If you want to write a mission history, academic dilemmas hinder you to sustain objective perspectives due to your confessional orientation. We mission historians believe that God has a grand plan of salvation for humankind and we are witnessing His story in the history of mission. Secular historians, however, do not believe in this kind of confession orientation. Rather they despise this kind of approach as the lack of academic objectivity. We mission historian must find the third way for writing mission history which could be shared not only with our fellow Christian scholar but also secular historians who believe in the objectivity as the primal condition for writing history. This paper suggests the method of Jacob Burckhardt(1818­1897) who proposed a flexible approaches in historiography. He criticizes that history is neither logic nor philosophy which is logical framework is firm and decisive. History writing should, according to Burckhardt, flexible because the interpretation of history should be open. The present author shows that this kind of flexible historiography could be accommodated in a new way of mission historiography. To show an example the author interprets the early Jesuit Missionary Matteo Ricci from the flexible mission historiography: Push factor and Pull factor. The author claims that writing mission history in more flexible historiography could be achieved by comparing push factor of missionary sending and pull factor of missionary receiving. Early Jesuit mission history will be more flexible if we approach the Jesuit mission from politics(of missionary sending from 16th­century Europe and missionary receiving from the late Ming China's political situation), culture, and religion.

If you want to write a mission history, academic dilemmas hinder you to sustain objective perspectives due to your confessional orientation. We mission historians believe that God has a grand plan of salvation for humankind and we are witnessing His story in the history of mission. Secular historians, however, do not believe in this kind of confession orientation. Rather they despise this kind of approach as the lack of academic objectivity. We mission historian must find the third way for writing mission history which could be shared not only with our fellow Christian scholar but also secular historians who believe in the objectivity as the primal condition for writing history. This paper suggests the method of Jacob Burckhardt(1818­1897) who proposed a flexible approaches in historiography. He criticizes that history is neither logic nor philosophy which is logical framework is firm and decisive. History writing should, according to Burckhardt, flexible because the interpretation of history should be open. The present author shows that this kind of flexible historiography could be accommodated in a new way of mission historiography. To show an example the author interprets the early Jesuit Missionary Matteo Ricci from the flexible mission historiography: Push factor and Pull factor. The author claims that writing mission history in more flexible historiography could be achieved by comparing push factor of missionary sending and pull factor of missionary receiving. Early Jesuit mission history will be more flexible if we approach the Jesuit mission from politics(of missionary sending from 16th­century Europe and missionary receiving from the late Ming China's political situation), culture, and religion.

Matteo Ricci, History of Mission, Historiography, The Jesuit, The Late Ming China, 16th­Century, Jacob Burckhardt