Issue #45

Abstract: A report, revised into an article, was presented at the II International Symposium “Lessons of the Holocaust and Modern Russia”, held in Moscow on May 4–7, 1997. Two works are analyzed: “Dialogue between a Christian and a Jew on the Catholic Faith” by Guillelmus, Archdeacon of Paris, Bishop of Catalaunia (William of Champeaux), and “Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew and a Christian” by the philosopher and theologian Peter Abelard. The first dialogue was written shortly before or after the First Crusade, the second — during its victorious conclusion and the preparation of the Second Crusade. Both “Dialogues” represent a kind of trial to which representatives of these religions subjected the Jewish and Christian faiths from the standpoint of the Old and New Testaments; since in the second Dialogue the Philosopher joined them, also from the standpoint of natural law. Both dialogues are conducted on the basis of differently understood reason and free will. The illusory desire for agreement between the confessions led to the disclosure of the religious and philosophical principles of the writers of the “Dialogues”, i.e., the Christians. The arguments put forward by the Jew were rejected or forgotten. An empty space, a separation, formed between the speech of the Jew and the Christian. However, while Abelard’s “Dialogue” is entirely devoted to the rational, dialectically argued ethical teaching of Abelard, into which Judaism did not fit, Guillaume’s contains a mystical-religious, mythological teaching about the creation, first of all, of the heavenly world as a free kingdom of angels, and of man created as a substitute for the fallen angel, with whom the Jew, who wished to recognize the world of free will, was in solidarity, for the study and implementation of acts of will constituted the basis of the Jewish tradition. The Christians of the “Dialogues” presented the Jewish world as a sacrifice to a being that is material, that requires possession of a thing and bodily expressed vows.