On Catechesis

Part One

As school supply sales hit high gear and darkness falls ever earlier, the fact is hard to deny: this summer will soon be a page in our family albums. Soon, school bells will ring - and, for us, another Catechism season will begin

So now is a perfect time to consider just what it means to engage in catechizing and, with that, what we wish catechizing to do.

Over the next few weeks, then, we will look at catechizing, asking first about the nature of catechisms and catechizing. We then will consider who is to receive catechizing, finally turning to who should teach.

It's an important subject, and one we do well to ponder at this point in the year. This and all practices of the Church must be grounded in God's Word. Otherwise, it becomes mere tradition - and tradition alone ought never to be our guiding principle, for we are called to serve the living God, not dead history!

So - what is a catechism?

It sounds like a simple question … until you try to give a simple answer!

At its most basic, a catechism is a teaching tool, usually written in question-answer format, designed to impart a certain set of facts to students.

Of course, for the past four-and-a-half centuries, the Reformed Churches have used the Heidelberg Catechism to teach the truths of Reformed (Biblical) Christianity. Our Heidelberg Catechism, along with its predecessors (such as Calvin's Geneva Catechism) and its cousins (like the Westminster Shorter and Longer catechisms), is more properly defined as a teaching tool of the Church, designed to help impart saving knowledge to members of the Covenant.

As such, then, the Catechism was written with a particular audience and a particular goal in mind. The audience is the Church - believers and their children. The goal is to provide help for those instructing the Church in the Truth of God's Word, so that believers might be properly equipped to confess Christ and to live as those who share in Christ's anointing, and so that the Church might properly be built and preserved.

This is no dusty document intended to sit on the shelves, for it was written with the intent of guiding the preaching and teaching the Church. Yet, at the same time, it is not a fluid document that we're free to amend at will. It belongs to the Churches, and they have said that it fully agrees with the Word of God. Thus, any changes to our Catechism - and they have been (rarely) made - must be done in order to make it better agree with the Word of God, and then only when the Church-at-large agrees that the change is necessary.

So what is the Catechism's intended use? In all things, it is to be a tool for teaching God's people the truths of Scripture in an orderly fashion. Thus, within the first year of its publication, the Catechism was divided into 52 Lord's Days so ministers would be able to preach through it (more or less) each year. In this way, the Church was to be given a well-balanced "diet" containing both the "pure milk" of the Gospel so necessary to spiritual life (1 Pet. 2:1) and the "solid food" of doctrine fit for the spiritually mature (Heb. 5:14ff.).

However, preaching was not the only use to which our forefathers put the Catechism. In the Church building and from house to house, ministers and elders lectured, quizzed, prodded and illustrated, using the Catechism to teach children of the Covenant and new converts all that God has done in Christ and what that means for those who confess Him in the world.

In the next few weeks, D.V., we will examine the practice of catechizing. What is catechizing? What is its goal? And on what basis do we do it?

Part Two

What is catechizing - that thing we, as a Church, do to our children from about 3rd grade through high school?

In a word, catechizing is preparing. It is preparing the seed of the Church - the children of God's Covenant of Grace and those new to the faith - to embrace the promises and to take up the obligations God has given to believers and their children.

The Covenant, after all, is God's sovereign bond in which He promises those He has called that He will be their God, and they shall be made His people (Jer. 31:33; 2 Cor. 6:16; Heb.8:10). These promises come to us who embrace Christ with faith, and also to our children (Gen. 17:7; Acts 2:39) - hence, the reason we baptize them and promise to raise them up in the knowledge of God's Truth.

It includes the promise that God will take those who are dead in their sins - utterly unable to seek Him - and, by means of the Holy Spirit, that He will renew them, drawing them to embrace Him by an understanding, confident faith (Jer. 31:34; Heb.8:11-12). He promises, then, that those who truly are His shall come to know Him in a very real and personal way by means of His direct indwelling - His living within them by the Spirit.

But those glorious promises also come with obligations - requirements which must and will be done by those who are given the Spirit. Thus, they trust in God for deliverance, relying by faith on the sacrifice of Christ (John 5:22-24; John 14:6-7). They seek to imitate God's character rather than the ways of men (Rom. 6:1-4; Gal. 5:16-25). They attend Church, seeking the fellowship of other Christians and using their gifts to strengthen fellow believers (Heb. 10:23-25; 1 Thess. 5:11-15).

Those who refuse to attend to the obligations of the covenant thereby cut themselves off from the promises of the covenant, revealing that not all who arise within the covenant community are among those chosen by God for salvation (Rom. 9:4-8).

And so that our children might never suffer the end of those who neglect the glorious promises into which they were baptized, we - just as the covenant people of so long ago - are called to teach and to have our children taught the Word of the God who has called them His own (Deut. 6:4-9; Eph. 6:4). Thus, when our children are baptized, we in the Reformed Churches promise "to instruct these children, as soon as they are able to understand, in the aforesaid doctrine, and cause them to be instructed therein, to the utmost of [our] power."

This is not just a good thing to do: it is utterly necessary. God has promised to provide His people with all that we need to serve Him. Part of this provision comes by means of the Spirit, given to those who are called. But part also comes by means of men - those who have experienced God's love and salvation, have studied and understood His Word, and have been given the gifts necessary to imparting that wisdom to others.

In this way, we seek to bring those born into the Covenant to a full understanding of salvation and an exercise both of faith and of the gifts they have been given. We do this so that the Church and Christ's Kingdom might be advanced … and also that God's Name might be glorified!

This, then, is the glorious task of catechizing: to train up children in the ways and wisdom of the Lord. It is a wonderful means of leading our children into the full enjoyment of the Covenant promises into which they have been baptized - a means provided by God, according to His gracious wisdom.

