A Spiritual Theology of Dialogue: Levinas, Burggraeve, and Catholic Theology

Abstract

Dialogue needs provocative interlocutors. Instilling a grave and shuddering awakening to the conscience, Emmanuel Levinas has provided a corpus of writings unveiling an immemorial horizon and divine calling of infinite responsibility before the other, the brother/sister stranger. Roger Burggraeve has animated Levinas’ writings within a Christian theological horizon as a source of formation in the service of promoting biblical wisdom and love in the life of faith. The writings of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis together portray a Catholic theological gravity to bring dialogue into a spiritual, practical, and social domain. Accordingly, this article develops the notion of dialogue within a Jewish and Christian lens by introducing the sense of the non-reciprocal character of dialogue, an asymmetrical relation of responsibility to the other evidencing the preconditions of dialogue. Levinas’ notion of non-reciprocal dialogue, taken further by the writings of Burggraeve, reveals a pre-original affectivity or ‘dialogical’ character of interpersonal relations of commitment respecting the other’s mystery and unknowability. This means that the dialogical relation is a pathway of ethical transcendence, a holy ground evoking an integral human ecology of maternity and fraternity. Such covenantal alterity in spiritual theological terms signifies an affectivity of atonement and redemptive love. In this way, the movement towards dialogue reveals a synodal path and holy ground to walk together and imagine an integral ecology of difference and mystery to transform words into sacrifice and truth into redemptive love. Journeying together upon such holy ground witnesses to a spiritual theology of dialogue envisioning a place to hear the “good news” (Lk 4:16) and encounter “the hunger and thirst for righteousness” (Matt 5:6).

1. Introduction: Preconditions for Dialogue

Let us imagine that dialogue begins in a garden. If it is barren, there is much work to be done to cultivate a hospitable environment and new life. When and if the garden is fertile, then there remains the challenge to share from the heart (Matt 18:35), to partake together what has been maturing through time, namely, the fruits of fraternity, maternity, and redemptive love. To partake of such fruits invites a developing covenantal bond of trust and symphonic moments of goodwill to invite hope. The Song of Songs proclaims, “Let my beloved come to his garden, and eat its choicest fruits” (Song 4:16). Isaiah imagines building such a garden out of a desert: “For the Lord will comfort Zion; he will comfort all her waste places, and will make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song” (Isa 51:3). In contrast, Pope Francis, in a sanguine and natural optimistic spirit of synodality, producing, as it were, a “song” of “patient dialogue”, extols

Approaching, speaking, listening, looking at, coming to know and understand one another, and to find common ground: all these things are summed up in the one word “dialogue”. If we want to encounter and help one another, we have to dialogue. There is no need for me to stress the benefits of dialogue. I have only to think of what our world would be like without the patient dialogue of the many generous persons who keep families and communities together. Unlike disagreement and conflict, persistent and courageous dialogue does not make headlines, but quietly helps the world to live much better than we imagine.

(Pope Francis 2020, no. 198)

Pope Francis addresses what remains as the opponent of dialogue in the patience of love and truth: indifference infected by a “multiplicity” (Levinas 1996a, p. 47) of social meanings and practices:

The social dimensions of global change include the effects of technological innovations on employment, social exclusion, an inequitable distribution and consumption of energy and other services, social breakdown, increased violence and a rise in new forms of social aggression, drug trafficking, growing drug use by young people, and the loss of identity. These are signs that the growth of the past two centuries has not always led to an integral development and an improvement in the quality of life. Some of these signs are also symptomatic of real social decline, the silent rupture of the bonds of integration and social cohesion.

(Pope Francis 2015, no. 46)

Amid the “crisis of monotheism” (Levinas 1996a, p. 47), faith and wisdom “run the risk of going unheard amid the noise and distractions of an information overload” (Pope Francis 2015, no. 47). Besides the social multiplicities or “dimensions of global change”, there are cultural disturbances affecting integral human development. Accordingly, Pope Francis emphasises the need to preserve a “cultural ecology” by stating the need to protect “the cultural treasures of humanity in the broadest sense” (Pope Francis 2015, no. 143). This is because “Culture is more than what we have inherited from the past; it is also, and above all, a living, dynamic and participatory present reality” (Pope Francis 2015, no. 143). Culture and society cannot be programmed by “logical and psychological” discourse that “break up” the “unity” of humanity’s appeal to the sacred or God (Levinas 1996a, p. 47). For Christians and Jews, the belief that God enters salvation history (Levinas 1996a, p. 47) is fundamental to human flourishing and hope for peace and righteousness. At stake is creating a spiritual and ethical metaphysical vision of dialogue and discourse in which prayer and ethics come together to heal the “break up” of “unity” in dialogue (Levinas 1996a, p. 47).

The call to observe and “keep” God’s “statutes” and “ordinances” (Lev 19:37), to preserve culture and society, offers an understanding towards God’s intention to create a “garden” of salvation, peace, justice, and blessing for the world. God commands ethical actions and forms moral and spiritual virtues, in the hope of bringing an earthy depth of grace, patience, and humility to dialogue. The success of dialogue is not met by the machinations of self-interest and indolence in its many forms such as the need for influence and power or simply to contribute without commitment and care. Dialogue achieves possibility as a by-product of being formed by God’s word resonating in the soul and conscience, evoking a unity between prayer and ethics. If dialogue is a “discourse” between people, then there are two fundamental modes: ethics and prayer. These modes signify “the essence of discourse is ethical” (Levinas 1996b, p. 216) as much as it does for “prayer” (Levinas 1998b, p. 7): expressions of “testimony, kerygma, confession, humility” (Levinas 1996a, p. 106), “lamentation”, and “beatitude” (Levinas 1998a, p.181). Under the light of ethics and prayer, discourse emerges as the “invocation” (Levinas 1998b, p. 7) of the other provoking crisis and trauma, an utterance of God’s word beyond thematization and indifference.

