Christophe F Potworowski. Israel Affairs. Volume 16, Issue 4, October 2010.
The article explores the possibilities of friendship between Israel and the Pope in the light of Pope Benedict’s denial of a reduction of religions to cultural artefacts and his commitment to religious claims to truth. Any discussion of Benedict XVI and Israel must take into account this call for the respect of the human desire for truth, the confidence in the ability of reason, and the validity of religious statements. This article offers some reflections on Benedict XVI’s contribution to the larger debate of interreligious dialogue between Christianity and the Jewish faith. After a brief look at Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate and at John Paul II, the essay examines some sections of Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth and his first encyclical Deus Caritas est with a view of developing the category of friendship as it applies to his attitude to the faith of Israel.
On 12 September 2006, Benedict XVI gave a lecture in the Aula Magna of the University of Regensburg. Although in the world press the lecture was mostly noted for its remarks on Islam, and somewhat as well as for the eventual boost it gave to the dialogue between Christianity and Islam, it also contained significant remarks for the general cultural crisis of which we are all authors and victims. More specifically, Benedict called for the broadening of reason. There is a mentality today that calls for the purification of the Christian message from its inculturation in the Greek world and the recovery of a pristine historical Jesus free from the accretions of doctrine and church. All this dehellenization and demythologization is to be done in the name of scientific reason. Questions with regard to the origin of human life or those pertaining to human destiny, the questions proper to religion and ethics and also the most burning questions of our life, are disqualified from public discourse and relegated to the realm of the subjective.
Human thinking in this guise is in fact, for Benedict XVI, a reduction of reason. Even more, it is a reduction of human reality itself. Humanity loses some of its dignity.
The subject then decides, on the basis of his experiences, what he considers tenable in matters of religion, and the subjective ‘conscience’ becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical. In this way, though, ethics and religion lose their power to create a community and become a completely personal matter. This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it. Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.
A similar reduction can occur within interreligious dialogue if religions are reduced to cultural artefacts and religious claims to truth are seen as obstacles to the establishment of social order. Cultural pluralism is involved, in the name of a false irenicism, and claims to truth are seen as remnants of a triumphalist and most definitely politically inappropriate age. Religious dialogue is then reduced to social or cultural negotiations, and the really burning questions are disqualified from discussion in the name of reason. This critical judgement is not a desire to return to pre-scientific days but a call for a broadening of reason, where the question of truth is not eliminated because it is awkward. Such positivism distorts scientific reason, whose authentic ideal is ‘the will to be obedient to the truth’. A broadened reason does not exclude questions of faith and ethics, it does not eliminate the divine: ‘A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures’. Any discussion of Benedict XVI and Israel must take into account this call for the respect of the human desire for truth, the confidence in the ability of reason and the validity of religious statements.
My aim in the following pages is not to review the state of affairs in Jewish Christian relations, nor to evaluate the progress of interreligious dialogue at various national or international levels, and even less is it to review the diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Israel. More simply, it offers some reflections on Benedict XVI’s contribution to the larger debate of interreligious dialogue between Christianity and the Jewish faith. After a brief look at Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate and at John Paul II, I will examine some sections of Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth and his first encyclical Deus Caritas est with a view to developing the category of friendship as it applies to his attitude to the faith of Israel.
Nostra Aetate and John Paul II
The state of relations between Rome and Israel moved significantly forward with the Second Vatican Council and the breakthrough of Nostra Aetate. In that 1965 document on the relation of the Church to non-Christian religions, the Council speaks of ‘the bond that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham’s stock’. The Church sees ‘the beginnings of her faith and election… already among the Patriarchs, Moses and the prophets’. ‘The Church’, it says, ‘cannot forget that she received the revelation of the Old Testament through the people with whom God in His inexpressible mercy concluded the Ancient Covenant.’ Further, ‘the Church believes that by His cross Christ, Our Peace, reconciled Jews and Gentiles, making both one in Himself’. Along with the people of Israel, the Church ‘awaits that day, known to God alone, on which all peoples will address the Lord in a single voice’. This intimate connection between Christianity and the Jewish faith was to be re-affirmed in various ways and in various statements by both John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The role of the Jewish Scriptures in the Christian Bible received special treatment in the 2001 document by the Pontifical Biblical Commission entitled ‘The Jewish People And Their Sacred Scriptures In The Christian Bible’.
