New Stakes in Inter-Religious Dialogue

Gérard Leroy

 Translation Canon Tony Dickinson

 

The expansion of fundamentalism of different kinds, the fall of the Berlin Wall, terrorist violence, have all created a new climate, stirred up by new fears, and spreading confusion in the spirit. As a result, religion now occupies a central place in debates which were previously dominated by a set of revolutionary themes and Marxist ideology. The new stakes demand an intellectual clarification in aid of a dialogue between religions which is still coming into being.

What is new under the setting sun?

In the 1970s the West used to think that, modern societies being more and more rational, belief was going to disappear. The idea that modernity and religion could not get on well together was very widely spread.

A few facts have come and corrected these certainties, beginning with the massive return of religion to the public stage in the West. Privatised religion, which has to do only with the conscience of the individual, is capable of developing considerable social effects. So American Evangelicals (who up till that point were satisfied with marching in the street to prevent supermarkets from selling alcohol on Sundays, or with drawing up petitions to stop the teaching of the theory of evolution) suddenly entered the political field as participants to ensure the re-election of Ronald Reagan, through movements like the Moral Majority or the Christian Coalition, which has been seen more recently supporting Clinton.

Manifestations of popular devotion have regained favour. Processions in Limousin and “pardons” in Brittany are multiplying, while everyone was working on the assumption that what was happening in those places was a vestige of a rural, medieval world on its way to extinction, where only people who were behind the times could be involved. Nothing of the kind.

Another notorious fact: the boom in new religious movements. On American campuses in the 1970s an unfolding of the new incarnations of a “religious awakening” was observed. In the USA the protest against the American way of life ruled out the political route. This “new spiritual culture” was perceived as a whim of the young, which would fade at the same time as their acne! Now, this new culture has expanded rapidly among the middle classes; it has spread to Canada and in Europe. Its syncretising of Oriental traditions, added to a dose of popular psycho-analysis, has emerged into the New Age, “a nebulous esoteric mysticism” where beliefs mingle with physical techniques and psychotherapies, in quest of some form of individual salvation, in search of an improved standard of physical and mental welfare. Add to that some spiritualistic, charismatic, or neo-Pentecostal currents, “restorationist” and neo-traditionalist movements, which complete the palette of these phenomena which are wrong-footing secularist certainties.

The Plurality of Cultures, an important social phenomenon.

This world is plural. There are different cultures, languages, religions in one and the same space. How are we to live with this phenomenon? How is it possible to live our own faith while respecting the faith of others? How can trust be established between people whose convictions are reconcilable only with difficulty?

This new situation triggers more reticence than enthusiasm. We actually feel ourselves menaced by the dissolution of our particular cultural identities in a universal humanity which would bring everyone into line. That is what people fear.

Inter-religious dialogue is more difficult and more necessary than ever. Because it requires opening the path of a peaceful exchange between religions which is founded on reason and which does not sacrifice religious understanding. It is necessary then for us first of all to study the foundations, the methods and the tools to be put at the disposal of inter-faith dialogue in order to encourage it.

Violence and Religion.

Down the centuries, religions have tended to stir up the violence of history. We are familiar with their responsibility in conflicts. Would they, then, be troublemakers rather than peacemakers? In that case it would be difficult to imagine that they would be ready, individually and together, to metamorphose in order to construct islets of peace in this ocean of barbarism. The religions have too often stirred up violence, expressed intolerance, sectarianism, fanaticism, exclusion, abuse of power over consciences, all legitimised by the sacralisation of one truth. It is in the name of “the bitter taste of the absolute”, to quote E. Levinas, that wars are justified, sometimes even “holy” wars, guaranteed by a god. Here we are at the heart of the anthropological triangle of which Professor Mohammed Arkoun used to speak: violence-the sacred-truth.

It would be an illusion to believe that truths of a religious nature are more intolerant than atheistic ideologies. Our recent history is tainted by worse genocides, by extortions most unworthy of humanity, in the name of ideologies like Nazism or Soviet Communism. Religions therefore do not have a monopoly on fanaticism.

The intolerance of the monotheistic religions is undeniable. We might call to mind Islam and the typically fundamentalist manner of its expansion. In the same way Caesaropapism of the fourth century comes to mind. Let us hold back from celebrating, with great resounding declarations, repentance for acts committed in the past, without discerning the false legitimation of proselytism, in the name of an absolute truth, regardless of freedom of conscience.

Why can adhesion to one truth lead to intolerant, proselytising fundamentalism if not because one has absolutised it oneself, independently of the rights of the person? We fall then into the trap of compulsory truth under the pretext that we are dealing with a divine and saving truth.

The Shift in the Status of Truth.

For about a century the status of truth has shifted. Our western, positivist world sees truth only in the experimental results of the natural sciences. Scientific reason wants to be the norm and to explain the world in its totality. What is more, “there would be”, says the encyclical Lumen Fidei “each person’s truths, (…) what each person feels in his interiority”.

Once, people used to accept as natural everything that happened. Today, scientific progress allows us to assuage constraints, rather than to put up with them. Let us think only about grief, about aging or about death. Rather than put up with the reality we succeed in subduing it. Reason has passed from submission to what is real to responsibility for its own story.

In relation to the world, to human beings, to life, two anthropological approaches clash, the one scientific, which generates the secondary effect which Max Weber described as “disenchantment of the world”; the other approach is the religious, whose apologetics curl around an ontology which allegedly belongs to another age. Each has his lenses, the researcher, the anthropologist, the pastor, the poet, the rabbi, our neighbour or the fundamentalist. We come to the point of concluding, with Merleau-Ponty, that “we know of the world only the idea of it which our consciousness forms”. All knowledge being only the auto-exploration of the reflective consciousness, we can therefore send the world to the devil!

It doesn’t much matter to the phenomenologist whether the cat exists or not and what it is in its actual essence. On the other hand, it is undeniable that a cat appears to his consciousness, especially if it jumps on his face (!), and that it is this appearing which concerns him.

Here a difficulty arises. Because everyone has, a priori, and about everything their own opinion, their own little idea– about what is just and about what is unjust, about what is true, and what is false, what is good and what is bad – everyone would like their idea to be universal. Each one aspires to impose his or her truth. Animated by this visceral desire to make themselves the norm, all the bosses, the mandarins, the potential ulemas, seek to impose their view. Each one in their den, whether it is anthropological, philosophical, or religious, seeing mid-day on the doorstep understands perfectly that it is mid-day for everyone. If only they would accept it! And so iis it possible still to hope for a consensus about a single truth and deduce from it a single norm which naturally aims at universality? Is there only one truth?

Thomas Aquinas replied to this question: “if someone denies the truth they allow at the same time that truth exists; for actually, if truth does not exist, this at least is true that truth does not exist.” And to conclude: “if there is something real, truth, necessarily, exists.” (de Veritate”).

Truth extends beyond the classic definition of the true, first thought out by the Greeks and confirmed by Thomas Aquinas, as the appropriateness of the language which people use about the world and the world itself, i.e. the match between thought and being. This truth must be allowed to happen. Every theologian tests it, declared Martin Heidegger, in devoting him/herself to “the science of unveiling (in the Greek meaning: a-letheia, not hidden) of a being given in history”.

Religious Truth

The religious intolerance of the past, but also the experience of totalitarianism in the twentieth century, have to be taken into account, as must the decline in the claim to an exclusive truth, jealously possessed. We are still on the eve of a true encounter with other civilisations. We are in a kind of interlude, in which we can no longer put into practice the dogmatism that there is a unique truth and in which we are not yet capable of overcoming a fundamental scepticism. We are in the tunnel, in the twilight of dogmatism, and on the threshold of real dialogue.

The fact remains that access to the true and to the One is situated on the eschatological level.

Truth is a horizon in search of which we occasionally feel our way forward. Religious truth rests, particularly, on the rational interpretation of texts. It has to be understood in conjunction with its hermeneutic of religious language.

The project of understanding other religions, or of the non-religious, matures by slow degrees, relying on similarities. It is then that dialogue appears.

Because truth can be represented as a prism with many facets, no believer can claim to hold – “to have” – the whole prism, the absolute truth. He has access to only one facet of truth and is happy to be able to discover others.

This partial access to truth sets up the possibility of sharing non-exclusive truths. There would be, in that case, a way of going beyond the principal contradiction of inter-religious dialogue which is generally a clash of exclusive and absolute truths and which is expressed, from the dogmatic point of view, by a failure which is perpetually repeated. The “ruling concept” of an objective and universal truth is not denied. It is the horizon towards which we are always heading. Rational thought is one way of making progress along the way to truth but it does not own it. Today we have to admit that there is some truth apart from me and that others have access to another aspect of the truth.

The believer cannot claim “to have” the truth but rather to aspire to “be in” the truth. This is about a relationship to what is “fundamental”. At the same time I have access to this foundation only because others equally have access to it by means which elude me. It is here that dialogue becomes possible and necessary even if it remains difficult.

Religious Pluralism as a Theological Question:

The difficult task of a Christian theology of religions, is to try to think through the multiplicity of ways towards God without compromising the uniqueness of the mediation of Christ. The universality of Christianity does not follow from the universality of Jesus Christ.

