What do Catechisms Teach?

My last article, What are Catechisms?, briefly described the purpose of using catechisms: to teach Christian doctrine in a way that’s easy to understand.

Some of the catechisms are obviously related, such as Martin Luther’s Small Catechism and Large Catechism (both 1529), and the Westminster Shorter Catechism and Larger Catechism (both 1647). Other catechisms may build on an existing catechism, such as the Baptist revision (1680) of the Heidelberg Catechism (1563). Much of A Puritan Catechism (1855) is the same as Westminster Shorter Catechism (1563), but A Puritan Catechism is shorter and uses more modern wording. In the case of the Baltimore Catechism, the Larger one was written in 1885, with 421 questions. Later, the Baltimore Shorter Catechism removed some of the questions, leaving a total of 208, but didn’t renumber the remaining ones.

I’ve decided to read through some catechisms and post articles about the answers given, but I haven’t decided how I will organize the articles yet. I’m not intending to exactly follow any particular catechism, but there are common themes:

• God
• People
• Sin
• Ten Commandments
• Christ
• Repentance
• Justification
• Prayer
• Lord’s Supper
• Baptism

The list below are the catechisms I’m intending to reference for this series: