Roots Violence
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ROOTS OF VIOLENCE Krister Stendahl ROOTS OF VIOLENCE Krister Stendahl ROOTS OF VIOLENCE CREATING PEACE THROUGH SPIRITUAL RECONCILIATION F O REWORD by James Carroll PREFACE by Brita Stendahl INTRODUCTION by Rebecca Pugh AFTERWORD by Marc Brettler, Brandeis University Muzammil Siddiqi, Orange County Islamic Center Rebecca Pugh, First Church in Ipswich Paraclete Press BREWSTER, MASSACHUSETTS 2016 First printing Roots of Violence: Creating Peace Through Spiritual Reconciliation Copyright © 2016 by The Estate of Krister Stendahl ISBN 978-1-61261-815-9 The Paraclete Press name and logo (dove on cross) are trademarks of Paraclete Press, Inc. Unless otherwise indicated, biblical quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scriptures marked NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scriptures marked NJPS are taken from the Jewish Publication Society TANAKH translation copyright © 1985, 1999 by the Jewish Publication Society. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Names: Stendahl, Krister, author. Title: Roots of violence : creating peace through spiritual reconciliation / Krister Stendahl ; foreword by James Carroll ; preface by Brita Stendahl ; introduction by Rebecca Pugh ; afterwords, reflections by Marc Brettler, Brandeis University, Muzammil Siddiqi, Orange County Islamic Center, Rebecca Pugh, First Church in Ipswich. Description: Brewster MA : Paraclete Press Inc., 2016. | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2016028404 | ISBN 9781612618159 (trade paper) Subjects: LCSH: Peace--Biblical teaching. | Peace--Religious aspects. Classification: LCC BS680.P4 S74 2016 | DDC 261.8/73--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016028404 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Paraclete Press Brewster, Massachusetts www.paracletepress.com Printed in the United States of America Contents Foreword JAMES CARROLL 1 Preface BRITA STENDAHL 5 Introduction REBECCA PUGH 11 Salvation as Victory 15 Salvation as Nirvana 28 Salvation as Shalom 37 The Language of Violence and the Language of Peace 51 Reflections DR. MARC BRETTLER 61 IMAM DR. MUZAMMIL SIDDIQI 71 DR. REBECCA PUGH 82 Notes about the Editing Process 88 Acknowledgments 92 Notes 94 Foreword JAMES CARROLL his book is a monument to Krister Stendahl’s voice. That the writing here began as this Teminent scholar’s spoken word makes it all the more precious because it rings with the immediacy of Krister Stendahl’s living presence. He had a gift for speaking as he thought, and the privileged ones who heard him were buoyed by being invited into the work- ing of a facile, original mind. It was because so much of Krister’s teaching took place, as it were, on the fly that his understanding, throughout a long career, con- tinually renewed itself. But such spontaneity, of course, achieved its rare gravity only because it was prepared for by diligent study and masterful scholarship: on the fly, perhaps, but never off the cuff. Thus, in these pages, the reader feels nothing less than the vivid nearness of the man, our dear companion on the way. For legions of students, colleagues, dialogue partners, and parishioners, Krister Stendahl’s pres- ence was itself life-changing. In his own person, Krister made his thinking and his believing radically available, 2 R OOTS OF V IOLENCE an act of supreme generosity. The two aspects of his identity nurtured each other: because he was thought embodied, he was faith-made-flesh. Across half a century, his influence changed how Christians regard their own tradition, which changed, in turn, the way Christian faith is regarded by others. He made reli- gious self-criticism a mode of religious commitment, and then he went further by insisting, as a founder of contemporary interreligious dialogue, that the truest self- criticism takes place in the presence of “the other.” Krister Stendahl was a giant on whose broad—if ever erect— shoulders believers will stand for generations to come. Krister’s watchword was peace—Shalom, Salaam. A Swede who came of age during World War II, his con- science was braced by the Holocaust, which prompted his readiness to investigate for complicity even the most sacrosanct elements of his own tradition—the standard reading of St. Paul, for example. Christian anti-Judaism, which morphed into racial anti-Semitism, found its greatest modern critic in this Lutheran theologian. His being a pioneer in Jewish-Christian dialogue prepared Krister then for an equally important role in a new— and still self-critical—Christian reckoning with the House of Islam. Especially