According to His long-term providence, God always uses heresy and false teaching to doctrinally sharpen His church. Don’t get me wrong. Heresy and false teaching are always bad news, and we should by no means take joy or delight in them. However, when we are forced to face them (which will prove to be inevitable in this life), we should take comfort that if we hold fast to Christ and His Scriptures we will be sharpened and refined through the challenge.

That was the case with the New Testament era of the church. Since the church began in Jerusalem, it began as a pointedly Jewish movement. Soon, however, the gospel began to go into the all nations, just as Christ commanded. And although Paul always made a point of preaching first in whatever synagogues he found, he usually went on to find much better reception with the Gentiles. Thus, it was natural that one of the first major questions facing the church would be regarding its relationship to Judaism. Particularly, where Gentile Christians required to be circumcised and practice other Jewish rites like the dietary restrictions? The Apostles’ answer was unanimous and very clear: no, “for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6).

In the following centuries, the church faced a number of Christological threats, the most well-known being Arianism in the early 300s. Arius was an elder in Alexandria who argued that Jesus was the first and supreme created being but He was not God. The bishop of Alexandria, Alexander, maintained that Jesus was truly God, and the theological rift between Arius and Alexander soon spread throughout the Eastern Roman Empire. To resolve this debate, Emperor Constantine summoned bishops from across the empire to gather at Nicaea and settle the matter. That counsel wrote the Nicene Creed, and although Arianism did not vanish entirely (indeed, it is still with us today via Jehovah’s Witnesses), the deity of Christ, which most Christians had always believed by assumption, was given greater clarification. The Athanasian Creed would go on to clarify explicit belief in the Trinity, and the Chalcedonian Definition would clarify the hypostatic union of Christ.

During the time of the Reformation, salvation and worship were the theological battlegrounds. Things were irrevocably set in motion when Luther posted his 95 Theses, issuing a challenge for a theological debate, particularly over the selling of indulgences. For Luther, the struggle was for the scriptural reality that our salvation is through faith in Christ alone. The Reformers rooted their arguments in Scripture and expressed that glorifying God ought to be every Christian’s ultimate goal. We, therefore, rightly associate the Reformation with the five solas: Scripture alone, faith alone, grace alone, Christ alone, and God’s glory alone. Clarity again followed. Calvin wrote the Institutes of the Christian Religion to make instruction on the basic doctrines of the faith accessible to everyone, and while the Institutes are still very much worth the time it takes to read them, the confessions that we produced in the following hundred or so years better achieved his goal. Of course, Calvin and most of the other Reformers also wrote catechisms. Calvin went so far as to say in one of his letters:

Believe me, Monseigneur, the Church of God will never preserve itself without a Catechism, for it is like the seed to keep the good grain from dying out, and causing it to multiply from age to age.

Letters and Tracts Vol V, 191

To be honest, I think that is a slight overstatement, since Christ will ensure the preservation of His Church; however, I do agree that catechisms can play a significant role in maintaining doctrinal fidelity in the church.

Of course, you may be wondering what exactly is a catechism, and since we are studying through a catechism, that would be a helpful matter to define. Gordon gives good summary:

Creeds and confessions were originally written to provide summary truths of the Christian faith in the face of great theological error. Catechisms in particular provided short, concise summary statements, in question-and-answer format, on some particular doctrine of the Christian faith. These documents are intended to help Christians, especially children and those new to the faith, to have their minds trained in what Scripture teaches on a given point of Christian doctrine.

p. 7

Interestingly, the origin of creeds and catechisms appears to be one and the same. Ben Myers gives a wonderful description how the Apostles’ Creed was originally as baptismal catechism:

On the eve of Easter Sunday, a group of believers has stayed up all night in a vigil of prayer, scriptural reading, and instruction. The most important moment of their lives is fast approaching. For years they have been preparing for this day.

