Abstract
This chapter opens the volume by introducing Krister Stendahl’s call to “always leave room for holy envy” in the face of interreligious encounters. In so doing, Gustafson provides examples of holy envy from his own experience. These include the Jewish mourning tradition of Shiva, a reflection on Daoism’s principle of wu wei (non-doing), and a reflection from Rabbi Anson Laytner on Chinese Judaism in China. This chapter also introduces the chapters in this volume, their authors, and their foci.
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Notes
- 1.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (“Lou Gehrig’s disease”).
- 2.
We removed this line so as not to misrepresent ourselves as Jewish . Instead, we simply told friends and family that we all moved into my brother’s house for the week and that they were welcome to come spend time with us, which of course they all did.
- 3.
George W.E. Nickelsburg describes Stendahl as a “professor, dean, historian of religion, theologian, churchman, [and] pastor” (Nickelsburg, “Preface,” v). Stendahl is beloved and well-known beyond the Christian traditions as well. Susannah Heschel, speaking on Jewish-Christian relations, has remarked on more than one occasion that “after the war God sent us Krister Stendahl” [Susannah Heschel, “Problems of Identity : Judaism and Christianity in the Modern European Context,” lecture (Skálholt, Iceland: 2011), and “From Rabbi to Nazi: The Vicissitudes of Jesus in Modern Theology ,” The Krister Stendahl Memorial Lecture (Stockholm, Sweden: 2011); also quoted in Jesper Svartvik, “In Memory of Krister Stendahl on his Idea of ‘Holy Envy,’” lecture (Jerusalem: Hartman Institute, 2009).
- 4.
The claim here is not that Stendahl first proposed the concept of envying rich religious traditions of others, but rather he made popular the phrase holy envy. I suspect, by no means, he was hardly the first to articulate such an idea. Parallel ideas most certainly are to be found in other thinkers. For instance, Lee Yearley famously spoke of “spiritual regret” [Lee H. Yearley, New Religious Virtues and the Study of Religion, lecture (Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University, 1994)], as “the recognition of a ‘religious good’ in the other person’s tradition that we cannot share” but nonetheless admire. [Edward K. Kaplan, “Spiritual Regret and Holy Envy,” Spiritus 5, no. 1 (Spring 2005), pp. 105–06]. Mary C. Boys acknowledges that “the concepts of spiritual regret and holy envy express an important dimension of interreligious learning: when we drink deeply from the wells of another tradition, we may see more clearly distortions and deficiencies in our own” [Mary C. Boys, Jewish-Christian Dialogue: One Woman’s Experience (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1997), 58].
- 5.
See Trice, “The Future of Religious Identity: A Spirit of Generosity,” 28n and Landau, “An Interview with Krister Stendahl.”
- 6.
Krister Stendahl, “From God’s Perspective We are All Minorities,” Journal of Religious Pluralism 2, 1993.
- 7.
Trice, “The Future of Religious Identity: A Spirit of Generosity,” 28.
- 8.
Jesper Svartvik, “In Memory of Krister Stendahl on his Idea of ‘Holy Envy,’” lecture (Jerusalem: Hartman Institute, 2009).
- 9.
Stendahl writes, “Apologetics, defending the Bible —defending God, for that matter—is a rather arrogant activity. Who is defending whom? I love to use the old Swedish expression, ‘It is pathetic to hear mosquitoes cough’ [‘Det är löjligt att höra myggor hosta’]. I don’t know why that is funny, but in Swedish it is funny. And apologetics is mosquitoes coughing. It kills so much of the joy in reading and practicing the love of the scriptures” (Stendahl, “Why I love the Bible”).
- 10.
Nickelsburg, “Preface,” v.
- 11.
Heathen (big “H”) specifically refers to Germanic polytheism and should not be understood to mean heathen (small “h”) in the generic sense of non-Abrahamic.
- 12.
Ásatrú is from the Icelandic ásatrú from Old Icelandic ása (God) and trú (belief), and refers to the contemporary reconstruction and practice of pre-Christian Germanic-Scandinavian religion.
- 13.
Laytner, “Jews, God and Theodicy ,” 37–54.
- 14.
Ibid., 51.
- 15.
Tian (天) is an ancient Chinese term referring to either “Heaven ” (figuratively or symbolically) or the actual (literal) sky. It can also refer to an impersonal divine force that controls the world or a cosmic moral principle that determines right from wrong.
- 16.
Laytner, “Jews, God and Theodicy,” 47.
- 17.
Ibid.
- 18.
Ibid., 48.
- 19.
Ibid., 51.
- 20.
Other popular translations of the opening line of poem eight read, “The best (person) is like water ” (Wing-Tsit Chan, trans., A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy), “The highest form of goodness is like water” (John C.H. Wu, trans., Tao Teh Ching), “Highest good is like water” (D.C. Lau, trans., Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching), and “The Highest good is like water” (Robert Hendricks, trans., Te-Tao Ching).
- 21.
Other popular translations of this line reads, “It dwells in (lowly) places that all disdain” (Wing-Tsit Chan, trans., A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy), “It stays in places loathed by all men” (John C.H. Wu, trans., Tao Teh Ching), “(water) settles where none would like to be” (D.C. Lau, trans., Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching), and “It dwells in places the masses of people detest” (Robert Hendricks, trans., Te-Tao Ching).
Bibliography
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Dao De Ching (translations)
A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Translated by Wing-Tsit Chan. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1969.
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———. 2011b. Problems of Identity: Judaism and Christianity in the Modern European Context. Lecture. Skálholt: Iceland.
Kaplan, Edward K. “Spiritual Regret and Holy Envy.” Spiritus 5, no. 1. Spring 2005. 103–106.
Landau, Yehezkel. 2007. An Interview with Krister Stendahl. Harvard Divinity Bulletin 35(1), Winter. https://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/articles/winter2007/interview-krister-stendahl. Accessed 21 Sept 2017.
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Stendahl, Krister. 1993. From God’s Perspective We Are All Minorities. Journal of Religious Pluralism 2: 1–13.
———. 2007. Why I Love the Bible. Harvard Divinity Bulletin 35(1), Winter. https://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/articles/winter2007/why-i-love-bible. Accessed 21 Sept 2017.
Svartvik, Jesper. 2009. In Memory of Krister Stendahl on His Idea of “Holy Envy”. Lecture. Jerusalem: Hartman Institute.
Trice, Michael Reid. 2015. The Future of Religious Identity: A Spirit of Generosity. In Religious Identity and Renewal in the Twenty-First Century: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Explorations, ed. Simone Sinn and Michael Reid Trice, 19–36. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt.
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Gustafson, H. (2018). Suppressing the Mosquitoes’ Coughs: An Introduction to Holy Envy. In: Gustafson, H. (eds) Learning from Other Religious Traditions. Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76108-4_1
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