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VOLUME X:1 January - June 2020
Waiting on Grace: A Theology of Dialogue Despite what its subtitle—A Theology of Dialogue—may immediately and superficially suggest, Waiting on Grace is not about the Catholic theological approach to interreligious dialogue. Nor is it a standard introduction to the different Christian theological paradigms of interreligious dialogue. Those who are familiar with the author’s rich scholarly production would have never expected him to produce such a work. Barnes see those “classical paradigms” as closed in on themselves. His theological reflection is rooted in the emergence of a theology of religions within the Catholic Christian tradition that responds to the experience of dialogue and opens theological reflection to wider and promising perspectives on the subject.
Waiting on Grace is a further step in the development of an original approach to theology of interreligious dialogue undertaken by Father Michael Barnes, a British Jesuit priest who taught for more than thirty years at Heythrop College in the University of London, ran the De Nobili Centre for Dialogue in Southall, West London, and now teaches at the University of Roehampton. His position is one that I would call—perhaps too simply—a theological approach to dialogue that is itself in dialogue with lived experience. At the very least, a fully informed review of this book would demand a close reading of his previous two books, Theology and the Dialogue of Religions,[1] in which he lays the foundations for his theological approach, and Interreligious Learning,[2] in which he spells out his “experiential” approach.
Not having had the opportunity to read either of these foundational works, what follows will not be a scholarly review of the book but more simply—again, perhaps too simply—a thankful record of the reviewer’s spiritual empathy with some the author’s theological insights that flow from his main conviction, namely, that “in some mysterious way God is always encountered in any generous moment of welcome and hospitality” (p. vii), or, to put it more theologically, “there is always something of grace at work wherever engagements of hospitality and welcome take place” (p. 82), since “to be in dialogue with another person is itself theological” (p. vii). The grace of otherness and the resulting grace of hospitality challenge us to adopt the waiting and welcoming attitude to which the title alludes. This theological and spiritual attitude summons all those who are involved in many and different ways in interreligious encounters to welcome the challenge of being receptive to the grace that comes to them thanks to the other. In this sense, the title of Barnes’ book, Waiting on Grace, echoes that of another good book on interreligious dialogue, Grâce à l’autre (“thanks to the other,” but also “graced by the other”), written fifteen year ago by the French theologian Geneviève Comeau.[3]
For the best overall description of the structure and contents of the book, I would simply refer the reader to the well-done précis that accompanies the volume:
Whereas much theology of religions regards ‘the other’ as a problem to be solved, this book begins with a Church called to witness to its faith in a multicultural world by practising a generous yet risky hospitality. A theology of dialogue takes its rise from the Christian experience of being-in-dialogue. Taking its rise from the biblical narrative of encounter, call and response, such a theology cannot be fully understood without reference to the matrix of faith that Christians share in complex ways with the Jewish people. The contemporary experience of the Shoah, the dominating religious event of the twentieth century, has complexified that relationship and left an indelible mark on the religious sensibility of both Jews and Christians. Engaging with a range of thinkers, from Heschel, Levinas, and Edith Stein who were all deeply affected by the Shoah, to Metz, Panikkar and Rowan Williams, who are always pressing the limits of what can and cannot be said with integrity about the self-revealing Word of God, this book shows how Judaism is a necessary, if not sufficient, source of Christian self-understanding. What is commended by this foundational engagement is a hope-filled ‘waiting on grace’ made possible by virtues of empathy and patience. A theology of dialogue focuses not on metaphysical abstractions but on biblical forms of thought about God’s presence to human beings which Christians share with Jews and, under the continuing guidance of the Spirit of Christ, learn to adapt to a whole range of contested cultural and political contexts.
For my part, I will focus my reading of the book on three points that I consider of extreme importance and great value for the development of a sound spirituality of dialogue, the level of interreligious dialogue that is the central concern of monks involved in DIM·MID.
(1) The space of the “in-between” as a theological place, as a space of “disclosure of truth.” The first pages of the book serve as a necessary philosophical foundation for giving theological status to "relationality," that is to say, for constructing a theology of dialogue to accompany an (instrumental) theology for dialogue that is always tempted to adopt a defensive positioning for the guarding of borders. A theology of dialogue “stresses the significance of interpersonal engagement for understanding the action of the self-revealing God” (pp. 8-9). This kind of theology is based on a radical assumption, namely, that “what the Church knows through the revelation of the Incarnate Word is intensified and even illuminated by what is strictly unknown yet dimly perceived beyond the boundaries of the Church” (p. 9). This awareness leads to the conclusion that “what the Church gives in terms of witness to Christ acts in a sort of dialectical tension with what it receives of the grace of God already permeating the entire scope of everyday human experience” (p. 11). For this reason, it is the nature of the “in-between” and what it may disclose of God that demands our spiritual attention and welcoming attitude. It is a question of “making space for the unknown and unexpected” (p. 45). Only by making this space will we be able to put aside the comfort of a dominating monologue, which often characterizes the Christian theological discourse in general—and interreligious dialogue in particular.
Barnes is convinced and convincing when he states that “the Church’s witness must be both responsible and imaginative, faithful to what is given yet also hospitable towards the challenge of other ideas and ways of thought” (p. 92). I might add that I was happy to find here and elsewhere throughout the book references to the theological insights of Raimon Panikkar on the “dialogical dialogue,” “inner dialogue,” “intra-religious dialogue,” etc. I was even more encouraged to find Barnes offering explicit appreciation for the work of the Catalan-Indian theologian: “Panikkar . . . puts his finger on many neuralgic points both for the theory and practice of interreligious encounter” (p. 178).
