Faith Encounters of the Third Kind

Humility and Hospitality in Interfaith Dialogue

David J. Brewer

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781725258464
  9781725258471
• eBook ISBN:
  9781725258488
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Comparative Religion

Interreligious dialogue that strives for both hospitality and honest discussion of difference! Is it possible to have both? Is it possible for religious traditions to engage one another in a spirit of humility, while also working together toward mutual descriptions of God and the world? This is the goal of this book, to find points at which each of the religious traditions are vulnerable and open enough to listen to each other and to help each other toward a shared description of reality. If you share these concerns--concerns for interfaith dialogue as well as for deeply held notions of conviction and truth--then the invitation is open for mutual constructive engagement.

Part I

A Philosophical and Theological Approach to Interreligious Dialogue

Chapter 1

The Bible and Hospitality

Let us renounce that bigotry and party zeal which would contract our hearts into an insensibility for all the human race. . . . With an honest openness of mind let us always remember that kindred between man and man, and cultivate that happy instinct whereby, in the original constitution of our nature, God has strongly bound us to each other.10

—John Wesley, Notes on the Bible

Introduction

Before discussing how to have interreligious dialogue, some will want to know why we should have it in the first place. Shouldn’t we as Christians focus either on evangelizing people of other faiths, or else respecting their right to worship in their own way as they see fit? What benefit is there to interfaith dialogue, much less dialogue that does not seek conversion? Several responses to this question immediately present themselves. First, we are living in an increasingly globalized and pluralistic world. The advances of technology, travel, and education have resulted in contracting the space between people of diverse cultural and religious backgrounds. In a practical sense, then, we must learn to live alongside one another peaceably. This will likely require more than merely tolerating one another, but rather building bridges of trust and collaboration that are more sustainable. While fear of the other and of difference is a powerful deterrent, we no longer have the luxury of cloistering ourselves from those of other religions and cultures. We are interconnected, if not in our own neighborhoods, communities, and workplaces, then online and in innumerable global interdependencies—political, economic, and so on. Understanding those who are different from us is a first step in overcoming fear and distrust and paving the way for peaceful coexistence.

A second reason that presents itself for this kind of dialogue is the very urgency of global concerns themselves. There are enough social, ecological, and geopolitical issues that matter to people of various backgrounds—religious or otherwise—to provide sufficient reason for engaging one another across cultural and religious lines. There will, of course, be vast disagreement both within and between religious communities about what those issues are and how to remedy them, but this simply means that dialogue is all the more important. Differences cannot be overcome without dialogue, and progress on these sorts of global issues is difficult when differences cannot be addressed in any meaningful way.

These sorts of considerations should be enough to suggest the importance of interreligious dialogue on its own merit. However, neither reason offers an explicitly Christian rationale. The reasons offered so far are pragmatic and come down to the singular concern for peaceful coexistence among people of diverse religious backgrounds. However, is there a distinctly biblical or theological justification for Christians to engage in interreligious dialogue that does not depend on or result in evangelism? I believe there is. While I do not deny that evangelism or conversion may continue to play a role in these kinds of conversations, I hope to show that this does not have to be the only motivation, or the primary one. In this chapter, I will explore the biblical and theological grounds for this position. In particular, I will look at two specific biblical accounts—one from the Old Testament, one from the New—that I take to be paradigmatic for Christian approaches not only to interreligious dialogue, but to hospitality in general and how we should treat those who are different from us.

I begin by looking at the story of the Levite and his concubine at the end of the book of Judges, a gruesome story that ends in the haunting rape and murder of an unnamed concubine. The brutality of the narrative, however, serves as a cautionary tale against the inhospitable treatment of foreigners—we can justify any behavior, no matter how heinous, when we begin to overlook the God-ordained dignity of others and fail to welcome them with hospitality. I then look at the Parable of the Good Samaritan in the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus subverts the very distinction between neighbor and enemy, and makes it clear that there is no one who is beyond the scope of God’s love and compassion.

