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Gamberini, “With Sincere Reverence” 14 http://escholarship.bc.edu/scjr/vol1/iss1/art3/
Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations
A peer-reviewed e-journal of the Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations
Published by the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College
“‘With Sincere Reverence’: A Christological Perspective for the Interreligious
Dialogue Envisioned by Nostra Aetate”
Paolo Gamberini, S. J.
Pontifical Theological Faculty of Southern Italy “San Luigi,” Naples
Volume I (2005-2006): 14-23
http://escholarship.bc.edu/scjr/vol1/iss1/art3/
Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations Volume 1 (2005-2006): 14-23
Gamberini, “With Sincere Reverence” 15 http://escholarship.bc.edu/scjr/vol1/iss1/art3/
The ethnical and cultural situation in Italy as well as in
many European countries has radically changed in recent
years. The increase of immigration, especially from North
Africa and from Asia, is slowly changing the way Europeans
think about their own religious and cultural identity.
The arrival of Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs
challenges who we are as Catholics. Islam has become the
second largest religion in Italy. In his speech to the city in the
year 2000, the former Archbishop of Bologna, Giacomo Biffi,
said that either Europe will become Christian again or else it
will become Muslim.1 The Cardinal was also targeting the
nihilistic and pluralistic culture which will not be able to face
the ideological attack of Islam. This is why the Catholic
Church has tried to have the continent’s Christian roots
acknowledged in the European Constitution, but as we know
without success.
Facing not only the religious expansion of Islam and of
other religions, but also preoccupied by the threat of terrorist
fundamentalism, many Catholics are tempted to defend their
identity by suspecting any kind of pluralistic attitude in
dealing with the present situation. They affirm themselves by
excluding anyone who is different ethnically and religiously.
They claim themselves by removing others.
Therefore, there is a need for renewing the spirit of the
Conciliar Declaration Nostra Aetate (NA), which reminds us
that the Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy
in the other religions. The Church acknowledges “with
sincere reverence” (sincera cum observantia) that the other
religions reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all
humanity. The 1974 Guidelines for Implementing the
Conciliar Declaration Nostra Aetate, No. 4 – prepared by the
1
Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, “La città di San Petronio nel III Millennio,” Il
Regno-documenti, 17 (2000): 551.
Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews – states
that the Church must always promote better mutual
understanding to overcome the reciprocal ignorance and the
frequent confrontations among people of different beliefs.
Theologians have a particular task in providing
discernment, in order to inform interreligious dialogue with
the Christological proclamation that Jesus Christ is “‘the way,
the truth, and the life’ (Jn 14:6), in whom people may find the
fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all
things to Himself” (NA, §2).
I will highlight three different moments in which this
“sincere reverence” towards other religions may be realized.
The first moment may be called methodological and will refer
to the Ignatian tradition of the Spiritual Exercises. I will
develop first of all the praesupponendum (presupposition) as
an attitude of being able to listen to the religious experience
of the other; then the contemplatio ad amorem
(contemplation in attaining love) as the awareness and
recognition of the action of the Spirit: being able to
distinguish the religious experience of God from its
theoretical and practical interpretations; and finally the
magis, the continuing transcending of the religious
conscience in reaching out to God: Deus semper maior (God
is always greater).
The second moment of my paper will be more theoretical.
I will deal with the question of Truth within interreligious
dialogue and how God’s ineffable transcendence and
otherness have been revealed in this Jesus of Nazareth. “No
one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is
in the bosom of the Father, He has made Him known” (Jn
1:18). The humanity of God, Jesus’ particularity, is not a
limitation for the interreligious dialogue, but constitutes an
adequate perspective for determining the universality of
Jesus Christ.
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The third moment considers the practical dimension of the
dialogue. I will articulate the inner otherness of God (Trinity)
with God’s becoming other than Himself (Incarnation): I will
show how the evangelical praxis of the believer, who makes
himself everything for everybody, is able in the praxis, more
than in theory, to sustain the eschatological tension between
the already and not yet, which characterizes interreligious
dialogue.
