, the
monological principle is not one that was used by our Lord. He, Who was
the full incarnation of love, made people participants in the Good News
that He proclaimed. We think, for example, of His conversation with the
woman at the well, in the course of which she moved from her superficial
understanding of water to His understanding of the water of life,
wherein the meaning of her life was revealed to her.[21] Again, we think
of the lawyer who put Him to a test by asking what he must do to inherit
eternal life, and our Lord drew him out in such a way that he answered
his own question.[22] The Gospels are full of such illustrations of our
Lord's method of communication. It is curious, therefore, that the
church has settled for the opposite monological principle which is quite
unequal to the task of conveying the full meanings of the gospel.

_Communication Is Dialogue_

Our Lord's method, which we may call the dialogical, has been vindicated
by modern research into the dynamics of communication, which has
demonstrated conclusively that the to-and-fro process between teacher
and pupil, between parent and child, provides the most dependable and
permanent kind of education. What is that to-and-fro between one who
knows and one who does not? The monological argument against the
dialogical process is that the ignorant and untutored have nothing to
contribute, so that the addition of zero and zero equals zero. This kind
of comment, which is made by surprisingly intelligent and otherwise
perceptive people, and all too often by educators, demonstrates how
little they know about the processes of learning. Nor does it follow
that the dialogical principle forbids the use of the monological method.
There is a place for the lecture and for direct presentation of content,
but to be most useful they should be in a dialogical context.
Furthermore, it is quite possible for a person giving a lecture to give
it in such a way that he draws his hearers into active response to his
thought, and although they remain verbally silent, the effect is that of
dialogue. As a matter of fact, one should not confuse the different
methods of teaching with the dialogical concept of communication. Both
the lecturer and the discussion leader can be either monological or
dialogical, even though they are using different methods. The person who
believes that communication, and therefore education, is dialogical in
nature, will use every tool in the acco