Engaging the Heidelberg Catechism
From The Forum Magazine, Winter 2013 - view the full issue here
On January 19, 2013, the Heidelberg Catechism celebrated a milestone birthday— its 450th! This was the day in 1563 that a synod in Heidelberg adopted the catechism for use in the German state of the Palatinate. Shortly after it appeared, Heinrich Bullinger, a leading Protestant reformer, called it “the best catechism ever published,” and within sixty years, it had been translated from its original German and Latin into Dutch, English, Hungarian, French, Greek, Romansch, Czech, and Spanish. Today it can be found in many African and Asian languages as well, and it is still one of the most widely used and deeply loved statements of the Christian faith in global Reformed Protestantism. Especially admired are its famous opening lines: “What is your only comfort in life and in death? That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.”
Why has the Heidelberg Catechism (HC) had such staying power? After all, its main author, Zacharias Ursinus, was only twenty-eight years old and in his first year of teaching theology at the university. Furthermore, he composed the catechism not for the worldwide church but for the congregations and schools of one small territory in Germany. And the HC was just one of hundreds of catechisms produced during the Protestant Reformation. What was it about this one that made it stand out and survive for so long? There are many answers to that question, but we will concentrate here on two: the biblical grounding and the practical focus of the HC.
Biblical Grounding
The HC is a document steeped in Scripture. Frederick III, the ruler who commissioned it, refers to it in the preface as “a catechism of our Christian religion out of the Word of God,” and later he would claim that “my own catechism is drawn word for word from divine, not human, sources.” These deep roots in Scripture can be seen in at least three ways. First, one of the things that strikes the reader immediately is the many biblical text references that support each question and answer. We sometimes refer to these as “proof texts,” but I would prefer to call them “source texts” or “text links.” They were not so much intended to “prove” a particular point in the catechism as to indicate some of the biblical sources on which the authors had reflected in their formulation of a particular doctrine. In addition, the references were intended to point to the places in biblical commentaries where a reader could find fuller discussions of these doctrines. In today’s terms, they were like links in an online text that would take you to another page with more information.
Second, the famous threefold structure of the HC follows a biblical pattern. To live and die in the joy of the comfort that Q&A 1 talks about, I must know three things: how great my sin and misery are, how I am set free from such sin and misery, and how I can live in gratitude to God for such deliverance (Q&A 2). Misery—Deliverance— Gratitude. Sin—Salvation—Service. These three subthemes form the major divisions of the catechism, and it has long been thought that this pattern was based on the structure of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Romans 1:1-3:20 establishes the universality of human sin; 3:21-11:36 treats salvation by grace through faith in Christ; and chapters 12-16 focus on the offering of ourselves as living sacrifices to God. The entire book is neatly summarized in Romans 7:24-25, which, slightly paraphrased, anticipates the language of the threefold division of the HC: “What a miserable man I am! Who will deliver me from the body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” The HC tracks very closely with the apostle Paul himself!
Third, the main contents of the HC are right off the pages of Scripture. Like all catechisms for a thousand years before the Reformation, the HC is essentially an explanation of the basic elements of Christianity: the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and the sacraments. The commandments, Lord’s Prayer, and institutions of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are, of course, parts of Scripture itself, and even the lines of the Apostles’ Creed are based directly on the biblical text. Since ancient times, the Christian community had considered it important to teach these key portions of the Bible to children, new Christians, and laypeople as a way of instilling in them the fundamentals of the Christian faith. And that is precisely what the HC does also, as it weaves these basic elements of Scripture into the threefold structure: we come to know our misery through the (summary of the) commandments (Q&A 3-11); we come to know our deliverance through the gospel as summarized in the creed and the sacraments (Q&A 12-85); and we learn ways to show our gratitude through the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer (Q&A 86-129). What we have in the HC, therefore, is biblical content within a biblical structure, resting on a biblical foundation.
Practical Focus
The HC is not only a profoundly biblical document but also a very practical one—in two senses in particular. First, it does not treat biblical doctrine abstractly but always relates it to the individual Christian or the Christian community. This is clear already in the opening question and answer, where Christ is presented not as an abstract theological concept but as a person to whom I belong, someone who is “my faithful Savior,” someone who “has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil.” All of this is part of the comfort of the gospel, addressed to people in great spiritual “dis-comfort” and in need of that good news.
This emphasis on the practical application of doctrine is found throughout the rest of the catechism as well: How does this teaching “help” us (Q&A 28)? How does it “benefit” us (Q&A 36, 43, 45, 49, 51)? How does it “comfort” us (Q&A 52, 57, 58)? What “good is it” to us (Q&A 59)? How does it “remind and assure” us (Q&A 69, 75)? This is not academic theology, but pastoral and relational theology, doctrine that is connected to people.
The HC is practical, secondly, in that it also highlights Christian practice—that is, how we as Christians can, may, or should respond to the biblical truths that are presented. This is most clearly seen, of course, in the third section of the catechism on gratitude, which teaches us how “in all our living we may show that we are thankful to God for all he has done for us” (Q&A 86). But this emphasis is also found earlier in the second section on deliverance. In Q&A 31, for example, the catechism explains that Jesus is also called Christ, or the anointed one, because he was ordained by the Father and anointed by the Holy Spirit to be our chief prophet, only high priest, and eternal king. Then the catechism goes on in the very next question to talk about our response to the threefold office of Christ. If Jesus is called Christ, “why are you called a Christian,” that is, a follower of Christ?
Because by faith I am a member of Christ and so I share in his anointing. I am anointed to confess his name [prophet], to present myself to him as a living sacrifice of thanks [priest], to strive with a good conscience against sin and the devil in this life [king], and afterward to reign with Christ over all creation for all eternity [king]. (Q&A 32)
Christ is anointed as prophet, priest, and king; we belong to Christ; therefore, we too are anointed to be prophets, priests, and kings. Here is Christian doctrine at its best— not just a summary of divine revelation but also a call to respond to that revelation in Christian living.
The HC is not, of course, without its limitations and flaws. It does not have a welldeveloped doctrine of the new creation, for example, or of the church as mission. And it contains a sharply polemical question and answer on the Roman Catholic mass (Q&A 80) that the Christian Reformed Church has judged to be an inaccurate representation of official Catholic teaching. But the HC’s remarkable shelf life is a testament to its resonance with the grand themes of Scripture and to its exquisite blend of doctrine and piety. Little wonder that the CRC has always recognized the HC as one of its confessions and has covenanted in its Church Order (Articles 54.b, 63.b) to employ the HC as a key tool in the preaching and teaching ministries of the church. We join Reformed and Presbyterian churches across the globe in wishing the HC a happy 450th!
(Lyle Bierma, Professor of Systematic Theology, Emeritus)
