Communicating Faith

11. Questioning for Faith Commitment

165 11 Questioning for Faith Commitment Raymond Topley The goal of Christian religious education is Christian discipleship. The basis for this claim is to be found toward the close of St. Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus directs his followers to go and make disciples, teaching them to observe all that he has commanded them (Mt 28:19). The church has no option than to do likewise. This raises the question as to the nature of Christian discipleship. A scanning of the tradition from the time of Christ to the present leaves one in no doubt that there are two distinct, yet related, elements that contribute to discipleship. One is hearing the word of God, the other is doing the Word. I think the contrast meant is between hearing and doing, rather than the Word and the word of God. Authentic Christianity, like much of human life, is possessed of both a cognitional and a behavioral element. This attention to faith in action presents a particular challenge to Christian religious education. The challenge may be articulated in the following question : How can one form and communicate faith in such a way that the faith in question is not just something that is held in the head and the heart but is something that extends, additionally, to the hands? I propose that only an approach to religious education and catechesis that assigns a central role to questions and questioning will suffice in meeting the challenge of holding 166 Raymond Topley in tension the knowing and doing dimensions of Christian faith and discipleship . A beginning to this task may be made by considering, first of all, the practice of questioning in education generally. Questioning in the Classroom It is frequently noted that the mark of an effective teacher is the ability to manage questions skillfully in the achievement of intended educational goals. Little wonder that this claim should be made when research reveals that in the average classroom up to 400 questions are asked every day!1 However, not all questions are of equal value. In educational parlance some are referred to as lower-order questions, while others are deemed to be of a higher order. Such a dualistic categorization is somewhat simplistic. Distinguishing among the various types of questions that surface in educational activity is a much more sophisticated task. Mastery of the art of questioning requires a more subtle differentiation of the wider range of question types and techniques that are available to the interested teacher. Simple recall questions of the “who, what, where, and when” type need to yield and lead to the more subtle probing and penetrative questioning of the “why, wherefore , whence, and whither” genre.2 To appreciate how these all fit together and relate to each other requires an insight into how questioning can lead to the student’s ongoing intellectual, moral, spiritual, and religious development . Before considering this further, however, there is need now, in keeping with the overall purpose of the chapter, to note the importance and role of questioning in religious education itself. Questioning and Religious Education While the issue of questioning is as important for religious education as it is for all education, it is particularly relevant to Christian religious education . The reason for this is that Christianity is not just a religion of knowing . It is also a religion of doing. Christian knowing is meant to issue forth in Christian doing. The words of Jesus himself bear out this point, for in1 . See Edward C. Wragg and George A. Brown, eds., Questioning in the Primary School, new revised edition (London: Routledge Falmer, 2001), 16. 2. See Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study in Human Understanding, vol. 3 of The Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (1957; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 197. Questioning for Faith Commitment 167 stance, from his remarks to the lawyer when concluding his telling of the parable of the Good Samaritan, “Go and do the same yourself” (Lk 10:37). Scripture scholar A. M. Hunter, commenting on the purpose of Gospel parables , observes, “Every parable of Jesus was meant to evoke a response and to strike for a verdict.”3 In other words, those learning the ways of discipleship —as catechumens, retreatants, or religious education participants— are called upon to make both judgments and commitments in response to hearing the message of Christ. This linking of religious doing with...