The alterity of the invocation of God’s infinity and word in dialogue is tempted by the egoism of ontology, the way how the alter ego represents or reduces the other to its prejudices, assumptions, and pre-conceptions. Such discourse contaminates the nature and quality of dialogue by taking on the threats and temptations of “domination”, thereby invoking a totality of “intelligence as cunning … struggle and violence” (Levinas 1998b, p. 7). In contrast, dialogue reaches the stage of “religion” (Levinas 1998b, p. 7) where the encounter between people is, as Levinas invokes, “otherwise than being” beyond the essence of self-interest that seeks to make the other “another myself” (Levinas [1987] 1997, p. 75). Dialogue takes on the quality of a sacred, religious encounter because the other has a “mysterious” “hold” over the self’s “existing” (appearance) before the other (Levinas [1987] 1997, p. 75). Levinas makes here a key distinction that the other is not “unknown” but “unknowable” for “The other is the future” (Levinas [1987] 1997, pp. 75–76), yet remote and “invisible” in his/her “alterity” and “exteriority” (Levinas 1996b, p. 34).

The sense of “unknowable” and our difficulty in recognising its radical nature can be explored and exemplified in the light of sympathy and empathy. The affective state of sympathy where the other is “similar”, reduced to an “alter ego” or another “myself”, can infect the giving of empathy despite inviting the other to share experiences and life together (Burggraeve 2018b, p. 19). This is because the states “of sympathy and empathy” do “not go far enough” as they remain within the realm of “reciprocity” or “mutual knowledge”, “a form of knowledge that makes finding oneself in the other [as another “myself”] possible” (Burggraeve 2018b, p. 22).

Reciprocal relations, despite the animating relevance of sympathy and empathy, falls into the egoism of the self: a recognition of the value of the self rather than the other (Levinas 1996a, p. 47). In effect, there is a danger that no real dialogue may take place, just “commonplace talk” (Levinas 1996a, p. 47). Levinas unveils this tendency and temptation, asserting that the “world” of people “have lost the univocity which would authorize us to expect from them the criteria of the meaningful” (Levinas 1996a, p. 47). The nature and quality of dialogue has been lost to “absurdity”, namely, “the isolation of innumerable meanings” oriented by the “absence of sense” and “the symphony in which all meanings sing, the song of songs” (Levinas 1996a, p. 47). Sympathy and empathy, to take on a “sense” of unknowability or respect for the other’s mystery and difference, must acquire a taste (humility and patience) for transcendence and otherness.

The question then is “how can we reach beyond the reductive reciprocity, into the other as other, into a relationship that is more—or better, different, radically different—than observing and empathising knowledge?” (Burggraeve 2018b, p. 22). It is a very natural experience to discover one’s image in the other, to find a depth of connection and appeal. This can give joy as much as it gives temptation to make and form the other in one’s own image. Burggraeve’s question relates to appreciating and respecting the mystery and “unknowable” quality of the other, an essential precondition of dialogue. He recognises the face of the “stranger” (Burggraeve 2018b, pp. 22–23) in the other, noting “The other is unconquerably ‘different’ because it escapes once and for all from every attempt at a final representation and diagnosis” (Burggraeve 2018b, p. 24).

Consequently, a “dialogical learning takes place” (Burggraeve 2018b, p. 29) such that “Respect is a relationship between equals in and through the asymmetric reciprocity of the dialogical” (Burggraeve 2015, p. 83). Dialogue therefore possesses two preconditions: (i) an asymmetrical or dialogical character towards the ethical height of transcendence of “being-for-all-the-others” (Burggraeve 2018b, p. 33) and (ii) respecting the “unknowable” mystery of the other, a future embracing responsibility, care (such as sympathy and empathy), and compassion. Accordingly, once dialogue respects the alterity of the other, such as the reluctance not to do harm to the other (Burggraeve describes this as ethical “shivering” (Burggraeve 2018b, p. 26)), then there is time and space for sympathy (the sharing of emotions) and empathy (understanding the other) to begin to unfold with a “sense” of alterity and transcendence. Such a foundation or “holy ground” (Ex 3:5) unveils hope for an integral “ecology” of dialogue wherein the other comes to mind through maternity (compassion) and fraternity. One can begin to notice with Burggraeve—in reference to the dialogical relation of the Levinasian “I–Other” in contrast to Buber’s “I–Thou” conceptual framework—an emphasis on the priority of the “social relation” as Levinas expresses in Totality and Infinity (Levinas 1996b, p. 213): “The epiphany of the face qua face opens up humanity....The presence of the face, the infinity of the Other, is a destituteness, a presence of the third (that is, of the whole of humanity which looks at us” (Burggraeve 2002, p. 127). Notably, therefore, where Buber brings the grace of the one who approaches me as “You” to the ethical relation, Buber offers a correction to Levinas’s emphasis on encountering the other solely as an ethical appeal of the face-to-face relation.

The following sections will seek first to examine the otherness of an integral ecology or “holy ground” of non-reciprocal dialogue. This will provide a lens to bring out the affective states of maternity and fraternity, the better to understand the nature of the preconditions of dialogue. Furthermore, the lens of maternity and fraternity unveils a spiritual habitus of an immemorial, covenantal relation culminating in transformation, new life, and grace. The spiritual significance here indicates how otherness can be understood as the transcendence of atonement transforming into redemptive love. Such a precondition of dialogue provides a hope and momentum for dialogue itself to transform into good news (2 Tim 4:2) provoking and witnessing a committed desire for righteousness and peace.

