01 - Chapter 01
CHAPTER I THE TEACHING METHODS OF JESUS THE parables of Jesus are among God’s best gifts to men; yet men have treated them as perversely as they have treated so many other precious gifts of God. For long periods these pictorial sermonettes of Tesus have been to the Church little better than insoluble riddles. It has almost seemed as if the Church had been bent on fulfilling the purpose of parable teaching ascribed to Jesus in Mark’s Gospel: “ that seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand.” The parables of Jesus are only part of his teaching, and the parabolic method is only one of his teaching methods. There has been a very great deal of misunderstanding of the teaching of Jesus through failure to appreciate the pedagogic methods he adopted. It is curious that until quite lately comparatively little attention seems to have been given to this most interesting and important subject. So far as the writer knows, the first systematic attempt to study, on a scale of any magnitude, the teaching of Jesus from the teacher’s point of view was Jesus the Master Teacher by H. H. Home, a book to which this chapter is deeply indebted. As a teacher, Jesus had certain handicaps, or what in others would have been handicaps. He suffered from all the prejudice that a Galilean upbringing would arouse in the minds at least of the dwellers in the capital; not the least part of this being due, if modern experience is any guide, to his provincial accent. Apparently he had no professional training. He wrote nothing, nor is there any certainty that during his ministry notes were taken either of his formal teaching or of his table talk.
Yet, meagre as the records are in point of bulk, there is no reason to doubt that they include everything that is essential, and little reason to hope or fear that any new discoveries that may be made will vitally change in any respect our conception of the Gospel of Jesus. The effectiveness of Jesus’ teaching methods is witnessed by this, that after nineteen hundred years, after it has seemed again and again as if the influence of the Gospel of Jesus were languishing to the point of collapse, not only are there more professing Christians in the world to-day than ever before, but never has there been an effort, so wide-spread and so determined, to understand the message of Jesus. In the non-Christian world never has the name of Jesus been more deeply reverenced. The popular apologetic of Hinduism, for example, largely takes the form of an attempt to show that there is no essential difference between Hinduism and Christianity; and in India increasingly it is the Christian standard by which all character is judged and all progress tested.
We are accustomed to think of Jesus as instinctively lighting on the most fitting methods of teaching. This is part of our inheritance from a traditional theology which, with exaggerated reverence, surrounded him with a halo of impenetrable mystery. But a close study of the records reveals him as such a master of pedagogy that it is surely more natural to think of him as carefully pondering the subject in the long and silent years of preparation,
If Jesus had certain handicaps as a teacher, he also had certain natural advantages. As the eldest son in a large family, he had a thorough knowledge of children and of young men and women before he began his work as a teacher. The marvellous simplicity of his language was learned in daily conversation with his younger brothers and sisters, in which simplicity was the necessary condition of being understood. The use he makes of metaphors from the family, his thought of God as Father, of those who do God’s will as a great brotherhood and sisterhood, were no doubt the flower of a happy home life. His genius for story-telling would find plenty of scope in the family circle; and his unfailing championship of women, springing from the chivalry of his own nature, had been his daily practice in his relations with his mother and his sisters, before it was revealed in his public ministry and became the great humanising influence it is to-day.
Further, he had long experience of village life. For the work of Jesus it was essential that he should know human nature, in its depth as well as in its breadth, know it in its nooks and crannies as well as in its open spaces. In villages men know each other with an intimacy which is hardly possible in the crowded, self-centred life of the town. The town-dweller has acquaintance with men; the villager knows men.
One of his great assets as a teacher was that he obviously loved teaching. There are those who teach because they cannot help teaching, because it is essential to their happiness that all around them should share whatever knowledge they possess, whatever accomplishments they have acquired. Watch a crowd of bathers in the sea on a summer dav. There are those who have no thought but to get as much enjoyment as possible out of their exercise and to exhibit their aquatic prowess; but here and there is one who looks round to see if there is any unfortunate who cannot swim and who gives up his own pleasure till the beginner can share it. Is not this just one form of unselfishness? In every aspect of his life Jesus was the Giver, not least in this, that he imparted richly of his knowledge. There is a certain type of person in whom the sight of a crowd rouses no feeling but contempt and the desire to say smart things at their expense. When Jesus saw the multitude, he wanted to shepherd and to teach them. If at any time he shrank from contact with the crowd, it was only that later he might reach them more effectively.
We do not always fully realise the extent to which modern pedagogical science follows the teaching methods practised by Jesus. His use of the Old Testament, for example of the passages from Deuteronomy that he quotes at the Temptation, is a lesson in the proper use of memorising, in the distinction between learning by rote and learning by heart. (Deu 8:3; Deu 6:16; Deu 6:13.) New Testament writers are frequently satisfied if the words of a quotation are relevant: in our Lord’s quotations the sense is also relevant.
