Coal for it had to be purchased at an ironmonger’s shop, brought home in a bag on the handlebars of the “sit-up-and-beg” antique bicycle I used for transportation, and then hammered into usable pieces in a dark dungeon of a cellar. There was no refrigerator, just a “cold cupboard” near the rear wall of the kitchen that actually had mushroom-like fungi growing out of one or two shelves because of the dampness. We managed to make the kitchen and upstairs bathroom reasonably bright and cozy, but the whole experience had a lot of the features of a year-long camping trip.
The really important thing was getting on course for my research. Because of my own ongoing interest in and commitment to a practised faith, one that made sense not just intellectually but experientially too, I had decided to do my research on one of the greatest preachers of early Christianity, St. John Chrysostom. His very name in Greek means “golden-mouthed” or, in other words, superlatively eloquent. Chrysostom (c.347–407) was made the Patriarch of Constantinople in 398. The city had been inaugurated in 330 by Emperor Constantine as the capital city for the Eastern Roman Empire. I knew that all of Chrysostom’s hundreds of sermons and commentaries had been faithfully recorded in Greek (with a Latin translation added later), and it seemed logical to me that a faithful investigation of this huge store of wisdom could be worthwhile. What, I wanted to ask, did such a great expositor of the Bible and of earliest Christianity teach as the essence of a living faith in day-to-day experience? Eventually, I sharpened the focus: the work and experience of God’s Holy Spirit in the life of a believer, according to Chrysostom.
Two problems immediately presented themselves. In the first place, Oxford was at that time totally out of sync with graduate studies programs at American universities. There was a system in place in the sciences, but in the humanities it was a very mixed bag indeed. Very few of the college dons had doctoral degrees themselves, and not all professors had one either. The MA (Oxon.) in Greats that I had earned previously was considered equivalent to a doctorate and sufficient academic preparation provided the person concerned had gone on to make good use of the tools already given to him or her. More particularly, however, amazing as it seemed to me, there was nobody in the theology or other faculties of the numerous colleges who was judged, on inquiry, sufficiently well read in the work of the great “doctor of the Church” to become my supervisor. I spent several anxious weeks in September and October interviewing nearly a dozen of some of the best-known Biblical and patristic scholars at the university, including Henry Chadwick, George Caird, Samuel Greenslade and the Dean of Christ Church, Dr. F.L. Cross, who edited the first edition of the well-known Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. These were all noted scholars and acknowledged authorities on early Christianity; their collected published books would make a small library. But none of them saw Chrysostom as his “cup of tea,” as one of them put it. One or more of them nevertheless urged me to bring my knowledge of German up to speed, and so I added a German tutor to my schedule.
Finally it was decided that my best recourse would be to seek out the guidance of a non-university Anglican priest of immense learning who occasionally helped out with unusual situations such as mine. His was a small but very ancient parish deep in the countryside south of Oxford. It was arranged that I should go down by train to meet him, have lunch at the rectory, discuss my aims and return to Oxford the same afternoon. The Reverend Father Chitty was an energetic, wispy-haired man of advanced years whose agile quickness belied his age. His black outfit and white collar at once marked him out for me on the platform as the train pulled into the station, and I soon was having the ride of my life as we careened around narrow, winding lanes at breakneck speed in his beaten-up old Austin. As we lurched around one particularly sharp bend, the passenger door flew open, struck the stone wall and banged shut again. This happened twice more as he shouted out something about meaning to get “the blessed thing” fixed.
I counted us both lucky when we at last pulled up in a lane with a picturesque Norman-style church on one side and a three-storey eighteenth-century rectory on the other. It was a labyrinthine, drafty old place within, but we were soon in his study with its stacks of books not just on sagging shelves to the ceiling on all sides but piled high on every available inch of space on chairs and on the floor itself. In spite of a glowing coal fire, the air seemed damp and smelled of mildew.
We talked for a while about Chrysostom and he pulled out a couple of tomes and hunted for a particular passage he wanted to share. When he found it and urged me to take a look, I found the Greek text almost impossible to read because of something I had never come upon before: some of the characters were illegible because there were actual wormholes through the pages. One hears of bookworms, but apparently they’re very real. Their presence in his library didn’t affect his obvious enthusiasm, however, and the time passed very quickly.
My spirits had been sagging badly, but the possibility of being mentored by such a learned and lively character gave a glimmer of hope. Chitty had kindly invited me to stay for the noonday meal, and since the impression it left with me has lasted all down the years, a brief description should be forgiven. At the ringing of a bell, a most varied collection of people—relatives both distant and immediate, plus a couple of elderly parishioners—descended the stairs and gathered around a large oval table in the capacious dining room. Some wore several sweaters and scarves. A couple were wearing rather soiled neckcloths or bandages denoting, I supposed, some kind of throat ailment. One had a racking cough. As we assembled, I was rather wickedly thinking of the colourful verse in the Book of Revelation: “And the sea gave up its dead.” It certainly could have been a scene out of a Charles Dickens novel. The crockery was of noble vintage but cracked and worn. The soup and the other dishes were excellent, however, in spite of everything, and the conversation was highly entertaining. I had a lot to ponder on the train journey back to Oxford. I wondered more than once, though, just what I was doing and where the path would lead.
Study of Chrysostom’s voluminous sermons now consumed many hours each day. Sometimes I worked in the Oriel College library above the senior common room. At others, for a change of atmosphere, I toiled in the world-famous Bodleian Library or went over to Pusey House, several blocks west of Oriel and built on a much smaller, more intimate scale. The connecting thread of my growing notes was anything that threw light on the central theme of the life of faith as viewed through a towering early Christian understanding and perception. When I tired of the Greek, I read the Latin translation, and my facility in both languages steadily deepened and grew apace.
Every month I sent a newsletter back to West Hill to be read aloud at a Sunday service in order to keep my congregation up to date with our activities and our impressions of life in a thriving though ancient university city overseas. On one occasion I even gave a sermon by telephone link-up that was broadcast from the pulpit in St. Margaret’s-in-the-Pines at a regular eleven a.m. service. The late Aubrey Wice, religion reporter for the Toronto Telegram, did a special feature article on it in a Saturday edition.
Few places I have known can be more depressing, in spite of all its beauty, than Oxford in the autumn when the fog rises up from the Isis and from the Cherwell River, blotting out the landscape and colleges alike. One rather dismal, foggy afternoon near the end of October, I was walking past Christ Church College garden when I had a most significant encounter. Walking towards me in the semigloom was my old Greek and Roman history professor, Peter Brunt. He carried a cane, as was his habit when he took his obligatory exercise break each day, and his hair was as tousled as I remembered it being when last I saw him nearly a decade earlier, in 1954. He always ran his hands through it as he listened to one’s essay or strove to make a point in his critique of the same.
Brunt, who was to go on to hold the prestigious chair in Ancient History not long afterwards, told me that he had heard I had come back. Pointing his cane at me, he then demanded, “What are you doing here?” I explained that I had returned to do a Doctor of Philosophy degree (D.Phil.) in order to teach at my old theological college. He almost snorted with surprise and not a little indignation. He said, “What kind of American nonsense is that? You have an excellent MA in Greats from here that is certainly the equivalent of any doctoral degree elsewhere. You have the brains and have gained the tools for research to add to the overall sum