This article takes its lead from Burggraeve’s insights into Levinas ethical metaphysics and engages both Levinas’s and Burggraeve’s writings with papal documents to develop a spiritual theology of dialogue. Accordingly, this article brings together phenomenology and theology to develop a spiritual approach to dialogue and uncover its preconditions. Levinas’ writings are often difficult in character of prose yet nonetheless have provided a fertile ground to engage with theology since the latter part of the twentieth century (Purcell 2006, p. 3). There have been other studies utilising Levinas’ writings with spiritual theology and phenomenology such as those of Marie Baird in regard to Karl Rahner (Baird 1997) and Eric Voegelin (Baird 1999), and Ann Astell (Astell 2004) and David Ford (Ford 1999) in relation to St. Therese of Lisieux. Nigel Zimmermann too has made good ground with his reflection on Karol Wojytla (Pope John-Paul II) and Levinas (Zimmermann 2009). Besides Burggraeve, several other authors have explored Levinas’ writings in relation to dialogue such as Michel Barber (2008), Andrew Kelly (Kelly 1995), David Steiner (Steiner 2001), and Ellen Wondra (2004). Yet, Burggraeve’s writings are the most pervasive for this study as he focusses essentially on utilising and clarifying Levinas’ philosophy for the benefit of developing Christian theology. This article therefore aims to take a further step to provide a spiritual–theological lens to dialogue with the import of Levinas’ ethical metaphysics and papal writings of Popes Benedict XVI and Francis. In this way, a search for “holy ground” (Ex 3:5) begins from both the Jewish and Christian traditions.

A word needs to be stated in regard to using Levinas’ thought for the benefit of Christian theology. There is a great challenge to accept from Christian theologians: Levinas’ challenge to ontotheology. This is because Levinas asks that the idea of the sacred and of God be encountered otherwise than “Being”, so as to be encountered first through the mercy and justice of God, that is to say, the through the face-to-face relation. Levinas therefore has a primary desire to communicate the personal, ontic value of responsibility and care for the other. The personal other comes before any ontological response that is often reduced to self-interest. Moreover, Levinas himself was open to Christian theologians utilising his thought for the benefit and development of Christian theology. He was intrigued how his ideas could have relevance in Christian theology (Levinas 1998b, pp. 53–54).

Furthermore, despite the Jewish roots of Levinas’ writings, they possess a universal appeal. Levinas’s thought cannot simply be reduced to its Jewish roots to lock in his writings within a straitjacket as it were. To use Levinas’ language and precision, because the power of thought is dialogical in character, it cannot be confined in some “identity of the ‘oneself’” (Levinas 1996a, p. 84). This is because the dialogical consists in the breakthrough of the same: “The oneself is a responsibility for the freedom of others” (Levinas 1996a, p. 87). One indeed should not be ashamed to use Levinas’ writings to develop Christian theology. Levinas would have appreciated this as a form of ethical maturing: sharing a vintage of his wisdom and demanding calls for responsibility. From Levinas, one learns not to be locked up in some identity as this can narrow one’s humanity, imagination, and goodness, making one bend to perceived positions or representations. To break through the totalizing forces of the same, one must seek then a universal openness, compassionate and dialogical, considering the hunger of the other, the sacredness of God’s image unveiled through the call for justice, mercy, and a little goodness. A good example here is the work of Roger Burggraeve that finds resonance in his Levinasian, philosophical readings of Scripture as illustrated in his 2020 work, To Love Otherwise: Essays in Bible Philosophy and Ethic (Burggraeve 2020), or his 2002 programmatic work embracing theology with Levinas’s thought, The Wisdom of Love in the Service of Love: Emmanuel Levinas on Justice, Peace and Human Rights (Burggraeve 2002). For an exposition of Levinas’ “theology” in the light of his ethical metaphysics—in contrast to the work of Burggraeve—see Marie Baird’s essay, “Whose “kenosis”?: an analysis of Lévinas, Derrida, and Vattimo on God’s self-emptying and secularization of the West” (Baird 2007).

2. A Spiritual Ecology of Dialogue: The Search for Holy Ground

Where dialogue enters the “holy ground” of the mystery and alterity of the other, an integral “human ecology” understands that the world has become a “hell” in need of hope for a “dignified life” (Pope Francis 2015, no. 148). In other words, a “holy ground” (signifying the preconditions of dialogue) becomes a time for understanding the other’s world and suffering unveiling spaces for dialogue, compassion, and responsibility. Levinas relates, “Consequently only a being whose solitude has reached a crispation through suffering, and in relation with death, takes its place on a ground where the relationship with the other become possible” (Levinas [1987] 1997, p. 76). Reflecting on the “Ecology of daily life”, Pope Francis asserts a pastoral vision to such otherness:

Authentic development includes efforts to bring about an integral improvement in the quality of human life, and this entails considering the setting in which people live their lives. These settings influence the way we think, feel and act. In our rooms, our homes, our workplaces and neighbourhoods, we use our environment as a way of expressing our identity. We make every effort to adapt to our environment, but when it is disorderly, chaotic or saturated with noise and ugliness, such overstimulation makes it difficult to find ourselves integrated and happy.

