How to Read the Gospels

THERE is so much that is strange, improbable, unintelligible, and even contradictory in what professes to be Christ's teaching that people do not know how to understand it. 
It is very differently understood by different people. 
Some say redemption is the all-important matter. 
Others say the all-important thing is grace, obtainable 
through the sacraments. Others, again, say that submission to the Church is what is really essential. But 
the Churches themselves disagree, and interpret the 
teaching variously. The Roman Catholic Church holds 
that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the 
Son ; that the Pope is infallible, and that salvation 
is obtainable chiefly through works. The Lutheran 
Church does not accept this, and considers that faith 
is what is chiefly needed for salvation. The Orthodox 
Russo-Greek Church considers that the Holy Ghost 
proceeds from the Father only, and that both works 
and faith are necessary to salvation. 
And the Anglican and other Episcopalian, the Presbyterian, the Methodist, not to mention hundreds of 
other Churches, interpret Christ's teaching each in 
its own way. 
Young men, and men of the people, doubting the 
truth of the Church-teaching in which they have been 
brought up, often come to me and ask what my teaching is, and how I understand Christ's teaching ? Such 
questions always grieve, and even shock me. 
Christ, who the Churches say was God, came on earth 
to reveal divine truth to men, for their guidance in life. 
A man even a plain, stupid man if he wants to give people guidance of importance to them, will manage to impart it so that they can make out what he 
means. And is it possible that God, having come on 
earth especially to save people, was not able to say 
what He wanted to say clearly enough to prevent people 
from misinterpreting His words, and from disagreeing 
with one another about them ? 
This could not be so if Christ were God ; nor even if 
Christ were not God, but merely a great teacher, is it 
possible that He failed to express Himself clearly. For 
a great teacher is great, just because he is able to express the truth so that it can neither be hidden nor 
obscured, but is as plain as daylight. 
In either case, therefore, the Gospels which transmit 
Christ's teaching must contain truth. And, indeed, the 
truth is there for all who will read the Gospels with a 
sincere wish to know the truth, without prejudice, and, 
above all, without supposing that the Gospels contain 
some special sort of wisdom beyond human reason. 
That is how I read the Gospels, and I found in them 
truth plain enough for little children to understand, as, 
indeed, the Gospels themselves say. So that when I 
am asked what my teaching consists in, and how I understand Christ's teaching, I reply : I have no teaching, 
but I understand Christ's teaching as it is explained in 
the Gospels. If I have written books about Christ's 
teaching, I have done so only to show the falseness of 
the interpretations given by the commentators on the 
Gospels. 
To understand Christ's real teaching the chief thing 
is not to interpret the Gospels, but to understand them 
as they are written. And, therefore, to the question 
how Christ's teaching should be understood, I reply : If 
you wish to understand it, read the Gospels. Read 
them putting aside all foregone conclusions ; read with 
the sole desire to understand what is said there. But 
just because the Gospels are holy books, read them considerately, reasonably, and with discernment, and not at 
haphazard or mechanically, as if all the words were of 
equal weight. 
To understand any book one must choose out the 
parts that are quite clear, dividing them from what is 
obscure or confused. And from what is clear we must 
form our idea of the drift and spirit of the whole work. 
Then, on the basis of what we have understood, we may 
proceed to make out what is confused or not quite 
intelligible. That is how we read all kinds of books. 
And it is particularly necessary thus to read the 
Gospels, which have passed through such a multiplicity 
of compilations, translations, and transcriptions, and 
were composed, eighteen centuries ago, by men who 
were not highly educated, and were superstitious.The Gospels, as is known to all who have studied their origin, far from being infallible expressions of divine truth, are the work of innumerable minds and hands, and are full of errors. Therefore the Gospels can in no case be taken as a production of the Holy Ghost, as Churchmen assert. Were that so, God would have revealed the Gospel as he is said to have revealed the commandments on Mount Sinai ; or he would have transmitted the complete book to men, as the Mormons declare was the case with their holy scriptures. But we know how these works were written and collected, and how they were corrected and translated; and therefore not only can we not accept them as infallible revelations, but we must, if we respect truth, correct errors that we find in them. AUTHOR'S NOTE. 
Therefore, in order to understand the Gospels, we 
must first of all separate what is quite simple and 
intelligible from what is confused and unintelligible, 
and afterward read this clear and intelligible part 
several times over, trying fully to assimilate it. Then, 
helped by the comprehension of the general meaning, 
we can try to explain to ourselves the drift of the parts 
which seemed involved and obscure. That was how 
I read the Gospels, and the meaning of Christ's teachings became so clear to me that it was impossible to 
have any doubts about it. And I advise every one 
who wishes to understand the true meaning of Christ's 
teaching to follow the same plan. 
Let each man when reading the Gospels select all 
that seems to him quite plain, clear, and comprehensible, and let him score it on the margin, say with a 
blue pencil, and then, taking the marked passages first, 
let him separate Christ's words from those of the Evangelists by marking Christ's words a second time with, 
say, a red pencil. Then let him read over these doubly 
scored passages several times. Only after he has thoroughly assimilated these, let him again read the other 
words attributed to Christ, which he did not understand 
when he first read them, and let him score, in red, those 
that have become plain to him. Let him leave un- 
scored such words of Christ as remain quite unintelligible, and also unintelligible words by the writers of the 
Gospels. The passages marked in red will supply the 
reader with the essence of Christ's teaching. They will 
give what all men need, and what Christ therefore said, 
in a way which all can understand. The places marked 
only in blue will give what the authors of the Gospels 
said that is intelligible. 
Very likely in selecting what is, from what is not, 
fully comprehensible, people will not all mark the 
same passages. What is comprehensible to me may 
seem obscure to another. But all will certainly agree 
in what is most important, and there are things which 
will be found quite intelligible to every one. 
It is just this just what is fully comprehensible to 
all men that constitutes the essence of Christ's 
teaching.This little article advising men how to read the Gospels most profitably is, of course, not allowed to be published in Russia. Hectographed and photographed copies do, however, circulate from hand to hand. TR.
==Original footnotes==
Category:Works originally in Russian
Category:Christianity