New Book from New Jersey Educator Applies Socratic Questioning to the Four Gospels

Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk

Frank Heelan, a longtime New Jersey educator, has released "The Way of Jesus God-Man and Savior: A Socratic Approach to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John," published through Christian Faith Publishing, according to the announcement.

The book employs the Socratic method of inquiry-based learning to explore the four Gospels, using structured questioning to guide readers, walking readers through Jesus’s teachings, healings, death and resurrection using a question-and-insight format. The publisher describes the structure as including embedded "Personal Reflections" meant to prompt readers to respond personally to the text rather than simply read it. Heelan says in the announcement that he wrote the book from a conviction that the Socratic method surfaces dimensions of Scripture that conventional study can miss, and that his aim is for readers to engage the Gospels with both intellect and what he describes as spiritual openness.

Heelan’s background is in education more than in publishing. His career included seven years as a History Teacher followed by twenty-five years as a Superintendent of Schools of schools in New York and New Jersey, including a tenure leading the Edison School District. His academic training includes degrees from Fordham University and New York University, a Scripture-focused degree from Maryknoll Seminary, and graduate study at Columbia University, where the announcement states he studied under Donna Shalala, later the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. As an accomplished author, he has previously published: he previously wrote "Stations of the Risen Christ: Resurrection Meditations," a devotional focused on Christ’s post-resurrection appearances.

"The Way of Jesus God-Man and Savior" is aimed at both adult and youth readers, per the announcement, and is positioned as a study tool rather than a straightforward devotional — closer in spirit to a guided seminar than a book meant to be read straight through. It’s available through Christian Faith Publishing’s website, in bookstores, and through Apple Books, Amazon, Google Play and Barnes & Noble.

For Studio CarryOnHarry, the more interesting story here isn’t the book itself but the author: a career educator who spent decades running school districts turning, in retirement, to teaching methodology as a lens for Scripture. That’s a specific and credible angle for a religious study guide, whatever one makes of the results."

Studio CarryOnHarry Perspective

At Studio CarryOnHarry, we see the real intrigue in how a proven classroom technique travels between domains. The Socratic method works in secular settings because it assumes knowledge lives dormant in the student and questioning awakens it—a premise that doesn’t depend on what subject you’re questioning about. That’s genuinely interesting, and it explains why Heelan’s background matters: he’s not importing an untested theory but applying a tool he knows produces engagement.

But the mechanical parallel only goes so far. In a history class, when a teacher asks "What do you notice about this primary source?" the student can point to the text and verify their reasoning against evidence both can examine. With Scripture, the "insight" moment Heelan describes may feel identical in structure, but it involves interpretive and spiritual layers that can’t be cross-checked the same way. The method remains sound; what counts as a successful answer shifts.

The announcement doesn’t clarify how Heelan handles the moment when two readers reach contradictory conclusions through the same Socratic process. In secular classrooms, that’s typically resolved through evidence or logical consistency. In religious study, it might be resolved through tradition, personal conviction, or spiritual discernment—different validation systems entirely. The method alone doesn’t resolve that tension.

The most useful way to think about this may be not as Socratic method being universally portable, but as Heelan recognizing that *engagement itself* might matter more in religious study than in secular study—and that asking questions creates engagement in ways a lectured answer never does, whatever answers readers ultimately reach.

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