Looking back over the history of the post-Reformation Church we can see that it was where the catechetical system of instruction as adhered to that the best fruits of the Reformation were preserved and transmitted. Richard Baxter was ready to acknowledge that “the chief part of church reformation that is behind (accomplished), as to means, consisteth in it (catechizing).” “O, brethren,” he cries in another place, “what a blow may we give the kingdom of darkness by the faithful and skilful managing of this work.”

Former Westminster Theological Seminary professor John Murray, the Scottish theologian who wrote Redemption Accomplished and Applied (a book that deserves multiple readings), also wrote a little-known apologetic called “Catechizing: A Forgotten Practice” in 1962 for the Banner of Truth Magazine.

While the content is the same, I reformatted the article for readability and received permission from Banner of Truth to publish it.

Murray, with frequent nods to Augustine, Luther, Calvin and Baxter, covers a lot of ground:

• The Origins of Catechizing

• The Development and History of Catechizing

• The Need for Catechizing

• Catechizing and Preaching

• Difficulties of Catechizing

• Difference Between Catechizing and the Use of a Catechism

• Catechizing and Catechisms Not for Children Only

• The Case for Catechisms

• The Benefits of Catechizing

May Murray’s retooled article find new life amid today’s growing catechetical renaissance.

Catechizing: A Forgotten Practice by John J. Murray

It is surely an indictment of the Church today that in dealing with the subject of catechizing we have to begin by explaining the very meaning of the term. What was looked on as a necessary and beneficial practice by the early church and by the Reformers has now fallen into such disuse among Christian people that very few seem to have any understanding or appreciation of the subject. And yet we believe it is to the discontinuance of this practice that we can trace much of the doctrinal ignorance, confusion and instability so characteristic of modern Christianity.

The Origin of Catechizing

The term catechizing is derived from the Greek word katechein which means “to sound over or through, to instruct.” In the New Testament this word is used seven times and in each instance refers to oral instruction in religious matters. For example, Luke, in addressing his Gospel to “most excellent Theophilus,” expresses his purpose thus: “that thou mightest know the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed” or, as it can be literally translated, “orally instructed.” The teaching of our Lord and of the Apostles was of necessity oral and partly interlocutory, and in the early church the converted Jews and heathen who received instruction in the rudiments of Christianity with a view to being admitted to membership were known as “catechumens.” Thus what is meant by catechizing is instruction in the Christian faith by means of question and answer.

Catechizing, or interlocutory teaching, was regarded as indispensable in the early Church. It is true that the early catechisms were not constructed on the method of question and answer but usually consisted of manuals of doctrine or brief creeds. These, however, were used as the basis for catechizing. Recent researches have suggested that there is common catechetical material in several New Testament epistles. There is no mention in the New Testament of catechist as a separate office or order, but it would seem that as the catechumenate developed this became full-time work.

Development and History

In the writings of the second century we find mention of catechumens and catechists and by the fourth and fifth centuries we see that catechetics began to develop its scientific theory. One of its chief exponents was Augustine and in his Catechizing of the Uninstructed he details the several steps in the process of wise catechizing. It is clear from the writings of the early Fathers that they attached great importance to the interlocutory method of instruction. They were not unmindful of the great commission given by the Lord to disciple all nations, teaching them all things that He had commanded.

As the Church grew in worldly prominence and lost in spiritual life changes came in the method of its training work. As its ritual services were expanded so its teaching exercises were diminished. As the ecclesiastical spirit overcame the evangelical, catechetical instruction declined. It stands out clearly in the history of the dark Middle Ages that where this kind of instruction was adhered to most closely, Christian life remained purest. We have only to think of the Waldenses, the Albigenses, the Hussites, and the Lollards to prove this. It is to the last mentioned that can be traced the earliest of catechisms (as we know them today).

With the dawn of the glorious Reformation catechetical instruction came back into its own in the Christian Church bringing with it a further development in the science of catechetics and especially constructing the catechism as we know it today. It is not surprising that Martin Luther to whom, humanly speaking, the Reformation owes its very beginning should be regarded the father of modern catechetics. His claim to this honor is substantiated not only by the catechism which he himself prepared but also by the writings in which he explained catechetics and gave an impulse to their pursuit. Calvin, who so clearly systematized the Reformation teaching, took similar view of the duty of the Church to instruct the young and the ignorant by interlocutory methods, and he published a catechism shortly after Luther’s appeared.

