A Paradigm Universalized: Nostra Aetate's Influence on Contemporary Interreligious Dialogue

Despite its status as the shortest document promulgated at Vatican II, comprising only 1,141 words, the declaration Nostra Aetate stretched beyond its length to address the religiously diverse world with a message of oneness, unity, and fraternity. While this message successfully precipitated dialogical initiatives between the Catholic Church and other religious groups throughout Europe and North America in the post-conciliar period, the ongoing reality of religious pluralism challenges the continual efficacy of Nostra Aetate’s message as the basis for interreligious dialogue: in a context whose increasing plurality demonstrates its resistance to this call to oneness, how does Nostra Aetate inform our understanding of interreligious dialogue today, and should it maintain such influence? In this paper, I posit that Nostra Aetate, alongside other Vatican II documents such as Lumen Gentium and Ad Gentes, established a tripartite paradigm of Church–dialogue–Christ for interreligious dialogue that, as demonstrated in subsequent magisterial documents, undergirds the Catholic Church's modern approach to interreligious dialogue. Moreover, although its Catholic framing can present limitations to dialogue, the message of Nostra Aetate ‘breaks open’ each anchor point of this paradigm to the possibility of diversity subsisting within universality; thus, its paradigm of interreligious dialogue still speaks—and speaks truthfully—to our pluralistic context.

To argue for Nostra Aetate’s enduring influence on interreligious dialogue, this paper first identifies the tripartite paradigm for interreligious dialogue established by the declaration together with Lumen Gentium and Ad Gentes. While ample scholarship on Nostra Aetate has already explicated its history[i] and its impact,[ii] these works have given less attention to the framework of interreligious dialogue proposed at the Council. An analysis of Nostra Aetate’s and other conciliar documents’ content reveals not only an increasing awareness of the Church’s mission to dialogue with other religions and proclaim Jesus Christ but also the interconnectedness of these points. The Church’s understanding of itself as ‘on mission’ to the world affects its approach to dialogue, and the content of this dialogue is determined by the Church’s understanding of Christ, who is both the Word professed in dialogue as well as the source of this very mission (Church–dialogue–Christ). This paper then notes how the inclusive language of Nostra Aetate regarding salvation and truth goes beyond a reinterpretation of the teaching extra ecclesia nulla salus to introduce an underlying theme of universality into the Church–dialogue–Christ paradigm. When one anchor point becomes universal, as in the emphasis of Christ’s passion and death for all (NA 4), all are brought to this same universality: dialogue is oriented to all (AG 1), and all are similarly “oriented” to the Church (LG 16). Through a chronological examination of subsequent magisterial documents, from Dialogue and Mission and Dialogue and Proclamation to Dominus Iesus, this paper then illustrates how the Church continues to negotiate the universality of the Church, its dialogue, and its Head in engagement with the world; this balancing act of outward orientation and inward doctrinal limitation, as in claims that “Jesus Christ is the mediator [inward] and universal redeemer [outward],” (Dominus Iesus 11, notes added) maintains the paradigm’s influence for interreligious dialogue today.

To address the second question, whether Nostra Aetate should maintain such influence through this paradigm and universalizing force, the paper begins by acknowledging that the Church–dialogue–Christ paradigm is critiqued and, indeed, undermined through dialogue with another religious tradition, as in the case of Buddhist-Christian dialogue. Although Buddhist-Christian dialogue has been fruitful in the post-conciliar period, both in scholarship[iii] and practical conversations,[iv] such interreligious initiations can face limitations when truth claims of Buddhism confront the assumption of truth that undergirds the paradigm itself. More specifically, the Buddhist doctrine of two truths (satyadvaya), which recognizes conventional and ultimate truth, not only reduces the paradigm’s claims to conventional truths (if even accepted as 'true') but also rejects the Christian structure of truth.  The entire framework of the Church–dialogue–Christ paradigm, which assumes the existence of truth possessed in full by the Church, seems to collapse in the presence of the religious other.  

Still, the paper asserts that this critique does not prevent the dialogical force of the paradigm, for the universality introduced by Nostra Aetate acknowledges diversity within universality. Other religions need not accept the Church, its dialogical mission, and Christ as ‘ultimate truth’ to dialogue; instead, the unbounded view of “Church” as universal sacrament, the openness of dialogue to all, and the shared humanity of Christ provide points of connection that span the gap that subsists in religious difference and that will persist even after these connections are made. Interreligious dialogue is independent from conversion, as several magisterial documents declare. Indeed, Nostra Aetate did not present oneness as sameness in speaking to all men but rather recognized points of commonality, fellowship, and truth in other religions, while also preserving the Church's claim to truth. In our current context, where increasing plurality can suggest either the futility of dialogue or the need to relativize religious truth, the universalized paradigm of Nostra Aetate provides a third option: a paradigm of interreligious dialogue that speaks the truth that encompasses all human persons.

[i]G. Alberigo and J.A. Komonchak, eds., History of Vatican II, 5 vols (Leuven: Peeters, 1995–2006).

[ii] Gavin D’Costa, ed., The Catholic Church and World Religions: A Theological and Phenomenological Account (New York: T&T Clark International, 2011); Kail C. Ellis, ed., Nostra Aetate, Non-Christian Religions, and Interfaith Relations (Cham, Swiss.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021); Vladimir Latinovic, Gerard Mannion, and Jason Welle, OFM, eds., Catholicism Engaging Other Faiths: Vatican II and its Impact (Cham, Swiss.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

[iii] For example, see James L. Fredericks, Buddhists and Christians: Through Comparative Theology to Solidarity (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books 2004); Patrick O. Ingram and Frederick J. Streng, eds. Buddhist-Christian Dialogue: Mutual Renewal and Transformation (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 1986).

[iv] For example, see Donald W. Mitchell and James A. Wiseman, OSB, eds. The Gethsemani Encounter: A Dialogue on the Spiritual Life by Buddhist and Christian Monastics (New York: Continuum, 1998).