The dangers of dialogue.

WHEN I HEAR the word dialogue I reach for my dogma, says a Catholic friend of the orthodox persuasion. Ecumenical dialogue is often portrayed as a substitute for doctrine and dogma. People who go in for dialogue are worried about imposing their belief on others, which is odd, since they seem to have so little belief to impose. Vibrant faith, we may be inclined to think, does not dialogue. Vibrant faith proclaims, instructs, judges, and persuades. In sum, ecumenical dialogue is a liberal scheme aimed at the evisceration of true religion.

That caricature is based on enough truth to keep it in circulation. The suspicion of ecumenical dialogue between Christians of different denominations is at least doubled when it comes to inter-religious dialogue between Christians and Jews. Of course everyone well, almost everyone-agrees that Christians and Jews should be nice to one another. Years ago we had the annual Brotherhood Week, when it was good form to take somebody to lunch with whom you would otherwise never think of having lunch. Brotherhood Week dressed up as inter-religious dialogue is still Brotherhood Week, and it has little to do with serious religion.

"Interfaith dialogue begins with faith," the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was fond of saying. Regrettably, much that is called dialogue steers clear of faith, at the beginning, at the end, and all along the way. Some twenty years ago, when people thought dialogue new and exciting, I was on a panel with a rabbi and a Roman Catholic priest. Toward the end, the monsignor who was moderating the affair exclaimed on the wonder of it. "Isn't this amazing? Here we have a Jewish rabbi, a Lutheran pastor, and a Catholic priest discussing their religious faith. It goes to show that, despite our differences . . ." Here I expected him to say something about our common faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus. But no. "It goes to show," he said, "that, despite our differences, we are all good Americans."

For this very American monsignor, our unity was established not by religion but despite religion. Friendly relations were possible on the secular basis of Americanism, which overcomes the dangerously divisive distinctiveness of being Christian or Jew. True dialogue, however, attends to distinctiveness, knowing that our disagreements are often ever so much more interesting than our agreements, knowing that agreements are discovered and tested by working through disagreements. Disagreement, Father John Courtney Murray said, is a rare achievement. Most of what we call disagreement, he added, is merely confusion.

Rabbi Leon Klenicki and I recently wrote Believing Today: Jew and Christian in Conversation (Eerdmans). Some critics have said it is too focused on differences between Jews and Christians. Good. First one must be clear about why he is a Christian and not a Jew, and the other why he is a Jew and not a Christian, before we can together be Jew and Christian in conversation. The first danger of dialogue is to rush to agreement, thus obscuring the differences that are the reason for the dialogue in the first place. There are other dangers of dialogue, as we are instructed in an admirable new study by Rabbi David Novak of the University of Virginia. It is called Jewish- Christian Dialogue: A Jewish Justification (Oxford), and I will be surprised if it does not move the conversation at least a light year beyond Brotherhood Week.

The three chief dangers of dialogue, according to Novak, are triumphalism, relativism,- and syncretism. Triumphalism ends the dialogue by eliminating the dialogue partner, assuming that his inferior truth is to be "subsumed by my superior truth. Relativism makes the dialogue pointless, assuming that there is no binding truth or that we are both really saying the same thing in different ways. Syncretism is the pasting together of pieces of Judaism and pieces of Christianity, producing an ersatz religion that is recognizably neither. Most readers might agree that the second and third of these are dangers, but some will have trouble with the first. Isn't "triumphalism" just a pejorative term for wanting the truth to triumph? No.

Triumphalism is not excessive passion for the truth, for we cannot care too much about truth. Triumphalism is the excessive equation of our convictions with the truth, and any such equation is excessive. Triumphalism, swelled by pride in possessing the truth, knows nothing of faith that is possessed by the truth. Triumphalism seeks to conquer, faith seeks to serve -also by understanding and nurturing the truth by which others are possessed. Jews are, for obvious reasons, more troubled than Christians by triumphalism in the dialogue.

THE DIALOGUE isn't over until it's over. David Novak argues, along with earlier Jewish thinkers, that both Christianity and Judaism are unfinished forms of faith awaiting a promised consummation. In Romans 9 through 11, the Apostle Paul speaks similarly about the continuing "mystery" of living Judaism. Christians cannot compromise the faith by denying their hope that Jews will recognize Jesus as Messiah. However, it is not a compromise of faith but an article of faith that existing Christianity is not the kingdom of God. Conducted in shared expectation of that kingdom, Jewish-Christian dialogue is for the duration. The chief danger of the dialogue is the desire to come to a conclusion before the conclusion written by the Author of our mutual and mysterious entanglement.