Martin Luther wrote two catechisms: the concise Small Catechism and the more extensive Large Catechism. Both became part of the Book of Concord, the collection of confessional writings that has shaped Lutheran doctrine and identity from the sixteenth century to the present day.
Compared to medieval catechisms, not too much has changed in what Luther covers. He avoids discussion of the saints or the Ave Maria, but that is not necessarily unusual. But he makes two large-scale changes from what was expected in medieval catechesis.
First, he begins with the Ten Commandments rather than the Creed or the Lord’s Prayer. Logically, many catechisms began with the Creed (the Apostles’ Creed), the Lord’s Prayer, or something similar because the Creed (or other positive teachings) told one what to believe before discussing the Ten Commandments, which told one what to do (or not to do).
But Luther is convinced that we need to hear the law first, so that we know not only what to do but also that we cannot do it perfectly, and thus that we live by faith alone, not by the works of the law, as good as they may be for us.
Second, Luther includes baptism and the Lord’s Supper in the catechism, which was uncommon but fits Luther’s insistence on the importance of the two sacraments. On that point, medieval Christians held to seven sacraments: Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Penance, Extreme Unction, Holy Orders, and Matrimony. Luther held to two or three sacraments: baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and possibly confession, although that is not entirely clear.
In this article, I will introduce the Catechism so that readers can get a sense of what it communicated and a taste of traditional catechetical teaching during the Protestant Reformation.
Large Catechism as a Unity
One fascinating feature of Luther’s catechism is how he sees the Commandments, Creed, Lord’s Prayer, and sacraments as a coherent whole. For example, the First Commandment, that one should worship God alone, is also the command to believe in the Apostles’ Creed, a creed about God. Or, for instance, the command not to take God’s name in vain parallels hallowing God’s name in the Lord’s Prayer.
While the Commandments tell us what to do, the Creed what to believe, and the Prayer what to pray, they have overlapping content. So they have different modes, but basically, together, the three main parts of the catechism summarize the whole course of the Christian life.
Large Catechism on the Ten Commandments
Of all the parts of the catechism, Luther’s discussion of the Ten Commandments is especially enlightening. In his discussion, he shows the depth of his theological reasoning and his view of the moral life within Christianity.
How Luther Numbers the Ten Commandments
Luther numbers the Ten Commandments slightly differently than most Protestants do today. He divides the final command (do not covet) into two commands and unites the first two commands (no other gods, no images). Here, he follows Augustine, and it is a reasonable way of thinking about the Ten Commandments.
How Luther Deepens the Meaning of the Commands
His approach to the Ten Commandments is also theologically robust. He takes a cue from Jesus, who expands the scope of the Ten Commandments to show their deeper meanings: hatred is forbidden by the prohibition of murder; lustful intent by the prohibition of adultery. And Luther develops this mode of teaching in the Commandments to show how the Ten Commandments, when considered, are a little enchiridion of the Christian life.
Now, this deepening also relies on a particular anthropology that Luther finds evinced in experience and in Romans 1 and 2. In a sermon he preached in 1525, four years before he published the Large Catechism, Luther affirms the uniqueness of the Ten Commandments because they repeat the law God wrote upon our hearts in nature:
Hence, Luther can say with rhetorical flourish that “I keep the commandments which Moses has given, not because Moses gave commandment, but because they have been implanted in me by nature, and Moses agrees exactly with nature, etc.” (LW 35:168).
Therefore, Luther will not necessarily deepen or expand on other commands in the Torah, which are particular to Israel’s time and place, in the same way as he does the Ten Commandments. Evidence for this is also found in the fact that the Ten Commandments are part of the catechism, a sort of necessary and universal component of Christian discipleship.
Why Does God Order the Commandments as He Does?
Luther believes the order of the Commandments matters, as they begin with the highest priority and descend downward. By order of priority, he does not mean that one is important and another is not; rather, the order of the Commandments logically moves from placing our heart and trust in God to our duties toward each other.
For example, Luther sees the first three Commandments as being about our relation to God:
Notice how Luther moves from our total trust in God to how we use his name and receive his instruction through God’s Word. The order here shows that we must first trust in God before we can take his name and receive his Word with benefit. Second, Luther explicitly tells us that, of the seven commandments directed toward our neighbour, the command to honour father and mother is greatest.
Why Is the Fourth Commandment Greater Than the Other Six?
