in the West, rhetoric was considered to be a pagan art, one unnecessary for, and detrimental to, religious propagation. As the Christian era gave way to a scientific one during the Enlightenment, both rhetoric and religion were considered irrational and outside the scope of Cartesian certainty. In recent decades, though, rhetorical studies have regained status in universities and rhetorical studies of religion have proliferated. Much work remains to be done, however. For example, Western rhetorical models do not typically consider religious tenets or creeds in terms of what this article will call rhetorical relationality, because creeds and tenets of Western Christianity tend to be purely exhortative. In the West, then, we lack a framework for such an analysis, but with the Four Tenets of Daesoon Jinrihoe, we are presented with Tenets that can, in fact, be analyzed relationally. In order to analyze them as such, this article draws upon philosophical, legal, and rhetorical frameworks developed by major twentieth- century rhetorician Chaim Perelman to understand the primary concern of mutuality expressed in contemporary rhetorical relationality.