Krister Stendahl (1921-2008)

I normally do not write about the deaths of academics. The reason is that I'm usually not as familiar with their work as I perhaps should be. I know David Noel Freedman as the guy who edited the Anchor Bible Dictionary, no more, no less. Okay, then again, I do have a few of his books, so maybe I know a little more than I think. Regarding Emil Brunner, I think I found his name alongside that of Karl Barth, but I've never read anything by him.

With Krister Stendahl, it is a bit different. I do have some things to say about him. And I'll be chronological as I describe my interactions with his work.

I first heard of Krister Stendahl in my Greek New Testament class at DePauw. I was reading Romans 11 with my professor, the late Dr. John Eigenbrodt, who presented me with an interesting interpretation of "All Israel shall be saved." In my eyes, Paul was saying that he expected the Jews to convert to Christ in the last days. According to Dr. Eigenbrodt, however, a scholar named Krister Stendahl had a different view. For Stendahl, Paul was saying that the Israelites would become good, observant Jews. In essence, God would save Israel apart from any faith in Christ on their part.

Okay. Then why does Paul agonize over their unbelief in Romans 9-11?

But let's move on. At DePauw, I wrote my senior thesis on Matthew's interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. One book I used was Stendahl's The School of St. Matthew and Its Use of the Old Testament, which was his 1954 dissertation. I liked it, even though my Greek and Hebrew skills were not up to par at the time. He compared Matthew's quotes of the Hebrew Bible with the Septuagint, the Masoretic text, and other manuscripts as well. It's good that somebody did that!

At Harvard Divinity School, I heard Krister Stendahl speak. James Carroll was talking about his book, Constantine's Sword, which was about how the Christian church persecuted Jews throughout the Middle Ages. Krister Stendahl was one of the speakers, and he essentially said that we should base our theology on what is loving. He appealed to I Corinthians 13, reminding us that Paul said love was more important than faith. As an aside, that was also the forum in which Kevin Madigan argued that the church was not that bad. And, to its credit, Harvard hired him soon thereafter! Maybe I was wrong about the Div School being dogmatically and closed-mindedly liberal. It must actually respect real diversity (and not just diverse strands of liberalism) to have done something like that.

But Krister Stendahl's presentation reminded me of what I hated about the Div School and Jewish/Christian dialogue in general: political correctness. The church was wrong to persecute Jews. Heck, Christ never told his followers to persecute anyone. He said love your neighbor, including your enemies and those who are different. But my point is this: Christians should not construct their theology on what makes people feel better. The New Testament says that everyone should convert to Christ. We should let the Bible say what the Bible says, not reinterpret it to fit a politically correct mold. And that's what I feel Krister Stendahl did with Romans 11.

I don't think I really encountered Stendahl's work at Jewish Theological Seminary. I didn't do much New Testament there, plus it was a Jewish environment, so, in classrooms, there wasn't much pressure on Christians to get their act together and ditch supersessionism.

So let's fast forward to Hebrew Union College. In my second year, I took a New Testament class with Dr. Michael Cook, a Jewish New Testament scholar. I asked to do my final paper on Krister Stendahl's interpretation of Romans 11. I mean, I had always heard of it, and it never made sense to me, but I had never read Stendahl's own arguments for his position. Dr. Cook said it would be a good project for me, and he gave me a paper that he himself had written on the topic.

And so I read Stendahl's Paul Among Jews and Gentiles, Final Account, and Meanings. Basically, Stendahl rested his position on the absence of the words "Jesus" or "Christ" in Romans 10:17-11:36. I wrote the following response in my paper:

"The absence of such a reference is perhaps puzzling, but it is not sufficient by itself to support Stendahl’s position. In I Corinthians 14, Paul uses God-language to the exclusion of Christ-language, but Christ is still implicit in his discussion. How else would Paul and his audience differentiate between a 'believer' and an 'unbeliever'? Similarly, Paul’s references to Israel’s hardness, stumbling, and unbelief in Romans 11 demonstrate his conviction that Israel’s salvation would accompany faith in Christ, even if the words 'Jesus' or 'Christ' do not appear."

And, interestingly, most of the scholars I read criticized Stendahl's position. I could not find many supporters when I did my research. Even Dr. Cook, one of whose specialties is Jewish/Christian dialogue, found Stendahl's interpretation of Romans 11 to be problematic. So, years after my DePauw New Testament Greek class, even after reading Stendahl's position in his own words, I go with my first hunch: Paul in Romans 11 says all Israel will believe in Christ.

And so these were my experiences with Krister Stendahl, but they are limited. I wouldn't want to be judged on whether or not I said "hello" to someone, since I often have not, yet I've managed to do good things. As far as his work is concerned, Stendahl wrote a good book on Matthew, and he tried to bring a measure of compassion to Christianity because of his concern for the Jews. I just disagree with how he went about doing that.