11. Appendix: Suggestions for Study Circle Discussions

APPENDIX SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY CIRCLE DISCUSSIONS

1. The book is obviously written for private reading, and these suggestions are added, at the author’s request, for those who would like to study the book in groups. Circles on it, however, will not be very profitable unless members of them are also carefully reading the Gospels and come to the circles with copies of the New Testament. Some acquaintance with the main outlines of New Testament criticism will be a help. Readers who want to know how the New Testament was written are referred to Principal Selbie: "The Nature and Message of the Bible" (S.C.M., Isaiah 6:1-13 d.), especially ch. iv. and v.

2. The questions suggested for discussion are only a selection of the many important questions which the book raises. Circles should not feel bound to follow them, or to try to cover them all at one meeting. There are many subsidiary questions, which some circles might pursue With profit.

3. The circle should try as far as possible to get away from the text of the book to the text of the Bible; to study and verify the author’s method of exposition. The Leader should give much thought to this.

4. A Bible with the marginal references of the R.V. should be used-also a note-book. The author’s clear preference for the A.V. may be remarked (cf. p. 224).

5. While the method of the book is historical, its object is practical. The circles should have the same objective. Experience comes before theology. Theology is worthless which cannot be verified in experience. "He that doeth His will, shall know of the doctrine."

6. One chapter a week will be as much as a circle can profitably manage.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION IN CIRCLES

CHAPTER I

I. Does the writer overdo the importance of history? Would not "spiritual religion" suffice without a "historical basis," as some Indians and others suggest?

2. What would our evidence be for" spiritual religion" if we had not the record of actual history to check fancy and support the ventures of faith?

3. Does the writer underestimate the actual impress made on his age by Jesus? Was he not probably more widely known?

4. How can ordinary people" make sure of the experience behind the thought of Jesus?" Does this belittle him?

5. What becomes of ordinary simple people untrained in historical research, who are not experts and merely want help in living and dying? Could not the whole presentation of Christ be much simpler? Where does "revelation to babes" come in?

CHAPTER II

1. Look up and verify at the circle meeting the references to the Gospels in the chapter and see if they bear the interpretations put upon them.

2. Was Jesus fond of life and Nature? Give instances.

3. Does intercourse with Nature make communion with God more real?

4. "Jesus showed and taught men the beauty of humility, tenderness and charity, but not of manliness and courage." Is there any truth in this charge as regards (a) the portrait in the Gospels, or (b) the presentation of Jesus in the teaching of the Church?

CHAPTER III

1. "One of Jesus’ great lessons is to get men to look for God in the common-place things of which God makes so many." Discuss this.

2. Had Jesus a sense of humour? Give instances.

3. "The Son of Fact,"-do you think this a true epithet?

4. What characteristics of the mind of Jesus does this chapter emphasize as principal? Do you agree that they are the principal ones?

(5. What do you imagine Jesus looked like? What do you think of the conventional figure of modern Art?)

CHAPTER IV I. To what extent was the hardness of the world during the early
Roman Empire due to current conceptions of God?

2. What was the secret of Jesus’ attractiveness, and what kinds of men and women did he attract?

3. How do you picture the life he lived with his disciples? E.g. Can you reconstruct a typical day in the life of Jesus (cf. pp. 81, 82).

4. Had he a method of teaching: if so, what was it? Give illustrations.

CHAPTER V

1. How would you state to a non-Christian the three principal elements in Jesus’ teaching about the character of God? Illustrate fully from the three Gospels.

2. What elements in the teaching of Jesus and the relation of God to the individual would be new to a Jew who knew his Old Testament?

3. What did Jesus teach his disciples concerning prayer?

4. "If the friend in the house to your knowledge has the loaves, you will knock until you get them; and has not God the gifts for you that you need? Is he short of the power to help, or is it the will to help that is wanting in God?" Do we pray in order to change the will of God? Why did Jesus pray?

CHAPTER VI

1. "There is little suggestion in the Gospels that Art meant anything to him." Would you admit this? Or has the writer too narrow a conception of the nature of Art?

2. "The appeal that lay in the sheer misery and helplessness of masses of men was one of the foundations of the Christian Church." Discuss this and illustrate from the ministry of our Lord.

3. "I have not been thinking about the community: I have been thinking about Christ," said a Bengali. Do you find this sort of antithesis in the Gospels?

4. "Jesus’ new attitude to women." What is it? Was it continued in the Apostolic Church? Did it differ from St Paul’s? Cf. St John 4:27.

5. What type of character does Jesus admire? Does your reading of the Gospels incline you to agree with the writer? Is it the same type of character which is exalted by Christian piety, stained-glass windows, and the calendars of Saints?

CHAPTER VII

1. "There is no escaping the issue of moral choice." "One opinion is as good as another." Discuss these two contradictory statements.

2. "Jesus says there is all the difference in the world between his own Gospel and the teaching of the Baptist." What is John’s teaching on sin and righteousness (in the Synoptic Gospels), and in what ways does it differ (a) from the Pharisaic, and (b) from our Lord’s teaching?

3. What are the modern parallels to "the four outstanding classes whom Jesus warns of the danger of hell?"

4. Wherein does Jesus’ standard of sin differ from the standard of sin current to-day?

5. "The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10). What does "lost" mean?

CHAPTER VIII

1. What is the connection between the Kingdom of Heaven and the Cross in the teaching of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels?

2. How does Jesus conceive of salvation? Illustrate from the Gospels. Do you agree with the writer’s exposition?

3. Why should the salvation of the lost (i.e. redemption) mean the Cross for Jesus?

4. "In choosing the Cross, Christians have always felt, Jesus revealed God: and that is the centre of the great act of Redemption." In what way?

5. Do you think the paragraph on p. 179 beginning: "In the third place . . ." does justice to the apocalyptic passages in the Gospels (Mark 13:1-37 ff, Matthew 24:1-51, etc.), or to the interpretation of this teaching by scholars of the apocalyptic school? (It is no use discussing this question unless members of the circle have made some study of apocalyptic thought.)

CHAPTER IX

1. "Into this world came the Church!" With what aspects of the religion and life of the early Roman Empire, as outlined in the chapter, would the Church find itself in conflict?

2. How would you introduce the Christian faith to one who believed and took part in the Eleusinian cult of Demeter? (Cf. 1 Corinthians and St Paul’s method of dealing with a similar situation, and notice the things he stresses-e.g. elementary morality.) 3. "Christ has conquered and all the gods are gone." Why did they go?

4. But have they gone? What resemblances are there between the world to-day (in the West and in the East) and the problem of the Church to-day and the Roman world and the problem of the Church then?

5. It was often remarked in India that, point by point, the writer’s description of religion in the Roman world is true to the letter of Hinduism to-day. Work out this parallel. (See Dr J. N. Farquhar, Crown of Hinduism and Modern Religious Movements in India.)

CHAPTER X 1. "It is the heart that makes the theologian." Where does your theology come from?

2. The doctrine of the Atonement has often been stated as an attempt to reconcile Jesus and an un-Christian conception of God. "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself." "The Cross is the revelation in time of what God is always." Discuss.

3. What are the three ways of answering the question: "Who and what is this Jesus Christ?" Why must people make up their minds about him?

4. Does the writer make Jesus too human? Or has the reading of this book made you feel his divinity more strongly just because he was so perfectly human?