Owen’s Two Catechisms

When political unrest drove John Owen to a small English village, he began ministering at the local church. Today, Stephen Nichols tells us about the two catechisms that Owen wrote to serve Christians of all ages in his congregation.

Welcome back to another episode of 5 Minutes in Church History. John Owen wrote two catechisms in 1645 while he was minister at Fordham and Essex. Owen was only three years ministering in Fordham, but let’s think about these years. It was the 1640s, and it was the time of the English Civil War. Parliament versus the king. It was a time actually of houses divided, brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor. And in 1642, John Owen was pitted against his employer. Owen strongly supported parliament, and he was at that time of the outbreak of the English Civil War employed as a private chaplain to Lord Loveless who supported the king. So Owen ended up no longer employed as a private chaplain and made his way to Fordham.

Fordham was about 65 miles north and west of London, right in the middle of Puritan country. It’s just a small village. The population today is under a thousand people. It’s charming, and the church is charming. It dates back to 1087. In 1618, a strange occurrence happened in that church. The parishioners broke into the church and stole the pulpit as a protest against the preaching of the then minister, Robert Cotton. Well, I’m sure there’s a great story there, and maybe someday we will track it down, but back to Owen. Owen arrived there in 1643 and when he got there, he preached the Bible and then he decided to write a catechism. In his dedicatory letter, he addresses the catechism, “To my loving neighbors and Christian friends.” He continues, “You know, Brethren, how I have been among you and in what manner for these few years past, and I have kept nothing back to the utmost dispensation that was committed to me that was profitable to you, but I have showed you and taught you publicly and from house to house testifying to all for repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ.” He goes on to say, “Now among my endeavors in this kind, after the ordinance of public preaching of the word, there is not, I conceive, any more needful thing than catechizing,” and so he says, “This caused me to spend many hours to write and print and get published this catechism.” And so he’s presenting it to his church. He says, “I’ve written a lesser catechism,” and we’ll get to that one in a moment. It’s only 25 sets of questions and answers. And he wrote it so that the youngest sort could learn it, so it was short for their sake. And he wrote what he called the greater catechism, which takes each of those 25 question and answer sets and expands them sometimes with four or five, sometimes with eight to 10 questions for each one, and adds Scripture proofs. Well, that catechism is for the parents.

And so he wants the parents to be educated in the greater catechism. He mentions that he included Scripture texts and what we call Scripture proofs for that greater catechism. In fact, he says, “The texts of Scripture quoted are diligently to be sought out and pondered that you may know indeed whether these things are so.” And then the parents being educated in that greater catechism can then teach the lesser catechism to their kids and they can memorize it. One more line from Owen, from his dedicatory letter. He writes, “The pains of writing this have been mine, and so I pray that all the benefit may be yours and all of the praise be His.” Owen also tells us that this catechism was focused on what he thought was the most important thing for them to know, the doctrine of the person and work of Christ. And so that’s what over half of the catechism is about.

At one point he references how we are fallen and in a miserable state. And he says, “By what may we be delivered from this miserable estate?” And the answer, “Only by Jesus Christ.” And then he asks, “Who is Jesus Christ?” And the answer, “God and man, united in one person to be a mediator between God and man.” And he says, “What is he unto us?” And the answer, “A king, a priest and a prophet.” Well, that’s John Owen and his two catechisms from the time of the English Civil War. And I’m Steve Nichols, and thanks for joining us for 5 Minutes in Church History.