Nostra Aetate denounces any form of anti-Semitism:
Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work on the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ.
There follows a strong condemnation of ‘hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone’. The reason for this condemnation of anti-Semitism is that ‘Christ underwent His passion freely, because of the sins of men and out of infinite love, in order that all may reach salvation’. And this leads to the last important point, namely: ‘It is therefore, the burden of the Church’s preaching to proclaim the cross of Christ as the sign of God’s all-embracing love and as the fountain from which all grace flows’ (NA 4). The condemnation of anti-Semitism likewise became an often repeated element of Christian statements directed to Israel. From now on, the aim of Christian-Jewish relations is mutual respect, mutual understanding, and ‘fellowship’.
John Paul II’s legacy to Jewish-Christian relations was significant. Though this is not the place to review his contribution to those relations, it would be impossible to talk about Benedict XVI’s input without a brief reference to his predecessor. The most striking gesture is undoubtedly John Paul II’s visit to Israel during the year of the Jubilee. Before that, there was the 1986 visit to the synagogue in Rome. Here John Paul II reiterated the elements of Nostra Aetate, and then mentioned the obvious difference between Catholics and Jews, namely the attachment of the former to Jesus:
No one is unaware that the fundamental difference from the very beginning has been the attachment of us Catholics to the person and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, a son of your People, from which were also born the Virgin Mary, the Apostles who were the ‘foundations and pillars of the Church’ and the greater part of the first Christian community. But this attachment is located in the order of faith, that is to say in the free assent of the mind and heart guided by the Spirit, and it can never be the object of exterior pressure, in one sense or the other. This is the reason why we wish to deepen dialogue in loyalty and friendship, in respect for one another’s intimate convictions, taking as a fundamental basis the elements of the Revelation which we have in common, as a ‘great spiritual patrimony’. (cf. NA, 4)
What strikes me about this formulation is the simultaneous mention of the Catholic attachment to Jesus Christ with a statement on the status of faith as something given freely and never as a result of ‘exterior pressure’ or coercion. The other element I retain from this is the use of the term friendship, which adds something quite definite to the term dialogue. John Paul II then goes on to list the kind of tasks or issues Jews and Catholics could promote together. The work of ‘collaboration’ has been made possible by a recognition of the joint heritage and, therefore, the joint responsibility. This involves a defence of human dignity and human rights, as well as a morality based on the Ten Commandments, ‘in the observance of which man finds his truth and freedom’. It is interesting to note the similarities with the list of issues proposed almost 25 years later by Benedict XVI.
Where does this leave Benedict XVI and his contribution to Jewish-Christian dialogue? On the one hand, Benedict is not free to do as he pleases in the realm of foreign relations in the name of the Vatican. He is the inheritor of a long tradition which finds some of its earliest expressions with the writings of St. Paul. Just like his predecessor, he is not free to depart from this tradition. On the other hand, to the extent that he is faithful he will be able to give this tradition a freshness and a new life on the basis of his own theological synthesis.
A few months after the inauguration of his pontificate in 2005, Benedict wrote a letter to the President of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews on the occasion of the 40th anniversary Nostra Aetate. In this letter Benedict recognizes the ‘new era of relations with the Jewish people’ and ‘the basis for sincere theological dialogue’ made possible by the declaration. As such, the document stressed ‘the need to overcome past prejudices, misunderstandings, indifference, and the language of contempt and hostility’. Now, once these have been overcome, or at least once the need to overcome these has been recognized, what is there left? How are relations to develop? It is here that Benedict offers his own contribution:
The Declaration has been the occasion of greater mutual understanding and respect, cooperation and, often, friendship between Catholics and Jews. It has also challenged them to recognize their shared spiritual roots and to appreciate their rich heritage of faith in the One God, maker of heaven and earth, who established his covenant with the Chosen People, revealed his commandments and taught hope in those messianic promises which give confidence and comfort in the struggles of life.
Benedict recognizes the important contribution of his predecessor John Paul II and expresses his ‘own firm determination to walk in [his] footsteps’. For Benedict, the Jewish-Christian dialogue ‘must continue to enrich and deepen the bonds of friendship which have developed, while preaching and catechesis must be committed to ensuring that our mutual relations are presented in the light of the principles set forth by the Council’. The only indication as to the possible content of these deeper ‘bonds of friendship’ is the following:
As we look to the future, I express my hope that both in theological dialogue and in everyday contacts and collaboration, Christian and Jews will offer an ever more compelling shared witness to the One God and his commandments, the sanctity of life, the promotion of human dignity, the rights of the family and the need to build a world of justice, reconciliation and peace for future generations.
