Why Did the Early Church Use Catechisms?

Question 10.

Early church catechisms are something many evangelicals have either never heard of or quietly suspect of being a Roman Catholic invention, and both reactions miss a rich and useful history. Long before the Reformation produced its famous catechisms, the believers of the first few centuries were carefully instructing new converts in the faith before they were baptised, and they had good reasons for doing so.

So why did the early church use catechisms, and does any of it matter for us now? I think it matters a great deal, because the instinct behind the practice is deeply biblical, and recovering it could do our discipleship a world of good.

What a Catechism Actually Is

The word catechism comes from the Greek katecheo, which means to teach by word of mouth, to instruct orally, often through question and answer. You find the word itself in the New Testament. Luke writes his Gospel so that Theophilus may have certainty concerning the things he has been taught, and that verb taught is katecheo. Paul speaks in Galatians of the one who is taught the word sharing with the one who teaches, again the same root.

So a catechism, at its simplest, is structured oral instruction in the basics of the faith, usually arranged as questions and answers to aid memory. It was never meant to replace Scripture. It was a tool for teaching Scripture systematically, so that a new believer would not be left to piece together the faith haphazardly.

That oral, question and answer shape was practical in a world where most people could not read and books were scarce and costly. A truth set to a memorable question and answer could be carried in the heart for life, recited, pondered, and passed on.

Why the Early Church Catechisms Were Needed

The early church catechisms arose from a real pastoral pressure. The gospel was spreading into a pagan world, and converts were coming out of backgrounds steeped in idolatry, immorality and superstition. A man might profess faith in Jesus on Tuesday while carrying a lifetime of confused ideas about the gods, the body, the afterlife and how to live. He needed teaching, and a lot of it.

So the church developed a period of instruction, often lasting many months and in some places up to three years, during which a convert, called a catechumen, was grounded in the faith before being baptised. They were taught who God is, what Jesus accomplished, how to read the Scriptures, how to pray, and how a Christian is to live. Only when they had been thoroughly instructed and their lives showed genuine change were they baptised, usually at Easter, and welcomed to the Lord’s Table.

This was not bureaucratic delay. It reflected a conviction that becoming a Christian meant entering a whole new world of belief and behaviour, and that no one should be rushed in half taught. The early church catechisms were the means of making sure converts knew what they were committing to.

The Biblical Roots of the Practice

Some will worry that this all sounds rather post biblical, an accretion of later centuries. But the impulse is plainly there in the New Testament itself. The Great Commission does not stop at making converts. Jesus commands His people to make disciples, baptising them and ‘teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.’ Teaching is built into the commission.

The very first church modelled it. Acts 2:42 says the new believers ‘devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.’ Teaching came first. Paul writes whole letters that move from doctrine to duty, instructing churches systematically in what to believe and then how to live. The pattern of grounding believers in sound doctrine runs right through the New Testament, which is why I argue elsewhere that doctrine genuinely matters.

So the early church catechisms were not an invention bolted on to the faith. They were a faithful application of the Lord’s own command to teach His people everything He had commanded.

What the Catechisms Contained

The content of the early instruction tended to cluster around a few pillars. New believers were taught the Apostles’ Creed or an early form of it, summarising the faith they were embracing. They learned the Lord’s Prayer, which shaped their praying. They were taught the Ten Commandments and the moral life that flowed from the gospel. And they were given a basic grasp of the great events of salvation, from creation and fall to the cross and resurrection and the hope to come.

This gave converts a framework. Rather than a scattered bag of impressions, they received an ordered understanding of God, of themselves, of sin, and of salvation. They could tell you what they believed and why, and they could spot teaching that contradicted it.

That last point was no small thing. A believer well grounded in the basics is far harder to deceive, which is exactly why the early church invested so heavily in instruction before baptism rather than after.

Why This Still Matters for Us

I am convinced the modern church has lost something here, and to our cost. We often run the early pattern in reverse. We press for a quick decision, baptise rapidly, and only afterwards, if at all, get round to teaching. The result is a great many professing believers who have never been grounded in the faith and who remain spiritually unstable for years.

Recovering the spirit of the early church catechisms does not mean importing a three year programme or reciting a medieval document. It means taking seriously the work of teaching new believers the basics before assuming they understand them. It means a church that disciples rather than recruits only, that grounds people in who God is, what the gospel is, and how to walk with Jesus.

Done well, this protects new Christians from the wolves, gives them roots that hold in the storm, and equips them to teach others in turn. The tool can look modern or ancient. The principle is timeless, and it came straight from the Lord’s command to teach.

What Recovery Might Look Like Today

What might it look like to recover the wisdom of the early church catechisms without simply playing at being ancient? It need not be elaborate. A simple, agreed set of questions and answers covering the gospel, the person of Jesus, the Scriptures and the Christian life, worked through with every new believer before or soon after baptism, would capture the heart of what the early church catechisms were always for.

Some churches do this through a membership class, others through one to one discipleship over coffee, others through a short printed booklet of questions. The format hardly matters. What matters is the conviction behind the early church catechisms, that no one should be left to assemble the faith by guesswork, and that a believer grounded well at the start is spared years of avoidable confusion later on.

I would love to see more of this in our own day. We have endless resources, books, apps, conferences, and yet many believers could not give a clear account of the gospel if you asked them on the spot. A modest, patient return to the instinct behind the early church catechisms would do more for the health of the church than most of the programmes we run.

Catechism Is Not the Enemy of the Bible

Let me address the suspicion head on, because I share the evangelical instinct that nothing must rival Scripture. A catechism is not a replacement for the Bible, and the moment it becomes one it has failed. The early church never set its instruction above the Scriptures. It used instruction to drive people into the Scriptures, to give them the categories to read their Bibles well.

Think of it the way you would think of a good map. A map is not the country, and no one mistakes it for the country, but a map helps you find your way through territory you would otherwise get lost in. Sound catechism is a map to the Scriptures, never a substitute for travelling the land yourself.

Used that way, structured teaching is a servant of the word, not a competitor to it. The early church understood this, and so should we, especially in an age where so many believers can quote a worship lyric far more readily than they can explain the gospel.

So, now what?

So the early church used catechisms because it took the Lord’s command to teach seriously, because converts out of paganism needed grounding before baptism, and because well taught believers are stable, faithful and hard to deceive. The practice grew straight out of the New Testament’s own pattern of doctrine before duty and teaching before assumption.

You do not need to be a church historian to apply this. If you disciple anyone, a new believer, your own children, a friend just coming to faith, ask whether you are grounding them in the basics or simply hoping they pick it up. And if you have never been taught the faith systematically yourself, it is not too late to start. Why not learn to give a clear account of what you believe, the way those early Christians once did? You can begin by working through how to tell sound teaching from false teaching.

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Acts 2:42 (ESV)