(Pope Francis 2015, no. 147)

Pope Francis expresses that “holy ground” can be found in the mundane character of our existence that demands making “every effort” to adjust to the “ecology of daily life”. “Ugliness” and “overstimulation” create an environment of “indolence about existence” (“recoil before action” and “hesitation before existence”) inducing the “tragedy” of “being fatigued by the future” (Levinas 1995, pp. 28–29). Such spiritual acedia or torpor ironically finds its birth in “overstimulation” induced by our rapidly, even hyperbolic, changing technological world. Here, there is a trajectory of momentous force and speed carrying the person lost in the pollution of disorder, chaos, noise, and stimulation, away from the gift of solitude and the endowing maturity of growth amidst suffering and death. It is not surprising then that Pope Benedict XVI had called for an “ecology of man”:

Yet I would like to underline a point that seems to me to be neglected, today as in the past: there is also an ecology of man. Man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will. Man is not merely self-creating freedom. Man does not create himself. He is intellect and will, but he is also nature, and his will is rightly ordered if he respects his nature, listens to it and accepts himself for who he is, as one who did not create himself. In this way, and in no other, is true human freedom fulfilled.

(Pope Benedict XVI 2011, p. 5)

It can be a trap to fall into an understanding of dialogue where the sense of humanity’s “nature” is overlooked. Human nature is not first something to be used and exploited as a tool or technique of reciprocal communication. There are qualities of human nature that are primary. Pope Benedict infers this as the “ecology of man” born in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26–27) where the “true freedom” of a prayerful conscience orients the discovery of truth and fulfilment.

In more philosophical terms, Levinas, reflecting on human nature, asserts

The human, or human interiority, is the return to the interiority of the non-intentional consciousness; it is the return of the bad conscience, to its possibility of dreading injustice more than death, of preferring the injustice undergone to the injustice committed and which justifies being by that which assures it. To be or not to be: the question par excellence probably does not lie therein.

(Levinas 1998c, p. 177)

This means that before dialogue, there exists in the human person a dialogical nature and quality, of having a “bad conscience”, a humble one in which one acknowledges one’s sinful and vulnerable condition. Accordingly, the “ecology of man” unveils “human interiority” as a priority of holiness “for the sake of Christ” (2 Cor 12:10); that is to say, we have a theological being that begins to unveil our condition of possibility before God, an ethical metaphysical condition of humility: of putting the conscience into question, unmasking the conscience as “bad”, knowing and acknowledging such weakness leads to courage and strength of conviction (2 Cor 12:9–10).

The seasons of existence permeate life with turbulence, trauma, shock, surprise, interruption, and contradiction to unveil an encounter of God’s word awakening in the soul, a “shivering” and “panting” as it were of transcendence to respect the alterity of the other (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 68). Furthermore, God’s evocative word can be likened to the effect of producing a condition between “sleep and insomnia” (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 68), a “maternal” cry in the depth of the soul calling for compassion and substitution (expiation), namely, a kenotic force gestating the “truth of Being” (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 68) as “responsibility”, or in Christian theological terms, being close to the Father’s heart like Christ (Jn 1:18). This suggests that the “ecology” of the human person’s soul is incarnational, “alterity in identity … the identity of a body exposed to the other, becoming ‘for the other,’ the possibility of giving” (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 69). In essence, this means that the “ecology” of the human person is diachronic in nature: of “substitution, responsibility” through the time of the Other and Infinite God (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 154).

The character of diachrony in the dialogical “ecology”, or more to the point, “diaconal ecology”, of the human person can be exemplified through Pope Francis’ analogy in Evangelii gaudium that “time is greater than space” (Pope Francis 2013, no. 222–25). Pope Francis writes

This principle enables us to work slowly but surely, without being obsessed with immediate results. It helps us patiently to endure difficult and adverse situations, or inevitable changes in our plans. It invites us to accept the tension between fullness and limitation, and to give a priority to time. One of the faults which we occasionally observe in sociopolitical activity is that spaces and power are preferred to time and processes.

(Pope Francis 2013, no. 223)

It may well be a temptation to believe that it is possible to keep everything together in the present through a perfect system of control or even expertise. Yet the spaces of social control that fall into practices like micromanagement and bullying need the diachronic time of care, newness, and responsibility to draw from memories and the imagination of faith to give hope and vision for the future. Such incarnational, diachronic, and diaconal time creates sacred spaces for courage, boldness, and service to help digest the present in its hunger for human flourishing and integral human development. This means that time gives light to space by focusing on the development of humanity, a form of fraternity, maternity, and love that is “patient” and “kind” (1 Cor 13:4) and not beholden to the immediacy of proofs, results, tests, and objective facts thematizing the self into an inhuman unit of information. Giving service to time signifies the desire for the face-to-face relation giving inherent boundaries of responsibility to initiate the goodness of dialogue. Pope Francis warns then how, by pre-emptively throwing oneself into the “space of power”, one cannot appreciate the gift of newness and boldness. He relates

Giving priority to space means madly attempting to keep everything together in the present, trying to possess all the spaces of power and of self-assertion; it is to crystallize processes and presume to hold them back. Giving priority to time means being concerned about initiating processes rather than possessing spaces. Time governs spaces, illumines them and makes them links in a constantly expanding chain, with no possibility of return. What we need, then, is to give priority to actions which generate new processes in society and engage other persons and groups who can develop them to the point where they bear fruit in significant historical events. Without anxiety, but with clear convictions and tenacity.