A new theological era has begun, bringing a positive judgement on other religions. It still remains to consider them as ways of salvation, which demands a theological examination of the meaning of religious pluralism. The Church seeks to re-interpret the vision of the plan of God’s salvation, with a much more lively awareness of the historical particularity of western culture. Today the Church is waking to other cultures, and begins by pondering the question of plurality. Is it a fact that we are dealing with a historical contingency? Or has the Creator in fact made the decision? What does scripture say? Two texts enlighten us: Genesis 11 in relation to the construction of the Tower of Babel, and the story of the Feast of Pentecost in Jerusalem in Acts 2.

What is Genesis 11 about? About a human plan for unity. The construction of a tower is stopped by a sudden incomprehension of orders, of misunderstandings, of disputes. These people who believed they were going to attain heaven and dominate the earth, despair of ever being able to get their way in the end. “For God confused their language and he dispersed them over all the face of the earth”, says the text. What does that mean? A punishment? Surely not! A blast of God’s anger and it’s a cataclysm for which we must wait. On the other hand the text reveals the intention of God: “God scattered humanity over all the earth.” The key to reading this story is in the following chapter. God intervenes, to bless Abraham, who has as his principal function the gathering of the people scattered over all the earth, the descendants of the three sons of Noah: Shem, ancestor of the Semites, Ham, ancestor of the Egyptians, the Nubians, the Libyans etc., and Japhet, ancestor of the Phoenicians, the Philistines, the Medes and the Greeks. When God addresses Abraham he marks him out: “By you all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” This blessing of the nations of the earth, through Abraham who unites the diversity of all the clans, does it not have a universal character? Does it not bear witness to the divine plan of creation?

Conversely with regard to the people of Babel, who sought to achieve unity without God, on the day of the Feast of Pentecost it is the divine initiative which gathers people together. This festival, agricultural in origin, attracts crowds from everywhere: from Egypt, from Mesopotamia, from Libya from Cappadocia etc. The apostles address them in their own language. And there you have each one understanding them in their own language. Unity in action. Diversity is intact. Does not all this diversity of cultures gathered at Jerusalem for Pentecost echo back to the scattered nations which God has blessed in the person of Abraham?

The present basis for inter-religious dialogue

For about half a century it has been possible to observe a shift in what is problematic in the theology of religions, first of all in the Protestant German setting, where the scientific development of the history of religions carries along theologians like Ernst Troeltsch, Albert Schweitzer, or later Paul Tillich and many others, to think theologically about Christianity while taking account positively of the existence of the other religions and of their claims to truth. On the Catholic side, the reflection opened by P-A. Liégé, Henri de Lubac, or Karl Rahner, ended in fine in the declaration Nostra aetate.

 

On the way, the experience of the encounter of religions has been affirmed. It is no longer about knowing today if people can be saved without belonging to the Church, but of seeking to understand the positive role of religions, as socio-historical institutions, in the history of salvation.

 

As Claude Geffré writes, the theological basis of the religious pluralism which legitimises inter-religious dialogue develops the idea that “the economy of the incarnate Word is the sacrament of a vaster economy which coincides with the religious history of humanity” (“Ffrom Babel to Pentecost, essays in inter-religious theology”).

 

From there we come back inevitably to the incarnation. Since the logos became human among humans, it is the mystery of Christ, passed through death and resurrection, which has a universal significance for the whole human story. Human history has never been abandoned to itself. It has taken all its meaning with the paschal event. The historic revelation which coincides with the history of the people of Israel finds its fulfilment in the story of the Church which is then affirmed as the sacrament of this transcendental revelation which is co-extensive with human history.

 

It is in insisting on the same paradox of the incarnation, in other words “the union of the absolutely universal and of the absolutely concrete” to use Paul Tillich’s words, that we are in a position to de-absolutise Christianity as a historical religion, neither exclusive nor inclusive, and to confirm its dialogical character.

 

From tolerance to dialogue

The hour is coming when people pass happily from condescending tolerance to real dialogue established on respect for one another’s convictions. A long way from relativism, it is concerned with seeking to understand the speech of the other. The revealed truth of God is, of course, One, but it is interpreted in different ways. The tragedy of fundamentalism is that it wants to identify the letter of the text with the actual word of God. Fundamentalism always proceeds from a literalist reading of the basic text with no regard for a hermeneutic which takes account of the historical contingency of the text.

 

Religious truth is neither exclusive nor inclusive of every other truth. Christianity has for a long time claimed a central place in the galaxy of religions, watching the other religions whirl around itself like free electrons waiting for them to rejoin the nucleus. This Ptolemaic view will not hold. No religion can occupy the centre and substitute itself for God without withdrawing God from its faith and denying itself. The central star is the mystery of God.

