143 - Teaching the Faith

Teaching the Faith
By Patrick D. Miller

The central feature of this issue is a symposium on the new Catechism of the Catholic Church. The appearance of this catechism, which has received much attention in the Catholic Church-some negative and some positive-comes at a time of renewed interest in catechetical instruction in some of the Protestant denominations as well. A recent special issue of The Presbyterian Outlook devoted to the subject of Christian education contains articles almost entirely on catechisms and the history and contemporary possibilities of catechetical teaching. Such a focus would hardly have been expected twenty years ago or even a decade ago, so out of favor has been the catechetical approach in many Christian education circles. That does not mean that catechisms have disappeared from the churches. On the contrary, a number of churches use catechetical instruction in a variety of ways. Further, the custom of giving awards and public recognition for recitation of one of the catechisms, no small motivation in this writer's learning of the Westminster Shorter Catechism at an early age, continues even in a theological school such as Princeton Theological Seminary, where students who learn the Shorter Catechism receive a substantial enough monetary award that some faculty, perhaps only half-jokingly, have remarked that they wished they were eligible for the award.

Yet, it is certainly the case that, in general, catechetical instruction has fallen out of favor as a part of the church's teaching practice for most of this century. Its muted but serious revival is well worth considering. The ambivalent response of many persons to a return to catechisms is not surprising. In our time, it may be more difficult than it once was to use them as teaching tools, inasmuch as memorization generally has fallen on hard times not only because of the criticism by educators of rote learning but also because of the effect of sweeping technological advances from television to photocopiers to calculators to computers, all of which have contributed to a move away from slower and less efficient modes of learning. Catechetical instruction has been an obvious mode of learning, as it has often focused more upon committing to memory than it has upon understanding. Some have found that there are indeed other ways of studying the catechism to learn about church doctrine than simply memorizing it, but it may be worth asking if the return to memorizing may not

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have some usefulness if the material is such that comprehension and recall happen more easily for those who take the trouble to learn the catechisms. The form of a catechism, its style and level of presentation will have much to do with how it is used in the Christian communities for which it is created. The new Catholic Catechism, running some six hundred pages, is a good example of one that is meant to be an extended doctrinal statement for study and understanding as well as for defining the circle of faith rather than for precise appropriation and commitment to memory.

The Catholic Catechism, as it is presented in the essays that follow, reminds ups of the essentially conservative character of catechisms, as of creeds and doctrinal statements generally. That is appropriate in that part of their function, at least, is to conserve the tradition as it has been handed down, as it has been previously agreed upon. The church does not generally fix in doctrinal form matters that are under much debate or contemporary currents and trends in theology unless it does so precisely to assert the tradition against other voices and currents it deems unacceptable. The conservative nature of the catechetical form is one of its chief virtues and reasons for being. It may be most helpful just at the point of providing a kind of mooring, a formulation of the tradition of Scripture and theology in a time when things are loose and many voices are in the air. In a recently published and valuable study of confirmation and the catechetical tradition, Richard Osmer reminds us of the positive achievements of the catechetical movement in the time of the Reformation:

The catechism was acknowledged as an indispensable tool in promoting theological literacy and Christian unity. It provided Christians with a basic doctrinal framework, enabling them to reflect theologically on their work in the church and ordinary life. The church did not seek to control every aspect of a person's life; only to provide a sure foundation on the basis of which liberty and conscience could be exercised. At the same time, the catechism was seen as promoting unity among Christians. Confession based on such instruction was of the church's one, true faith, not the individual's particular, idiosyncratic beliefs. The catechism thus was viewed as promoting both individual freedom and church unity.¹

That capacity to advance theological literacy and to provide a shared understanding of the faith continues to attract us to the possibilities of catechetcal teaching.

There are, of course, some dangers in the conservative character of catechisms. They are more backward looking in general than forward, as one can see, for example, in the heavy-handed and tendentious use of masculine language in the Catholic Catechism. They tell us more about where we have been and what we have believed than where we are going and how to formulate the faith in our own time. That there are genuine verities that can be set forth is one of the things catechisms make clear, but they also reveal their highly time-bound character. A contemporary Re-

¹ Richard Robert Osmer, Confirmation: Presbyterian Practices in Ecumenical Perspective (Louisville: Geneva, 1996), p. 72.

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formed catechism, for example, might not set the decrees of God so firmly to the fore as do the Westminster Catechisms and would surely talk about creation in other ways than as a six-day event.

