The Bible ought to be taught to children. This should be self-evident from a theological perspective, given that the Bible is God’s authoritative self-revelation to mankind. “Let the little children come to me,” Jesus says, “and do not hinder them.” From an educational perspective, though, we do well to ask ourselves what it means to teach the Bible in the school classroom. How might this differ from teaching in a church context or in a Christian home? What consideration do we give to the age of the child and their stage of cognitive development? The Bible is simultaneously so precious that we would not hold back it’s life-giving message to our little ones, but also quite difficult in its language and concepts that we must give due consideration to how it is most effectively presented to young minds.
I myself have struggled with this as an educator. Credentialed as I am with a doctorate in biblical studies, instead of entering the classroom with headstrong confidence in my ability to teach the Bible, I am all too aware of the complexities, nuance and sophistication of the biblical text. My book on 1 Peter, the result of many years study of one of the smaller epistles of the New Testament, examines tricky issues in textual criticism, literary analysis and theological interpretation. This is not to say that such depth of study has put the text out of reach for my younger students. I presented a bit from my book to 8th graders last year, and they were genuinely engaged with the text and gained spiritual insight from it. My reflections here, though, stem not from an accumulation of expertise, but rather from a sense that effectively teaching students comes not from subject expertise but from guiding them to their own encounter with God through his word.
In this article, I return again to Charlotte Mason’s Toward a Philosophy of Education to gain insight into an effective model for educating children in the Bible. (You may read along with me either online or in the volume published by Seven Treasures Publications in 2009 ISBN 978-1438298139. I will reference the published work below.) Mason orients her curriculum around domains of knowledge: knowledge of God, knowledge of man, knowledge of the universe. Knowledge of God is not just first in sequence, but first in rank of importance. In the child’s life, the mother is essential to a child acquiring a knowledge of God, because she knows the child more intimately than any teacher can and she can relate her knowledge without either talking down to the child or making such knowledge incomprehensible. I like Mason’s analogy of a mother describing the child’s father. Although absent at work, she is able to convey to the child the father’s love and care for the child. So too, the mother can share the heavenly father’s care and love. The child already has an affinity for a relationship with God, and our effort is simply “to help them make good” on their first steps of relating to God (82). As a seminary trained father, I know all too well the temptation to be exacting in our theology. We have little heretics on our hands who are likely to misunderstand the trinity or hypostatic union. My children asked many questions that could have been met with lengthy theological dissertations. But what these questions are really about are them just getting to know who God is. It’s easy to teach doctrine later. Don’t miss the opportunity to cultivate the relationship now.
The Sufficiency and Simplicity of Scripture
Once the child is of school age (6 years old), they are ready for the “demands of conscious mental effort.” The key factor in determining their readiness for scholarly activity is the ability to tell back or narrate. Upon arriving at this intellectual level, reading from the Bible and having the child retell forms the core of biblical education.
Now our objective in this most important part of education is to give the children the knowledge of God. We need not go into the question of intuitive knowledge, but the expressed knowledge attainable by us has its source in the Bible, and perhaps we cannot do a greater indignity to children than to substitute our own or some other benevolent person’s rendering for the fine English, poetic diction and lucid statement of the Bible.(83)
Our curriculum should be based in the sufficiency of the Bible. It is the sole source of our knowledge of God (special revelation), adding specificity to our intuitive knowledge (general revelation). It is the word of God that has the power to save and sanctify. Therefore she recommend actually reading it, without substituting it for some filtered or clarified rendition. A child can listen with delight to the cadences and literary eloquence of the Bible. The reading should be direct and simple, going passage by passage followed by a narration by the child. Mason has great insight into two aims for the child. First, the child is growing in “the attitude of the will towards God.” We might call this reverence, obedience or fear of the Lord. In every experience of wonderment, the child gains a sense of God’s power and authority; that this is a being worthy of obedience and worship. Second, the child is growing in the “perception of God which comes from a gradual slow-growing comprehension of the divine dealings with men.” A sense of how God relates to any individual comes through perceiving how God has dealt with others. Precision in understanding the nature of God and his plan of salvation takes time. Fortunately, we have time in ample amounts. Little by little, passage by passage, the child can acquire a storehouse of biblical knowledge.
In the course of her description of biblical education, Mason lays out a basic course of study for children (see the chart further below that lays this out in terms of US grade levels). For students 6-12 years old, she recommends gaining a broad overview of the OT becoming acquainted with the major and minor prophets and the kings as well as learning from the synoptic gospels. Children can benefit from a good children’s Bible or a guide to introduce passages directly from the Bible itself. Finding a useful volume that helps read the Bible rather than replacing it is important. Mason would have us find an author who is “able to take the measure of children’s minds, to help them over real difficulties, bive impulse to their thoughts and direction to their conduct.” (84) For students 12-15, reading the whole of the OT with “wise and necessary omissions” is paired with the gospel of John and Acts. There are so many stimulating and fascinating passages that there is such an abundance of material the goal should not be comprehensive coverage, but selection that will fan the flame of the young teenager’s deepening knowledge of God. For students 16-18, it is time to address difficulties in the text, whether they be “textual, moral or doctrinal.” The argumentative literature of the epistles and the apocalyptic literature of Revelation is reserved for this latter stage. Our delineation of ages might shift a bit, but the recognition of stages of development is sound in her basic layout.
Notice that step by step, the student is guided through selections of scripture to gain a sufficient knowledge of the whole over a long span of time. Selectivity is essential for identifying age-appropriate passages for study at different age levels. This is very different than the kind of selectivity associated with proof texting. We want to give our children a broad and comprehensive diet without cherry picking a minimal set of key passages. Yet there are places where wise caution should be exercised either because the material is for mature audiences (one thinks of Genesis 38) or the argumentation is fairly abstract and intricate (say, Romans 3-5 or Galatians 2-3). These can be saved for later in the child’s education. Early on simple narratives that are highly accessible to young minds should be the normal fare even through middle school.
Difficulties, Doubt and Doctrine
The Bible is a collection of works created by a number of different authors over the course of thousands of years. Even at its most accessible (the vocabulary and style of John, for instance, reads easily) the concepts of the Bible can be difficult to understand. Even apart from doctrinal difficulties, there are many books of the Bible that will challenge young readers and at times even older readers. The simplicity of the gospel should not cause us to assume that the Bible is simple to read. It is after all ancient literature, and there are moments of heightened literary style. There are difficulties within the Bible that have generated volumes of scholarly debate, so much so that we can be forgiven our ignorance surrounding issues and nuances. We cannot be afraid of the challenges inherent in the text, nor can we be dismissive of the difficulties we encounter. Our students will come across them, asking us questions as they read a challenging text. We shepherd these little ones through personal doubt and differences in doctrinal heritage.
When teaching the Bible our pedagogy must be consistent with any other subject or topic of study. The engine room of Mason’s methodology rests in a simple plan to be executed for all lessons.
In every case the reading should be consecutive from a well-chosen book. Before the reading for the day begins, the teacher should talk a little (and get the children to talk) about the last lesson, with a few words about what is to be read, in order that the children may be animated by expectation; but she should beware of explanation and, especially, of forestalling the narrative. Then, she may read two or three pages, enough to include an episode; after that, let her call upon the children to narrate,––in turns, if there be several of them. They not only narrate with spirit and accuracy, but succeed in catching the style of their author. It is not wise to tease them with corrections; they may begin with an endless chain of ‘ands,’ but they soon leave this off, and their narrations become good enough in style and composition to be put in a ‘print book’! This sort of narration lesson should not occupy more than a quarter of an hour. The book should always be deeply interesting, and when the narration is over, there should be a little talk in which moral points are brought out, pictures shown to illustrate the lesson, or diagrams drawn on the blackboard. As soon as children are able to read with ease and fluency, they read their own lesson, either aloud or silently, with a view to narration; but where it is necessary to make omissions, as in the Old Testament narratives and Plutarch’s Lives, for example, it is better that the teacher should always read the lesson which is to be narrated.
Charlotte Mason, Home Education, 232-233
Notice that a lesson begins with a very brief introduction by the teacher, merely to stimulate the expectation of the students for what they are about to read. The focal point of the lesson is the text, not the teacher. After reading an episode – a manageable, coherent passage – the student narrates what was read, imitating the concepts, language and sequence of the author. Then the class responds to the text through discussion or written work. The idea here is to work with the material in such a way as to fully assimilate the content as well as think through its implications and applications. This focused method operates in all subjects, including the Bible. Mason spells out the method as it relates to the Bible, after “some talk and discussion” (which, keep in mind, ought to be brief and only to stimulate expectation) “the teacher will read the Bible passage in question which the children will narrate.” The narration itself is the core of the exercise, although the lesson should finish with some form of response by the student assisted by the teacher. Notice in this quote that the teacher is not just helping the student acquire ideas, but also habits of reverence and sympathy.
