Beeson Podcast, Episode 369 Jim D. Smith III December 5, 2017 Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George. Timothy George: Welcome to today's Beeson podcast. Well, today I have the privilege of interviewing a person who's been a friend of mine for a very long time, Dr. Jim Smith. Jim, welcome to the Beeson podcast. Jim Smith: Timothy, thank you. It's a privilege, and let me say since there are a lot of Jim Smiths out there, they circulate, that I'm James D. Smith III. How's that? Timothy George: Always on your bio, didn't make it to this biographical sketch I'm reading, but I'm glad you clarified that because you're not just a regular Jim Smith. You are a very special Jim Smith, and you're special to me because we were students together years ago at Harvard Divinity School. You have been a professor at Bethel Seminary in San Diego for a number of years where you also serve in that city as the associate pastor of La Jolla Christian Fellowship. You've been very active in ministry and in scholarship and teaching and it's a privilege to connect with you again after we were students in Cambridge, Massachusetts way back, I think, in the 1970's. Jim Smith: That's right. It's been a privilege for me, Timothy, and I just appreciate the shared interest and the shared heart for the Lord's work in a way that invites all manner of people to come and enjoy that blessing. Timothy George: We've been together a few times over the years, and more recently we've been drawn together through our great professor at Harvard, George Huntston Williams. And that's really what we want to talk about today. One of the great church historians of the 20th century. He died in the year 2000. He was born in 1914, so his life cut a huge swath across the 20th century, a remarkable person, a great, great scholar. Occasionally, Jim, somebody will say to me, "Oh, Dr. George, you're such a scholar," and I always say, "Oh, no, I'm not, but I have seen scholars. I know what they smell like." And so I know George Williams was a great scholar and it was a privilege to know him and work with him. Why don't you tell about how you came to Harvard and your impressions of George as a teacher? Jim Smith: Well, I came to Harvard originally ... my wife Linda and I moved to Cambridge. I'd finished seminary at Bethel, an MDiv, and thought it might be for one year something we could afford and might work to apply for a THM at Harvard. Applied at Yale, too. Got in there, as well, but after some prayer, came for what we thought would be one year and the original attraction was a New Testament Ancient Christianity scholar named Helmut Kester. Timothy George: Yep. Jim Smith: I wrote ahead to him, and he, of course, just passed in the last couple years here. But he was my dissertation advisor ultimately, but during that one year, I found out that to survey church history at Harvard under George Williams meant that you took four semesters of church history. So with that, I was able I thought maybe to do two during my single year of THM studies and was absolutely amazed going into the classroom because George Williams knew everything. He just knew everything, encyclopedic and sensitive to all these different movements of God's work in and through the church, not perfectly realized by his people, but still just having the touch of God. So with that, I was just amazed being in the presence of this individual, over in Sever Hall typically. We'd slide in, and he would just go after it, and I kept actual double books, that's not accounting, but I kept one slice of narrative for historical facts and over in the left margin as I was handwriting it, I'd put in anecdotes. I'd put in when he'd take off his glasses ... Timothy George: Yeah. Jim Smith: ... and then reminisce. And, so things like that were just magic to me. Timothy George: You know, I remember those days. I was George's teaching fellow for a couple of those years when we were meeting at Sever Hall. I remember he would always go to morning prayer, and that was held in those days, maybe still now, in Appleton Chapel, which was adjacent to Sever Hall there in Harvard yard. And without fail, he would be there in Appleton Chapel for morning prayer. And there are all kinds of speakers covering every kind of spectrum you could imagine back in the 1970's, but there was some continuity. Every session was the Lord's Prayer was said, every session there was a reading of the Scriptures and the singing of a hymn. And George, I asked George, "Why do you go to this every single morning?" And I would go just to be with him and to walk with him over to the class, but he was there every day, and he said, "This is so important that you begin your day in a time of prayer and reflection. It's going to shape the rest of your day." And that's the way his life was lived. He was really interesting, Jim, in that he was a Unitarian from several generations back. His father was a graduate of Harvard Divinity School way back I think in 1913 or something like that. And yet George Huntston Williams believed in the doctrine of the Trinity. I remember being so puzzled by that. How could a Unitarian believe in the Trinity? You remember that? Jim Smith: I remember it well, and I think he would most often refer, in terms of his own beliefs, refer to the Divine Triad. And I think that was a phrase that he utilized both to express the core conviction of historic Christian faith, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. But, also, not to wave a red flag in front of people that might find offense at the language but might still leave the door open for a conversation. So it was most vividly, I think, one occasion we were up at George and Marjorie's house. There was a house guest there who was a Patristic scholar from England who wasn't from the Church of England but, in fact, was a practicing Unitarian at