WorkMartin Luther

The Large Catechism

Luther tells pastors too proud to teach the basics of the faith that he, a doctor of theology, still recites them every morning.

by Martin Luther278 passages held

German, the original language

Original title: Der Große Katechismus
First published: 1529(aged 46)
Original language: German

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Overview

Many pastors, Luther complains in this book's longer preface, despise the catechism: some because they are too learned for it, others from plain laziness, and having read it once they throw it in a corner. Some of the nobility say pastors are no longer needed at all, since everything is in books. Luther answers with himself. He is a doctor and a preacher as learned as any of them, he writes, yet every morning he recites the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments and the Creed word for word like a child, and he means to remain a pupil of the catechism. The book grew out of preaching. In 1528 Luther took over the teaching of the catechism in the parish church at Wittenberg and preached three series of about ten sermons each, in May, September and December, and that winter he took part in the visitation of the parishes of electoral Saxony, where he saw how little ordinary Christians and their pastors knew. He finished the book in March 1529, and it was printed in mid-April under the title German Catechism. It goes through the five chief parts every Christian must know — the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, baptism and the Lord's Supper — at sermon length, for pastors to preach from and fathers to teach from. On the first commandment Luther stops to ask what a god is. To have one, he says, is to trust in something with the whole heart and to look to it for every good thing, so that whatever a heart relies on is in fact its god; for many people that god is money. A second edition later in 1529 added a short exhortation to confession. In 1580 the book was included in the Book of Concord, the collection of Lutheran confessional writings.

Key concepts

What is a 'god', according to the Large Catechism?

A god is whatever a person looks to for every good thing and runs to in every need. Having a god means trusting and believing in something with the whole heart, so the test is where trust actually rests, not what is professed. Luther's everyday example is the person who feels secure because he has money and property: that money has become his god.

Why does Luther count overcharging and slacking as theft?

Because stealing, in his reading, means getting hold of another's goods unjustly by any means. That reaches the market, the shops, the cellars and the workshops: a servant who lets the household's goods go to ruin and a craftsman or day labourer who overcharges and works carelessly are thieves who do not want to be called so. Luther adds that the biggest robbers are protected by the powerful while small ones hang.

What does the eighth commandment forbid besides lying in court?

Every use of the tongue that harms a neighbour. False witness, Luther says, is a work of the mouth, so slander, gossip and spreading a person's faults all fall under it. Even a true fault is not public property: it should be rebuked privately, as Christ instructs, and taken further only to those with authority to correct it, never into general talk.

What makes baptism more than plain water?

God's word joined to the water. Luther insists that baptism is not mere water but water set in God's command and name, and that the word is what gives it its power. Separate the word from it and it is no different from any other water. With the word it is, in his phrase, a divine water.

Why is prayer a duty and not just a feeling?

Because God commands it, in the second commandment, just as he commands honouring parents. Luther wants people to stop asking whether they feel worthy or devout enough. A prayer offered because God told us to pray counts with him, however poor the person praying; one that waits for the right mood may never be said at all.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Whatever the Heart Relies On

What does a person actually worship, whatever they profess? The Large Catechism reads the Ten Commandments as a map of where people put their trust and how they treat their neighbours.

Luther asks what a god is and answers with trust: whatever a heart clings to and relies on is, in truth, its god. For many that god is money, the commonest idol on earth. The other commandments are read just as concretely. Theft covers the market, the shops and the workshops, and while small thieves hang, great thieves in league with princes rob all Germany. False witness covers every sin of the tongue, so a neighbour's real fault is to be raised privately, not spread.

faith
trust
divine command
providence
divine providence
property
religion
justice
speech ethics
religious ethics
commandments
authority

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A Pupil of the Catechism

Can anyone ever finish learning the basics of faith? Luther writes for pastors who think they have, and for households that have never begun.

A doctor and preacher as learned as anyone, Luther says he still recites the Commandments, the Creed and the Lord's Prayer each morning like a child, and means to stay a pupil. Pastors who read the catechism once and throw it in a corner are, to him, lazy and proud. The second half treats prayer as a command rather than a mood, separates feeling a temptation from consenting to it, and locates the power of baptism and confession in God's word, not in water or in the penitent's own effort.

religious education
prayer
scripture
religious practice
temptation
baptism
sacraments
forgiveness
eucharist
grace
sin
church

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Within this work

passages held: 278
distinct concepts: 324
by passages held, corpus-wide: #268

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “baptism” and “faith”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 22 pairings. 88 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
baptism	faith	13
faith	sacraments	13
baptism	sacraments	12
faith	prayer	12
forgiveness	sacraments	8
religious education	scripture	7
faith	forgiveness	6
obedience	prayer	4
faith	obedience	3
faith	religious education	3
faith	scripture	3
forgiveness	prayer	3
prayer	scripture	3
sacraments	scripture	3
baptism	scripture	2
religious education	sacraments	2
baptism	forgiveness	1
baptism	religious education	1
obedience	religious education	1
obedience	sacraments	1
obedience	scripture	1
prayer	sacraments	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1517 Ninety-five Theses (Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum)
Where the quarrel began: an academic exercise in Latin, followed within months by the German sermon that carried its argument to lay readers.
LA
1518 Sermon on Indulgences and Grace (Ein Sermon von Ablaß und Gnade)
The German companion to the Latin Ninety-five Theses: the same quarrel over indulgences, taken out of the lecture hall and put to lay readers a few months later.
DE
1520 A Treatise on Good Works (Von den guten Werken)
Published in the spring of 1520 just ahead of the three manifestos of that year, it lays out in plain German the teaching on faith and works that they take for granted.
DE
1520 Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation von des christlichen Standes Besserung)
The first of the three books of 1520 that made the break with Rome public; The Babylonian Captivity of the Church followed in October and The Freedom of a Christian in November.
DE
1520 The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae praeludium)
Of Luther's three treatises of 1520, the one written in Latin for the learned: the appeal to the nobility before it was in German, and The Freedom of a Christian, after it, appeared in both languages.
DE
1520 The Freedom of a Christian (Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen)
Meant as a peace offering to the pope, the third of Luther's treatises of 1520 turns from the institutions of the church to the life of a single believer.
DE
1522 A Sincere Admonition by Martin Luther to All Christians to Guard Against Insurrection and Rebellion (Eine treue Vermahnung zu allen Christen, sich zu hüten vor Aufruhr und Empörung)
Written in hiding between the Diet of Worms and Luther's return to Wittenberg, in the same winter that he began translating the New Testament into German.
DE
1522 Preface to the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans (Vorrede auf die Epistel S. Paul an die Römer)
A companion to The Freedom of a Christian: the same teaching on faith and works, given this time as a way into the book of the Bible it came from.
DE
1523 Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed (Von weltlicher Obrigkeit, wie weit man ihr Gehorsam schuldig sei)
A sequel that corrects its predecessor: three years after asking princes to reform the church, Luther marks the line beyond which their power over Christians stops.
DE
1529 The Large Catechism (Der Große Katechismus) you are here DE
1529 The Small Catechism (Kleiner Katechismus)
Published a month after the Large Catechism, it gives the household the words to learn by heart, where the larger book explains them to the preacher.
DE
1530 An Open Letter on Translating (Ein Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen)
Eight years after the September Testament, and four before the complete German Bible, Luther explains how the translation was made and why he would not undo it.
DE

— or open another of their works