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Catechesis
Psalm 78 · Deuteronomy 6:4–25 · Large Catechism, Preface
The Texts
Psalm
"We will tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord and his might." (v. 4)
Reading
"You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house." (v. 7)
Book of Concord
Large Catechism, Preface
Deuteronomy 6 does not assign catechesis to a guild of professionals. Moses commands every Israelite father to teach the commandments diligently to his children: when sitting in the house, when walking by the way, when lying down, when rising. The words are to be bound on the hand, placed between the eyes, written on the doorposts and gates. The instruction is not periodic and ceremonial; it is continuous and domestic. It saturates the ordinary movements of household life. Psalm 78 opens with the same resolve: we will tell the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, that the generation to come might know them, that children yet unborn might arise and tell their own children. The chain of transmission is the Church's most basic act of preservation.
Luther's Preface to the Large Catechism is a document written by a man who has seen what happens when this chain breaks. His Saxon visitation found villages of baptized people who could not name the articles of the Creed, recite the Lord's Prayer, or state the Ten Commandments. He describes them as living like dumb brutes and irrational swine. The Large Catechism is his response: a tool for the one Deuteronomy 6 always intended as the primary teacher, the head of the household. Every line of the Preface's urgency traces back to the question Psalm 78 asks: will the coming generation know, or will the chain be broken on our watch?
Discuss
Luther discovered in the Saxon visitation that an entire generation of baptized people had been left without the basic content of the Christian faith. Deuteronomy 6 places the responsibility for preventing that disaster on the head of household, not on the clergy. Where in your congregation is the Deuteronomy 6 household most visibly alive, and where is it most absent?
Key Terms
| Term | What It Means |
|---|---|
| Housefather as priest | Luther's transfer of primary catechetical responsibility from the professional clergy to the head of household. Every housefather is a priest in his own house; every housemother a priestess. The home is the Church's primary school. |
| Worst enemies of God and men | Luther's description of parents who neglect their children's spiritual instruction. God did not give parents children for their own amusement or for labor. To raise children without the fear and knowledge of God is to act as the supreme enemy of the very souls entrusted to your care. |
| Lazy paunches / presumptuous saints | Luther's name for clergy and nobility who read the Catechism once, throw it in a corner, and imagine they have outgrown it and become more learned than God Himself. The Preface attacks them with open sarcasm. |
| Perpetual pupil | Luther's own self-description. Despite being Doctor of Theology and leader of the Reformation, he confesses that every morning he reads the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer word for word as a child being taught the Catechism. |
Discuss
Luther describes parents who neglect their children's spiritual instruction as the worst enemies both of God and of men, and reserves his sharpest contempt for clergy and nobility who think they have outgrown the Catechism. Both failures share the same root assumption: that catechesis is for someone else or for an earlier stage of life. Where does your congregation most visibly carry that assumption, and what would it take to dislodge it?
The Crisis That Birthed the Catechism
The Large Catechism's Preface was not written as a calm introduction to a systematic text. It was written by a man in a state of pastoral alarm. During his visitation of the Saxon churches, Luther encountered a level of Christian ignorance that he had not expected to find in lands where the Gospel had been preached for years. Pastors themselves were incompetent, unable to teach what they did not know. Laypeople in the villages were entirely without the rudiments of the faith. The generational transmission of the Gospel was not merely weakening; it was on the verge of total collapse.
This is the historical reality that Deuteronomy 6 was designed to prevent. Moses gives the command to teach the children diligently precisely in the context of entry into the promised land, where the danger is not persecution from outside but prosperity and forgetfulness from within. Psalm 78's resolve to tell the coming generation was written in full awareness that every generation must decide again whether to pass on what it received or to let it dissolve into the ordinary business of comfortable life. Luther's Preface is the Saxon visitation translated into pastoral instruction: the crisis is real, the command is ancient, and the household is the only institution small enough and intimate enough to do the work Deuteronomy 6 envisions.
Discuss
Moses gives the Deuteronomy 6 command at the moment of entry into prosperity, when the danger is forgetting rather than persecution. Luther found the same danger realized in the Saxon villages. What are the specific conditions in your congregation's social context that most threaten the generational transmission of the faith, and what does Luther's Preface require of those who see the danger?
Neither Food Nor Drink Until the Lesson Is Learned
The Preface does not merely urge household catechesis as a good idea. It prescribes a daily domestic routine of a specificity that startles modern readers. The basic texts, the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer, are to be recited every morning when the children rise, at meals, and at night when they retire. Every head of household is obligated to examine his children and servants at least once a week. If children or servants are unruly and refuse to learn the appointed texts, Luther's instruction is direct: until they repeat them, they should be given neither food nor drink. Masters who cannot bring order to the catechesis of their households are instructed not to hesitate to dismiss such servants from their homes entirely.
This severity is not cruelty; it is a measure of the stakes. Deuteronomy 6's command is issued with the same weight as the commandments it instructs parents to teach. To fail in this instruction is not a parenting deficiency; it is a violation of the direct command of the Supreme Majesty. Luther's famous declaration that every housefather is a priest in his own house is not a compliment; it is an appointment to an office with responsibilities that cannot be delegated. The child who does not know the Creed is not a child whose religious education has been deferred; he or she is a child whose priest has abandoned his post.
Discuss
Luther's prescription of withholding food and drink until the catechism is recited will strike most modern readers as excessive. But his logic is that the soul's need for the Word is as urgent as the body's need for bread. What is the equivalent in your congregation's household life of that urgent daily rhythm, and what has replaced it?
The Perpetual Pupil
The Preface's most disarming move is Luther's offer of his own life as evidence against spiritual pride. He does not merely condemn the lazy paunches and presumptuous saints who have thrown the Catechism in a corner. He confesses that he himself, Doctor of Theology and the instrument of a reformation, does as a child being taught the Catechism every morning. He reads the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer word for word, and he insists that he must remain a child and pupil of the Catechism for the rest of his life.
The reason he gives connects directly to Deuteronomy 6's language of daily meditation. Luther cites the command to talk of the words when sitting, walking, lying down, and rising, and argues that God prescribes this constant repetition precisely because He knows we are in a spiritual war. The Catechism is not merely instruction; it is armor against the devil's fiery darts and medicine against his infection. Furthermore, Luther promises a spiritual reality that rewards this daily practice: when the Catechism is practiced in thought and speech day by day, the Holy Ghost is present in that repetition, bestowing ever new and more light and devoutness on the one who perseveres in it. The perpetual pupil is not a person who has failed to graduate; he or she is the person who has understood what the texts are for.
Discuss
Luther claims that when the Catechism is daily practiced in thought and speech, the Holy Ghost is present in that repetition and constantly gives new light and devoutness. That is not a description of information retention; it is a description of a means of grace. What would it mean for the adults in your congregation to recover a daily catechetical practice, and what would they need from the pastoral office to make that possible?
The Payoff
Deuteronomy 6 commands the transmission of the faith in the shadow of the Exodus: the people who received this command had themselves been brought out of Egypt by the mighty hand of God and were commanded to tell their children what that hand had done. Psalm 78 resolves to tell the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord so that they might set their hope in God and not forget His works. The Large Catechism's Preface stands in the same line: the chain of transmission that Luther urges every housefather and housemother to maintain is the chain by which generation after generation receives the news of the cross, the empty tomb, and the name spoken over them in Baptism, the news that their warfare is ended and their iniquity is pardoned, and that the God of the Exodus is still their God.