 

Would all religions, in accordance with the divine will for universal salvation, be existential possibilities for opening up to the mystery of salvation? That is the question. It does not pose a challenge to the uniqueness of the mediation of Christ. On the contrary it is about recognising the Christic nature of grace, rather than assigning to it a temporal ownership. Would we wish to arrogate to ourselves the right of sharing out grace and the monopoly on its distribution, in the way that companies distribute their products where the fancy takes them? It is not Christianity that sets the points on the railway to heaven! Quite simply because Christianity is not Christ.

 

Christian faith therefore must abandon this lazy inclination to exclude the other religions and this predatory temptation to include the other religions in its own, as we might put together a nest of dolls. Interreligious dialogue cannot be undertaken with the mind-set of an owner.

 

Dialogue is not self evident:

Like every dialogue, interreligious dialogue is not self evident. The intimate experience of the sacred can only be expressed by using a symbolic language which attempts to describe “how the last things are”, by analogy. As Paul Ricoeur writes, demythologisation allows us to “uncover a truth impossible to utter from a simple scientific or philosophical point of view, a truth which it is impossible to transmit without the help, the roundabout means of symbol and of myth.” Myth is necessary. Demythologisation purifies faith, reduced to its essential kernel, by the tough asceticism of the conclusions of scientific knowledge. It is only then that the sacred can be formulated in a rational, theological language. So the biblical hermeneutic, characterised by the dialectical tension between analysis of the real and the meanings of the story, does not take sides in relation to the truthfulness of religious language (is the story that is being is told true?) even if it does not exclude it.

 

Might interreligious dialogue threaten the faith of Christians? Their mistrust is explained, culturally and theologically.

 

Culturally, the fear of Christians has to do with the relativisation of the Christian message. They have the impression that their religion is set out on the great stall of world religions, like a piece of merchandise, which is not worth less than any other, of course, but not more, and which, like the others, will not escape the great clearance sale of secularisation. Let us remember that Christians have conveyed the conviction that they are the only keepers of truth and the only guardians of salvation since the third century, and the memorable declaration of Bishop Cyprien, of Carthage: “no salvation outside the Church!”

 

Theologically the fear rests on the declaration of Jesus in John 14, 16: “I am the way the truth and the life.” Christ does not let us imagine that he is one way among others or a partial truth. He is THE truth. And Luke adds in the Book of Acts, that “there is no other name given to mortals than that of Jesus by which we must be saved” (4:12). To put it crudely, let us not go in search of any other lifeboat than the one which bears the name of Jesus. How is it possible then to hope for salvation for the humanity which has not chosen this boat? What does Paul say? That God wants salvation for all people (1 Timothy 2:4).

 

This is the way in which the dialectic of the problem presents itself: how to reconcile, to articulate the confession of Jesus Christ as a unique mediator between God and mortals and the divine will for universal salvation? Lazily, we thought we had got out of that by inviting non-Christians to sign up for Christianity!

 

Dialogue implies the effort of discernment, of patience in order to understand the other. Understanding makes use of rationality and of affectivity, then of objective knowledge and subjective knowledge. It’s about understanding what the other says and who this other is who says it. It is about thinking the thought of others, empathetically, without necessarily sharing it. And if understanding is contemplated, it is because of a presupposition that consciences come within a single horizon, the truth, and that truth ploughs its way across exchange and dialogue. We can no longer seriously arrogate to ourselves a right of ownership in relation to the truth. In dialogue it is truth which is the third element. There is you, there is me, there is truth. Let us decipher that..

 

Where is dialogue when interpretation is on the decline?

Today doctrinal dialogue appears at a dead-end. It would have to do with interpreting and linking together the great religious texts, aiming at a truth in waiting, within the perspective of a general hermeneutic of religions in dialogue. This approach would consist in bringing back to life the philosophical understanding of the religious and in contributing to theological developments originating within each religion. A major stake today is to be found in the critical interpretation of Islam by Muslim thinkers.

 

Paths to open up:

I suggest three tracks for the dialogue of religions today. The first is about translation, which picks up the imperative of knowledge. Dialogue supposes as its pre-condition a task of reading the texts, the traditions and the ways of thinking of the other.

 

I would keep the second track for the hermeneutic task as a philosophical method of interpreting religious texts.

 

The third path finally would be that of the joint intervention of the established religions in the public space to promote values against violence. It begins to make sense only in the context of a pluralist democracy where the citizens – including the religious leaders – are willing to assign to their creeds and to their faith as first priority the mission of defending and nourishing the “common world”, dear to Hannah Arendt, which is democratic life itself.

 

Finally, beyond the study of texts, beyond a better knowledge of the other, beyond the intellectual dialogue, let us never neglect the sharing of religious experience, prayer on the individual level, in community, and side by side, believers of different traditions, where each in their own tradition finds their breath in spiritual sharing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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