Blessed to Be a Blessing: Judges 19:1–30

At first glance, the Old Testament may seem an odd place to look for support for interreligious dialogue. A popular belief is that the God of the Old Testament is wrathful and narrowly nationalistic, one that uses Israel at almost every turn to destroy and conquer other nations. This picture is a far cry from the sort of interreligious dialogue under consideration here. Indeed, as early as the second century, a position developed known as Marcionism, named for its originator, Marcion of Sinope, which claimed that the two testaments describe two different gods—one who is a demiurge responsible for the evil in the world, the other the God of love and compassion revealed in Jesus Christ. Marcion went as far as to develop his own canon (Bible), one that excluded the entire Old Testament and removed any references to Judaism in the New. While this dualistic position was rejected by the early church, it is hard to ignore the lingering influence in popular readings of the Old Testament today. These readings, however, are cursory at best and do not do justice to the scope of God’s compassion in the Hebrew Bible.

While it is true that the Old Testament focuses almost exclusively on the Israelites as the chosen people, its scope extends far beyond them. The initial covenant that God makes with Abraham promises that through him “all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Gen 12:3b; see also Gen 22:18; my emphasis). The idea from the start was that the Israelites were blessed to be a blessing. They were chosen so that through them the other nations could come to know YHWH. In the covenant that God makes with Moses, YHWH declares, “the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exod 19:6; my emphasis).

The implication is not that Israel was intrinsically more important than the rest of the world; but rather that they had been called to a special function, a priestly one that was designed to mediate YHWH’s blessings to the rest of the world. Within the Israelite community, itself, the function of the priests was to mediate God’s presence to the rest of the Israelites. The comparison then is that the relationship of Israel to the rest of the nations is to be like that of the Israelite priests to the rest of Israel. Just as the priests were called to a higher degree of holiness so that through them the rest of Israel could experience God’s presence, the Israelite community as a whole was called to serve as priests to the rest of the nations—mediators of God’s justice and mercy to the world.

This responsibility was an extension of the Israelites’ exodus experience. In Egypt the Israelites were foreigners in a foreign land; they were maltreated, used as slave labor for the building of an empire. It was YHWH who observed their misery and showed them mercy by delivering them from their bondage (Exod 3:7–8). In turn, the Israelites were to show this same mercy to the rest of the nations. They were to remember their captivity in Egypt and avoid re-creating the same kind of oppression for others that had been created for them. Walter Brueggemann describes this as a “countercommunity with a counter-consciousness,”11 one that ran against the prevailing powers and kingdoms of this world—kingdoms like Egypt that sought to advance their own geopolitical ends at the expense of those like the Israelites who were easy to exploit. It was in this counter-consciousness that Israelite holiness consisted. The term holy literally means “set apart.” Thus, the Israelites were called to be a holy nation in that they were to be different from the other nations, identifying themselves completely with YHWH’s compassion, mercy, and justice so that through them, other nations could come to know the nature and character of God.

A central theme of the Old Testament, then, is the ongoing commitment to justice for the poor, the widow, the outcast, and the foreigner. Exhortations throughout the Old Testament enjoin the Israelites to avoid wronging or oppressing the resident alien precisely because they had been aliens in Egypt and YHWH had delivered them (see: Exod 22:21; 23:9; Lev 19:33–34). In Deuteronomy 10:12–22, YHWH reminds the people of their covenant responsibility, which entails both devotion to YHWH (Deut 10:12–13) and care for the defenseless (10:17–19), which turn out to be one and the same, for, as YHWH states:

the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the lan...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: A Philosophical and Theological Approach to Interreligious Dialogue
• Part II: Abrahamic Faiths in Mutual Constructive Engagement
• Part III: Eastern Faiths in Mutual Constructive Engagement
• Conclusion: Honesty, Truth, and Humility
• Works Cited