best. Then there was George who was the Unitarian, and he was in a lively argument or discussion, if you will, with this scholar because he was advocating the Divine Triad. So I thought, "We're not short on ironies here." This is amazing. Here's this Anglican Unitarian and here's this Unitarian Trinitarian, and that was part of the richness of seeing George at work as a teacher and as a Christian brother. Timothy George: Absolutely. He was an ordained Unitarian minister, but he was also ordained in the United Church of Christ, which represented the old congregationalist tradition of New England Puritanism. And he often said that he wanted, he aimed in himself to reunite these two branches of the Lord's body that had become divided in history. And there was about him, deep in his core, this kind of ecumenical fervor. It expressed itself in a lot of ways. For example, his strong interest in the Catholic church. He was one of the very few Protestant observers at all four sessions of the Second Vatican Council and actually wrote a great deal about that, became acquainted with the person who became Pope John Paul II. Karol Cardinal Wojtyla when he was at Vatican II. Later wrote a book about him called "The Mind of John Paul II." And this was something that he conveyed to me, and I'm sure to you and to all of his students: the importance of the unity of the body of Christ despite the brokenness and dividedness that we live with in a broken world today. Jim Smith: That's right and that's so well said, Timothy. Let me recount an experience, and I've said this elsewhere that mindful of the moment here, was walking across Harvard yard one time with George and was again amazed by his graciousness, his generosity. That was not only in terms of, you know, his classic of course, 1962 and many revisions, "The Radical Reformation" and "Generosity in the 16th Century," but to all these amazing array of groups who somehow were under this Christian banner. And I said to him, you know, something like, "How can you be so generous to all these people? It just amazes me." And his words back to me and I paraphrase. I wish I had a tape recorder, you know, but his words back to me were, "We have to make choice. Either we can focus on the tragic brokenness of the body of Christ when we see all these different groups and denominations, everything. Either we can focus on the brokenness, or without denying the brokenness, we can simply affirm that no one group can express the fullness of Christ." And he said, "That's my conviction, that no one group can express the fullness of Christ. And so I need to have an ear. I need to have an attentiveness to find out what it is in the fullness of the Lord that can be shown me through studying and knowing this particular group." And that's really informed my teaching my thought ever since. It's about the fullness of Christ without denying the real challenges. It's kind of like 1 Thessalonians 5:21: "Examine all things and hold on to what's good." Timothy George: That's excellent. Well, while we're still talking about ecumenism, it was George who really taught me the importance of what I've come to call ecumenism of conviction not of accommodation, because while he had this remarkable breadth that you've just described, he also had depth, and he never wanted people to sort of play loose and fast with their hard-fought, hard-won convictions. He felt that a person who had really deep convictions and was willing to defend them and talk about them was much closer to the heart of Christian unity than someone who simply sought the least common denominator. 'Let's just hold hands and be nice' kind of philosophy of ecumenism. So I appreciated that fact that he was a person of conviction. He had deep convictions about many things. We've talked about some of them, and he encouraged that in his students. And he once said that the two parts of the creed that the church historian is to make meaningful are Una Sancta, the one holy Catholic in Apostolic church; and Communio Sanctorum, the church as the communion of saints. What do you think George meant by that expression? Jim Smith: I think ultimately playing off of what I mentioned a moment ago, the issue being the fullness of Christ that insofar as Paul would say and insofar as we gaze into the reality of Christ, insofar as we gaze into the truth of the Word, we open ourselves to the spirit, then in fact Christ himself takes the center place and Una Sancta, the one and the holy, we become unified even if we in details have diversity, even if we have even disagreement, but we center around Christ. It’s what Paul Hebert would later on, if I can skip to missiology for a moment, what Paul Hebert would call the centering stage of theology. In other words, there's a boundaried set. There's also a centered set. Boundaried means you agree all the same things pretty much, and then you're part of God's family. Centered set means you're pointing toward him with your attentiveness, and you may be positioned in various ways, but if Christ is the center, then there's really a transforming element of what God's grace has done. So that unity around Christ and, of course, the communion of saints part of the creed, of course, and in that the sense in which we really do belong to one another. It was interesting at points because I, as you may recall, you had already, I think, moved on into seminary teaching and then on to being at Beeson, but I had the privilege of working with Henri Nouwen. And, you know, seeing Henri on one side and seeing George Williams on the other, this whole sense of "God so loved the world" means that all manner of people are beloved of God. The question is as we live our lives, are we going to respond by saying to God, "I love you too"? And that gives us a unity and a communion, a community, that is divine as well as human. Timothy George: You mentioned a while ago one of George Williams's, well, really, his most famous book, "The Radical Reformation," published first in 1962 and then through several additional editions, translated into several languages. Amazing book that gave a kind of coherence to what used to be called The Left Wing of the Reformation. George actually coined this term "The Radical Reformation," going back to the root, the radix of the Christian faith and these various variegated groups, many of whom were persecuted, even martyred in the 16th century. And yet he found something in their witness that was worth lifting up into the limelight, reflecting on and learning from. Jim Smith: It was a profound book, and you know, as I said I initially went to do the ThM because of Helmut and some of his writings. The book that first captured me as I got into this four semester sequence, I was taking the last two semesters in the sequence in what I thought would be my only year there, but he didn't assign "The Radical Reformation" as, you know, the reading for the whole course very, very humbly, but he referred to it and said, "If you're interested, then look at these." And I thought, "This is incredible." This is incredible because of his attention to detail. I mean, as you know, Timothy, he went on to learn Polish once he became convinced that this was an area that needed to be explored. Went through just some profound personal sacrifices to engage the materials. And so I was fascinated by this book, by the attentiveness and his sense of 'these are not just shvarma, these are not just rabble, these are people who are seeking a root of Christian faith in the Scripture and at the heart of the earliest Christian community.' And whether or not they exactly grasped that in their times, that was their hearts' desire, and these were people for George Williams that were deserving of attention and respect. Timothy George: He called them "our speaking cousins." You know, we're kin to them spiritually speaking, and we have something to learn from them, even as you say. Some of them may seem weird and wacky to us as we might to them. But there is something there worth our attention. Another thing about George that I remember and appreciate so much is the fact is that he did not approach his discipline and his career as a scholar, as a teacher, as a writer, simply from the standpoint of objective academic interest. One did not study the history of God's people the way one might study an innate, an inert object. Rather there was a sense of being engagéd. And he loved to quote the great historian Otto von Harnack, "We study history in order to intervene in the course of history, and we have a right and duty to do so." Jim Smith: Yes. Timothy George: "For without historical insight," George said, quoting Harnack, "we either permit ourselves to be mere objects of the historical process, or tend to mislead people in an irresponsible way." And so he indeed was an interventionist in many ways in the causes he cared about and the passions to which he gave himself. What would you say about his role as an activist? Jim Smith: Well, I think it began again with his approach to the story, his approach to history. One day I was sitting talking with him. He cleared off a chair ... you remember those moments, you know. He cleared a chair up in Widener K. Timothy George: And you had to clear it because his books were up to the ceiling everywhere. Jim Smith: Yes, Yes. Timothy George: I have never seen a more mismanaged and totally disheveled office until I saw my own. Jim Smith: I remember going up one time and I thought, "I better get some stilts. I'm going to have to walk on stilts to get into his office," you know. But he cleared off a chair and we were talking the discipline of church history and he said, "One of the foundational decisions we have to make is whether we are studying a specimen or a species." He says, "If we're studying a specimen, then our object is to pin it to the board," and of course he had some background in the sciences too. Timothy George: Yes, he did. Jim Smith: But, "We have to pin it to the board, get out our sharp knives and go about mastering it." He said, "If we're working with a species," which he says, "I believe we are, then the first thing we need to do is listen and develop a relationship and engage on that mutual basis." And I thought, "I'm going to carry this with me." Well, here we are, you know? It's not a specimen when we look at the church. As a pastor, as a teacher, as a layperson working with purpose, you know, this is a species; this is a living organism that is inhabited by our Lord. And so that to me is a tremendous difference, and that was part of his conviction as a church member. This is a living body. Timothy George: And this brought him into all kinds of issues. This was of course a period in American history. It was a period of causes, of marches in the street, of demonstrations on civil rights, the war in Vietnam. He was engaged on all of those fronts. Also the sanctity of life. He was very strongly committed to a pro-life position and actually preached about that once in Memorial Chapel there at Harvard. Jim Smith: Yes. Timothy George: He had great courage of his convictions and was not afraid to engage and to enlist others in something he believed very passionately about. And one of those causes, and maybe you could comment on this because I know you've helped bring now into print again some of his writings dealing with what he called Christian Naturalism concerned with creation itself and the care of creation. Jim Smith: Well, he said and we noted this in helping introduce these new editions of his work on Christian attitudes toward nature and "Wilderness and Paradise in Christian Thought." He was fond of saying that, "We are creatures of a creator and subjects of a kingdom." And so