1. The Methodological Moment
St. Ignatius of Loyola wrote the book of the Spiritual
Exercises as a guide on how to experience God and to make
decisions in one’s own life in a selfless way. At the beginning
of the Spiritual Exercises St. Ignatius introduces some
presuppositions (praesupponendum) which say that he who
is giving the Spiritual Exercises should “be ready to save his
neighbor’s proposition than to condemn it. If he cannot save
it, let him inquire how he means it; and if he means it badly,
let him correct him with charity. If that is not enough, let him
seek all the suitable means to bring him to mean it well, and
save him.”2 When we apply this principle to interreligious
dialogue it means that it is necessary to listen carefully to the
religious experience of the other believers, trying more and
more to assume the other’s perspective instead of coercing
the other into one’s own viewpoint. “Listening is the first step
in understanding. In listening we indicate both that we care
about the other and also that we have something to learn
from the other. It seems to me that religious humility
mandates listening as a basic mode of being in an
2 See David L. Fleming, SJ, Saint Ignatius, The Spriritual Exercises: A
Literal Translation and a Contemporary Reading 6th ed. (St. Louis: The
Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1991). See also J.THOMAS, I Segreti dei
Gesuiti. Gli Esercizi Spirituali (Casale Monferrato: Piemme, 1986).
interreligious context.”3 We may formulate the golden rule of
interreligious dialogue in this way: “Try always to understand
the others, as you would like to be understood.”4
We need to listen to the Muslim as a Muslim, the
Buddhist as a Buddhist. Dialogue and Proclamation (DP), a
May, 1991 document of the Pontifical Council for Inter-
religious Dialogue (PCID), states that Christians must be
prepared to learn and to receive from and through others the
positive values of their traditions. Through this attentive
listening and open attitude Christians “may be moved to give
up ingrained prejudices, to revise preconceived ideas, and
even sometimes to allow the understanding of their faith to
be purified” (§49).5
In §235-§236 of the Spiritual Exercises we may find the
second methodological principle for interreligious dialogue.
Everyone is invited to acknowledge how God dwells, labors,
and acts in all created things. That means that by giving up
one’s own preconceived ideas and by having receptive
minds, as the PCID document affirms, Christians should
recognize that God has “also manifested himself in some
3 A. Goshen-Gottstein, “Judaism and Incarnational Theologies: Mapping
out the Parameters of Dialogue,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 39, No.
3-4 (June 2002): 23.
4 M. Schulz, “Der Beitrag von Immanuel Levinas zum jüdisch-christlichen
Dialog:Menschwerdung Gottes,” Müncher theologiszhe Zeitschrift 56
(2005): 152.
5 Cf., “Much contemporary theological thinking is done precisely in
dialogue with others. The purpose of such dialogue is twofold: first, to
correct imbalances that stem from a false perception of the other or
from excluding the other from one’s horizons; and second, the
encounter with the other furnishes us with new ways of perceiving and
presenting our religious convictions. Ultimately, the encounter with the
other fashions our own self-perception, as well as our religious
understanding” (Alon Goshen-Gottstein, “Judaisms and Incarnational
Theologies,” 221).
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way to the followers of other religious traditions” (§48).6 The
Spirit of God is not only at work in the religious life of
individual believers, “but also in the religious traditions to
which they belong” (§17). During the first interreligious
meeting in Assisi on Oct. 27, 1986, and again in his speech
to the Roman Curia in December of the same year, John
Paul II declared that “every authentic prayer is moved by the
Holy Spirit.”7 In one of his Wednesday catecheses, on Sept.
10, 1998, John Paul II remarked that “very often at the
source of the variety of religions there are founders who
realized in the Spirit a deep religious experience. This
spiritual experience has been transferred into the doctrines,
rites and teachings of the different religions.”8
In order to perceive the Spirit at work within these
religions it is necessary to go beyond the propositions and
formulations of those to whom we listen. We need at this
moment to pay attention to the eighth rule for the
discernment of spirits of the Second Week. Ignatius Loyola
distinguishes very carefully the starting moment of the
spiritual consolation, in which the soul is touched by God
himself, and the following moment of this experience. “For
often in this second time, through one’s own course of habits
and the consequences of the concepts and judgements, or
through the good spirit or through the bad, he forms various
resolutions and opinions which are not given immediately by
6 The Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences declared in November
1986 that religions have the gift of an authentic experience of the self-
communication of the divine Word and of the saving presence of the
Holy Spirit. (Quoted in Congregazione Generale 34a della Compagnia di
Gesù (1995), Decreto V, Roma 1996, 86). See J.-M.Biron, “La
Compagnie de Jésus et le dialogue interreligieux,” Cahiers de
Spiritualité Ignatienne 110 (2004) : 97-111.
