In recent times liberal German theologians, pastors, and teachers have
endeavored to dislodge Luther's Small Catechism from its position in
church, school, and home. As a rule, these attacks were made in the name
of pedagogy; the real cause, however, were their liberal dogmatical
views. The form was mentioned and assailed, but the contents were meant.
As a sample of this hostility we quote the pedagog, philologian, and
historian Dr. Ludwig Gurlitt (_Die Zukunft,_ Vol. 17, No. 6, p.222): "At
the beginning of the sixteenth century," he says, "a monk eloped from a
cloister and wrote a religious book of instruction for the German
children. At the time it was a bold innovation, the delight of all
freethinkers and men of progress, of all who desired to serve the
future. This book, which will soon celebrate its five-[four-]hundredth
anniversary, is still the chief book of instruction for German children.
True, its contents already are so antiquated that parents reject almost
every sentence of it for themselves; true, the man of today understands
its language only with difficulty--what of it, the children must gulp
down the moldy, musty food. How we would scoff and jeer if a similar
report were made about the school system of China! To this Lutheran
Catechism, which I would best like to see in state libraries only, are
added many antiquated hymns of mystical turgidity, which a simple youth,
even with the best will does not know how to use. All outlived! Faith in
the Bible owes its existence only to the tough power and law of inertia.
It is purely mechanical thinking and speaking which the schoolmaster
preaches to them and pounds into them. We continue thus because we are
too indolent to fight, or because we fear an enlightened people."
The best refutation of such and similar aspersions is a reference to the
enormous circulation which Luther's Small Catechism has enjoyed, to its
countless editions, translations, elaborations, and its universal use in
church, school, and home for four centuries. Thirty-seven years after
the publication of Luther's Catechisms, Mathesius wrote: "Praise God it
is said that in our times over one hundred thousand copies have been
printed and used in great numbers in all kinds of languages in foreign
lands and in all Latin and German schools." And since then, down to the
present day, millions and millions of hands have been stretched forth to
receive Luther's catechetical classic. While during the last four
centuries hundreds of catechisms have gone under, Luther's Enchiridion
is afloat to-day and is just as seaworthy as when it was first launched.
A person, however, endowed with an average measure of common sense will
hardly be able to believe that the entire Lutheran Church has, for four
centuries, been so stupid as would have been the case if men of Dr.
Gurlitt's stripe had spoken only half the truth in their criticisms.
Moreover, the number of detractors disappears in the great host of
friends who down to the present day have not tired of praising the
Catechisms, especially the Enchiridion. They admire its artistic and
perfect form; its harmonious grouping, as of the petals of a flower, the
melody and rhythm of its language, notably in the explanation of the
Second Article, its clarity, perspicuity, and popularity; its
simplicity, coupled with depth and richness of thought; the absence of
polemics and of theological terminology, etc. However, with all this and
many other things which have been and might be said in praise of the
Catechism, the feature which made it what it truly was, a Great Deed of
the Reformation, has not as yet been pointed out. Luther Paulinized,
Evangelicalized, the Catechism by properly setting forth in his
explanations the _finis historiae,_ the blessed meaning of the great
deeds of God, the doctrine of justificaiton. Indeed, also Luther's
Catechism is, in more than one way, conditioned by its times, but in its
kernel, in its doctrine, it contains, as Albrecht puts it, "timeless,
never-aging material. For in it pulsates the heartbeat of the primitive
Christian faith, as witnessed by the apostles, and experienced anew by
the Reformer." (648.) This, too, is the reason why Luther's Enchiridion
is, indeed, as G. v. Zezschwitz remarks, "a booklet which a theologian
never finishes learning, and a Christian never finishes living."