The narration is usually exceedingly interesting; the children do not miss a point and often add picturesque touches of their own. Before the close of the lesson, the teacher brings out such new thoughts of God or new points of behaviour as they reading has afforded, emphasizing the moral or religious lesson to be learnt rather by a reverent and sympathetic manner than by any attempt at personal application.
Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, 84-85
This method enables the teacher to handle difficulties not by being the answer person addressing all of the child’s questions but by introducing them to “thoughtful commentators” who will help the child find answers without detracting from scripture’s nature as God’s revelation. Mason writes:
Having received a considerable knowledge of the Old Testament in detail from the words of the Bible itself and having been trained to accept difficulties freely without giving place to the notion that such difficulties invalidate the Bible as the oracle of God and our sole original source of knowledge concerning the nature of Almighty God and the manner of His government of the world, children are prepared for a further study of divinity, still following the Bible text. (85)
Every student must encounter difficulties at their own level of understanding and at their own pace. As a parent or teacher, we often fear that the questions the child raises is the first step toward heresy or rejection of the faith. This is far from the case, since children are grappling with abstract concepts like fallenness, salvation, justification and sanctification. They must begin at a place of limited understanding before they can fully understand all the intricacies of their knowledge of God and the salvation he provides in Christ. Doubt itself can be useful in sharpening faith and detecting error. Oz Guinness, in his 1976 book In Two Minds, defines doubt as “a state of mind in suspension between faith and unbelief” (27). This liminal state is like a sword that can cut in two directions. Its liability is that it can destroy faith, but it can also usefully challenge error. Guinness writes:
As long as the presence of doubt is detected anywhere, neither faith nor knowledge can ever be complacent. But though doubt may be normal, it should be temporary and it should always be resolved. Wisely understood, resolutely faced, it need hold no fear for the Christian. To a healthy faith doubt is a healthy challenge. (47-49)
So we neither have to ignore nor fear difficulties and doubts students encounter in the Bible. We do need to be careful, though, not to be the source of answers. This can create a dependence on the teacher to alleviate these points of tension. The student must work through these matters in order to arrive at a place of personal appropriation of their own faith.
A Course of Study
Mason lays out a reasonable sequence of biblical study for students at different ages. I’ve tried to organize and summarize her thoughts in the chart below, converting the information to the grade levels most commonly used in the US.
| Grade level | OT | NT | Focus |
| PreK-4 | Basic OT story Major/minor prophets The kings | Synoptic Gospels | Narratives Overarching story Key figures |
| 5-8 | Whole OT with “wise and necessary omissions” | Gospel of John Acts | Deeper understanding Encounter difficulties |
| High School | Whole OT addressing textual,moral, doctrinal difficulties | Epistles Revelation Church history Catechism | Effective interpretation Theological reasoning |
For the youngest children, a good Bible story book helps provide a broad overview. I really like The Big Picture Story Bible by David Helm for PreK and Kindergarten. Egermeier’s Bible Story Book is a classic appropriate for 1st and 2nd graders. Even at these early years, though, reading from the Bible itself has great merit. By the time a child is 8, they should be able to read the narrative sections of the Bible with ease. Recognize, however, that there are many passages that may not be appropriate for young ears, which is why Mason encourages selectivity for the youngest students.
As children begin to encounter difficulties in the Bible, it is most helpful to equip them with a means of finding answers for themselves. I really like Bible handbooks for this purpose. Most publishers (Zondervan, Crossway, etc.) produce handbooks. I like the one produced by Baker. It has excellent illustrations, often using classic paintings. The articles and commentary are succinct, written by scholars who have the ability to convey their deep knowledge in an accessible style.
I was surprised to find Mason reserving the epistles for the oldest students, but this makes great sense. Paul, for instance, uses dense argumentation at times, often covering abstract theological concepts. There are certainly great verses for the second grader to learn from, say, Romans. But it takes some maturity to really dig into what the epistles have to say. Our ultimate goal is for students to become effective interpreters of the Bible and to cultivate theological reasoning. This takes time, so don’t feel like you have to rush your younger students into full-on inductive Bible study. And the little heresies children speak when young tend to get worked out over time.
Teaching the Bible can be one of the most difficult subjects to get right at Christian schools. The Bible seems easier than you think, but ends up being harder than you think. Many of us who have grown up with the Bible have become very familiar with it, yet teaching it to children requires an awareness of their lack of familiarity as well as a sense of some of the difficulties this ancient text has in store for them. I’m sure many of you out there have come across great resources and effective methods. We’d love to hear how Charlotte Mason’s method resonates with your experience and what kinds of resources you would recommend.