Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/86

 74 classification. If Jesus is to figure among sociologists, before he is cited as an authority let him at least be understood. And if he is to be debarred from the class of social teachers, let it first be remembered that much which is put forth as his is no more from him than the schoolman's gloss was from Aristotle.

III. The sources from which it is possible to draw the social teachings of Jesus are primarily, though not exclusively, his own words. At first glance, therefore, no problem could seem easier than the process of gaining such teachings. With most theologians of the past, with many of today, the ipsissitna verba of the Master are an end of all discussion. But even if we disregard the possible changes incident to one or more processes of translation, it is a prime necessity that the interpreter remember that thought is superior to word, and that a sentence wrenched from its context may be quite as misleading as a similarly detached word. The thought of Jesus is sometimes so genuinely Oriental as to elude any process of interpretation that is purely verbal. His style is so concrete, and his similes so perfect that there is a constant temptation to forget that a parable, after all, can teach only an analogy, and that the real teaching of its author lies not in its form but in the analogy. Further than this, Jesus seldom combined complementary or mutually modifying thoughts. He was not a systematic lecturer, but a creator of impulses. He sometimes puts forth a proposition so categorically as to make it appear that it exhausts his teachings upon the subject, and yet under some other circumstances its modification is expressed with equal absoluteness. The two superficially appear contradictory. In reality they are the two hemispheres of the truth. To claim either of them alone as his teaching is to do Jesus injustice. His real teaching can be gained only through their combination. For this reason, so far as a systematized and complete statement is concerned, outside of the magnificent summaries into which Jesus has compressed the essentials of religion and morals, no one can claim to have mastered Christian teaching until he has mastered its entirety. The