PRINCIPLES FOR INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE.pdf - CUEA

Carthage were by nature the enemies of the deities of Rome. In such
a context the refusal to worship the deities of the city was felt
essentially as an act of disloyalty towards the state.
In the beginning the situation was almost the same within the Biblical
tradition. In the Bible, Yahweh acts as the God of the Jews. He
constantly warns his people not to worship any other deity and to
obey his Law. This people, with one God, are also the association of
a physical entity — the twelve tribes descended from Abraham via
Isaac and Jacob — with a land, Palestine. The Jewish community is
an ideal prototype of unity: it obeys at one and the same time the ius
sanguinis, loci and religionis, the law of blood, place and religion. It is
the perfect prototype of an ethnically homogeneous community,
rooted in religion and shaped into a land and a state. In a way, to
speak of religious liberty in such a case is literally absurd. There is no
choice other than remaining in the state-community or leave it. In
particular the Jew who is converted to another religion ceases ipso
facto to belong to his state-community. So his conversion is felt as a
betrayal and, as such, it warrants the penalty of death (Cf. Dt 13:2-19;
Lev 24:10-23). If we have dwelt on the case of the Jewish community
as a prototype, it is because that case is not without some similarities
with the classical Islamic Umma, as it was shaped by traditional
theology.
For historical reasons the situation changed completely with the
appearance of the Christian preaching. From the beginning this
preaching was not linked with the state, and Jesus' people, the
Jewish community, rejected the call. Jesus ordered his disciples “to
render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and to God the
things which are God’s” (Mt 22:21). This revolutionary attempt to
dissociate state and religion and to ensure the freedom of the
individual conscience failed. The time was not yet ripe. Consequently,
in the Roman Empire, the first Christians were considered as disloyal
subjects, because of their refusal to pay honor to the deities of their
city and of their social group. Accordingly, they were treated as
rebels. The right to self-determination and to religious liberty was
denied them as individuals acting freely in accordance with their
conscience.
Created by DEAN-FASSFrederic Ntedika Mvumbi, OP
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