7 Giovanni Paolo II, “Discorso ai cardinali, alla famiglia pontificia e alla
curia e prelatura romana,” Il Regno-documenti 32 (1987): 136.
8 See L’Osservatore Romano (September 10, 1998).
God our Lord, and therefore they have need to be very well
examined before entire credit is given them, or they are put
into effect” (§336).
If we extend this eighth rule not only to individuals but to
religions, then we need to distinguish between the written
and oral traditions, kept in Sacred Scriptures and teachings,
and the original self-communication of God received by the
founders of these religions.9 Dialogue and Proclamation
(§30, §78) states that prayerful discernment and theological
reflection is required in order to discern the presence of the
Spirit within the doctrines and precepts of the other religions.
The August, 2000 declaration of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith, Dominus Iesus says that God “does
not fail to make himself present in many ways, not only to
individuals, but also to entire peoples through their spiritual
riches, of which their religions are the main and essential
expression even when they contain ‘gaps, insufficiencies
and errors’. Therefore, the sacred books of other religions,
which in actual fact direct and nourish the existence of their
followers, receive from the mystery of Christ the elements of
goodness and grace which they contain (§8).”
By discerning the first and the second moment of God’s
self-communication in these religions and distinguishing the
original spiritual gift from its human interpretations and
categories, we may be able to participate in the spiritual
experience of the other and be receptive to the ways other
religions proclaim and live their experience of God. By
9 “In religious experience it is possible to distinguish between a
superstructure which I call belief and an infrastructure which I call faith.
The superstructure is the external word, the external revelation, the
external reality, the word used in history and culturally conditioned. The
infrastructure is the interior word, the word which addresses the heart,
the intimate revelation.” (W. Johnston, L’œil Intérieur. Mysticisme et
Religion [Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1982], 82-83).
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transcending the categorical expressions of other religions
we reach “a much deeper level, that of the spirit, where
exchange and sharing give a mutual witness to one’s beliefs
and a common exploration of one’s respective religious
convictions.”10 The aim of interreligious dialogue is a deeper
conversion of all towards God and everyone is invited “to
leave one’s previous spiritual or religious situation in order to
direct oneself towards another.”11 “The Christian theologian
in dialogue with the other is called faithfully to reflect on the
experience of tracing a pilgrimage of constant departure
which is also an entry into this fullness which God
promises.”12
By converting oneself more and more to God, one comes
closer to Truth. NA, §2 states that in the manner of life and
conduct, in the precepts and teachings of these religions,
there is a reflection of that truth which enlightens all people.
This does not mean that the Truth, which enlightens all
religions, is still hidden and inconceivable. Truth is not the
outcome of complementary truths found in other religions.
Jesus Christ is “the way, the truth and the life.” Dialogue and
Proclamation states, however, that “the fullness of truth
received in Jesus Christ does not give individual Christians
the guarantee that they have grasped that truth fully. In the
last analysis truth is not a thing we possess, but a person by
whom we must allow ourselves to be possessed. This is an
unending process” (§49). In order to reflect on this important
aspect of the interreligious dialogue we need to consider the
second moment of this discussion.
10 DP, §40.
11 Secretariat for Non-Christians, “The Attitude of the Church Towards the
Followers of Other Religions: Reflections and Orientations on Dialogue
and Mission,” AAS 75 (1984): §37.
12 Michael Barnes, Theology and the Dialogue of Religions (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002), 219.
2. The Theoretical Moment
In the contemplation to gain love, St. Ignatius invites the
retreatant to search and find God in everything. This is not a
nameless and abstract God but the God of Jesus Christ.