We will return to these themes shortly.
In January 2010, Benedict visited the Great Synagogue of Rome. It was only the second time in history that a Pope visited this place of worship. It was also the third time that Benedict visited a synagogue, after his visits in Germany and the United States. In some ways, the visit was overshadowed by the tensions in Jewish-Christian relations of the day: The so-called reinstatement of Bishop Williamson, the possible canonization of Pius XII, and the permission for the celebration of the Tridentine mass. Let me say something about the third issue.
In 2007, Benedict issued a Motu Proprio which set the framework for the use of the 1962 Missal as an ‘extraordinary form’ of the Eucharistic liturgy. On 7 February 2008, Benedict further revised the Good Friday prayer to read:
Let us also pray for the Jews. May the Lord our God illuminate their hearts so that they may recognize Jesus Christ as saviour of all men. Almighty and everlasting God, you who want all men to be saved and to gain knowledge of the truth, kindly allow that, as all peoples enter into your Church, all of Israel may be saved.
(The modification to the prayer was given in a note by the Vatican Secretary of State, and published in the Osservatore Romano.)
Joseph Weiler had the following comment on this:
There are many Jews who found that move regressive, for it implies two uncomfortable propositions: One, that we Jews need praying for, since we will not be saved and will, in the eyes of some Catholics, end up in Hell; and two, that, Nostra Aetate notwithstanding, Catholics do not accept that in our fidelity to the Hebrew Bible and to the eternal covenant between our forefathers and the one and only Almighty God, the Holy Blessed be He, to the exclusion of the Trinity, we are fulfilling God’s destiny for us. Now, it is amazing progress that instead of burning us at the stake to force us to accept Jesus as our one and only Savoir, only a prayer is said. But, for many, the fact that our souls need praying for is a sign that Judaism is not accepted as legitimate. So let us again listen to the Pope: ‘I, too, in the course of my Pontificate, have wanted to demonstrate my closeness to and my affection for the people of the Covenant’, said the Pope movingly and so respectfully. ‘The People of the Covenant.’ That is who we are. No one could say it better.
During his visit to the synagogue, Benedict XVI re-affirmed the legacy of John Paul II and pledged to ‘confirm and deepen… the path of dialogue, fraternity and friendship’. He called for a joint witness to the one God, to the respect for life, and to the preservation and promotion of the sanctity of the family:
It is our duty, in response to God’s call, to strive to keep open the space for dialogue, for reciprocal respect, for growth in friendship, for a common witness in the face of the challenges of our time, which invite us to cooperate for the good of humanity in this world created by God, the Omnipotent and Merciful.
From my viewpoint as a theologian, I am struck by the frequent use of the category of friendship in the various speeches and addresses during his visits to synagogues and Israel. Now, the use of the term ‘friendship’ is not accidental. It offers a real clue to the relations desired by Benedict XVI. What does he mean by friendship, especially in such a context? To obtain a basis for a meaningful reply to this question, I would like to begin with an examination of the book Jesus of Nazareth.
Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth
Benedict’s book Jesus of Nazareth contains a significant amount of material pertaining to Jewish-Christian relations, most notably the section dealing with Jacob Neusner’s dialogue between Jesus and a rabbi. How is this material helpful to our question? If friendship is the focus of Benedict’s attitude to the Jewish people, how is this manifest in his portrait of Jesus of Nazareth.
As with the encyclical Deus Caritas est, the book Jesus of Nazareth is not primarily about relationships with Judaism, and so our question seems misplaced. Still, there are many references to the faith of Israel and, for a book about Christology, an uncharacteristically high level of engagement with Judaism. Almost every major element in Benedict’s portrait of Jesus Christ contains something pertinent to the relationship between Christians and Jews. It would not be unfair to call this a characteristic of his theological method and intent.
