Resuming Conflict: Benedict’s “Grace and Vocation” and the Limit of Dialogue

Abstract

This paper analyzes Benedict XVI’s disputed text “Grace and Vocation Without Remorse: Comments on the Treatise ‘De Iudaeis’” from 2018 not only as the specification and, in part, restoration of a traditional Christian understanding of God's covenant with Israel, but implicitly also as an attempt both to re-evaluate the Christian tradition of treatises on Jews and to revitalize a dispute between Christianity and Judaism on theological questions. Through this attempt, the limits of the idea of inter-religious dialogue between (Catholic) Christianity and (Rabbinic) Judaism become abundantly clear.