God’s truth was made visible and accessible in the particular
history of Jesus of Nazareth. God does not exclude
humanity. The human Jesus defines God’s very essence. “It
is precisely God’s deity which, rightly understood, includes
his humanity.”13 God can be humanly expressed since God
is also human in his being. Dominus Iesus declares that “the
truth about God is not abolished or reduced because it is
spoken in human language” (§6).
The human God is not less than God. God finds his
appropriate and adequate self-expression in the humanity of
Jesus. This does not dissolve the mysterious character of
God’s revelation, but it is manifest in Jesus Christ. We
should not look for God beyond the humanity of Jesus, but
we should always go beyond our relative and finite ways of
expressing the mystery of incarnation.
This truth qualifies the identity of the Christian faith as a
revealed religion. To set this truth aside means to alter
Christianity and to make interreligious dialogue impossible
because Christians would enter into dialogue without their
own identity. We would not have a “sincere reverence,” if we
dialogue already with a presumption, a common
denominator for all religions called the unfathomable
Mystery, into which we reduce all religions into one.14 On the
contrary, each religion is in dialogue with its own
presuppositions.
13 Karl Barth, The Humanity of God (Richmond: John Knox, 1960), 46.
14 See Paolo Gamberini, “Kenosi e universalità del cristianesimo,” Filosofia
e Teologia 17 (2003): 426-434.
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To argue the truth of Christian faith is very complex in the
cultural context of our days, which is on one side relativist
and on the other side marked by a clash of civilizations and
religions; but we cannot deny truth or become agnostic,
either saying that truth cannot be known, or saying that truth
is what the majority decides.15
In a speech at the Pontifical Lateran University on May
12, 2004, the President of the Italian Senate, Marcello Pera,
asked, “If one truth is equal to another truth, why should we
dialogue? And if in faith there is no truth, how can we ever
be saved?”16 According to Pera absolute truth bars dialogue
or an acknowledgment of what “is true and holy” in other
religions, as NA, §2 and Ad Gentes, §9 declare.
To answer this serious objection we need to articulate in
the right way the criterion and the condition of truth, in order
to avoid both relativism and fundamentalism. Whoever
dialogues is well aware of his own criterion of truth (Torah,
Holy Scriptures, Qu’ran). Denying what makes a Jew a Jew,
a Christian a Christian, ignoring that everyone is committed
thoroughly to his measure of truth, boycotts and does not
promote dialogue at all. To leave one’s own belief in order to
be in dialogue with the other would change dialogue into a
monologue. Instead, each religion must question and clarify,
what are the criterion and condition of the truth it claims.17
15 See Joseph Ratzinger, Fede-Verità-Tolleranza. Il Cristianesimo e le
Religioni del Mondo (Siena: Cantagalli, 2003), 115ff.
16 M. Pera, “Il Relativismo, il Cristianesimo e l’Occidente,” Lezione alla
Pontificia Università Lateranense per i 150 anni di fondazione della
Facoltà di diritto civile, Roma, 12 maggio 2004, http://www.senato.it/
presidente/21572/21575/28223/composizioneattopresidente.htm.
17 By criterion we mean the objective reference (in se) of what constitutes
an identity; by condition we mean the perspective (pro nobis) in and
through which that objective reference is perceived. To deny this
When Christians proclaim their truth, they refer to the way
this truth became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth. There is a deep
link between the truth and this Jesus, as it is stated in Jesus’
affirmation: “I am the truth” (Jn 14:6). This is quite a
paradoxical affirmation and in certain way intolerant. This
identification between the “I” of Jesus and the Truth is
intolerable for everyone who encourages relativism, but also
for those who oppose any form of fundamentalism. Behind
that “I” there may be hidden an institution or an ideology, or
even a church. If God is the Truth, whoever (an individual, a
group, or a religion) stands on God’s side is also in the truth
and becomes the interpreter of truth. The attributes of God’s
Word qualify God’s spokespersons.
In order to understand the paradoxical character of the
Johannine affirmation we must pay attention to the proximal
context of Jesus’ self-definition: the paschal experience.
“Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew
that his hour was come that he should depart out of this
world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in
the world, he loved them unto the end” (Jn 13:1). Jesus’
passion, death and resurrection reveal that in the
identification between Truth and the I of Jesus a deeper
revelation of God and a different way of defining truth have
been shown. Jesus’ self-giving for others (kénosis) is the
essential condition by which Jesus expresses his being the
truth of God the Father. There is a deep connection between
“I am the Truth” of Jesus’ saying and the Johannine
affirmation that summarizes the whole Easter event: “There
is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for
his friends” (Jn 15:13). Becoming the neighbor of whoever
was poor, sick and marginal, until he made himself “friend of
correlative dimension of truth leads either to reducing the objective
reference to one’s own perspective (relativism) or to making one’s own
perspective the criterion of truth (fundamentalism). See V. Melchiorre,
Essere e Parola (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1982).
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sinners” (cf. Mt 11:19), Jesus manifested that the criterion of
his truth is the experience of otherness which has its origin in
God the Father and has its end in embracing the other.
Jesus’ identification with the Truth reveals that God
defines his very being in the humanity of Jesus and in him
God has assumed the extreme otherness of the sinner.
Jesus emptied himself so totally for the sake of others, that
his life was defined in relation to sinners. That God affirms
himself in relation to another from himself, to that wholly
other who is the sinner, this belongs to the paschal
revelation of God, which can be recapitulated in the
Johannine expression “God is Love” (1 Jn 4:8).
The very possibility that God becomes other from himself
is God’s very essence which is constituted by inner relations:
Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Without denying biblical
monotheistic faith, Christians believe that the one God is not
an absolute being, resting in splendid solitude. The God of
Jesus Christ is ontologically open within and beyond himself.
Therefore, the category of “otherness” finds in the Christian
idea of God its foundation. If interreligious dialogue is made
possible by acknowledging the other in his difference and
limits, then the logic guiding this dialogue is the same as that
of the paschal existence, when Jesus laid down his life for
the others, and of the Trinitarian life, where each person in
the one God exists for the sake of the other person.
This different God calls for a different understanding of
what truth is. We may quote Saint Augustine: “We do not
enter into Truth but through Love” (Non entratur in veritatem
nisi per charitatem).18 God is not afraid of dialogue as the
Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum)
declares: “The invisible God (see Col 1;15, 1 Tm 1:17) out of
18 Augustine, “De Gratia contra Faustum,” Opera, F. Tempsky - G.
Freytag, Lipsia 1891, XXXII, cap. XVIII.
the abundance of His love speaks to human beings as
friends (see Ex 33:11; Jn 15:14-15) and lives among them
(see Bar 3:38), so that He may invite and take them into
fellowship with Himself” (§2). The absolute truth is essentially
“conversational” and “self-communication.” “Truth itself may
become for us an idol, because truth, separated from love, is
not God: it becomes an image, an idol which we must
neither love nor adore.”19 In a Christian perspective, truth
and dialogue are neither opposed nor juxtaposed: they
essentially correspond to each other.
This relation, between truth and dialogue, determines
what kind of universality may be attributed to Christian truth.
If Christian identity originates from the life-style and thought-
style of Jesus, we have to avoid any form of exclusive or
inclusive Christianity in dialogue with other religions. “Instead
of diminishing the scandal of the Word made flesh, in order
to ease interreligious dialogue, it is necessary to show how
the principle of incarnation, that the Absolute reveals Himself
in and through a historical particularity, invites us not to
make Christianity an absolute, that is, a religion excluding
others.”20 If Jesus is defined by his relation to others, it
means that also the other religions define Christ’s event.
Dialogue and Proclamation, §48-49 states:
[W]hile remaining firm in their belief that in Jesus Christ,
the only mediator between God and humanity (cf. 1 Tm
2:4-6), the fullness of revelation has been given to them,
Christians must remember that God has also manifested
himself in some way to the followers of other religious
traditions. Consequently, it is with receptive minds that
19 B. Pascal, Pensieri, a Cura di Paolo Serini 3rd ed. (Milan: Arnoldo
Mondadori Editore, 1988), n. 541, 314.
