Dialogical Theology

Dialogical or interreligious theology is a new kind of theology that accepts and celebrates religious plurality and is grounded in dialogical praxis. Object and method of this theology are dialogical. Whereas confessional theology is the reflection upon one’s own religion, interreligious theology investigates the conditions for an interreligious dialogue in which partners learn from one other and appreciate each other. It is therefore a novel way of relating to different religious groups in society. It learns in ‘bookless moments’ from and with people who live and think differently. Rather than operating with a fixed content, interreligious theology is open and contextual. In the emerging new discipline of dialogical theology, distinctness allows for communication. Interreligious theology investigates the incommensurability of religions as well as the comparability between them: it establishes connections through translations and creates bridges. It is prone to promote self-criticism and to stimulate creative interaction with religious others. In an increasingly global world, foreign religions quickly became neighbour religions. In such a constellation, one may begin to recognize that people from other religions have their own access to what John Hick calls ‘the Ultimate Reality’. Dialogical theology and dialogical philosophy emerged in the twentieth century. Dialogical thought departs from the objectivity of philosophers such as René Descartes, whose scientific rationalism began from the thinking ego who is confronted with objects outside. In a scientific view of the world, outside objects can be studied by the subject in an objective way. However, for Immanuel Kant, the numinous world is not accessible by our minds; we only know the phenomenal world. We only know the world as it appears to us. Dialogical philosophers continue to doubt that the only way to approach the world is through objective observation. With the dialogical turn in philosophy, the world is not objectively describable, nor is it an idealistic projection. Philosophers like Gabriel Marcel and Franz Fischer argued that human beings are not merely knowable: one meets them (Meir 2015b). One may participate in their existence. Dialogical philosophers argue that we live in a network of relations. What is important for them is that there is a between-space; the apex of humanity would lie in the lofty possibility of meeting human and no-human others. Ferdinand Ebner, for instance, argued that through the relationship with human beings and God, one enters the ‘spiritual realities’ (Ebner 1921). Gabriel Marcel sharply distinguished between the problem (le problème), the sphere of knowledge, and the mystery (le mystère) which goes beyond knowledge: Being was being with others (Marcel 1951). In dialogical theology, existence is co-existence and togetherness – it is relationality. Recognition is approached as higher, more elevated than cognition. For religious dialogical thinkers, the dialogue between human beings is the basis of the relationship with the Divine. These insights on the relatedness of all with all are eminently present in Jewish dialogical theologies.