Already in a 1998 lecture, ‘Interreligious Dialogue and the Jewish-Christian Relations’, the future Pope Benedict had addressed the role of Jesus Christ in Jewish-Christian relations. According to common wisdom, the Hebrew Bible, the ‘Old Testament’ is what unites the two religions and faith in Jesus Christ is what divides them. Against such a superficial judgement, he notes that ‘through Christ Israel’s Bible came to the non-Jews and became their Bible’. He goes on:
For through the encounter with Jesus of Nazareth the God of Israel became the God of the Gentiles. Through him, in fact, the promise that the nations would pray to the God of Israel as the one God, that the ‘mountain of the Lord’ would be exalted above all other mountains, has been fulfilled.
Conversely, Christians ought to acknowledge the decree of God by which Israel’s mission to the world was conferred: ‘the Jews must remain as the first proprietors of Holy Scriptures with respect to [Christians], in order to establish a testimony to the world’. In the same article Benedict says that anyone who looks upon interreligious dialogue with a view of uniting all religions is ‘headed for disappointment’. Indeed, the eschatological tension prevails: ‘Such unification is hardly possible within our historical time and perhaps it is not even desirable.’
The introduction in Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth gives the tone to the portrait that follows. Benedict calls Jesus the ‘new Moses’. The Book of Deuteronomy, he says, contains a promise to Israel that is not the same as the various messianic promises in the Bible, and yet is crucial for the understanding of Jesus: there will be a new Moses. Now Moses is seen as a prophet, not one who can predict the future or a soothsayer, but one who converses with God. The conclusion to the Book of Deuteronomy carries the promise: ‘And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses’ (Dt 34:10). The promise is for a new Moses, one who will again converse with God: he spoke with the Lord ‘face to face’ as man speaks to his friend. (cf. Ex 33:11).
The most important thing about the figure of Moses is neither all the miraculous deeds he is reported to have done nor his many works and sufferings along the way from the ‘house of bondage in Egypt’ through the desert to the threshold of the Promised Land. The most important thing is that he spoke with God as with a friend. This was the only possible springboard for his works; this was the only possible source of the Law that was to show Israel its path through history. (JoN 4)
This is the promise, this is the hope:
Israel is allowed to hope for a new Moses, who has yet to appear, but who will be raised up at the appropriate hour. And the characteristic of this ‘prophet’ will be that he converses with God face-to-face, as a friend does with a friend. His distinguishing note will be his immediate relation with God, which enables him to communicate God’s will and word firsthand and unadulterated. And that is the saving intervention which Israel – indeed, the whole of humanity – is waiting for. (JoN 4-5)
Benedict further alludes to Exodus 33:23, where God allows Moses to see his back. The implication in the promise is that there will a greater prophet, one who will be familiar with God, one who will have that which Moses did not, namely ‘a real, immediate vision of the face of God and thus the ability to speak entirely from seeing, not just from looking at God’s back’ (JoN 5-6). Hence, also, not only a new and greater Moses but also the expectation of a greater covenant. In this way, Benedict stresses communion with God the Father as an essential characteristic of his Christology.
It is probably in the relationship between Jesus and the Torah that Benedict XVI’s book is most provocative in the context of Jewish-Christian relations.
Benedict returns to this theme of the introduction, but this time he shows how Jesus, as the new Moses, brings with him, as expected, a new Torah. This Torah is ‘totally new and different – but it is precisely by being such that it fulfills the Torah of Moses’ (JoN 100). The key difference lies with the ‘universalization of the People of God’, where ‘Israel can now embrace all the peoples of the world; the God of Israel has truly been brought to the nations, in accordance with the promises, and has now shown that he is the God of them all, the one God’ (JoN 101). With reference to Matthew 5:17, he notes that Jesus did not want to abolish the law but to fulfil it. In short, this fulfilment is achieved by claiming for himself the same authority as the giver of the law.
What are we looking for? First we try to see how Benedict positions Jesus in relation to Israel, the Jewish faith, and more specifically, the Torah. Indirectly, by extrapolation, we can derive Benedict’s position on the Church in relation to Israel. Jesus is the new Moses and the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount are the new Torah. Actually, this section is a ‘dialogue between Jesus and Israel, which is also inevitably a dialogue between Jesus and us and between us and the Jewish people of today’ (JoN 109). This is how Benedict introduces the problem:
How then are we to understand this Torah of the Messiah? Which path does it point toward? What does it tell us about Jesus, about Israel, about the Church? What does it say about us, and to us? In my search for answers, I have been greatly helped by the book… by the Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner: A Rabbi Talks with Jesus. (JoN 103)
Like Benedict, Neusner deplores the effects of the Enlightenment on the interreligious dialogue. The heritage of the Enlightenment, he says, was a disregard of religious claims to truth. Religious beliefs are seen to be obstacles to a stable social order rather than valid statements about human destiny. Religious dialogue, in this mentality, is reduced to a ‘politics of social conciliation, not religious inquiry into the convictions of the other’. He continues: ‘Negotiation took the place of debate, and to lay claim upon truth on behalf of one’s own religion violated the rules of good conduct.’
