ABSTRACT

We have argued that loving fellowship is a relationship in which two persons identify with each other by each making the other’s real interests his or her own. In thus serving your interests not merely in the same way that I serve my own, but as being my own, I love you as myself. If all people were to love both God and each other in this way, we would have peace on earth and the Kingdom of God would be with us! Unfortunately this ideal is far from being realized in the broken world in which we live. Because of our finitude and fallibility most people remain forever strangers to us, and even those fellowships which we do achieve in life remain fragile and under the constant threat of estrangement.