The Emergence of ‘Dialogue’ as a Core Concept of Revelation in Magisterial Teaching

Abstract

This article analyses key magisterial documents, investigating the emergence and development of the concept of dialogue in the teaching of the Church since the Second Vatican Council, demonstrating how this concept is central for an articulation of revelation and its dynamic outworking in salvation history. Beginning with Vatican II’s Dei verbum (1965), and its recognition that revelation is a dialogical word-event reality, an overview of magisterial documents in the years immediately following the Council will show how dialogue was reduced to a functional practice for the Church’s mission. Verbum Domini (2010) marks the beginning of a return towards dialogue in magisterial teaching with its re-reading of Dei verbum, bringing the concept of dialogue from the edge of the Church’s life back to the centre of fundamental theology. The social teaching of Pope Francis has continued to deepen this recovery of the dialogical dynamic of revelation.

Qualifying Religious Truth and Ecclesial Unity: The Soteriological Significance of Difference

“…Indeed, "dialogue" first entered the ecclesial lexicon in 1964 with Paul VI's encyclical Ecclesiam Suam to describe a new approach for the church, both ad intra and ad extra (McInerney 2013). Elsewhere, I have charted the emergence and development of the concept of dialogue in the magisterium's fundamental theology, an importance that goes much deeper than its mere utility for engagement with other religions and denominations (McAleer 2024). The International Theological Commission's (2011, §5) document Theology Today, for example, recognises that "The sheer fulness and richness of that revelation is too great to be grasped by any one theology, and in fact gives rise to multiple theologies as it is received in diverse ways by human beings."…”