Thus it is that catechetical instruction and the documents on which such teaching is based need to be both informing and inviting, that is, transmitting the faith and inviting persons to think further about it. The resistance to memorizing and perhaps to catechisms in general is sometimes because memorization seems to rule out discussion. But as a teaching tool, the catechism is much like the Shema of ancient Israel. It was to be learned, preserved, anti recited. But it was to be talked about and discussed as well. Its implications and contemporary force were and are always under discussion. So also the catechism is not meant to be so definitive that there can be no discussion. The danger of catechetical formulations is that they may be dogmatic in tone and not just in substance, formulating the perimeters of faith as sharply as the center. The center should be fairly clear, but the periphery should be more open. One does not define the faith attested in the Scriptures primarily through such canonical works as Job and Ecclesiastes, but that faith cannot be defined without including them and what they attest as a part of the circle of faith.

Along with Scripture, catechisms provide touchstones for growth in faith, formulations to which one can return again and again in a world where superficiality and rapid change are the order of the day. One of the tests of a catechism's ability to do the job is whether it provides for the journey at least a few pieces of theological coinage that do not tarnish or decrease in valve as time goes by, theological "texts" that are there to turn to in the face of life's exigencies and uncertainties, its upheavals and crises. Most of those who have memorized the Westminster Shorter Catechism, one of the better-known catechisms of the Reformed tradition, will always remember its questions about what is sin ("Any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God") or who is God ("God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth"). But the appeal of those questions and answers is their simplicity-indeed excessive simplicity-in dealing with the largest of issues. The first question of the Shorter Catechism, however, works in a different way. As it asks about our "chief end" as human beings and answers that we are here "to glorify God and to enjoy him forever," we are given a fundamental definition of a tradition and the kind of foundation that lasts and lets us know in a defining way who we are and what we are about. So also, the first question of the Heidelberg Catechism has carried many souls along their way and to their rest in a kind of fundamental assurance that goes very deep, even when they can only remember the first couple of lines:

Q. What is your only comfort, in life and in death?

A. That I belong-body and soul, in life and in death-not to myself but to
my faithful Saviour, Jesus Christ . . .

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One can go a long way with simply that conviction and the 103rd Psalm. As one reads on in the catechism, it will give further definition and aid faith's search for understanding. But that beginning word is always there. One comes to count on it.

In the end, the test of the catechetical tradition and its continuing viability in the churches may be its capacity for aiding the theological education of the young. Some of us tend to presume too readily that catechisms are child's play, theologically speaking. One has only to take a glance at the new Catholic Catechism to demolish that assumption. But the education of the next generation is where the catechetical tradition begins in Scripture:

When your children ask you in time to come, "What is the meaning of the decrees and the statutes and the ordinances that the Lord our God has commanded you?" then you shall say to your children, "We were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. . ." (Dent. 6:20-21)

That first account of a child's catechism is instructive in several ways. For one, it sets an expectation that the questions and answers of faith are a part of the agenda of the future among the people of God. It acknowledges that both faith and practice will not always be self-evident and there need to be provisions made, responses anticipated for when the queries about faith and life come up, as they inevitably will. In ancient Israel as well as in the Reformation, catechetical instruction arose out of the needs of the community.

Second, if the catechism is to take the form of question and answer, the questions should not always be shaped by the one who creates the answers. Moses' words in Deuteronomy recognize that there are predictable questions that children (of whatever age) will ask. The community, in its familial and, in its congregational forms, needs to anticipate those questions, but they should be, at least in part, authentic questions that the children want answered and not only questions that the adults want asked. It is not 'difficult to anticipate such questions. What parent has not been asked soiree version of the child's question "Who is God?" or "What does God look like?" The teaching of the young in our catechisms or in other forms can and should anticipate and address such questions, letting faith seek its understanding where that faith is.

Finally, we should ask if there is not a clue to the shape of our catechisms in the response that the parents of Israel were to give to the queries of their children. The answer to what and why and who in this Deuteronomic context is not a formulation of rational and abstract theological statement, though such means of teaching have place and value. Here the answer to the question is a story, a story of a people and of how by the grace of God they came to be and to be free. If catechisms are to tell us something of who we are and what we are to believe, they may need to begin in the story that does that. Further inferences may be drawn, as indeed they are in the Deuteronomic account (see verses 24-25). The biblical tradition seems to start everything in the experience of the grace of God and the calling of the

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one and of the many into a new identity. We celebrate that at baptism. We should not forget it at confirmation. The catechism that will teach the next generation will be one that takes them back again to the questions of who they are and what it is that God has done for them. If that is tended to, then we may go on to the further theological elaboration that one regularly expects from the church's creeds and catechisms.

-Patrick D. Miller