(Pope Francis 2013, no. 223)

The “ecology” of the self that is beholden to self-interest will resist embracing an interiority of dialogue, namely, being dialogical, the “holy ground” of meekness and gentleness “to inherit the earth” (Matt 5:5) as much as boldness to embrace new ground (Pope Francis 2018, no. 129). Where the illumination of time awakes and interrupts the self through shock, surprise, and contradiction, the “ageing” or “diachrony” of “the kingdom of the Good” produces space in the self’s soul to reveal the “patience” of time (Levinas [1998] 1999, pp. 51–52). Such patience acknowledges that in life, there is “death” (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 52) signifying the command of being called to responsibility for the other (cf. Philem 1:19), an unassailable and invincible little goodness to be “despite oneself” (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 51), otherwise than being, willing to walk through the decades of life in service of the other.

As life and death come together in time’s illumination of patience and obedience to God’s word in the other’s face, the “kingdom of a non-thematizable God” forms the dialogical self to accept the “unpayable debt” towards the “neighbour” (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 52), the paradox of “pain” of a “pure deficit, an increase in debt” (Pope Francis 2013, no. 223); that responsibility is hyperbolic, ever increasing as one enters the proximity of responsibility for the other and the Kingdom of God. In other words, the illumination of time opens spaces of the small goodness towards the other that reveal being exposed to the other’s “outrage and wounding … sickness and ageing” (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 55). Here, there is “no possibility of return” as Pope Francis notes above. To “bear fruit … with clear convictions and tenacity” unveils the kenotic path of compassion, “the pain of labor in the patience of ageing”, the maternity “to give to the other even the bread out of one’s own mouth and the coat from one’s shoulders” (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 55).

Specifically, then, what is this kenotic path to forge itself in dialogue? It means a rupture with the Platonic idealism that a “peaceful encounter between people is only possible through the mediation of ideas” (Burggraeve 2015, p. 75). Dialogue is based on the communication of ideas. Yet, there is a problem here as dialogue falls into reducing “the other to the same” (Burggraeve 2015, p. 75), producing a conversation with “another myself” (Levinas [1987] 1997, p. 75). Such self-interested dialogue invites conversation as soliloquy where the other has now taken the form of a personal “alter ego” or, perhaps, an impersonal, artificial, and anonymous construction of reality where the other is more a product of information technology and hence more like a “bot” or “internet butler”.

The irony here is that the I and the alter ego have now achieved a miraculous perfect unity of conversation and understanding and of imagined sympathy and empathy. In contrast, the necessary ingredients of good dialogue, namely, difference, unknowability, and diversity, have now been squandered by an imagined, perfect truth reduced to a unity of reason without the gifts of faith and alterity (responsibility for the other). Self-interested dialogue is the opposite of a synodal listening inviting mystery and diversity. Pope Francis, forming laity into the process of governance and synodality in the Church, serves to acknowledge the “holy ground” of dialogue to give life to the integral ecology of the Church and unveil the sparkle of grace in the hearts of the faithful. Such a sparkle of grace can be revealed as an awakening, surprise, shock, or even trauma to initiate moments of compassion and mercy.

The awakening of having a dialogical heart of mercy and otherness underlines the quality of possessing a depth of understanding and listening animated by spirituality, service, perseverance, and hope. Pope Francis reflects, “True wisdom, as the fruit of self-examination, dialogue and generous encounter between persons, is not acquired by a mere accumulation of data which eventually leads to overload and confusion, a sort of mental pollution” (Pope Francis 2015, no. 47). Reducing the other in dialogue to “another myself” (Levinas [1987] 1997, p. 75) lends itself to false forms of holiness, fundamentalisms that encourage idolatry of the self and hatred or condemnation of the other (Pope Francis 2018, no. 35). The steps towards overcoming bitterness, rivalry, and enmity signify a “difficult freedom” (Levinas 1990, p. 272) initiated through the Gospel’s call of poverty in spirit and meekness as much as it calls for righteousness and perseverance in the encounter of persecution (Matt 5:3–12). Such a kenotic integral, spiritual ecology of dialogue unveils God’s word: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt 6:19–21). The “treasure” of wisdom reveals the boldness of love and mercy, the counsel and courage to generously encounter the other with a spiritual largesse of a healing heart.

The largesse of the people of God to welcome “dialogue with everyone so that together we can seek paths of liberation” (Pope Francis 2015, no. 64) reveals the character of “the wisdom of love at the service of love”, namely, the “non-indifference to the other” (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 162) in dialogue. By “non-indifference”, Levinas speaks of the diachrony of coming to responsibility through the time of the other’s “unbridgeable” (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 122) suffering, strangeness, pain, and outrage. This means understanding difference not as a reduction to the same, to “another myself”, but as a confrontation with the alterity and strangeness of the other to be heard and listened to in non-reciprocal responsibility. The nature of non-reciprocity reveals an asymmetrical, interior, primordial (or pre-original, anarchic, and immemorial) encounter of alterity or otherness. Levinas points out, “Before the Other (Autrui), the I is infinitely responsible” (Levinas 1996a, p. 18). In spiritual, theological terms, this signifies the diachronic encounter of grace, the time of non-evasion of responsibility and compassion gestating the mercy of encountering God’s word in and through the other’s face. Here, there can be a real dialogue with the other. This means that there is no dialogue without a crisis caused by the other’s face: a dialogue of transcendence of the wisdom and love in service of one another. The essential nature of the crisis is the revelation that “difference” and “unknowability” must be preserved (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 123) to create a future of hope, salvation, and peace.

