The Catholic Church tells us that interfaith dialogue is an obligatory part of the Christian life. “Dialogue is fundamental for the Church, which is called to collaborate in God’s plan with its methods of presence, respect and love toward all persons (cf. AG 10-12; ES 41-42; RH 11-12)” John Paul II, To the Plenary Session of the Secretariat for Non-Christians, 3-4-1984, pages 268 -71 in Interreligious Dialogue: The Official Teaching of the Catholic Church (1963 – 1995). ed. Francesco Gioia (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1997), par 419.
Many people disregard this responsibility because they fear that inter-religious dialogue leads to a relativistic understanding of faith. They think that one’s Catholic identity and beliefs would be lost by the end of the dialogical process. Examples can be brought up which seem to suggest this happens. It certainly is a legitimate concern. Indeed, the Church shares this apprehension, but she does not think it justifies our exclusion from dialogue. Instead, it means that there is the need, now more than ever before, for Catholics to engage in a continuing process of catechises throughout their life, to be made better aware of the teachings of their faith and for the reasons why they are believed by the Church. How else can they dialogue with others about their own faith if they do not know their own faith? We cannot ignore the need to dialogue, especially since dialogue can make us more aware of those areas of the faith we do not sufficiently understand. It provides for us the motivation to discover answers to those questions we cannot yet answer, and it could illuminate for us questions which we might not otherwise have known needed to be asked. To engage others in a proper dialogue is difficult, and there are many practical concerns which need to be worked out to help facilitate a respectful and meaningful dialogue. We will concern ourselves with the ways dialogue can take place and the methods involved in such dialogue later. At this point, we need to examine various aspects of why dialogue is fundamental to who we are as human persons, because this will help lead us to discover why dialogue can never be regulated as an optional extra of the Christian life.
Humans are, by and by, communal by nature. We are called to relate to one another, to share with another our lives –to experience life together. We are greater when we work together than when we fight against one another. While we could raise the question of hermits and whether or not they share in these communal needs, we must realize that they represent at best a small portion of humanity, and if we examine their lives closely, we would find that they meet these communal needs in various ways and are never truly neglected.
We need others in our lives; we need to share with them our thoughts, our hopes, our fears, our beliefs, what we have done, what we wish to do, our likes, our dislikes, and anything else which we feel makes us who we are. Except for those who would want to dominate all conversations so that they are the only ones who actually converse (probably the result of an inflate ego), not only do we want to communicate about ourselves with others, we also want to listen to them, and hear the insights they have gained from their own interests, studies and life experiences. The fragile barrier between the I and thou is broken down when we converse, although how much we let others in and how much they let us in depends upon many factors, and communion here on earth tends to be less than perfect. Yet, such communion through dialogue exists. We can and do experience the joys and sorrows of others; we are never set apart as an impartial listener, no matter how much we might try. Moreover, as we listen, and respond to what we hear, we begin to realize another truth: our thoughts are never entirely our own. They do not come out of our minds ex nihilo. They develop and come out of a response from the dialogues we have been engaging with others from the very beginning of our existence. “When the individual thinks, he does not think individualistically; he does not think out of himself alone; nor only in contemplation of God or intercourse with the world, that is, with the object of thinking (his thought), but he thinks already in conformity, harmony with, and / or reaction to, stimulated by, and in dialogue with, other people. Thinking is not an individualistic process, but an act of language” Raimon Panikkar, The Intra-Religious Dialogue (New York: Paulist Press, 1999; revised edition), 36.
Speech is an important, and indeed, central part of how we communicate. We must understand both the power and limitations of speech. St Bonaventure elucidates upon this issue quite well when he writes, “Considering speech in relation to the speaker, we see that all speech signifies a mental concept. That inner concept is the word of the mind and its offspring which is known to the person conceiving it. But in order that this concept may become known to the hearer, it assumes the form of the voice; and by means of this clothing, the intelligible word becomes sensible and is heard externally. It is received into the ear of the listener and yet does not depart from the mind of the person uttering it” St Bonaventure, On The Reduction of the Arts to Theology. trans. Zachary Hayes (St Bonaventure, New York: Franciscan Institute, 1996), par. 16. The power of speech is that it allows us to share concepts together, where the thoughts in my head are able to be received by you, and you can think upon the same things I am thinking about, making a unity of thought between the two of us. Because we are so accustomed to it, and experience it throughout all our conscious lives, we might not realize how valuable and significant a tool this is! We might not even realize what we are doing, yet it is true, speech provides a vehicle by which we find ourselves being united with one another.
What is it that is being shared? What exactly are concepts? Does not their common possession among people who are not materially one and the same show for us evidence of a non-material side to our existence? Because these concepts have an influence upon our actions, and through our actions upon the material world we experience through our senses, does this not show that they are, in part, transcendental to the material side of reality? And does not the fact that we can share with others in a transcendental experience indicate that we are never entirely alone as pure individuals even when we are thinking to ourselves, because our thoughts are not entirely independent from the thoughts of others?
Certainly, speech is a powerful tool, because of how it makes present before us an immaterial reality. Yet, it is also an imperfect tool. The way we communicate these concepts are only imperfect representations of them, and require work on both sides to actualize their potential: speech “never expresses except by means of a likeness; it never teaches except by means of a convincing light; it never persuades except by power; and it is evident that these effects are accomplished only by means of an inherent likeness, light and power intrinsically united to the soul” (ibid., par. 18).