20 C. Geffré, “Le pluralisme religieux comme question théologique,” Vie
spirituelle 3 (1998) : 586
.
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they approach the convictions and values of others. The
fullness of truth received in Jesus Christ does not give
individual Christians the guarantee that they have
grasped that truth fully. In the last analysis truth is not a
thing we possess, but a person by whom we must allow
ourselves to be possessed. This is an unending
process.21
Only to God is known how the many religions participate
in the work of the Holy Spirit and how they can be
associated with the paschal mystery.22 “On the last day the
mysterious convergence of all religions among them will be
revealed together with their meaning within God’s one plan
of salvation.”23 In the meantime, however, if it is true that
God is love, the way the Spirit of Christ touches every
human person is by the experience of mutual love.
To give a Christian account of the experience of being in
relationship with the other, committed always to living ‘in
between’ this concrete position within history and the
fullness of meaning which comes at the end of history and
which can only be anticipated in hope, is only possible if
one is willing to take the risk of crossing the threshold, of
encountering the other person.24
3. The Practical Moment
After examining the methodological and theoretical
dimensions of interreligious dialogue, we consider now the
practical moment. In order to make the Catholic Church
21 N.B. “The Spirit of truth will lead you to the complete truth” (Jn 16:13).
22 Cf. Gaudium et Spes, § 22.
23 C. Geffré “Le pluralisme religieux comme question théologique,” Vie
spirituelle 3 (1998), 584.
24 M. Barnes, Theology and the Dialogue of Religions, 226.
receptive to interreligious dialogue in authentic spirit, both
realism and discernment are necessary.
First of all realism: everyone should seek to comprehend
the religion of the other as the other understands it,
according to its own parameters and not according to a
superficial idea of that religion. Speaking about Islam in the
post-synodal Apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in Europa, John
Paul II said that a proper relationship with Islam needs to be
conducted prudently, “with clear ideas about possibilities and
limits, and with confidence in God’s saving plan for all his
children. It is also necessary to take into account the notable
gap between European culture, with its profound Christian
roots, and Muslim thought” (§57).
Together with realism we need also discernment. This
asks first of all for an ethical foundation, which is the golden
rule found in many religions: “Do to others what you would
have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the
Prophets” (Mt 7:12); “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Lv
19:18); “Not one of you truly believes until you wish for
others what you wish for yourself” (40 Hadith An-Nawawi,
13); “This is the sum of the Dharma: do nothing unto others
which would cause you pain if done to you” (Mahabharata
5:1517). Card. Karl Lehmann declared that:
[T]he problem of violence in every religion is of utmost
importance. Whoever wants to dictate his conviction with
power and violence cuts himself off from any kind of
interreligious dialogue. Every religion should examine in
which way its own image of God pursues an ideal of
violent imposition of her belief upon the others [...] Each
religion should be critical of certain praxis of religious
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coercion (for Christian churches: heresy, inquisition,
missions).25
Discernment should be done not only on an ethical base
but also a spiritual one. The eschatological event of God,
who became human in Jesus, continues in the self-
identification of Christ with the little ones, the hungry, the
thirsty and the excluded (cf Mt 25:35). As God became
other-from-himself (Incarnation) by being other-in-himself
(Trinity), so Christians are called everyday to discover their
own identity by becoming other than themselves. Saint Paul
says:
To the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might win Jews;
to those who are under the Law, as under the Law though
not being myself under the Law, so that I might win those
who are under the Law; to those who are without law, as
without law, though not being without the law of God but
under the law of Christ, so that I might win those who are
without law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win
the weak; I have become all things to all men, so that I
may by all means save some.26
Paul defines his own identity by relating it to others:
He meets those who are under the Law not without that
Law that binds to the problems of the Law. He meets the
weak not as the strong one, in order to let them feel more
greatly the suffering caused by their weaknesses. He
does not face the Jews as a Christian who denies them
the authenticity of their specific way to God. He meets
everybody with what identifies each one of them before
others and before God. Paul’s ego constitutes himself by
25 Karl Lehmann, “Una religione tra le altre,” Il regno-documenti 48
(2003): 46.