3. Non-Reciprocal Dialogue: Transcendence, Maternity, and Fraternity

Confronting the darkness of being’s essence falling into the evil of conflict, war, and prejudice (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 4), dialogue begins in the tragedy and melancholy acknowledging that “existence has been abandoned by all” (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 90). This is because self-interest forces the other to retreat into itself, hiding the pain of suffering and voice of outrage. From the “emptiness” of spaces such as discrimination and victimization, murder and ostracism, bullying and harassment, lying and deceit, pride and envy, evil and sin, revenge and hatred, and indifference and apathy, time remains, so to speak, in a synchronous orbit around the self-interested ego, fuelled by the essence of vanity, power, and violence. Otherwise than the inhumanity of the ego lies the other’s face, immersed in the diachrony of the “transcendence of the Infinite”, “a past that was never present”, an immemorial, anarchic (without origin) gift of mercy, expiation, substitution, compassion, and responsibility (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 154). For the other to unveil a heart-felt disposition in dialogue would be a gift, a sign of the immemorial presence of hungering and thirsting for justice and peace as much as it is a lament about existence and the anonymous expressions or encounters of depersonalization. To hear the hidden lament, tears, and cries of the other in dialogue signifies the preconditions of non-reciprocal dialogue as “truth in love” (Eph 4:15), namely, respecting unknowability and discovering how compassion and loving-kindness become a catalyst to unveil truth in its “practical setting of social living” (Pope Benedict XVI 2009, no. 2).

An affectivity of the heart underlines the preconditions of dialogue because it leads to the spontaneity of faith (revealing surprise and boldness), the melancholy of hope (encountering perplexity and unknowability), and vigilance of love (touching upon mystery and otherness). The spiritual ecology and sensibility of such dialogue is exemplified in the non-naïve spontaneity of faith of the “unconditionality” of Mary’s “Yes” (Lk 1:38: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”) (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 122). The drama of Mary’s “Yes” in Luke 1:26–38 can now be put into service to understand the nature of non-reciprocal dialogue in terms of a spiritual theological affectivity of surprise, perplexity, and mystery in the encounter of God’s word. The aim here will further show how using Levinas’ and Burggraeve’s thought reshapes a Christian theological perspective towards a more ethical metaphysical appreciation of the dialogue between Mary and the archangel Gabriel, better appreciating how the mystery of Incarnation invites a diachronic perspective of coming to understanding through the time of otherness, the alterity of the face. In other words, in Mary’s response, one appreciates how the ethical relationship of acknowledging the other (the angel) is the condition of possibility of a new form of knowledge beyond mere openness.

Mary discovers and preserves her future, mission, and identity facing God through the visitation of the angel. This is miracle, a sign and deed of power, of the Lord God. In view of miracles, Levinas writes

The possibility of thought is the consciousness of miracle, or wonder. The miracle ruptures biological consciousness; it possesses an intermediary ontological status between the lived and the thought. It is the beginning of thought, or experience. Thought at its beginning finds itself before the miracle of fact. The structure of the fact as distinct from the idea resides in the miracle. Hence, thought is not simply reminiscence, but always consciousness of the new.

(Levinas 1998b, p. 16)

We can begin to see that encountering the face of God through the angel is the “miracle of the fact par excellence” (Burggraeve 2018a, p. 117). Her perplexity respects the unknowability of God whilst guarding her from the temptation to totalize the knowledge and message given by the angel to an “idolatry of facts” (Levinas 1996b, p. 65). The dialogical nature of difference, mystery, and unknowability culminates in Mary’s “Yes” of faith (Lk 1:38), signifying her growth in understanding from recognition to acknowledgment (Burggraeve 2018a, pp. 116–17). Respecting the Absolute Other, God’s unknowability, Mary in humility, boldness, and faith enters the mystery of salvation, a diachronic pathway of grace and transcendence to gain knowledge, understanding, and wisdom from the alterity and movement towards acknowledgment from recognition, which “is concretised as hesitation and shuddering” (Burggraeve 2018a, p. 117), namely, her perplexity, that is to say, an ethical “shivering” (Levinas [1998] 1999. p. 68). In this way, the Marian drama of such non-reciprocal (preconditions of) dialogue (Burggraeve 2022) unfolds in seven acts or parts as it were.

First, non-reciprocal dialogue starts with the word of the Other, coming not from within myself but from outside. The “Saying” of the Angel (the Other)—“the most passive passivity” being a “diachrony of patience”—reveals and bestows God’s transcendence of alterity to be “for-the-other” (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 50). Second, this strange word of greeting (“Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you” (Lk 1:28)) provokes an inner shuddering/shivering in the form of perplexity (hesitation, uncertainty, anxiety, and questioning). Levinas here can be put into service to provide some light. Employing his thought, one can consider that such shuddering (a condition “between sleep and insomnia, panting, shivering”) is the signification of an identity of “responsibility” in and “at the service of the other” (Levinas [1998] 1999, pp. 68–69).

Third, the word of the other (the angel Gabriel) appeals and provokes the answer of the addressed (Mary). This answer is a questioning: “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” (Lk 1:34). Mary’s answer reflects the essence of her soul in “proximity” to God through the angel as much as it reflects, to utilize Levinas’ language, her “sensibility” of maternity (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 68): “The more the one approaches the other, the more careful the one becomes” (Burggraeve 2018a, pp. 117–18).

Fourth, Mary’s critical questioning provokes a surprising answer by the angel explaining what is now happening in Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God” (Lk 1:35–37). The angel’s revelation to Mary reveals the diachrony of uniting the memory of hope for the messiah with expectation as is illustrated later in Simeon’s (Lk 2:29–32) and Anna’s (Lk 2:38) blessing and adoration.

Fifth, the angel is changed by the questioning and dialogue taking place. Mary’s maternity can be seen in a Levinasian sense as that “which is bearing par excellence” (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 75), bearing even responsibility for the angel’s revelation. Her perplexity, the “restlessness” of someone surprised by the angel’s visitation, demonstrates her alterity and “gestation” of her “Yes” to God (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 75). The effect upon the angel is to reveal the words of Mary’s maternity, the “groaning” (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 75) of salvation and Creation (“We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now” (Rom 8:22)).