This dialogue touches on an interesting feature of this multifaceted conversation, namely the contemporaneous aspect of interpretation based on a belief in the Word of Scripture:
The rabbi’s dialogue with Jesus shows that faith in the word of God in the Holy Scriptures creates a contemporaneous bond across the ages: Setting out from Scripture, the rabbi can enter into the ‘today’ of Jesus, just as Jesus, setting out from Scripture, can enter in to our ‘today’. (JoN 104)
Neusner recognizes the claim of Jesus, shares the ‘alarm’ of his first audience, refuses to follow Jesus, and chooses to remain with the ‘eternal Israel’. The novelty of Jesus’ message is his own ‘I’, and this ‘gives everything a new direction’ (JoN 105). Neusner addresses ‘the mysterious identification of Jesus and God that is found in the discourses of the Sermon on the Mount’, and this is the point where ‘Jesus’ message diverges fundamentally from the faith of the “eternal Israel”‘ (JoN 105).
Three commandments make up the focus of the dialogue: the commandment to obey and love one’s parents, the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy, and finally the commandment to be holy as God is holy. Let us look at the first two as they are the most revealing. In each case, Neusner comes to the conclusion that there is an exclusive relationship of opposition between following Jesus and following these commandments. Throughout this discussion, which includes both Neusner’s dialogue with Jesus and Benedict’s response to Neusner, my interest lies in what this reveals about Benedict’s attitude to the Jewish faith and how this attitude resembles friendship.
In the case of the injunction to keep the Sabbath holy, the discussion revolves around the statement by Jesus to the effect that ‘the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath’ (Mk 2:27). Neusner quickly rejects the conventional interpretation that Jesus was simply a liberal rabbi. The issue is not about a liberal critique of moralism or legalism, but about the authority of Jesus himself. Neusner sees the central issue as Christological, as having to do with Jesus. The disciples of Jesus are free from the law of the Sabbath, because they are in the presence of Jesus, the Son of Man. The central issue is the authority of Jesus: ‘Jesus understands himself as the Torah – as the word of God in person’ (JoN 110).
The second contentious issue has to do with the fourth commandment, the honour and love due to one’s parents. Here, the alarming element is made manifest by Jesus when he responds to being told that his mother and brothers are outside waiting to see him. He answered ‘Who is my mother and who are my brothers?… Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother’ (Mt 12:46-50). Once again, Jesus speaks with the authority of the Torah itself, but here, the threat to the social order of Israel is even more explicit than in the case of the value of the Sabbath. More importantly, it is the cohesion of the ‘eternal Israel’, which is threatened, the ever-present family of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob, Leah, and Rachel. For Neusner, ‘it is this family of Israel that is threatened by Jesus’ message, and the foundations of Israel’s social order are thrust aside by the primacy of his person’ (JoN 113). Discipleship with Jesus follows his claim to form ‘the origin and center of a new Israel’ (JoN 113). Benedict summarizes the argument:
We come to the same conclusion as in our earlier analysis of the commandment to keep the Sabbath. The Christological (theological) argument and the social argument are inextricably entwined. If Jesus is God, then he is entitled and able to handle the Torah as he does. On that condition alone does he have the right to interpret the Mosaic order of divine commands in such a radically new way as only the Lawgiver – God himself – can claim to do. (JoN 115)
On the one hand, discipleship with Jesus does not bring a social programme or political order. On the other hand, Jesus brings out the universality of Israel’s vocation and mission. This mission is to the nations. And further,
[t]he vehicle of this universalization is the new family, whose only admission requirement is communion with Jesus, communion in God’s will… It is entry into the family of those who call God Father and who can do so because they belong to a ‘we’ – formed of those who are united with Jesus and, by listening to him, united with the will of the Father, thereby attaining to the heart of the obedience intended by the Torah. (JoN 117)
Jesus’ intention is not to abolish the Sabbath or the family, but to give both a ‘new and broader context’ within a call for universalization.
