Messianic Difference and Dialogical Theology: Martin Buber and Hans Urs von Balthasar

This essay focusses on Martin Buber's attack on the apostle St.Paul, whom he blames of having transformed the belief of Jesus into a dogmatic if not Gnostic theology of power, and on Balthasar's response to Buber, offering a revision of the Jewish Christian relations by relying on St.Paul. By adopting a similar dialogical existentialism like Buber, Balthasar wishes to deepen the Christian dogma as a dialogical paradigm. However, this debate leads inevitably to the fundamental difference between Jewish and Christian theology in the conception of the Messiah, which in fact is interpreted by both, Buber and Balthasar, as the condition of the possibility of both the limit and the potential for a dialogical theology grounded in the idea of the radical alterity of the other.