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The Wisdom of Tradition

Recently I was browsing through the 8th and latest (50th Anniversary) edition of Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills. It is the mountain climber’s Bible. I learned the rudiments of mountaineering from the second edition of Freedom in the late 1960s, and it’s safe to wager that most serious mountaineers in North America have sharpened their crampons on some edition of Freedom. It is the signature publication of the publishing arm of The Mountaineers, a venerable Seattle institution. For several years I was a member of The Mountaineers and was involved in their climbing program. So as I looked through the front matter of the latest edition of Freedom, I recognized many of the names of its editors. I’d climbed with or been instructed by some of them.

And Does It Matter Who Wrote It?

(Continuing our story of an intemperate letter)

So the writer of the letter, James Graham Jr, was actually a contemporary of Pearl’s, not a “long-term adversary” (so Spurling, p. 211), and by the time he wrote this letter in 1933 he had known her all his life. Family tradition has it that Sophie Graham, the wife of James Graham Sr, had even homeschooled Pearl Sydenstricker and the Graham children in the early days when both families were in Tsingkiangpu (Chingkiang). And later in the mountain retreat of Kuling (Lushan), where many missionaries and other Westerners migrated to escape the summer heat of the lowlands, the Graham’s and Sydenstricker’s summer cottages (both homes regularly occupied by two generations of missionaries and grandchildren) were next door to each other.

It takes no stretch of the imagination to surmise that these were close communities of missionaries, and little passed unseen between those families, at least during their summer hiatus. As another source has it, “You see, Kuliang [sic] is a little summer community, and everybody knows everybody else’s business. It is impossible to do anything without it being talked about” (Edward Bliss Jr., Beyond the Stone Arches, p. 104). Of course, by the same token, these missionaries—whatever their differences and tensions—would quite naturally defend one another against criticism from without or betrayal from within. And by 1933, Pearl Buck had clearly betrayed and offended many within that community.

Who Wrote This Intemperate Letter?

History is a slippery thing. So I have told myself many times. Usually the context for this thought is early Christian history, often the New Testament era. Our sources are few—or at least far fewer than we might wish—and many a fact or context eludes us. We try to fill in the gaps by historical triangulation or by trying to discern the most probable scenario given the facts we have to go on. What was going on “when Cephas came to Antioch”? Exactly who were the judaizers? What was the setting of the Letter of James? Who was the author of Hebrews and what is the setting it addresses? If we only had [blank], we could shine more light on this or that situation.

Anyone who has spent serious time in early Christian scholarship has their own list of questions. And as we burrow into the texts, their gaps and the questions they raise, we encounter another stubborn fact. We bring our own perspectives to this work, which in turn colors our conclusions. Our decision on point A might very well affect our conclusion on point F. A mistaken judgment on point B might lead us far afield by the time we reach point G. And our judgment on point A or B might easily have been corrected if we had just had some additional information. Perhaps another ancient text. Or perhaps access to oral tradition. The fields of New Testament and early Christian studies are littered with this sort of thing. (And I guess I shouldn’t complain, since this offers job security for me—it renders untold possibilities for publishing new books!)

With this theme never far from my mind, I encountered something a few weeks ago that brought it back to the surface in an interesting way. I was reading Hilary Spurling’s recently published biography, Pearl Buck in China.

Defending Whom?

Constantine.

Defending Constantine.

You’re not supposed to defend Constantine!

But Peter Leithart does just that in his forthcoming book by that title.

Moments of Speechlessness

Lately I’ve been experiencing moments of speechlessness. Over the years it’s been a recurring condition for me.

It’s triggered by comments—sometimes from church folk, no less—who mention that, of course, we now know that there were many Gospels—such as the Gospel of Thomas—which were just as early as, if not earlier than, the four Gospels but didn’t make it into the New Testament. Or that the early church soon exchanged following Jesus for beliefs about Christ. Or that the Sermon on the Mount was forsaken for a catechism or a confession. Or that Constantine held absolute sway over the bishops at Nicea and shaped its creed for political ends. And that the shape of our New Testament is the result of one ecclesiastical party suppressing and winning over lesser parties (with Constantine a key player again). And all this was reinforced by the heavy-handed measures of the church during the Middle Ages. And so forth.

500th Anniversary of Calvin’s Baptism?

Friday, July 10, was the 500th anniversary of John Calvin’s birth. We don’t know on what day young Calvin was baptized, but biographers assume it took place soon after his birth. I’ll speculate that it took place on his 8th day, since that correlation with the optimal schedule for Jewish circumcision of male babies just seems fitting for Calvin. So you heard it here first: on Saturday, July 18, we should have celebrated John Calvin’s (infant) baptism. Or should we have?

When the Missionary Gets Out of the Way

Seventy-two years ago, on May 12, 1937, James R. Graham Sr., a Southern Presbyterian missionary in Tsingkiangpu, China, wrote home to supporting churches. This was in the forty-seventh year of Sophie and James Graham’s missionary service in Tsingkiangpu:

We have a very large country work, extending over all of three counties and over parts of two other counties. The country work from this station was, for years, exceedingly slow. The prejudice against us was great and it took many years to live it down. This has always been a great official center and wherever the official influence predominated in the old days, their influence was always thrown against allowing the foreigners to get any foothold anywhere. They didn’t love us and felt that we would be a source of trouble to them, I suppose. It is quite different now. The Church, which grew up here in the city, has long ago become self-supporting and self-governing. We have no hand in it at all, except to lend it every help and support that we can in the way of advice and moral assistance.