Forming the Faith Today through Luther's Catechisms
Citation
Lutheran Quarterly, vol. XI, pp. 379-396 (1997)
Description
Do we, who are American Christians of the Lutheran tradition in the waning years of the twentieth century, know what Luther's Small Catechism is? I do not think I knew until 1990. . . . [A]lthough I knew its content and its power, not until May 1990 did I come to know what Luther's Small Catechism is. That was when, in preparation for teaching a summer course on Luther's catechisms at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, I actually held a sixteenth-century copy in my hands. It was not the blue book I had used with Pastor Faust, packed with Bible verses and organized with an eye toward Melanchthon's theological loci. It was not the small orange booklet, shorn of many of Luther's insights, that I had used with adults in my parish ministry. It was instead a book so different in content, presentation, form, and intent that even today I am not sure I fully comprehend its import. This article thus serves as an introduction to the Small Catechism, not the contemporary version familiar to our congregations, but the one Luther produced for "his own dear Germans"—those "dear cattle and irrational pigs.