Although speech is central to the way we communicate, it is quite clear it is not the only, nor possibly the best way, we communicate ourselves to others. While probably not the words of St Francis, the famous dictum which tells us to, “preach the Gospel, and use words if necessary,” clearly is in the Franciscan spirit and hits upon this truth quite well. We communicate not only by our words, but by our deeds; what we do for and with others suggests quite a bit about ourselves and what we actually believe in. Indeed, even if we do not share a common tongue, we can nonetheless communicate a significant amount by non-verbal means, and indeed, much of what is communicated between people, even when speaking to another, is done through such means. We must realize that our very body itself communicates who and what we are; unless we believe in some sort of gnostic spiritualism, we must realize that our visage, our image, is a significant part of our identity. Although our body communicates much about ourselves to others, we must also recognize that it does so imperfectly, due in part to the maladies we suffer in life. When we first meet others, often our first glimpse of who we are is established to them by our looks and how we present ourselves to others through them; despite all claims to the contrary, first impressions have a long lasting effect upon people and how they think of each other.
Even if we have never met someone in person, we feel we know more about them once we have seen their picture. This is probably why pictures of authors are so often included with the books they write: it helps create a more personal relationship between the reader and the author, freeing up the communication process that the author wants to establish in their book. Indeed, we feel we cannot fully know someone until we have some image we can use to associate with them. This explains why images in the Christian faith play a very important role in our spiritual life. The Logos took upon Himself human form, providing with it a personal image we can use to relate to Him. The communion we have with the saints is capable of receiving its fulfillment when we can contemplate their images, because by their images their presence before us can be realized and felt and not left as some sort of mental abstraction. Indeed, the body is so important to us because we are all embodied entities and not disembodied spirits.
St Gregory of Nyssa tells us that the soul and body develop together, yet the body conforms to the will of the soul. “For just as a man when perfectly developed has a specially marked activity of the soul, so at the beginning of his existence he shows in himself that co-operation of the soul which is suitable and conformable to his existing need, in its preparing for itself its proper dwelling-place by means of the implanted matter; for we do not suppose it possible that the soul is adapted to a strange building, just as it is not possible that the seal impressed on wax should be fitted to an engraving that does not agree with it” St Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Manin NFPNF2:5. ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), XXIX.7. This points out that even our soul, which is immaterial and invisible, nonetheless can communicate something of itself to others: our body and what it looks like is not a secondary aspect of who we are: it is fundamental to our identity. The two are intricately linked from the time of conception, and the soul provides the framework for which the body finds its form, even as the soul grows in its own existence; the body finally manifests the fullness of the soul’s artifice, not in birth, but in our maturity. In our fallen existence, there can be, and are, errors in this communication, but Catholic theology has always said that the resurrected body will be free from blemishes; the soul will perfectly form the body without any contamination to it from sin. This is why iconography spiritualizes the body, because it represents the transcendent glory that the body is to have in the resurrection.
If our soul, in how it shapes its body, is communicating itself to others, it is doing this because it is following the true archetype of humanity, that is, the Logos who became flesh to communicate with us the fullness of the revelation of God. “It is something like this that we see in the Eternal Word. God conceived the Word by an eternal act of generation, as it is written in the eighth chapter of the Books of Proverbs […]. But that the Word might be known by human beings who are endowed with the senses, the Word assumed the form of flesh….” (St Bonaventure, On the Reduction of the Arts), par. 16). The Father speaks the Word, and the Word assumes flesh to reveal Himself to us; the flesh presents to us the “image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15), revealing to us God in the way our flesh reveals to each other our soul.
In saying this, there are many caveats which probably should be made clear. Among the first, and most important of them is this: while fullness of truth is revealed to us in Jesus, this does not mean we can comprehend this truth, that there is no mystery left. “For the image is one thing, and the thing depicted is another; one can always notice the differences between them, since one is not the other, and vice verse” St John of Damascus, On the Divine Images. trans. David Anderson (Crestwood, New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), III.16. While Jesus is indeed the fullness of God in bodily form, the divinity of Jesus transcends the humanity, that is, God transcends the human condition. Everything is revealed, and yet in that revelation we encounter the mystery as a part of that same revelation. The divine transcendence is revealed, but it is not exhausted, in the incarnation. This of course has a practical effect for us: it reminds us the limitation of communication. Since there are elements of truth which transcends human comprehension, then all human engagement with truth will be limited, and must indeed be seen as such. Communication is done through likeness and not identity; we must not confuse what we relate to others as being more than a mere likeness of truth; the fullness of truth will always be more than what we can and do say. Our concepts and ideas should be seen as pointers to a reality which transcends the words we use to express them. “Reality is not totally objectifiable,” as Panikkar puts it (Panikkar, The Intra-Religious Dialogue, 34.
Once we realize that our incarnated existence itself is a form of personal communication with others, this alone should demonstrates the fundamental role that dialogue plays in our life. We exist in dialogue; we encounter others always in dialogue. As Jesus represents what humanity is all about, we can easily establish our being as being in dialogue relates Christology. Christ is the archetype for humanity: Marius Victorinus puts it in this way: the Logos is the image of the Father, and our soul is in the image of Christ. But people could still wonder if there is not something deeper and more fundamental which explains the dialogical nature of humanity? Is it only because the Logos, who represents in His Person the Dialogical Principle of God, is incarnate as Jesus Christ, the archetype for humanity, that we too must exist in dialogue?
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