Why We Need A New Reformation Catechism On Human Sexuality

The historic creeds and confessions of Protestant churches have served to preserve Christians in the truth of the gospel for centuries. We are deeply indebted to those who took the time to formulate, with great accuracy and clarity, the precious truths of our faith. We are faced with a unique challenge in our times, however, with regard to new movements that are harming the integrity of what we believe.

Of particular interest is how the current sexual revolution has completely overturned what God established at creation as good. This is a unique challenge that has been answered by many helpful writers on the topic. The problem is that not enough Christians are taking the time to read current books that address this issue. Further, few resources are available that are intended to bring families, study groups, and churchgoers together around confessional-like statements that address the challenges of our day.

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. To this day, catechizing is one of the most effective method of preserving Christians from error.

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. Read more»

Chris Gordon | Do We Need a New Catechism And Why Should One Be Written? | May 21, 2022

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2 comments

  1. We face a conundrum. It would be desirable to have a catechism such as this. The problem is that non-ecclesiastical documents such as this do not carry the weight of ecclesiastical documents. So how could an ecclesiastical document be formed even within the Reformed community? I don’t even see how it could happen even within a subset of the Reformed community such as the PCA. The PCA has formed a study committee on human sexuality which produced a “report” but it is far from a confession or a catechism. But it is clear that there is very little consensus in the PCA about what the Bible teaches about human sexuality. I think the best we can do is the original Reformed confessions and catechisms.

    • Bob,

      In his catechism on sexuality, Chris is drawing out of the Heidelberg and applying to the specific question before us what is already there latent in the catechism. I’m in favor of new Reformed, ecclesiastical confessions and catechisms and I’ve made that argument in Recovering and in the pages of Modern Reformation but, in this case, I’m not sure that we need a new eccclesiastical document (perhaps we do) but we need to learn to use what we have, which is what Chris has done for us.

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