Krister Stendahl, ELCA, former bishop in Sweden, former dean of Harvard Divinity, died at the age of 86, on April 15.
Stendahl spoke at Yale Divinity when I was there for an STM. He used Paul to teach that we should not convert the Jews. Abraham Malherbe, NT professor, said afterwards, "To the Jew first, then the Gentiles."
Krister's son John, now an ELCA pastor, lived down the hall from us. We heard a few interesting Stendahl stories. They changed into swimsuits on an American beach, Swedish style. Mrs. Stendahl got herself arrested for offending the locals as she changed. The Stendahls were home nudists, no matter who the guests were, so they surprised a few people.
Krister seemed to speak at every theological or cultural convocation. The Lutheran magazine reported his statements. Newspapers followed him faithfully. He seemed to pop up at life on other planet conferences and other strange convocations. Krister's more serious topics were women's ordination and Christian-Jewish dialogue. When he went back to be a bishop, he pushed his views and found himself out of a job after a few years. That was quite an accomplishment, to out-liberal the Swedish liberals. Stendahl came back to America to work, at Brandeis.
His son John has remained an ELCA pastor, carrying on the Jewish dialogue tradition. His congregation began with Seminex supporters and is now a Reconciling in Christ partner.
My New Testament professor at Notre Dame, Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza, is now the Krister Stendahl Professor at Harvard. Her husband Frank is also at Harvard. He wrote an interesting article about Pope Benedict XVI (B16 to Norm Teigen). I took a class from Frank, and Frank knew the current pope quite well.
Elisabeth was quite nice to me, but I ruffled Frank's feathers. (Imagine that.) I quoted Tillich's biography (written by Tillich's friend) in class. Tillich was a pagan as well as a flagrant adulterer. The paganism charge stung Frank because he loved Tillich's theology. So did my doctoral advisor.
Frank had no problem with adulterous theologians. He stated the theory that Karl Barth wrote the big print of the Dogmatics while his mistress wrote the scholarly parts. He taught that Charlotte (the live-in mistress) got honored early in the volumes while Nellie (his long-suffering wife) was mentioned only at the end. He also noted how the Dogmatics dwindled to nothing once Charlotte died. Barth was a Marxist and sent his mistress to the big Communist international meeting.