How do this portrait of Jesus, Neusner’s dialogue with Jesus and Benedict’s response help us with our question regarding the use of the category of friendship? One is tempted to say ‘With friends like this, who needs enemies?’ Yet that would be an unfair representation of Neusner as well as of Benedict. Clearly, the desire for truth, for religious truth, is present. But surely friendship implies more than mutual respect and an agreement to disagree. Benedict does not disagree with a lot of what Neusner says about Jesus. In fact, he finds it profound and is grateful for the understanding of Jesus it has given him. In order to see better the implications of Benedict’s view of friendship, we need another element: the experience of the love of God.
Benedict XVI’s Encyclical Deus Caritas est
It should be noted that first encyclicals carry a particular importance as they suggest the tone, the major themes, concerns and directions of a pontificate. So it was with John Paul II’s Redemptor hominis, and so it is with Benedict’s Deus Caritas est. Published in December 2005, this encyclical was generally very well received but, as far as I know, little was said about its implications for ecumenical or interreligious dialogue, let alone Jewish-Christian relations, and even less about its implications for interreligious dialogue as act of charity and as act of friendship. Yet it is precisely my intention to suggest that charity and friendship are the central categories in Benedict XVI’s attitude to the Jewish faith.
On the very first page of Deus Caritas est the question of relations with Israel is already indirectly addressed. The whole complexity of the relationship with Israel, along with the hope for its future, is in the following words: ‘In acknowledging the centrality of love, Christian faith has retained the core of Israel’s faith, while at the same time giving it new depth and breadth’ (DC 1).
Benedict’s starting point for understanding the Christian position, as well as the starting point for anything at all, can only be one thing, namely, ‘We have come to believe in God’s love’. As one of the most quoted passages from that same first page says: ‘Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction’ (DC 1). This encounter will also provide the horizon and the direction of action and morality. To deny this starting point on the part of Benedict would be to totally misread his efforts. It is precisely in relation to this encounter, this discovery of God’s love, that Benedict says that ‘Christian faith has retained the core of Israel’s faith, while at the same time giving it new depth and breadth’. The love for God is central for the Jew (cf. Dt 6:4-5). Likewise with the love of neighbour (cf. Lv 19:18). The encounter with Jesus results in a new horizon: ‘Since God has first loved us (cf. 1 Jn 4:10), love is no longer a mere “command”; it is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us’ (DC 1).
In short, Benedict XVI’s first encyclical wishes ‘to speak of the love which God lavishes on us and which we in turn must share with others’ (DC 1). Insofar as relations with Israel are not something accidental or the result of international conventions of diplomacy, but rather an exercise much more closely related to the heart of religious identity, I believe Benedict’s first encyclical can be immensely helpful in laying out the foundations of interreligious dialogue.
Of course, one can also say that this first page raises the potential problem of supersessionism with the variety of its possible declensions. Rather than pronounce on this issue and examine whether it implies the arrogance of theological and possibly cultural superiority, let us get closer to the larger framework that a reading of Deus Caritas est offers.
It is important to show how relations with Judaism, which would fall under the category of ‘love of neighbour’, are different when related to the experience of the love of God; in other words, it is important to see how relations with Judaism fit within the new horizon opened up by the encounter with Jesus.
The encyclical is ambitious. It claims to focus on God’s love which is ‘fundamental for our lives’, raising ‘important questions about who God is and who we are’ (DC 2). Clearly, whatever one’s standpoint, these are important and highly pertinent questions for interreligious dialogue. Benedict’s intention is to say something about what is distinctive about Christian identity, about what constitutes this identity. If there is some misunderstanding about the identity of participants in a dialogue, or some perceived misunderstanding, all the more reason for a clarification. Christian identity stems from an encounter with God’s love. Hence the need to clarify what is meant by this love and how it determines our identity.
In order to understand what we mean by love, Benedict confronts several oft-repeated misreadings of the term: its reduction to eros, the charge of being anti-eros addressed to Christianity, the contemporary so-called exaltation of the body. The Biblical faith introduced a new dimension, not as a parallel universe to man, but revealing a God who ‘intervenes in [the human] search for love in order to purify it and to reveal new dimensions to it’ (DC 8). Biblical faith does this by introducing a new image of God as well as a new image of man. With regard to the image of God, it becomes clear that there is only one God, the other gods are not God, that he created the world and, most importantly, that he loves man: his love, moreover, is an elective love: among all the nations he chooses Israel and loves it – but he does so precisely with a view to ‘healing the whole human race’ (DC 9). And here is the second element, the new image of man: in experiencing the love of God man discovers his true nature.
