Luther, vol. 5 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

Filled with anxiety for the future of his Church he warmly exhorts the pastors to provide for a constant supply of preachers and worthy officials. They were to tell the authorities and the parents, “of what a gruesome crime they were guilty, when they neglected to help to educate children as pastors, preachers, and writers, etc.... The sin now being committed in this respect by both parents and authorities is quite beyond words; this is one way the devil has of displaying his cruelty.” We see from this that Luther’s solicitude for the teaching of the Catechism had a practical motive beyond that lying on the surface. He wished to erect not only a bulwark but also a nursery for the Church to come; for this same reason, in his efforts about this time on behalf of the schools (see vol. vi., xxxv., 3), what he had in view was, that, with the help of the Bible and the Catechism, they should become seminaria ecclesiarum.

In the preface to the Larger Catechism of 1530 Luther lashes those among his preachers who turned up their noses at the Catechism.

Many, he says, despise “their office and this teaching, some because they are so very learned, others out of laziness and belly-love”; they will not buy or read such books; “they are, in fact, shameful gluttons and belly-servers, better fitted to look after the pigs and the hounds than to be pastors having the cure of souls.” To them he holds up his own example. He too was “a Doctor and preacher, nay, as learned and experienced as any of them,” and yet he read and recited every morning, and whenever he had time, “like a child, the Ten Commandments, Creed, Our Father, Psalms, etc.”; he never ceased being a student of the Catechism. “Therefore I beg these lazy bellies or presumptuous saints, that, for God’s sake, they let themselves be persuaded, and open their eyes to see that they are not in reality so learned and such great Doctors as they imagine.”

The exhortations in this preface, to all the clergy to make use of and teach the Catechism diligently, contain much that is useful and to the point.

In other passages he nevertheless sees fit to emphasise what he says by false and odious reflections on the Papacy. “Our office is now quite other from what it was under the Pope; now it is serious and wholesome, and thus much more arduous and laborious and full of danger and temptation.”[1905] Before him “no Doctor on earth had known the whole of the Catechism, that is the Our Father, Ten Commandments and Creed, much less understood them and taught them as now, God be praised, they are taught and learnt even by little children. In support of this I appeal to all their books, those of the theologians as well as those of the lawyers. If even one article of the Catechism can be learnt aright from them, then I am willing to let myself be broken on the wheel or bled to death.”[1906]

In the plan of both the Larger and Smaller Catechism Luther keeps to the traditional threefold division, viz. the Ten Commandments, Apostles’ Creed and Our Father. To these he appends a fourth part on baptism and a fifth on the Supper, the only two sacraments he recognises. He also slipped in a short supplementary instruction on the new form of Confession before the chapter on the Supper.[1907] The Smaller Catechism was provided from the very first with morning and evening prayers, grace for meals and an eminently practical “Household Table of Texts,” consisting of appropriate verses for pastors, for their subordinates and pupils in general, for temporal authorities, for subjects, married people, parents, masters, children and also for the “young in general, for widows and for the parishes.”

The language, more particularly of the Shorter Catechism, is throughout a model of simplicity and clearness.

We may find an example of his brevity and concision at the end of the “Creed”; the passage will also serve to show how greatly his teaching differed from that of the Church. After the words: “I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the dead and life everlasting, Amen,” there follows in the Catechism the usual question: “What means this?” and the answer, with regard to the Church, is that the Holy Ghost “calls, gathers together, enlightens, hallows and holds the whole body of Christians on earth in Jesus Christ in one true faith; in which body of Christendom He free-handedly forgives me and all the faithful all our sins daily,” etc. The paragraph ends, as do all the articles on the Creed, in the usual form: “This is true.”

In spite of all peculiarity of doctrine in the Shorter Catechism all polemical attacks on the olden Church are carefully eschewed. In the Larger Catechism, on the contrary, they abound. Even under the First Commandment, speaking of the worship of God, the author alludes to what “hitherto we have in our blindness been in the habit of practising in Popery”; “the worst idolatry” had held sway, seeing that we sought “help, consolation and salvation in our own works.” In the explanation of the article on the “Holy Christian Church, the Communion of Saints” it is set forth at the outset, that, “in Popery,” “faith had been stuck under the bench,” “no one having acknowledged Christ as Lord.” “Formerly, before we came to hear [God’s Word] we were the devil’s own, knowing nothing of God or of Christ.”[1908]

On the other hand, several of Luther’s doctrines find no place whatever in either of the Catechisms. For instance, those, which, according to the testimony of Protestant scholars quoted above, necessarily lead to a “Christianity void of dogma” (above, p. 432 ff.). The people and the pastors learn nothing here of their right of private judgment with regard to the text of the Bible and the articles of faith. Nor is anything said of that view of original sin which constituted the very basis of the new system, viz. that it is destructive of every predisposition to what is good; nor of the enslaved will, which is ridden now by God, now by the devil; nor of the fact that man’s actions have only the value imputed to them by God; nor, finally, do we find anything of predestination to hell, of the “Hidden God” Who quashes the Will of the “Revealed God” that all men be saved, and Who, to manifest His “Justice,” gloats over the endless torment of the countless multitudes whom He infallibly predestined to suffer eternally.[1909] The reason for the suppression of these doctrines in catechisms intended for the general reader is patent. The dogmas they embody, in so far as they vary from the traditional, are too contradictory to form a solid theological structure. To what dangers would not the new doctrine have been exposed, and what would have been the bad impression on the reader, had mention been made in the Catechisms of such theories, even though, in reality, they formed the very backbone of the new theology?