I recently took part in a dialogue with a small group of Baha’is. I was in fact the only Christian and more than a dialogue it was an account of the teachings of Baha’u’llah, the founder of the Baha’i faith but referring to some Christian scriptures. I learned a lot in the process about myself and about interreligious dialogue. 

Dialogue can be challenging especially when you see your faith from another perspective. Sometimes it challenges your very identity. This is especially true when it comes to supercessionism which is also called replacement theology, that is when one religion believes that it has a revelation that replaces or develops that of a previous one which can suggest a superiority.  Christianity did it to Judaism. Christians believed that Jesus was the Messiah promised in the Hebrew scriptures; the Jews didn’t recognise him, so those who did and followed Jesus fell heirs to the promises given by God to the People of Israel. Christians had in fact replaced Jews as God’s Chosen People.  Islam then did it to Judaism and Christianity when Muslims, while respecting the prophets of Judaism, including Jesus, claimed that Mohammed was the final prophet and the Qur’an the true expression of the Word of God. And the Baha’i faith reflects this attitude in believing that Baha’a’ullah is a further revelation from God which is appropriate for the modern age.

While in no way explicitly rejecting previous revelations it did feel a bit like supercessionism as I listened to an interpretation of the Christian scriptures which Baha’u’llah reinterpreted to show how he understood them or fulfilled them. This being accepted by Baha’is as the correct understanding of the scriptures. It raised for me questions about how to accept the integrity of another faith when one faith develops from another or is influenced by another. How do we accept the integrity of a faith’s understanding of scripture when it is shared or used by another faith but understood differently?

I had an experience of this a few months ago when I was involved in a project to interpret a scripture story depicted on a medieval tapestry which was to be put on display in the newly refurbished Burrell Museum in Glasgow. The story chosen was that of the story in Genesis 22 of Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son but being saved from doing so by an angel. The Christians and Jews shared the same text but interpreted it in different ways and even had different names for it. For Jews the story is called the Binding of Isaac or the Akedah and shows the total submission to God’s will of Abraham, the exemplar of faith. It’s because of Abraham’s obedience and willingness to kill his son that God tells him, “Because you have done this…I will bestow my blessing upon you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven and the sands on the seashore” (Genesis 22:16–17). Isaac was saved and a ram sacrificed in his place and in memory of this a ram’s horn is blown each year at the festival of Rosh Hashanah to remind God of the Akedah and his promise to bestow blessings on God’s People and safeguard their future.

Christians on the other hand refer to the story as the sacrifice of Isaac and see in it a prefiguration of the death of Jesus on the Cross. They approach the same story from a different viewpoint, from their own theological understanding of seeing Christ at the centre of revelation. For one person in our group this was a bit disconcerting – another faith interpreting her faith, not only differently but in a way that could suggest the Christian understanding was the correct one. It was very obvious that we are standing in different places with different mind sets even when we read the same scriptures.  

This was the case with my interaction with my Baha’i friends which was enjoyable and friendly but used passages from the Gospels and understood them in a way that was alien to me. It was obvious that our whole approach to the Gospels was quite different. For me the scripture was saying something about Jesus and the reality of God’s relationship with humanity, while for the Bahai’s the same scripture was used to show that the Christian understanding was inadequate and replaced by a further revelation.  Do I have the right to say that this was wrong?  Not really because I don’t own my scriptures. The scriptures of the world religions contain a wisdom that is universal and available to all and as such are not the property of any one faith.  For the Baha’is or Baha’u’llah to interpret the Christian scriptures as proof of the validity of his own faith is an act of faith in itself and it’s this that has to be acknowledged by saying Baha’is believe that this ……… means……….. Christians too have to acknowledge that their understanding of these same texts is based on their faith, perhaps even foundational to it.     
​
What all this says to me is that we need to be sensitive when using scripture within the context of dialogue. We need to listen and acknowledge different understandings, be sensitive to supercessionist texts and what impact they can have on our dialogue partners. We also need to face up to the challenges that a replacement theology poses as we acknowledge our respect for the integrity of other faiths – a respect which is foundational to interreligious dialogue.

I have to remind myself that the human race is very young if you compare it to what we know of the age of the universe. Taking the evolution of the world as one year homo sapiens only appeared at three minutes to midnight on 31st December. That’s no time at all so perhaps it’s no surprise that in spite of the great innovations and creations of history we are just not good at living together.  We are still learning how to do it and making many mistakes along the way. Perhaps it’s because we don’t trust one another, are afraid of one another and see one another as a threat. There seems to be a deep zenophobia and distrust that leads us to think the worst of one another.

​I recently read Rutger Bergman’s book, Humankind, in which he tries to give a positive view of human beings and show that on the whole human beings are decent kind of beings. He does admit, however, that we also seem to be attracted to stories that shows the opposite – stories like William Golding’s Lord of the Flies that suggests children left to themselves on a desert island will deteriorate into animal and destructive tendencies. Bergman shows reality doesn’t support this but somehow it has grasped the imagination of people who seem to readily believe the truth behind the story.  It’s the same I think with the Christian belief in original sin which has also spoken to the imagination and influenced church attitudes for centuries.

Original sin, the story that at the beginning of creation human beings i.e. Adam and Eve disobeyed God resulted in the belief that all human beings are born in a state of alienation from God and in need of redemption. I should say that Judaism, which shares the same story in Genesis does not interpret it in this way and Islam which talks of Adam and Eve falling to earth from Paradise sees human beings as weak and to be tested but not in any way alienated from God. It only came into Christianity in the 4th cy and as far as the Catholic Church is concerned formalised in the 16th cy at the Council of Trent. It is associated with St Augustine who, while grappling with the problem of how sin could have come into the world when the world was created by a good God, devised the belief that the original sin of Adam and Eve was passed down biologically to future generations. Human beings could then only be saved by grace which came through baptism and belief in Jesus. Such a belief in the tainted nature of humanity lays the way open for control, a negative attitude towards the body and sex, forced conversions and baptisms, a rigid moral code which punished the sinner to say nothing of a lack of self -esteem and a poor self- image. It influenced the attitude of preachers and teachers and probably William Golding in writing the Lord of the Flies.

Of course, human beings are sinful and have tendencies towards greed, power, control. It’s very obvious in the world today and just this week I’ve heard stories from a Uighur woman about the genocide that it happening in China, from an artist who has worked  with the Rohingya in Myanmar and of the  antisemitism that stems from the very false but persistent reports about a fabricated document called the Protocols of the Elders of Sion. We are not doing well as human beings.

I’m glad to say, however, that as far as Christian theology is concerned there is now much more emphasis on the goodness of creation and the innate goodness of human beings, created as they are in the image and likeness of God. Religions are living traditions. They develop their understanding of faith in dialogue with the prevailing culture in which they live. That early story in Genesis is now understood as a myth, not to be seen as a fabrication but as a story which contains a truth and the truth is that human beings are created good as all of the created world is, that we are all made in the image and likeness of God, that we are made for fellowship with God and one another but we can also be sinful and determined to plough our own furrow ignoring the need to work for harmony among our brothers and sisters and forgetting our call to care for the created world. Is this not a much more positive  view of human nature and a good basis for transforming our attitude to one another?  What if we trusted that the men and women we met were essentially good and like us struggling to live as best a human life as they could?  Would we be more open to refugees, more concerned for the homeless, for those with addictions, those of our brothers and sisters without food, water, health care or whatever.  Would we be less likely to see those of other cultures and religions as a threat and different from ourselves? Would we be able to overcome the suspicion, racism and zenophobia that sets us against one another?
I would certainly hope so.