When the rooster crows at dawn, they are led out to a pool of flowing water. They remove their clothes. The women let down their hair and remove their jewelry. They renounce Satan and are anointed from head to foot with oil. They are led naked into the water. Then they are asked a question: “Do you believe in God the Father Almighty?” They reply, “I believe!” And they are plunged down in the water and raised up again.

They are asked a second question: “Do you believe in Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was born of the Holy Spirit and Mary the virgin and was crucified under Pontius Pilate and was dead and buried and rose on the third day from the dead and ascended in the heavens and sits at the right hand of the Father and will come to judge the living and the dead?” Again they confess, “I believe!” And again they are immersed in the water.

Then a third question: “Do you believe in the Holy Spirit and the holy church and the resurrection of the flesh?” A third time they cry, “I believe!” And a third time they are immersed. When they emerge from the water they are again anointed with oil. They are clothed, blessed, and led into the assembly of believers, where they will share for the first time in the eucharistic meal. Finally they are sent out into the world to do good works and to grow in faith.

That is how baptism is described in an early third-century document known as the Apostolic Tradition. It points to the ancient roots of the Apostles’ Creed. The creed comes from baptism. It is a pledge of allegiance to the God of the gospel–a God who is revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; a God who is present to us in the real world of human flesh, creating, redeeming, and sanctifying us for good works.

Apostles’ Creed, 1-2

It is also important to note that the confession of the Apostles’ Creed at one’s baptism was not meaningless ritual. The time that catechumens (which is what those preparing for baptism where called) spent preparing for their baptism revolved around studying the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. Through these three texts, the catechumens were catechized into the basics of the Christian faith. Through the Creed, they were instructed in the essential doctrines that a Christian must confess. Through the Prayer, they were taught how and what a Christian should pray. Through the Commandments, they were discipled in how God expects for a Christian to live and given a sure guide for confessing and warring against sin.

Although the Reformation saw the great return to the practice of catechizing, even here the Reformers were attempting nothing new but were attempting to correct errors that had settled within the church throughout the Middle Ages. Against the Catholic Church, the Reformers actively pursued the theological instruction of every Christian, which led them back to catechisms. Although the Reformers wrote fresh catechisms for their own day, they almost always continued to order them around the Creed, the Prayer, and the Commandments.

I do not believe it coincidental that the two of the most theologically robust periods in church history were also times when catechisms were most widely used and valued. I also do not believe it is simply a minor encouragement that catechisms are gradually being returned to once more.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that we are in the midst of another theological crisis. The New Testament church wrestled for salvation by grace alone. The early church wrestled for the Trinity and the divinity of Christ. The Reformation church wrestled for Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide. The Twentieth Century church wrestled for biblical inerrancy. And it seems that the battleground of the Twenty-first Century is for biblical anthropology. What is a women? is not trite or comical; rather, it is one of the many warnings signs that our secular, post-Christian culture is in the middle of a turbulent existential crisis. What does it mean to be human? is the great question and challenge before us today. Are we our own gods, or are we just chimps that hit the genetic jackpot?

While there are many sides and aspects to this crisis, two are most prominent. One is the advent of the Internet and now artificial intelligence. Historically, tools and technology have always greatly shaped the people who adopted them, and these are perhaps the mightiest tools yet so we shouldn’t underestimate their impact upon us. For instance, A.I. is presenting a direct challenge to the modern conception of education that emphasizes the supreme importance of information acquisition. If information and efficiency are most important, then setting kids in front of iPads has proven to be at least three times more efficient than other forms of teaching. However, isn’t there something unshakably artificial about that way of developing intelligence? If we are made in the image of God, shouldn’t we value what God values? If so, how valuable does God find our perception of efficiency? Call me crazy, but I think we will soon discover that how children learn is just as important as what they learn. The medium is, indeed, the message.

The other anthropological battleground is sexuality, which, of course, is the focus of our present study. The attempts to redefine sex and marriage are nothing less than calling good evil and evil good. Sadly, many Christians didn’t realize how slippery the slope really was whenever they began to bend their convictions on matters like premarital sex and divorce. As we have seen from church history, we should hope to grow in doctrinal clarity through the present challenge. The catechism that we will be studying is, I believe, a great step in that direction.