Jesus insisted as much as any modern teacher on the importance of each person learning to think for himself or herself. “ He that hath ears to hear, let him hear: ’ that is what ears were meant for. Most of us use our ears, not to listen to what we do hear, but to hear what we expect to hear. ’ Have you never read? ’ he asks (Mark 2:25), read with your understanding as well as with your eyes? The passage is one which shows how our Lord read with his mind. If Scripture had been silent on the subject, it would have been interesting to conjecture what aspects of the career of David would have most interested our Lord. In the Gospel records the only incident in the life of David to which Jesus refers is that in which David showed his capacity for original and truly religious thinking, his realisation that the claims of humanity come before those of ceremonial.
Conventionality was the vice of the priest and the Levite in the parable, as it was also of the five thoughtless bridesmaids who would not enter the marriage procession without the conventional torch.
Jesus acted on the principle that the highest truths of all, men must find out, each for himself. In Mark’s Gospel Peter’s confession of the Messiahship of Jesus is the climax to which the earlier part of the story has been leading up. As Professor Bradley says of the forest of Arden, Shakespeare gives no hint of the way thither. If we are ever to find it, each must find it for himself. But there are other truths that can be imparted; and so in Mark, when the disciples have learnt that Jesus is the Christ, he immediately begins to correct their conception of the nature of Messiahship. Ascertained truth is made a stepping-stone to the acquisition of new truth.
Jesus distinguished between preaching and teaching. Some of the greatest pulpit ministries of the last generation took the form of systematic exposition of books of the Bible. In our day desultory preaching on casual themes has so largely usurped the place of regular and continuous teaching as to explain much of the prevalent ignorance of the Bible and of the nature of the Christian religion.
Jesus adapted his language to his audience. In this he stands in marked contrast to the apostle Paul, who did not fully appreciate the importance of lucidity as a Christian grace.
Dr. Denney once warned his students that the Christian preacher is apt to underestimate the capacity of a congregation to understand his thought, to overestimate their capacity to understand his language. Very few of us are likely to have thoughts which will take an average congregation out of its depth; many of us are likely to have certain words in our vocabulary which, at least to a section of our audience, will be in an unknown tongue. The thought of Jesus is of fathomless profundity, his language is simplicity itself. The points he makes are all points that are worth making. Nothing he said would be liable to the criticism one has heard of a sermon that “ it is a good road, but does not lead anywhere.” Our Lord made constant and effective use of the principle of contrast, the principle that a learner does not really know a thing until he knows what is excluded as well as what is included. In a significant passage he contrasts his own healthy acceptance of the world of men and things with the Baptist’s ascetic fear of the world.
(Mat 18:11 ff.) At the end of Mat 25:1-46 he elaborates the contrast between those on the right hand and those on the left. The picture of the son who repented of his disobedience is supplemented by the picture of the son who repented of his obedience. The Pharisee stands out in relief against the tax-collector, the good shepherd against the thief, the faithful shepherd against the hireling, the elder brother against both the father and the younger brother. The man with the one talent is placed against the background of the man with the five and the man with the two talents. The story of the crops that failed is supplemented by the story of the abundant harvest. The folly of the five careless bridesmaids becomes all the more reprehensible when they are placed beside the five thoughtful companions who looked ahead.
Jesus’ whole life was a commentary on the theme: ’ Other men have said... but I say unto you.” A principle of scientific teaching is to reach the unfamiliar through the familiar. Every preacher is conscious of the often astonishing impression made on an audience by a reference to a familiar even if unimportant fact or incident of their everyday life. The parables of Jesus are the classic example of the marvellous effect with which this principle may be employed in teaching. In his teaching Jesus made large use of the question method. A teacher should be * an animated question point.” Jesus asked questions to stimulate thought. “ What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he? ’ “ Who do men say that I am? ’ A striking example of this method occurs in the passage (Mat 11:7 ff.) in which Jesus asks the crowds to reflect on the drawing power of the Baptist. It illustrates not merely the pedagogical principle of teaching by asking suggestive questions, but also the method of elimination, of reaching the right answer by first discussing various possible alternatives.
Jesus led the people to the discovery that they flocked to hear John’s preaching because he was a rock-like man and an ascetic; but most of all because he was a prophet with a message straight from the heart of God.
Jesus, again, asked questions to guide inquirers in answering their own questions: on the keeping of the Sabbath: You hypocrites, does not each of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, lead it off and water it?’ (Luk 13:15); on the question of passive resistance to the foreign and heathen ruler: ’ Whose are this image and superscription? ’ (Mat 22:20); on the limits of the claims of neighbourliness: ’ Which of these do you suppose showed himself neighbour of him who fell among the robbers? “ (Luk 10:36); on the duty of his followers to pay the temple-tax: ’ What do you think, Simon? From whom do earthly kings take customs or tax: from their own children or from foreigners?”
(Mat 18:25); on the source of his own authority: ’ I too will put a question to you.
What about the baptism of John: was it a purely human institution, or had it divine sanction? ’ (Mat 11:24 f.) Nor was this last a ’ catch ’ question; Jesus did not ask ’catch” questions: it was Jesus’ contribution towards an answer to a question that still vexes men’s minds, the seat of authority in religion.