Sixth, after the angel’s revelation, the incarnated “Yes” of Mary (“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” (Lk 1:38)) expresses her maternity as “openness” (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 76) of mission and grace through her son. Mary now, to place in a Levinasian light, has “a vocation that wounds, calls upon an irrevocable responsibility” (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 76) to be “the mother of my Lord” (Lk 1:43): “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too” (Lk 2: 34–35).

Seventh and lastly, Mary’s “Yes” unveils the covenantal vocation to learn from her faith and charity, to live out her maternal otherness: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Lk 6:36). This means that the other, poor one and stranger, like a visiting angel, has something to reveal, a gift and grace to witness, a message to testify to God as Creator and Redeemer, namely, the birth of hope to “inherit the earth” (Matt 5:5) and a spirit of gentleness, patient endurance, and boldness to approach the other in all his/her mystery, difference, unknowability, and hope. Hence, Mary’s “Yes” reveals the precondition of possibility for non-reciprocal dialogue. Levinas relates, “I am bound to others before being tied to by body” (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 76). Burggraeve emphasises more succinctly, “We are already bonded with each other, even before we can bind ourselves with each other. We are (passively) bonded in a destiny even before we can (actively) enter into the destiny of the other” (Burggraeve 2018b, p. 13). This reveals that such “ethical proximity of the one-for-the-other reveals our human precondition as … a ‘fraternity’ that precedes our freedom” (Burggraeve 2018b, p. 13).

To summarise, non-reciprocal dialogue in the light of Luke’s story about Jesus’ birth reveals a sevenfold spiritual habitus and sensibility of the ethical relationship of acknowledging the other through (i) patience; (ii) hesitation; (iii) questioning; (iv) surprise and blessing; (v) transformation; (vi) a maternity of openness; and (vii) a covenantal vocation of human fraternity. The first five areas highlight the approaching transcendence of dialogue leading towards an affectivity of maternity and fraternity. In a word, the Annunciation speaks of the parrhesía (“Boldness, enthusiasm, the freedom to speak out, apostolic fervour” (Pope Francis 2018, no. 132)) of non-reciprocal dialogue. This is a message to be borne to the world in surprise and spontaneity evoking the boldness of maternal imagination to bring mercy to those who “fear [and love] God”, to scatter “the proud in the thoughts of their hearts”, to bring “down the powerful from their thrones”, to fill “the hungry with good things”, and to send “the rich away empty” (Lk 1:5–53). In this way, Mary’s bold witness initiates the patience and surprise of dialogue to embody in praise what is at the heart of the Kingdom of God: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour” (Lk 1:47).

4. Conclusions: From Dialogue to Witness

Non-reciprocal dialogue comes alive to invite a “holy ground” of transcendence, an integral human ecology of maternity and fraternity. The notion of non-reciprocity underlines the preconditions of dialogue as otherness and unknowability. Yet, such “preconditions” are also “pre-originary”. This is because the proximity of God entails a “giving” like “the bread taken from one’s mouth” (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 77). Mary’s “Yes” embodying the gift of divine maternity emerges from a “shivering” (Burggraeve 2018b, p. 26), as it were, of unknowability, perplexity, and surprise (Lk 1:29) in the immemorial depths of God. Burggraeve explains such ethical shivering as “an utmost circumspection and carefulness, apprehensive as we are to do injustice to the other in all our forward-marching self-certainty (AE 86/68)” (Burggraeve 2018b, p. 26). The depth of shivering before the other, in the spontaneity of not wanting to do any harm to the other signifies the “moment that ‘brotherly’ dialogue ‘founds’ and installs itself ethically, i.e., becomes fully humane” (Burggraeve 2018b, p. 26).

In the time of grace, ethical shivering creates “space for an utterly positive approach to the other” (Burggraeve 2018b, p. 27) to witness care and compassion without the compulsion or temptation of certainty and ego-desire. In such a humane ecology of maternity and fraternity, there arises a space for a “difficult freedom”, a “shivering” of “atonement”, demanding in its character of encountering the collision of infinite responsibility (Levinas 1996a, p. 18). Atonement therefore possesses an anarchic condition even before we understand it as an ethical act. This means that atonement has a pre-original quality that one is created as expiating—“a passivity more passive still than passivity of matter”—the active passivity (or difficulty) of “the freedom of consciousness” (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 113–14). In atonement, there is movement of transcendence from the “freedom of consciousness” to the freedom of responsibility (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 114) like the Suffering Servant (of Isaiah 53), not having chosen to expiate for others (“But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities” (v.5)).

The affectivity of atonement in dialogue therefore signifies the anarchic/pre-original “condition” of transcendence of being made “otherwise” (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 3) for God. In the maternity and fraternity of existence, to be “otherwise than being” (Levinas [1998] 1999, p. 3) is to be incarnationally driven: to be like Christ (God’s Son), expiating and suffering for others. As the affectivity of atonement demonstrates a profound passivity of vulnerability, the holy ground of encountering God’s will and word in the other’s face opens to grace and purpose. In the moment of ethical shivering before the Holy Spirit, God communicates to the soul an invincible small goodness of the human condition: “The more I face my responsibilities the more I am responsible” (Levinas 1998a, p. 98). Here, in the diachrony of hyperbolic responsibility, the word of the Risen Christ appeals to the self through the poverty and suffering of other’s face. The Risen Christ comes to mind as an awakening, as a disturbance, shock, and trauma in our trembling and shivering, as the condition of the other’s outrage, hurt, and cries of anguish. The disturbance uncovers the nature of wounding grace, allowing God to wound through the other’s face. The grace is “wounding” because it is an event of love and fraternity for the stranger-brother/sister that transforms diachronically into maternity (Burggraeve 2018b, p. 16), into the gift of compassion. An affectivity of atonement forms the pre-original dialogical foundation of humanity as the time of grace to orient and animate spaces for the small goodness, for acts of loving-kindness and responsibility.

