The Small Catechism

By Martin Luther

Editors’ Introduction to the Small Catechism

The origins of Luther’s Small Catechism stretch back to the earliest days of the Christian church. The Greek word katecho, to sound again or from above, was already used by Paul (Gal. 6:6^*) to denote Christian instruction. By the second century, it had come to designate the pre-baptismal instruction of catechumens. A loan word in ecclesiastical Latin, Augustine first used the noun catechismus to denote basic Christian instruction. In the Middle Ages the church often narrowed this instruction to the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer. Luther used the word in this way throughout his life. In the late Middle Ages booklets written for catechetical instruction focused on the sacrament of penance: the preparatory works of faith and contrition, the thoroughness of confession, the succeeding works of satisfaction (especially prayers, fasting, almsgiving), and finally preparation for a good death.

Already before the Reformation, as part of his duties as preacher at St. Mary’s, Wittenberg’s city church, Luther delivered sermons on the various parts of the catechism.¹ First published separately, in 1522 they appeared as a collection in his Personal Prayer Book.² Although this booklet was not a catechism per se, in the preface to his 1526 revision of the liturgy, the Deutsche Messe, Luther appealed to his fellow pastors and preachers to write instruction booklets and suggested they use his Personal Prayer Book as the basis of their work.³ Unlike the order found in many medieval catechisms, this prayer booklet began with an exposition of the commandments and then moved first to the Creed and finally to prayer.⁴

Already in 1525 pressure on the Wittenberg theologians to produce aids for basic Christian instruction was mounting, led by the pastor in Zwickau, Nicholas Hausmann, who appealed both to Luther and to the Saxon court for help. When the original team in Wittenberg assembled to work on the project, John Agricola and Justus Jonas, could not bring it to completion because of Agricola’s move to Eisleben, Luther promised to work on the project himself. When Luther did not immediately fulfill his promise, others stepped into the breach. One such publication, probably prepared by Stephen Roth (later city clerk in Zwickau), appeared in late 1525 and contained excerpts from Luther’s Personal Prayer Book.⁵ Its introduction included a so-called lay Bible, consisting of the three traditional parts of the catechism but also Bible verses for holy Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the first time all five “chief parts” appeared together. Other preachers and teachers, including John Agricola, rector of the Latin school in Eisleben, also prepared catechisms that more or less reflected the Evangelical teaching of Wittenberg.⁶

In 1528, with John Bugenhagen, Wittenberg’s chief pastor, away helping to reform the city of Braunschweig, Luther again took over the catechetical preaching. In these sermons, in addition to lengthy explanations, he often tried to reduce the meaning of a particular part of the catechism to a single sentence. Spurred on by the questionable theology and pedagogy in other catechisms and moved by his own brief experience as an official visitor in Saxony’s rural churches, he began to write the Small Catechism in late 1528 or early 1529. The first three parts were published on separate broadsheets in January 1529, each addressed to the heads of the household. After a serious illness curtailed his activities, he completed the project in the spring with explanations of the sacraments and brief orders for household prayers.

Within no time these original sheets also appeared in booklet form, with Luther providing for the Wittenberg edition a preface addressed to the simple pastors and preachers. All subsequent printings in Wittenberg were illustrated with woodcuts and references to the Bible and contained two appendices: German versions of the marriage and baptismal services with Luther’s introductions. They also included various household prayers and a chart of Bible passages for the household (sometimes called the “Table of Duties”). In 1531 Luther revised the Small Catechism slightly by appending to the fourth question on holy baptism a brief discussion of confession of sins with an order for private confession and by adding an explanation of the introduction to the Lord’s Prayer.

Luther’s Small Catechism poses one simple question, Was ist das? (What is this?), and only occasionally poses other questions (How does this happen? What does this mean? What does this signify?). The simple paraphrase of catechetical texts elicited by that question is matched by its insistence on moving from law (Ten Commandments) to gospel (Creed and Lord’s Prayer) and by an expansion of material found in traditional catechisms to include explanations of holy baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Its prayers for mealtimes, morning, and bedtime come from traditional sources. The list of Bible passages for the household reflects Luther’s belief that relations of daily life constitute the Christian life and not some self-chosen spirituality.

In the Book of Concord produced in Dresden in 1580, the Small Catechism included all the sections described above. However, several princes, including Ludwig VI of the Palatinate, and their theologians objected to Luther’s baptismal service with its references to exorcism. As a result, despite pleas from Jakob Andreae, both appendices were removed from editions simultaneously produced elsewhere and from subsequent versions printed in Dresden. This excision was part of a lengthy dispute over the nature of baptism among Lutherans, especially led by those who, under the influence of some Reformed theologians, worried that Lutherans might understand baptism as effective without faith by the mere performance of the act. Included here are both appendices as well as simple descriptions of the original illustrations that accompanied almost every edition produced in Wittenberg during Luther’s lifetime.