We should note that this catechism was written by one man to address one topic. Gordon himself notes that this booklet should be received as the resource that it is, not as an official ecclesiastical document. For us, the 1689 London Confession of Faith and the Baptist Faith and Message would be examples of such ecclesiastical documents. Although they too are under the authority of Scripture, they were produced by numerous pastors and theologians for benefit of many congregations and have been widely received by many congregations. The New Reformation Catechism on Human Sexuality is not such a document. Thus, as we study through its questions, we are not biding ourselves to the answers given; rather, we are using Gordon’s work as a springboard into clarifying what the Bible has to say to us about the topics presented. But we are studying through this catechism because I do believe it is a worthwhile resource to use.

Gordon rightly notes in his preface that:

The culture is daily catechizing us and our children in the ideas they want impressed upon minds. It has been to our own demise that Christians have not taken seriously enough the call to combat this vicious assault on our faith through catechizing God’s people in his truth. The great need of the moment is a robust recovery in training Christians in the truths of what we confess.

pp. 7-8

I once had a youth pastor tell me that he intended to raise his future children as freethinkers without being indoctrinated. That is a recipe for disaster. Doctrine simply means teaching, so to indoctrinate children is to teach them. It cannot be avoided. If you do not indoctrinate or catechize your children, they will be indoctrinated and catechized by the culture around them, probably through their friends and screens.

Much of our cultural catechizing happens through the stories that our souls are fed with. In instance, almost all of us have been catechized into trusting our desires because of the Disney stories that were so foundational to our childhoods. That shouldn’t surprise us. The Greek’s used to Homer to teach children to read because its stories were also catechizing them into the values of Greek society. The Romans did the same with Virgil. We should make a great effort to shape our children’s hearts through the stories in Scripture and of our brothers and sisters throughout church history. 1 Clement is an interesting example of this. Clement was the bishop of Rome and was very likely Roman. He was writing to Corinth, a city a Greece. In this epistle, Clement did not draw upon examples from Homer or Virgil or from their cultures’ largely shared mythologies. Instead, his letter is filled with New Testament citations and Old Testament examples. As Christians, the Scriptures had become their shared culture.

As I have been arguing, I also think that formal catechisms are invaluable resources for this process. Although my eldest daughter is only six, I was given a glimpse of their benefit a couple of months ago. My daughter and I came to a difficult verse in the Bible (I’ve forgotten the exact one), and I asked her how that could be true. She answered simply that it couldn’t be true.

I asked, “Are you sure?”

“Men wrote the Bible, and men can be wrong,” she said.

I just looked at her for a moment, while she kept thinking.

Then she retraced one of her catechism questions: “But the Bible was written by men chosen by God and inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God, so He can’t be wrong.”

“That’s right,” I said, “men can certainly be wrong, but the Holy Spirit inspired the men who wrote the Bible. So nothing in the Bible can be wrong. Let’s keep trying to figure out what this verse means.”

As Psalm 119:11 alludes to, memorization almost inevitably leads to character formation. What we intentionally place within our minds will eventually work its way into our hearts and our words and deeds. Therefore, if you want to grow more in the faith, start memorizing a catechism. If you are a parent, catechizing your children just may be the greatest gift you ever give them. For a brief guide to which catechism to use generally, see this post.

As for using this catechism, my hope is that through studying these questions we will ground ourselves ever deeper into Scripture to shape our view of all matters relating to human sexuality. I also hope that this catechism will help prepare us for future conversations over these topics, whether with a family member, friend, neighbor, or coworker, that we would better know what we believe and why. I hope that this study will particularly serve parents. For those parenting young adults, working through this catechism together could be a less awkward way of talking about these things. For we who are parenting young children, I pray that this study will serve to prepare us now for later conversations.