26 1 Cor 9:20-22.
encountering the human and religious determining factors
of the other. Through these strong denotations of the
other Paul articulates his own identity in a plural way. He
needs these strong factors which determine the identity of
the other, in order to find his own way to God, overcoming
his own weakness and his inclination to violence.27
Translating this into the language of interreligious
dialogue, we may say that the Christian is called to become
a Jew, to become a Muslim, “for the sake of the gospel” (1
Cor 9:23). It is not simply becoming more tolerant or
respectful for the dignity of the other. As God became
human by remaining God, so the Christian is called to
become a refugee with the refugees, an outcast with the
outcast, a Muslim with the Muslims, by remaining himself.
The more as a Christian he dialogues, the more he will be
able to be incarnated in the belief and in the life of the other
believer, and vice versa. The model for such dialogue is
Jesus’ relationship with the Father. “Through participation in
that relationship – Father and Son united by the Sprit of love
– Christians learn how to relate to others. The analogy of
“mutual indwelling” (perichoresis) of the divine persons
within the Godhead teaches the virtues and practice of
hospitality and welcome.”28 The more Christians dwell in the
way of believing and of living of Muslims, of Jews, of Hindus,
the more they will understand their own Christian identity
and why God’s being is defined as Love.29
27 H.-J. Sander, “Il cristiano nel postmoderno: identità plurale,” Il Regno-
attualità 50 (2005): 23.
28 M. Barnes, Theology and the Dialogue of Religions, 228.
29 Cf. Frank Whaling, Christian Theology and World Religions. A Global
Approach, (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1986),
130-131.
Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations Volume 1 (2005-2006): 14-23
Gamberini, “With Sincere Reverence” 23 http://escholarship.bc.edu/scjr/vol1/iss1/art3/
“To be ‘oneself as another’ entails a participation in the
mystery of God’s self-giving which alone can mend the
‘broken middle’ of interfaith relations.”30 By getting to know
the spiritual tradition of the other, Christians understand
better their own faith, purifying it from what causes obstacles
or misunderstandings in the partner. At the same time
differences between the Christian faith and the other
religions may appear more clearly. Everyone will understand
his own religious identity not without the others but in relation
to the others.31 “If Christian identity is found only in
generous-hearted relationship, in learning to see ‘oneself as
another,’ then it will be through trust in the Spirit that
constant conversion is made possible. Faith, love and hope
are reciprocal dimensions of the Christian life, manifestations
of God’s own self-giving, the grace which makes for human
flourishing.”32
30 M. Barnes, Theology and the Dialogue of Religions, 207.
31 Cf. “The Spirit of God breaks through the self-enclosed world we inhabit;
the Spirit re-creates us and sets us on the road toward becoming what I
like to call a ‘catholic personality’, a personal microcosm of the
eschatological new creation. A catholic personality is a personality
enriched by otherness, a personality which is what it is only because
multiple others have been reflected in it in a particular way. The
distance from my own culture that results from being born by the Spirit
creates a fissure in me through which others can come in. The Spirit
unlatches the doors of my heart saying: ‘You are not only you; others
belong to you too’” (M. Volf, Exclusion and Embrace. A Theological
Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation [Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1996], 51). “One does not live without others. This
means that one does not live without fighting with others. So we need,
not just once but everyday, to give up the naive conviction that ‘we
understand each other’, and to get out of the sentimental meanderings,
by which we hoped to hide under certain expressions and defenses the
reality of the other” (M. De Certeau, Mai Senza L’altro [Magnano:
Qiqaion, 1993], 41).
32 M. Barnes, Theology and the Dialogue of Religions, 228.
In conclusion, I summarize the three moments mentioned
above as three theses:
1) The dynamics of the Spiritual Exercises invites us to
listen and to acknowledge in the other the work of the Spirit
by distinguishing the religious experience of God from its
consequent theoretical and ethical interpretations;
2) The Spirit at work in the other religions is the Spirit of
Jesus Christ, who became a human being for others;
3) Interreligious dialogue lives the eschatological tension
between the already and not yet. This tension should not be
explained by means of a theory but lived and supported in
the praxis of a believing love.