The progress made in the dialogue between Jews and Christians during the long pontificate of John Paul II remains precarious: it is enough to see the controversy aroused by the question of a possible beatification of Pius XII, accused of “silence” on the Holocaust, among the highest dignitaries of Judaism. This makes it particularly interesting to dive into a careful and intellectually stimulating reading of the proceedings of a symposium held in November 2007 at the Catholic Institute of Paris, initiated by the Jewish-Christian Friendship of France, chaired by Paul Thibaud, the former director of the magazine “Esprit.” These proceedings published by Albin Michel in their pocket series “Espaces libres” explore a central question debated by leading figures in philosophy (Marcel Gauchet, Alain Finkielkraut, Luc Ferry), history (Edouard Husson), and theology (Patrick Desbois, Armand Abecassis, Gilles Berheim): Could “the missed relationship with Judaism” be “a key to the current destabilization of Christianity?”
In a context marked right from the introduction, by a hypermodernity that, according to Paul Thibaud, creates a situation where “the emancipated individual hardly fears judgment and hardly hopes for an afterlife,” the discussions immediately showed that Christianity contains “a reserve of meaning” and comes with a demand for “brotherhood,” the ultimate “transcendence” offered to humans. The two monotheisms could have met on this fundamental questioning. However, participants had to acknowledge that the elements of divergence still overshadow those capable of uniting: foremost, how to understand or even justify the development of a Christianity fed by a “negative essentialization of Judaism,” based on a break with its original source, albeit presented as a “fulfillment” by the Church of Rome? Some speakers regretted that this Church, built on the “Word made flesh,” paradoxically resulted in a despiritualization of its spiritual message.
The event of the Holocaust, as unspeakable in its inhumanity as the evocation of the creator in Judaism, could it constitute an obstacle to reconciliation? In this respect, the always remarkable intervention of Father Patrick Desbois about “his work on the Holocaust in the East,” through his research in both German and Soviet archives, particularly in Ukraine, led him to question the status of “witness,” one of whom even wondered if “it made sense to remember.” These remarks echoed the philosophical considerations of Alain Finkielkraut on the “necessities and dangers of remembrance.” The historian Edouard Husson, a specialist in Nazi Germany, noted with this troubling precision that “there have been more books published about the Holocaust in the ten years following the fall of the Berlin Wall than in the forty years that preceded it.”
However, this encounter between Judaism and Christianity should not crystallize on the Holocaust alone. Philosophers and theologians also focused on the ills of globalization, this “acid that corrodes all traditional values” according to former minister Luc Ferry, enlightening the reasoning of his colleague Olivier Abel on “the Western question”: a rejection of the product of this West, contemporary counterpart of an Ottoman Empire once considered “the sick man of Europe.” This rejection is the basis on which, from Russian Orthodoxy to American Evangelism, both religious and nationalist claims are made. According to this philosopher who teaches at the Protestant Theology Faculty in Paris, a “totalitarian Christology” asserts to “save by one and for all.” After addressing the indescribable, the question of dogma looms. Probably a central point of opposition in the debate with Judaism, which Armand Abécassis recalled was built on a continuous elaboration: “Toledot” means “generation,” i.e., a history that is continuous, to be transmitted as much as elaborated. This is never closed and cannot be as humans do not achieve the absolute. Hence the process of incessant Talmudic re-reading, a constant questioning of origins and ends. The division in how the two religions relate to history is apparent: in Judaism, the revelation “develops throughout history,” while in the religion of Christ, history is made into “Revelation.” Should we then, as Luc Ferry and Henry-Jerome Gagey, Professor at the Catholic Institute of Paris, suggest, dare to envisage “a humanistic rearrangement of the religious” aimed to “liberate the best of the spiritual content of Christianity from the authoritarian and dogmatic character of its institutional and historical realization”?
Furthermore, the reflections on humanity’s relationship to death, a foundational theme in both philosophies and religions, will undoubtedly provoke thought. A consensus shared by all participants highlights the valuation of the body as “property” and “capital,” transforming it into an “object of performance.” When these performances diminish, due to age or illness, individuals now seek to rid themselves of this burden. Here again, Christianity and Judaism seem to diverge on the implications: it is vain, according to Christianity, to attempt to give meaning to death by deciding it oneself while, according to the Talmud, “there is no life, there is no transmission without loss and disappearance.” The volume concludes with Marcel Gauchet’s thoughts on secularism, an extension of a reflection he has already undertaken in his book “The Political Condition” (Gallimard, 2005): in this process of separation between the political and the religious, the former has lost its vigor in the weakening of the latter. The State, the philosopher and historian recalls, drew its strength and energy “from its claim to dominate religions,” which “ensured its eminence.” Concluding on the fact that despite different reasons, France and Israel nevertheless have one thing in common: a “failure of radical secularism.”
