The three questions on the Office of the Keys in the fifth chief part
form the most important and independent addition to Luther's Small
Catechism. However, they are not only in complete agreement with
Luther's doctrine of Absolution, but, in substance, also contained in
what he himself offered in the part Of Confession. For what Luther says
in paragraphs 26 to 28 in a liturgical form is expressed and explained
in the three questions on the Office of the Keys in a doctrinal and
catechetical form. Not being formulated by Luther, however, they were
not received into the Book of Concord. In the Nuernberg _Text-Booklet_
of 1531 they are placed before Baptism. Thence they were taken over into
the Nuernberg _Children's Sermons_ of 1533 as a substitute for Luther's
form of Confession. Andrew Osiander, in the draft of his Church Order of
1531, in the article on "Catechism and the Instruction of Children,"
added as sixth to the five chief parts: "Of the Keys of the Church, or
the Power to Bind and to Unbind from Sins," quoting as Bible-verse the
passage: "The Lord Jesus breathed on His disciples," etc. Brenz, though
not, as frequently assumed, the author of the Nuernberg Catechism, also
contributed toward introducing and popularizing this part of the
Catechism. In his Questions of 1535 and 1536, which appeared in the
Appendix to the Latin translation of Luther's Large Catechism, he
offered an original treatment to the Keys of Heaven, as the sixth chief
part, on the basis of Matt. 16, 19; Luke 19, 16; John 20, 22f.
Thirty-six years after the first publication of Luther's Catechisms,
Mathesius, in his _Sermons on the Life of Luther,_ also speaks of six
chief parts of catechetical instruction; but he enumerates Absolution as
the part between Baptism and the Lord's Supper, hence as the fifth chief
part of the Catechism.
As to the Christian Questions for Those Who Intend to Go to the
Sacrament, it was claimed very early that Luther was the author. They
were first published in 1549, and a number of separate impressions
followed. After 1558 they are usually found in the appendix to the Small
Catechism. The Note, "These questions and answers," etc., designating
Luther as the author, first appeared in an edition of 1551. Together
with this note, the Questions are found in an undated Wittenberg edition
of the Small Catechism, which appeared about 1560, containing pictures
dated 1551. Referring to this edition, the Wittenberg proof-reader,
Christopher Walther, in a polemical writing (1566) against Aurifaber,
asserted that the Questions were not written by Luther, but by John Lang
of Erfurt (+ 1548). The question at issue has not yet been decided. For
while the contents of the Questions reproduce, from beginning to end,
Luther's thoughts, and the last answers are almost literally taken from
the Large Catechism, we have no evidence that Luther compiled them; but,
on the other hand, also no convincing proof against this. Claus Harms
and Koellner asserted that Luther is the author of the Questions, while
Kliefoth and Loehe declared it as probable.--The Introduction to the Ten
Commandments, "I the Lord, thy God," and the Doxology, at the close of
the Lord's Prayer, were added after Luther's death.