Roots of Righteousness – 003

The Form of Sound Words

Catechetical Preaching is an honored tradition stretching back to the Apostolic era.  Paul exhorts Timothy to hold fast to the “form of sounds words” (2 Tim 1:13).  Hebrews 5:12 speaks of the “first principles of the oracles of God.”

The Puritan worthy, Thomas Watson, understands the value of this ministry method and expresses himself as follows:

To preach, and not to catechise, is to build without a foundation. This way of catechising is not novel, it is apostolical. The primitive church had their forms of catechism: so much those phrases imply, a ‘form of sound words,’ 2 Tim. 1:13. and ‘the first principles of the oracles of God,’ Heb. 5:12.; and since the church had their catechumenoi, as Grotius and Erasmus observe, many of the ancient fathers have written for it, Fulgentius, Austin, Theodoret, Lactantius, and others. God hath given great success to it. By this laying down of grounds of religion catechistically, Christians have been clearly instructed and wondrously built up in the Christian faith; insomuch, that Julian the apostate, seeing the great success of catechising, did put down all schools and places of public literature, and instructing of youth.   Watson, T. (1855). The Select Works of the Rev. Thomas Watson, Comprising His Celebrated Body of Divinity, in a Series of Lectures on the Shorter Catechism, and Various Sermons and Treatises (p. 8). Robert Carter & Brothers.

This study provides a sampling of catechetical works which have served the souls of God’s Sheep over the centuries.