And the Word became dialogue

interreligious dialogue as a requirement of faith

Abstract

The plurality of religions, as an undeniable reality of human life, challenges the Christian faith to find possible paths of reflection, dialogue, and encounter in view of unity. If, on the one hand, the search for these paths demands conversion from the pretension of superiority and exclusivity that has provoked cruel inhumanities in the history of religions, on the other hand, the reasons for dialogue must not be justified simply by plurality itself, or pluralism in fact but by the foundations of faith itself that find in God the reason for dialogue, in Jesus of Nazareth and in the proclamation and practice of the Kingdom of God the justifications for dialogue, and in the defense of the poor and marginalized, center of the Judeo-Christian experience of God, the criterion and measure of the unity of religions. In the light of what is normative and proper of Christianity, this work wants to point out that the paths of dialogue are opened by God and that they find in the uniqueness of Jesus, the Word who became dialogue with humanity and did not announce himself, the foundations for Christian optimism with other religions through the discovery of the liberating potential that each one of them has for the defense of the needy and the weak as the most authentic meaning of dialogue.