once religion re-emerged, in the twenty- first century, as an engine of political conflict, this Foreword: James Carroll 3 professor-priest devoted himself to the task of disarming what he called the “antagonistic structures” of belief. That was, for him, centrally a matter of finding a new key in which to read the Bible. When violence became the lens through which Krister re-viewed the texts, two things became freshly apparent. First, the Bible is rife with violence, but that is so because violence is the problem to which the Bible is responding. Second, the Bible tells the story of violence from the point of view not of the powerful who inflict violence, but of those upon whom it is inflicted. Humans are constitutionally inclined (Original Sin?) to find the solution to the problem of violence in yet more violence, but Krister Stendahl, with intellectually honed clarity, but also with compassion that eschews judgmentalism, showed this to be the essential human error—tragedy itself. He insisted that it is an error that can be over- come. In the voice of Krister Stendahl himself, resonant and strong throughout these pages, we hear the har- monies of reconciliation, the music of the man he was: highly rational, yet attuned to the mystical; politically responsible, yet grounded in a contemplative detach- ment; firmly Christian, yet prophetically ecumenical; earnest, while imbued with good humor; painfully aware of human self-destruction, yet stirring with 4 R OOTS OF V IOLENCE hope. Krister Stendahl was a man of peace—shalom, salaam. We need him still. We need his voice. His words remain. w Preface BRITA STEHNDAHL his is the story of a manuscript lost and found and left unfinished. More curiously, it was T never written down onto paper by its author. Its text was lifted from tapes sent to the lecturer who put them in his closet where they rested, along with many other tapes of others lectures he had given. At one time he took them out and had them transcribed and looked at what now had become a manuscript. He sighed (I am sure) and tucked the bundle back in his closet. When, years later, Rebecca Pugh came along to study themes of violence and peace in Scripture, the manuscript came out again. Perhaps with her help there was a book in it, he thought. But I’ll let her tell her story in her introduction. The author was Krister Stendahl, my husband, a professor at Harvard Divinity School for more than thirty years and dean for eleven (1968–1979). Later, as Bishop of Stockholm in his native Sweden (1984– 1988), he made much use of his unusual talent for preaching, teaching, and lecturing. Words came easily 6 R OOTS OF V IOLENCE to him. Yet as a professor he had this anomaly: he rarely sat down at his desk to produce the commentaries like those which seemed to flow from the pens of his colleagues. An intellectual restlessness made him incapable of spending time repeating what others had written and adding his own angle. What he wanted was to bring about constructive new thinking. That itch made him decide to accept the deanship, since an administrative role forced him to make decisions and act on them whether it meant the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of others. He communicated best through lectures, letters, emails, notes, and telephone calls. He belonged to the modern oral tradition. He felt the proximity of big exis- tential questions and would never deny their reality, and he conveyed this to students. His deep knowledge and proficiency in several disciplines, and his keen aware- ness of the present, was an exhilarating experience. His skill in the use of languages and his ability to shift style from high to colloquial, done with humor and grace, stimulated his listeners. Over the years Krister gave lectures on the subject “Roots of Violence in Scripture.” His first explicit attempt was at Dana College, a small Lutheran school founded by conservative pietistic Danish immigrants for the education of ministers. These four sessions are the ones Preface: Brita Stendahl 7 that were caught on tape, then hidden in his closet, and now finally presented here. The first session was called Salvation as Victory. Krister is not speaking here about salvation as an experience by an individual fighting sin and finding forgiveness and peace in Jesus Christ, the Savior and Redeemer. He is talking about the very real dangers that are threatening humankind today. And how inad- equate the language of Salvation as victory is. Krister had grown up in the shadow of World War II. He had seen the devastation of Germany and the news- reels from the opening of the concentration camps.