"No Religion is an Island": Catholic and Jewish Theologies of Each Other

When people read any sort of written text, they naturally construct its meaning for themselves in interaction with their own perceptions, life experiences, and interests. When someone over time repeatedly rereads a text, s/he can find new insights in it because in their reading they bring to bear their current questions and circumstances.

And so, when rereading Abraham Joshua Heschel's classic, "No Religion Is an Island," I was struck both by its prescience and by its contemporary relevance for today. Published in the same year as the Second Vatican Council's declaration, Nostra Aetate, which revolutionized Catholic–Jewish relations (and in whose promulgation he played a role), Rabbi Heschel's essay accurately anticipated many of the dynamics that have become evident in the subsequent interreligious dialogue. He also put forth a number of arguments from within Jewish frames of reference that have been roughly paralleled in developing post-Nostra Aetate Catholic thought.

For example, Heschel asked: "Does not the task of preparing the kingdom of God require a diversity of talents, a variety of rituals, soul-searching as well as opposition? Is it really our desire to build a monolithic society: one party, one view, one leader, and no opposition? Is religious uniformity desirable or even possible?"¹

This was interestingly echoed in 1997 by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI: "Let us speak plainly. Anyone who expects the dialogue between religions to result in their unification is bound for disappointment. This is hardly possible within our historical time, and perhaps it is not even desirable."²

Rabbi Heschel's remark about "preparing the kingdom of God" and Cardinal Ratzinger's reference to what is possible "within our historic time" both point to an eschatological perspective that has also been a notable feature of the interreligious climate of the past few decades. This eschatological vision is also evident elsewhere in "No Religion Is an Island," as when Heschel asserted, "Religion is a means, not an end. It becomes idolatrous when regarded as an end in itself,"³ or when he observed that "[h]uman faith is never final, never an arrival, but rather an endless pilgrimage, a being on the way."⁴

Compare these comments with the Second Vatican Council's statement, in its Decree on Ecumenism, that "Christ summons the Church, as she goes her pilgrim way, to that continual reformation of which she always has need . . . "⁵ or to the following 1985 words of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews:

[I]n underlining the eschatological dimension of Christianity we shall reach a greater awareness that the people of God of the Old and the New Testament are tending towards a like end in the future: the coming or return of the Messiah – even if they start from two different points of view. It is more clearly understood that the person of the Messiah is not only a point of division for the people of God but also a point of convergence. Thus it can be said that Jews and Christians meet in a comparable hope, grounded on the same promise made to Abraham.⁶

An important incident in 1964 is worth noting in this regard. Rabbi Heschel vigorously reacted against a leaked draft of Nostra Aetate, which seemed too many commentators to hope for the conversion of Jews to Christianity. He labeled the notion "spiritual fratricide" and declared himself, "ready to go to Auschwitz any time, if faced with the alternative of conversion or death."⁷ After conciliar debate, the final form of Nostra Aetate section 4 contained instead an eschatologically oriented expression: ". . . the Church awaits the day, known to God alone, on which all peoples will address the Lord in a single voice and 'serve him shoulder to shoulder.' " Heschel thought this was "the first statement of the Church in history – the first Christian discourse dealing with Judaism – which is devoid of any expression of hope for conversion."⁸

Rabbi Heschel's concern with the dangers of proselytization is apparent in "No Religion Is an Island" and illustrates what I said...