You know, this must be a generational thing, FK. I think the X-generation (is that as in "crossed-out" or "canceled"?) does not speak the same language as the generation before.
If you are using the word "person" and "personal" as human, then God is not personal at all, except through Christ.
In the old days of collect phone calls, you could have a "person-to-person" call, meaning one individual human being to another.
Obviously, you don't mean "personal" to mean "human" because God is not human yet you say God is "personal." In the West, you even call the Hypostases as "Persons" of the Holy Trinity! That in itself is a source of some theological knots, no doubt.
Now you say that you don't use the word "personal" as "private" or "intimate" I suppose (unless you have another definition of that word too!), yet you do use as such it when you say I don't have a personal relationship with all men.
In fact I do, in the manner you use the word: every time I communicate with another human being I am communicating with a person, which makes my communication "personal."
Now, your definition of what is a person also qualifies animals as "persons," as I have already pointed out to you. There is a dictionary definition and then there is a faddish usage of words. If we are going to use the latter, then we will be talking right past each other, as we have on many on occasion, and that in itself is a source of great misunderstanding, and even frustration.
That could be. I actually call myself a "Geezer X-er" since I was born a couple of years after the cutoff for Boomers. :)
If you are using the word "person" and "personal" as human, then God is not personal at all, except through Christ.
Try this from Schaeffer:
Rightly understood, Christianity as a system has the answers to the basic needs of modern man. In this it differs from the new theology, which has no adequate basis upon which to give answers which will stand up to the test of rationality and the whole of life as we must live it.
The first basic need is caused by the lack of certainty regarding the reality of individual personality. Every man is in tension until he finds a satisfactory answer to the problem of who he himself is.
The biblical Christian answer takes us back first to the very beginning of everything and states that personality is intrinsic in what is; not in the pantheistic sense of the universe being the extension of the essence of God (or what is), but that a God who is personal on the high order of Trinity created all else. Within the Trinity, before the creation of anything, there was real love and real communication. Following on from this statement, the Bible states that this God who is personal created man in His own image. A personal God created all things freely in a nondeterminate fashion, and man is created in a special situation - what I would call a special circle of creation. He is the image of this kind of God, and so personality is intrinsic to his makeup. God is personal, and man is also personal.
What he is saying is that if God is some kind of unknowable machine then we will never have the answers to life's greatest questions. To us, God would be a Being of randomness and chance. We could not reasonably count on Him for anything. But if instead God was personal, well, then that is a different matter entirely. Schaeffer notes that many many people on earth believe that God is impersonal.
In fact I do, in the manner you use the word: every time I communicate with another human being I am communicating with a person, which makes my communication "personal."
You are right and I should have been more clear. I should stick to quoting Schaeffer on this subject. :)