(2) This understanding of dialogue naturally becomes a theological and existential imperative “to discern the signs of God’s self-revelation through the medium of the conversations and interpersonal exchanges that make us most deeply human” (p. 26). This imperative should naturally result in a life of dialogue “in the middle of things” (p. 9) and it touches upon the very nature of the Church’s mission, to be “a movement of theological hospitality towards the other that mirrors and responds to God’s prior movement towards human beings” (p. 43), that is, the so-called missio Dei. In biblical terms, “If God is the God of all people and not the tribal leader of one, then acts of dialogue-as-hospitality entail theological attention to the many different ways in which human beings are drawn into the divine mystery” (p. 72). A significant portion of Barnes’ volume is devoted to show how this interpretation of the Church’s mission is at the very heart of the “theological spirit” of Vatican Council II and more particularly to remind us what the conciliar declaration Nostra ætate says about relations with people of other faiths. Barnes rightly recalls that Nostra ætate is to be interpreted in the light of the theological teaching laid out in the dogmatic constitutions, primarily Lumen gentium and Dei verbum, where the hermeneutic of revelation is “intrinsically dialogic and communicative” (p. 67) and the key theme is “relationality” (p. 61). The conclusion is far-reaching: “The wisdom that Nostra ætate recovered is that no hard and fast distinction can be made between the sacred wisdom of other ‘religions’ and what is known of the God revealed in the Christ Event” (p. 74). For us monastics engaged precisely in the “dialogue of religious experience” promoted by the post-Conciliar Church, it is important to know and remember that these are the theological foundations of Nostra ætate’s exhortation to “encourage, preserve, and promote” the spiritual values of other religions.[4] As Barnes puts it,
Nostra ætate’s call to “encourage, preserve, and promote” the truths and values of another religious tradition is asking for more than generous discernment of another religious system or even a set of visionary ideals. It asks for an encounter with the persons of faith who give shape to a religious world (p. 79).
(3) Since “the interreligious is the interpersonal” (p. 81), interreligious dialogue requires making room for a “third space”, where something new can be revealed. This is possible only through what Barnes calls “intentional relationality,” (p. 84) which he describes as “a Christian consciousness that participates in the missio Dei, formed in response to the Word and guided by the Spirit who together are at work in a whole range of encounters and conversations” (p. 141). This kind of personal engagement in an intentional relationality is made possible by another key component of Barnes’ argument, empathy. This empathetic concern for the other’s world, his/her religious world included, and the spirit of hospitality both have an impact on and expand the consciousness of the subject, his/her religious consciousness included, becoming transformative of both the self (see pp. 178-185) and Christian identity, which “is not self-subsistent but relational” (p. 200). As shocking as this may seem to some, Barnes can properly conclude his argument by saying that “strictly speaking Christianity has no language of its own” (p. 201). For this reason, “learning new vocabularies,” as the title of the final chapter reads, is a duty for the Christian faith.
In this final part of the book, the author adds a new quality necessary for his theology of dialogue: it is to result in a virtue-based theology. “Through an interpersonal exchange the self learns how to change, how to become more sensitive to what it means to be human” (p. 232), and
To be human is to speak and be spoken to, to communicate and to learn, to be host and guest, to struggle before the face of the Other, all of which presumes upon attention to that inner space where the dialogical God can be heard calling the soul away from a fixation on the self into a richer and more powerful sense of life-in-community (p. 223).
As we read in the preface, “this book is the third in an anticipated quartet” (p. vii). We then look forward with great expectations to Father Barnes’ next contribution to “make theological sense of Christian life in a cross-religious world of challenge and encounter” (p. ix). We do so because our reading of his most recent book has shown that Barnes is building a sound “missional and prophetic” theology of dialogue (p. 194)—an approach that immediately reminds one of Bevan’s and Schroeder’s “prophetic dialogue”[5]—and is working toward a theology of dialogue that is able to negotiate with integrity the tension between faithfulness to the “home” tradition and a generous openness to the other.
The concluding argument found on the very last page of this work provides an excellent summary of his entire theological endeavor. For this reason I think it is worth quoting here as the conclusion of this “spiritual reading” of Father Michael’s most valuable, but not always easily accessible book:
Instead of asking […] how other religions are somehow included or contained within Christian revelation, or—more simply—completed by it, Christians look to the way the Spirit of Christ is active in all religious communities as revealing the mystery of Christ—the mystery of what God is already doing in the world. In other words, the “comprehensive view” generated by the Mystery of Christ does not seek to impose a Christian set of answers but to raise for others the same possibility it holds out to the Church itself: to be touched and formed by the grace of God after the manner of Jesus’s own obedience to the Father. The question is not how the Spirit provides a “place” in the Paschal Mystery for other religious traditions but how the “missions” of the Word and the Spirit are held together yet distinguished within the single mystery of creation-and-redemption (p. 236).
Notes [1] Michael Barnes, Theology and the Dialogue of Religions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).[2] Michael Barnes, Interreligious Learning: Dialogue, Spirituality and the Christian Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). [3] Geneviève Comeau, Grâce à l’autre: le pluralisme religieux, une chance pour la foi, Paris: Éditions de l’atelier–Éditions ouvrières, 2005. [4] Vatican Council II, Nostra ætate 2. [5] Stephen B. Bevans, Roger P. Schroeder, Prophetic Dialogue: Reflections on Christian Mission Today (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011). |
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