The history of the love-relationship between God and Israel consists, at the deepest level, in the fact that he gives her the Torah, thereby opening Israel’s eyes to man’s true nature and showing her the path leading to true humanism. It consists in the fact that man, through a life of fidelity to the one God, comes to experience himself as loved by God, and discovers his essential happiness. (DC 9)
God’s love for man goes further than gratuitous giving in that even when Israel breaks the covenant and commits ‘adultery’, God’s love forgives, ‘it turns God against himself, his love against his justice’ (DC 10). This contradiction within the very nature of God’s love is the foreshadowing of God’s love in Christ which is unto death ‘and so reconciles justice and love’ (DC 10).
We now come to the New Testament difference, the distinct character of the Christian faith:
The real novelty of the New Testament lies not so much in new ideas as in the figure of Christ himself, who gives flesh and blood to those concepts – an unprecedented realism. In the Old Testament, the novelty of the Bible did not consist merely in abstract notions but in God’s unpredictable and in some sense unprecedented activity. This divine activity now takes on dramatic form when, in Jesus Christ, it is God himself who goes in search of the ‘stray sheep’, a suffering and lost humanity… His death on the Cross is the culmination of that turning of God against himself in which he gives himself in order to raise man up and save him. This is love in its most radical form. (DC 12)
The phrase ‘God is love’ (1 Jn 4:8) which gives the encyclical its title finds here its central focus. The contemplation of ‘the pierced side of Christ’ (cf. Jn 19:37) is the access point for grasping the truth that God is love: ‘It is there that this truth can be contemplated. It is from there that our definition of love must begin. In this contemplation the Christian discovers the path along which his life and love must move’ (DC 12).
More than simply pointing to the moment where this love of God manifested itself in history, the institution of the Eucharist allows Christians to participate in this defining movement of self-gift, of self-sacrifice: the Eucharist draws us into Jesus’ act of self-oblation. More than just statically receiving the incarnate Logos, we enter into the very dynamic of his self-giving. The imagery of marriage between God and Israel is now realized in a way previously inconceivable: it had meant standing in God’s presence, but now it becomes union with God through sharing in Jesus’ self-gift, sharing ‘in body and blood’ (DC 13).
This distinguishing characteristic of Christianity is not a result of the teaching of Christ, but the result of an encounter with God’s love in Christ:
Only by keeping in mind this Christological ad sacramental basis can we correctly understand Jesus’ teaching on love. The transition which he makes from the law and the Prophets to the twofold commandment of love of God and of neighbour, and his grounding the whole life of faith on this central precept, is not simply a matter of morality – something that could exist apart from and alongside faith in Christ and its sacramental re-actualization. Faith, worship and ethos are interwoven as a single reality which takes shape in our encounter with God’s agape. Here the usual contraposition between worship and ethics simply falls apart. ‘Worship’ itself, Eucharistic communion, includes the reality both of being loved and of loving in return. (DC 14)
In sum, the Christian has no choice in loving others. A Eucharist that would not move in the direction of loving others is ‘intrinsically fragmented’. Also, the so-called ‘commandment’ to love is only possible because God has loved us first.
The last element in this speculative first part of the encyclical concerns the unity of the commandment to love and the implications of this unity. It reveals what may be called the imperative to love, or in light of our particular interest here, the dialogical imperative. Love of God and love of neighbour are inseparable. Love of neighbour is made possible because of the love of God.
Love of neighbour is thus shown to be possible in the way proclaimed by the Bible, by Jesus. It consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God, an encounter which has become communion of will, even affecting my feelings. Then I learn to look on this other person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ. His friend is my friend.
How does this movement of friendship, or better this friendship imperative function? ‘Going beyond exterior appearances, I perceive in others a interior desire for a sign of love, of concern… Seeing with the eyes of Christ, I can give to others much more than their outward necessities; I can give them the look of love which they crave’ (DC 18).