Pope Francis writes

Only on the basis of God’s gift, freely accepted and humbly received, can we cooperate by our own efforts in our progressive transformation. We must first belong to God, offering ourselves to him who was there first, and entrusting to him our abilities, our efforts, our struggle against evil and our creativity, so that his free gift may grow and develop within us: “I appeal to you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Rom 12:1). For that matter, the Church has always taught that charity alone makes growth in the life of grace possible, for “if I do not have love, I am nothing” (1 Cor 13:2).

(Pope Francis 2018, no. 56)

Here, Pope Francis comes close to the sense of atonement. A spiritual theology of dialogue takes a step into the time of holiness, the discernment, patience, and generosity of spirit, to recognise the unlimited nature of sacrifice through “charity”. Moreover, Pope Benedict XVI affirms

Charity is love received and given. It is “grace” (cháris). Its source is the wellspring of the Father’s love for the Son, in the Holy Spirit. Love comes down to us from the Son. It is creative love, through which we have our being; it is redemptive love, through which we are recreated. Love is revealed and made present by Christ (cf. Jn 13:1) and “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5). As the objects of God’s love, men and women become subjects of charity, they are called to make themselves instruments of grace, so as to pour forth God’s charity and to weave networks of charity.

(Pope Benedict XVI 2009, no. 9)

Atonement by way of “redemptive love” unveils the dialogical self as a “living sacrifice” (Rom 12:1). The “holy ground”, an integral ecology of transcendence of maternity/compassion and fraternity/“social friendship” (Pope Francis 2020, no. 5), invites a beginning for the “instruments of grace” to make entry into a world bent on war, climate pollution and devastation, political instability, economic inequality, social alienation, and religious apathy and polarisation. An affectivity of dialogue “shivering” before the other’s need, gathering moments of atonement to bless and anoint the other in distress, unveils the Risen Christ’s immemorial and “creative love” (Pope Benedict XVI 2009, no. 9) to contradict the sin of the world and interrupt the political intrigues of self-interest, corruption, and repression. Such affectivity illuminating the preconditions and time of dialogue reveals space for a “holy ground” of “love in truth” to animate “ethical interaction of consciences and minds that would give rise to truly human development” (Pope Benedict XVI 2009, no. 9).

From the ethical shivering of encountering the other’s face in dialogue to the response of atonement/“creative love”, non-reciprocal dialogue evidences being created in the unconditional promise of covenantal love. Dialogue then becomes a spiritual vocation to bear the mysteries of the faith, to bear the trace of the Risen Christ’s word in the face of the poor one and stranger-brother/sister. On this point, Pope Benedict is clear in his response to the covenantal nature of human living and relations:

On this earth there is room for everyone: here the entire human family must find the resources to live with dignity, through the help of nature itself—God’s gift to his children—and through hard work and creativity. At the same time we must recognize our grave duty to hand the earth on to future generations in such a condition that they too can worthily inhabit it and continue to cultivate it. This means being committed to making joint decisions “after pondering responsibly the road to be taken, decisions aimed at strengthening that covenant between human beings and the environment, which should mirror the creative love of God, from whom we come and towards whom we are journeying”.

(Pope Benedict XVI 2009, no. 50)

For Pope Francis, it is not hard to imagine then that the possibility to “cultivate” covenantal living rests on instilling “good habits” rather than “providing information” (Pope Francis 2015, no. 211). Ensuing a “holy ground” and covenantal ecology of conversion, atonement, covenant, dialogue, and witness demands an awakening or ethical “shivering” and melancholy to fall into the most passive passivity (diachrony of responsibility) of encountering “truth in love” (Eph 4:15): “On this earth there is room for everyone”. Such a moment of revelation reveals the heart of “love in truth … to pursue development goals that possess a more humane and humanizing value” (Pope Benedict XVI 2009, no. 9).

To summarise, a spiritual theology of dialogue necessitates that the dialogical character of “truth in love” and, equally, “love in truth” (Pope Benedict XVI 2009, no. 2) gestate in the transcendence/womb of unknowability and otherness: of difference, patience, hesitation, questioning, surprise and blessing, and transformation to arrive at the “holy ground” of maternity and fraternity. In this fertile ground of dialogue, a spirituality arises to orient the boldness and wisdom to be willing to take on an expiating, atoning role. In the vulnerability of the willingness to shiver before the other’s mystery like Mary, to learn from Christ’s gentleness and humility (Matt 11:29), one may see that a spiritual pathway in dialogue “to inherit the earth” (Matt 5:5) culminates in the fruit of witness. The journey begins to take shape in transcendence taking on the qualities of faith, compassion, and friendship. This comes at a cost of entering the paschal mystery with Christ, to embrace atonement and covenantal love with a Marian “Yes” (Lk 1:38). In the integral human ecology (“good habits”) of responsibility, social fraternity, compassion, and covenantal love, dialogue has a chance to converge or transform into “the utmost patience” (2 Tim 4:2) to hear the good news and hence hope for a new world, a Kingdom of love in truth proclaiming, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matt 5:6).