Ramon Llull pioneered dialogic mission but its failure embittered him

Evidence

Worse, he claims, there were some who knew enough philosophy to disprove Islam but not enough to prove the truth of Christianity: he accuses Dominican Ramon Martí of destroying the faith of the King of Tunis without providing him with a new faith, leaving him adrift. The starting point for religious dialogue should not be an attack on the rival religion but a search for a common ground of belief. On this common ground, positive philosophical argument can prove, Llull claimed, the Christian doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, and so on, without the need to resort to attacks on Muhammad and the Koran. Real Muslims (or Jews), however, showed little inclination to be converted by his arguments, and Llull gradually adopted a less irenic and more hostile depiction of Islam. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 76

Categorization

• APHORISMS: The pattern — a gentler method fails and converts its own author into a harsher one — reads as timeless: failed irenicism breeds embitterment.
• XREF: Connects to modern interfaith dialogue dynamics and to the general failure-then-bitternening arc seen in The Reluctant Fundamentalist.