Why might the Fourth Commandment be the greatest? The answer involves part of the heart of Luther’s reformation of Christian worship. The Reformation doctor sees the family, marriage, and the mundane gifts of God as great and worthier than the two-tiered view of spirituality in the monastic life.
Before Luther’s emphasis, many medieval Christians saw the Christian life as divided into two: the higher spiritual state of monastics and the regular spirituality of laypersons. Of the former, celibacy, and therefore non-marriage generally, was believed to be a higher form of life. Luther reversed that emphasis, pointing out how marriage was to be elevated.
And it is in this highly charged context that he claims, “God has given this walk of life, fatherhood and motherhood, a special position of honour, higher than that of any other walk of life under it. […] God distinguishes father and mother above all other persons on earth, and places them next to Divinity itself. For it is a much higher thing to honour than to love” (Large Catechism, 314–15).
In one well-known passage, Luther explains:
Creed and Prayer
Luther does not stop with the Commandments but shows how they logically precede the Creed (what we believe) and the Lord’s Prayer (how we pray). His point is that the law is both necessary to follow and impossible to accomplish apart from faith, whereby, through this faith, God is pleased with our good works.
As noted, the First Commandment, which for Luther includes having no other gods and not making idols, has its positive content in the Apostles’ Creed. And with reference to prayer, we find a similar relationship, so that not taking the Lord’s name in vain corresponds to hallowing his name, and so on.
Luther here continues his emphatic view that faith justifies us before God and that we must obey God in all that he commands. Interestingly, he is convinced that God commands us to pray, and so he urges his readers not to pray only when convenient but to turn to God regularly in prayer. Again, due to Luther’s insistence that faith pleases God, we must not avoid prayer if we feel unworthy, but should go to God at all times.
Baptism and the Lord’s Supper
Luther reduces the seven medieval sacraments to two and includes within baptism something of the old sacrament of penance. On this latter point, Luther emphasizes: “Repentance, therefore, is nothing else than a return and approach to baptism, to resume and practice what has earlier been begun but abandoned” (Larger Catechism, 401). Protestant moral formation basically follows Luther here by seeing that baptism unites us to Christ, while the Lord’s Supper nurtures our faith.
What makes Luther’s emphasis unique is how he draws on Augustine’s definition of sacrament, namely, that when the word of the gospel attaches to the element, it becomes a sacrament; the Word of God is there.
It is hard to overestimate how important this was for Luther. Both baptism and the Lord’s Supper are gifts of God’s grace that become sacraments when the Word of promise attaches to them. So the water is water, but the Word comes to the sign of water and makes it a sacrament.
Therefore, Luther maintains that baptism saves and regenerates because faith needs an object in which to believe; and baptism contains the promise of God within it when the Word comes to it. So baptism saves and regenerates because in it faith apprehends the promises of God.
So the cross is the Word of salvation and remains so, even if we do not believe; Christ’s death still atones. Likewise, baptism with the Word remains the sacrament no matter our faith, but apart from faith, the sign of baptism is of no avail. Similarly, the Lord’s Supper is the body and blood of Christ for us, whether we believe it or not; yet if we do not believe, it is of no avail to us.
In one sense, Luther sees preaching, the cross, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper as all communicating promises by God in similar ways. They remain true even if we do not know it; but when we do know or trust in the promises through these media, then the Word of God powerfully saves and transforms us by faith.
While Protestants have various emphases, all mostly agree on this point: what matters is the Word of God, and the visible tokens of God’s invisible grace appeal to our senses so that we can know the Word of God as human beings, body and soul. Hence, physical and spiritual eating of the Supper matters.
Indeed, Luther explains, “Because the water and the word together constitute one baptism, both body and soul shall be saved and live forever: the soul through the word in which it believes, the body because it is united with the soul and apprehends baptism in the only way it can” (Larger Catechism, 396).
Conclusion
The tradition of catechisms reaches back into the Bible itself (see Deut. 6:7–9). Early Christians continued to catechize, and thus Luther’s catechisms reflect about 1,500 years of ongoing tradition. The fact that some Protestant traditions today have collectively forgotten this tradition may give us a moment to pause and reflect on why this happened.
Whatever we answer, we may want to remember the tradition of Christian catechesis, given the various crises of discipleship we now face. Luther provides one such example, but he is not alone. A great cloud of witnesses exists to inform and support our efforts at discipling those in our midst with the treasures of the faith contained in the Christian catechism.