Thus we see the nature of catechizing, as an activity.

What remains is to ask: is such instruction the responsibility of the parents alone, the Church alone, or a combination of the two? This we will see, D.V., in our final installment.

Part Three

Over the past few weeks, this space has been dedicated to looking more closely at the nature of catechizing.

We looked, first, at our Catechism as a tool for instruction: how it is a teaching tool of the Church, designed to help impart saving knowledge to members of the Covenant.

Last week, we examined the practice of catechizing. We defined this as a necessary means of preparing the children of God's Covenant of Grace, along with new converts, to embrace the promises and to take up the obligations that God has given to believers and to their children.

One major question remains: To whom does this duty of catechizing belong? To the father? Both parents? The elders? Or does it really matter, as long as the children are taught?

Indeed, it does matter who catechizes our youth! And as we examine this question in the light of God's Word, we find many passages confirming the father's necessary role in teaching his children the ways of the Lord.

Fathers are called to "bring up" their children "in the discipline and instruction of the Lord" (Eph. 6:4). Having taken to heart God's commands, they are to "teach them diligently to [their] children" (Deut. 6:7). The testimony of the Law was to be passed on from the fathers to the coming generation, so that the coming generations would be more faithful than their fathers (Ps. 78:1-8).

The book of Proverbs absolutely overflows with the instruction of a son by a father. In fact, Proverbs 1 tells us that only a fool would despise wisdom and instruction, immediately following this with the counsel, "Hear, my son, your father's instruction, and forsake not your mother's teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck" (Prov. 1:8-9).

So one would be hard-pressed to claim that the father - and the mother, by his side - has no mandate from the Lord to teach his children the ways of God. Of course he does! In fact, we neglect our parental duty and privilege when we neglect to read God's Word with our children, to discuss God's promises and commands at home, and to combine discipline for wrong-doing with instruction in God's good commands. For it is by such instruction and discipline at home that they come to understand God's instruction and discipline in life - and that they come to know how much their parents, and their God, love them (see Heb. 12:4-11)!

But in saying that disciplining and educating in the ways of the Lord is a task that must be done by parents, we don't necessarily say all that must be said. The Bible calls for fathers to teach and discipline, it calls for wise mothers to instruct - but nowhere does it say that this is their province alone!

In fact, it testifies quite to the contrary.

Recall for a moment the nature of catechizing: it is a means of instructing the youngest and newest members of the Covenant, preparing them to embrace both the promises and the obligations of the Covenant. For that task, catechizing employs God's Word (of course) … but also the Catechism, which is a tool of the Church, designed to explain and apply God's Word to God's people.

In this, we see something of how catechizing - along with preaching - truly is part and parcel of the ministry of the Word which Christ has entrusted to the under-shepherds of His Church.

What, then, is the ministry of the Word?

It is part of the discipling of the nations, which (Matt. 28:19-20) consists in baptizing and teaching. It is part of the task of shepherding and caring for Christ's flock (John 21:15-17), which God long ago promised to provide for His people (Jer. 23:3-4).

Thus, this task of ministering the Word to God's people involves not only preaching to the Church as a whole, but also teaching and instructing from house to house and in small groups (Acts 5:42; Acts 20:20-21). It involves not only the exhorting and commanding most characteristic of preaching, but also the teaching most characteristic of the catechetical instruction (1 Tim. 4:11-13; see also 1 Tim. 6:2, 2 Tim. 2:2).

Far from being a task given solely to fathers, teaching and instructing - our catechizing - as a task, was given to the apostles (Matt. 28:16; John 21:2,15), who were called to be Christ's official witnesses and teachers (Acts 1:2,8, 21-22).

Although the apostolate was not a continuing office, the task to which they were called was shared by the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastor-teachers (Eph. 4:11-16). Thus, much like the Levites of the old administration of the Covenant (Deut. 33:10; Mal. 2:7), Ministers of the Word are called not only to preach, but to proclaim the Word, to reprove, to rebuke and to exhort - doing all of these tasks with patience and teaching, thereby to preserve the saints from falling away into error (2 Tim. 4:1-5). In this, they share the task of the elder/overseer to teach the Truth and to oppose false doctrine (1 Tim. 3:2; Titus 1:9-14; 2 Tim. 2:24-26).

And so we see that this task of catechizing is not one that the Church has taken up simply because the parents are unwilling or unable. This joyous task is given to the Church by Him to whom all authority has been given (Matt. 28 again) and who, by means of the Holy Spirit, has given His Word of Truth to the Church (John 15:26-27), that through her leaders she might serve as its steward (1 Cor. 4:1) - not only preaching and teaching this Truth, but also guarding and preserving it from error and corruption (2 Tim. 1:8-14).

To return to our original question, then, to whom does this task of catechizing belong?

On one hand, it belongs to the parents, who have been called to raise up their children in the understanding and love of God's Word. To them belongs the blessed privilege of teaching the children - with words and with their very lives - what it means to live as one of God's beloved people.

Yet this task also belongs to the Church which, through its elders and especially its ministers, is called to defend and provide for the flock of Christ. This involves preaching, to be sure, along with the administration of the sacraments and the loving exercise of Church discipline. But along with that preaching - or, better, as a part of the ministry of the Word which preaching typifies and crowns - catechizing serves to prepare the children of the Covenant to embrace those amazing promises into which they have been baptized.

Let us, then, receive the practice of catechizing as the great gift which it very truly is.

For the elders called to teach, let us recognize the weighty privilege we have been given, putting each opportunity for instruction to its most profitable use and never failing to carefully prepare for our time with the children of the Covenant. And as parents, let us encourage the elders and the minister in their task, reinforcing the lessons at home as we daily strive to teach our children the wisdom of our gracious God!