as a result we have a two-fold relationship. One respects the biology; one anticipates and expects a connectedness to the created order, to the universe, to this earth. Growing out of his childhood in Ohio, once in awhile he'd reminisce about just seeing the beauty around him, how that he'd just stop and look at the beauty around him and wonder as you know, as the Psalmist says, "The heavens declare the glory of God." And so that multi-level aspect where we are not alienated or meant to be alien from the rest of creation. We are indeed creatures of a Creator. But also in the midst of that, because he is meant as Lord of heaven and earth, to have his proper place and recognition as subjects of the kingdom we need to contend for the value, the importance of the created order. And so in the midst of that time as a Christian naturalist, or we'd say environmentalist, that was a powerful role that he had and prophetic, I think, in a lot of ways, as he was in other things as well. Timothy George: You know in some ways he was well ahead of his time. Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," that very famous and influential book, came out in 1962. That was the same year George Williams published "The Radical Reformation" and the same year in which he published the first edition of "Wilderness and Paradise in Christian Thought." So he'd been thinking about these issues and the interconnectedness of Christian faith and issues related to life together on this planet for a long, long time. While we're talking about this, I want us to be sure to let everybody know about these two books. You have referred to them, and they are available through Wipf and Stock publishers. I'm sure you can get them through Amazon.com or something like that. George Huntston Williams's "Christian Attitudes Toward Nature" and the second book related to it, "Wilderness and Paradise in Christian Thought." And so I would commend you to read George Williams's books here, and you can still get in print, "The Radical Reformation" and a number of other of his writings as well. Well, Jim, we're almost out of time. We have a couple of minutes left, and I wonder if you want to just think with me back to those days at Harvard Divinity School and how that shaped your life and your ministry, and when you think about it today. You and I are not as young as we used to be, but our life has been decisively shaped by our friendship but also by knowing people like George Williams. You mentioned Helmut Kester. Krister Stendahl was our dean during part of that time ... Some great scholars and great people of the church. Jim Smith: Well, for me, it was a remarkable time because among other things, I was convinced that if God really was calling me to pastoral ministry, which was still a surprise at that point. I guess it still is that the Lord would put his hand out that way. Part of what I needed to do is be a good listener and listen to the story that laid behind numbers of different peoples of the world, different cultures around the communities from which I came. I came from a very blue collar background. In fact, my dad thought he would lose me when I went to Harvard. He thought, "This is just too much." He was a tuna fisherman and worked building manholes in San Diego. Wonderful guy. My mom was wonderful in music but had been burned in some ways by academic elitism in other senses. So it was people like George that remained down-to-earth who valued the people. That was significant to me. It helped me to listen to the story, and also when I said, "Would it be crazy for me to go over and take sacramental theology at St. John's?" He said, "No, by all means. Go do that. Or go over to Weston or Andover Newton, or you know Gordon-Conwell." He said, "Just enjoy it and have benefit of what's here." And that openness was a blessing for me intellectually and personally but also as I was pastoring a congregation there in Dorchester that was kind of growing from minuscule to small. And things were happening there and people finding the Lord. He was an encouragement pastorally because I got to listen to the roots of that church. You know when we were during that year doing pastoral ministry during those times, there were people born in the 1800's that were in our congregations. And to be able to listen to them, especially some of who were Swedish immigrants in my Swedish Baptist Church there. That was just a wonderful gift of attentiveness to their story. And that's really I think informed it ever since, as I continue to teach here at Bethel Seminary and over at Richmont University in the spring and as pastoral ministry continues. I'm just so grateful for that encouragement personally and professionally as well. Timothy George: Thank you so much, Jim, for this conversation. We've just been reminiscing today about one of our great teachers, Dr. George Huntston Williams, who was the Hollis professor of divinity at Harvard Divinity School from 1963 to 1980. Our friend, our teacher, our mentor in many ways. It's been a joy to connect with you again, Jim, in this way and I wish you every blessing in the good work you're doing at Bethel and throughout the body of Christ. Jim Smith: Timothy, thank you. It's such a privilege to share about our mentor but also, dear brother, for us to continue fellowship in variety of ways and wish you God's blessing. Linda sends her greetings to you and Denise too. Timothy George: Thank you so much. Announcer: You've been listening to the Beeson podcast with host Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson podcast at our web site beesondivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical divinity school training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We pray that this podcast will aid and encourage your work, and we hope you will listen to each upcoming edition of the Beeson podcast.