And far from being arrogant or originating in some form of ill-advised sense of superiority, this love of neighbour is propelled forward as the only true condition for drawing near to the love of God. ‘Only my readiness to encounter my neighbour and show him love make me sensitive to God as well. Only if I serve my neighbour can my eyes be opened to what God does for me and how much he loves me’ (DC 18). Love of God and love of neighbour are inseparable, but both live from the gift of God’s love who has loved us first. The very nature of this love demand that it keep flowing outwards, or else it dries up and dies. Far from being an ambitious moralistic project born from a human hubris, this friendship imperative is a participation in God’s own movement of love towards man. ‘Love is “divine” because it comes from God and unites us to God; through this unifying process it makes us a “we” which transcends our divisions and makes us one, until in the end God is “all in all” (I Cor 15:28)’ (DC 18).
Some implications can already be drawn. By means of a bold but not illegitimate extrapolation, we can say that Israel is the Church’s ‘neighbour’ and therefore the command to love one’s neighbour is applicable to interreligious dialogue. Loving Israel is also the condition for the Christian to draw close to the love of God.
Now the second part of the encyclical is concerned more explicitly with the love of neighbour that is the practice of love by the Church as a ‘community of love’. Several modalities of charitable activity are discussed, along with the interesting question of the distinctiveness of Christian charity in action. Interreligious dialogue is not discussed because it is generally not seen as part of the Church’s ‘charitable’ activity. My argument suggests that unless it is seen as a ‘charitable’ action, that is as flowing from the experience of God’s love, it has no place in the Church nor can it be called an activity of the Church. Again, the Church is not involved in charity out of moralism or out of a dis-ordinate sense of duty, but rather because it must: ‘For the Church, charity is not a kind of welfare activity which could equally well be left to others, but is a part of her nature, an indispensable expression of her being’ (DC 25).
Within this second part of the encyclical there is a section which indirectly may contribute quite a bit to understanding Catholic positions in the Jewish-Christian dialogue. It is the section concerning the relationship between justice and charity. Nominally, the section is more concerned with issues of social justice and the relationships between theologies of liberation and political power. There are situations where a relationship is so dominated by issues of justice and its exigencies to the point where no other voice will be heard. A significant part of Benedict XVI’s pastoral and theological mission is the call for the broadening of reason. A misplaced insistence on the importance of the exigencies of justice will fail to see that these exigencies will never be fully satisfied, that the human heart requires other desires to be satisfied which justice does not know. These other desires can only be satisfied by charity. Clearly this does not mean that the Church remains on the sidelines with regard to issues of justice. The promotion of justice ‘concerns the Church deeply’ (DC 28). Because of its awareness that the image of man is fundamentally changed in light of the love of God, the Church continually educates man to the exigencies of this new criterion: ‘The Church has an indirect duty here, in that she is called to contribute to the purification of reason and to the reawakening of those moral forces without which just structures are neither established nor prove effective in the long run’ (DC 29). This consideration of the relative place of justice is clarified by the encyclical’s discussion of the distinctiveness of the Church’s charitable activity. Once again, these remarks are not explicitly about interreligious dialogue, but their validity as foundational discourse remains. Thus Benedict says the following concerning efficiency: ‘Yet, while professional competence is a primary, fundamental requirement, it is not of itself sufficient. We are dealing with human beings, and human beings always need something more than technically proper care. They need humanity. They need heartfelt concern’ (DC 31). In other words, charity speaks of that particular and peculiar intertwining of love of God and love of neighbour that no social assistance can reproduce. Charity is not ideological, at the service of political strategies, ‘but it is a way of making present here and now the love which man always needs’ (DC 31). This engagement without ideology respects the freedom of the other: ‘Love is free: it is not practised as a way of achieving other ends. But this does not mean that charitable activity must somehow leave God and Christ aside. For it is always concerned with the whole man.’ Yet Benedict equally says that Christian faith cannot be imposed. The best witness to God and to Christ is charity: ‘A Christian knows when it is time to speak of God and when it is better to say nothing and to let love alone speak’ (DC 31). Charitable action, as well as words, silence and example contribute to a credible witness to Christ.
What does Benedict want from Israel? What does he want for Israel? In a word, friendship. This implies, first of all, a fidelity to the encounter with the love of God. By calling Israel the ‘people of the Covenant’, Benedict recalls the Jewish People to their own experience of the love of God and to the promise this experience implies. His offer and his desire for friendship is not arrogant, but entirely based on the Christian experience of the love of God, the encounter with Christ which gives this relationship a new horizon and a new direction.