Dialogo interreligioso e monoteismo. Un rapporto problematico

Abstract

After about twenty-five years of success which began in the 1980s, the expression “interreligious dialogue” has had an obvious setback, which leads us to wonder whether what happened was really conducted at the level of the religious faiths. Actually this phenomenon seems to have developed especially in Christianity, and especially in reference to Judaism, with which the former has a peculiar relationship. Rémi Brague’s thesis, according to which speaking generically of monotheism hinders rather than promoting mutual understanding, leads us to reassess this notion from a philosophical-religious point of view: on the one hand, there is a very strong tendency in religions to identify their one God with that of any other religion; on the other hand, this notion is not so much a common denominator as a problematic idea, placed at the level of consciousness, sometimes as the result of a reflexive process, sometimes as its starting point: in both cases, however, it is rich in human meaning. Although largely protruding from religious experience, monotheism is thus the space of possibility for a different and humbler sense of inter-religious dialogue.