In the latter half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries catechizing occupied a most important place in the Reformed Church and perhaps nowhere more than in Scotland and England. “It may be said, without exaggeration, of the catechisms framed on the system of the doctrinal Puritans, and published in England between the years 1600 and 1645, that their name is legion.” Writing in 1656, Richard Baxter could say “How many scores, if not hundreds, of catechisms are written in England.” But the Reformers and Puritans did not stop at the compilation of catechisms, they enforced the practice of catechizing. It is obvious that they were thoroughly in earnest about this matter, as can be seen by enactments of the Church at that time.

In England a canon of 1603 (which has never been repealed) required that “every parson, vicar, or curate upon every Sunday or holy day before evening prayer, shall, for half an hour and more, examine and instruct the youth and ignorant persons of his parish in the Ten Commandments, the Articles of the Belief, and in the Lord’s Prayer; and shall diligently hear, instruct and teach them the Catechism set forth in the Book of Common Prayer.” The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, in the first year of its existence, provided that while there should be two public services on every Lord’s Day, the first service should consist of worship and preaching, and the second should be given to worship and the catechizing of the young and ignorant. In 1639 this was carried a step further by an act declaring that “every minister, beside his pains on the Lord’s Day have weekly catechizing of some part of the parish.” To ensure that the weekly catechizing be carried out the Assembly later ordained every presbytery “to take trial of all ministers within their bounds, whether they be careful to keep weekly diets of catechizing; and if they shall find any of their number negligent therein, that they be admonished for the first fault, and if, after such admonition, they do not amend, the presbytery for the same fault shall rebuke them sharply; and if after such rebuke they do not yet amend, they shall be suspended.”

The history of catechizing from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the present time is mainly a story of decline. It is true that in Scotland, and especially in the Highlands, catechizing continued to occupy a vital place in the instruction of young and old, but, as had already happened in England, it was becoming more and more a rote acquaintance with the catechism. Isaac Watts had taken up the question with great enthusiasm and exposed the folly of blind memorizing. He wrote a short work on Catechisms for Children and compiled two catechisms for younger children as well as explanatory notes to the Shorter Catechism. Among the leaders of the Evangelical Awakening, John Wesley more than any seemed to value the use of catechetical method of instruction. It was in Wesley’s later days that the modern Sunday school movement began, and although the basic principles continued, yet in the second half of the nineteenth century the effects of the new antipathy to dogmas, creeds and catechisms virtually put catechizing out of the Church. Today we are reaping the results of that false approach to the Christian life. Ignorance and unbelief are rampant in our land, the Church is without an authoritative message, and often even evangelical Christians are weak and unstable. Is there not cause to ask whether the time has not come to revive the art and practice of catechizing?

The Need for Catechizing

Catechizing presupposes need. The foundation of all religion, Isaac Watts reminds us, is laid in knowledge. Scripture attaches great importance to knowledge and gives a foremost place to the mind and understanding. It is through the mind that truth enters the man, influencing the affections and directing the will. True it is that knowledge may remain in the mind and, without the influences of the quickening, life-giving Spirit, be inoperative in the life, yet the fact remains that knowledge—knowledge of truth—is the very basis of the Christian life. Hence the need for instruction in the doctrines of Christianity both for the believer and the unbeliever. Ignorance and error are effects of the Fall and it is upon them that Satan’s kingdom is built. Knowledge and truth are the grand weapons by which it is overthrown and Christ’s kingdom established in the individual and in the world.

Ignorance of the truth and love of darkness is the basic justification for the practice of catechizing. How often this is found true by sad experience. It was a tour revealing to him the gross ignorance of his fellow countrymen that constrained Martin Luther to take up the work of catechizing in earnest. “I have been impelled to cast this catechism of Christian doctrine into this simple form by the lamentable deficiency in the means of instruction which I witnessed lately in my visitation. God help us! what deplorable things I have seen! The common people wholly without any knowledge of doctrine.” John Owen, the great Puritan theologian, was moved by a similar need to compile two catechisms and wrote: “Amongst my endeavors after the ordinance of public preaching the Word, there is not, I conceive, any more needful (as all will grant that know the estate of this place, how taught of late days, how full of grossly ignorant persons) than catechizing.” Even more convincing is the testimony of Richard Baxter, one of the most faithful and zealous pastors whom England has seen. “For my part,” he writes in his Reformed Pastor, “I study to speak as plainly and movingly as I can and yet I frequently meet with those that have been my hearers eight or ten years, who know not whether Christ be God or man, and wonder when I tell them the history of His birth, and life and death, as if they had never heard it before. And of those who know the history of the gospel, how few are those who know the nature of that faith, repentance and holiness which it requireth, or, at least, who know their own hearts.”

Read more, print, or download on your e-reader Murray’s “Catechizing: A Forgotten Practice” here.

Source [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]