Bogoslovska smotra, Vol. 87 No. 3, 2017.
Original scientific paper
The Dialogical Essence of Faith in the Perspective of the Relation: God – Human being – Church – World
Valerija Nedjeljka Kovač
orcid.org/0000-0002-7535-1951
; Catholic Faculty of Theology, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The article deals with the thesis that dialogue is an essential, although not the only, dimension of Christian faith and a way of its realisation. Dialogue incorporates all its subjects and their interrelations: God – human being – Church – world. The author develops the thesis against the background of the understanding of dialogue as an intentionally established communication among equal interlocutors in which differences are mutually respected and that aims at establishing one common reality or consensus. The second part of the article demonstrates that dialogue has its foundation in God himself, who has revealed himself to the human being dialogically so that the human being could be saved. Within this manifold divine‑human communication, which reaches, in both directions, its eschatological and exemplar pinnacle in Jesus Christ, the whole history of salvation narrates and it becomes the paradigmatic example of every other dialogue that is led out of faith with people throughout history. The third part deepens the ecclesiological dimension of the Divine‑human dialogue, because in the historical‑soteriological dynamics the Church has been sent to continue the dialogue with God and in God´s name with people ad intra and ad extra. In the last part the relationship of the Church as the one that continues the dialogue of faith towards (self)‑critique and plurality as contemporary values (but also often barriers for realisation of dialogue) is being discussed. These are the challenges that the Church cannot avoid and that ought to be perceived as criteria of its own renewal and growth, so that the Church might remain authentic witness of God´s dialogue with human beings in time.
Keywords
dialogue; God´s self‑revelation; Jesus Christ; faith; human being´s response; communion with God; sensus fidei; critique; plurality
Hrčak ID:
190451
URI
Publication date:
12.12.2017.
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