Alex Fogleman
Knowing God in Patristic Catechesis

Rowan Williams has famously written that theology as a discipline is “perennially liable to be seduced by the prospect of bypassing the question of how it learns its own language.” My hope is that this project offers a picture of early Christian catechesis that helps us remember, quite literally, how early Christian theology learned its own language. What it means to know God is inseparable from the ways in which such knowledge is experienced; medium and message are tightly linked. In studying early Christian catechesis, we observe how knowing God belongs within a set of ecclesial practices in which the meaning of knowledge and faith are found in – and founded upon – Jesus Christ. Advancing from faith to understanding, from belief in God to the knowledge of eternal wisdom, begins and ends with Christ.

Knowing God in Patristic Catechesis
Book Excerpt
Alex Fogleman
Catechized by a Peculiar People

David Lyle Jeffrey on his baptism in the Scottish Baptist Church in rural Canada: “A feature of baptism in our tradition that I continue to value is that it makes you think about the meaning of it quite a lot, both before and after the experience. One of the questions that friends would ask me is, “Do you feel any different?” My Catholic friends especially, since they had the luxury of having just a few drops on their heads when they were too young to remember, wanted to know. Actually, I did feel different, though not perhaps in quite the way they may have expected. It wasn’t euphoric. Rather, I felt as though I had entered into the community of grownups in some way.”

Catechized by a Peculiar People
Alex Fogleman
Catechesis and Trinity, Part III: Living the ...

Nicholas Norman-Krause on the Trinity and the Moral Life: “Moral life is not, first and foremost, obedience to a moral law instituted by a distant Lawgiver, but participation in the Triune life by means of deification and sanctification. Law certainly has its place within this Trinitarian moral vision. But, as we will see, law hangs together with other crucial moral concepts within a broader vision of Christian discipleship, of drawing near to the Father, through the Son, by the Holy Spirit.”

Catechesis and Trinity, Part III: Living the Trinity
Alex Fogleman
Catechesis and the Trinity, Part II: Praying ...

Nicholas Norman-Krause on the Trinity and Prayer: “the Lord’s Prayer is only fully intelligible when understood within a larger Trinitarian account of our participation in the divine life. By the Holy Spirit, we are united to Christ, adopted into his sonship, and so enabled to address his Father as ours. And thus, to pray the Lord’s Prayer is to come to participate in the Triune life of God. For this reason, reflection on the Trinity properly belongs to the catechesis of prayer in general, and to the study of the Lord’s Prayer in particular.”

Catechesis and the Trinity, Part II: Praying the Trinity
Alex Fogleman
Catechesis and Trinity, Part I: Speaking the ...

Nicholas Norman-Krause on learning the language of the Trinity: “The doctrine of the Trinity be approached in catechesis not so much as a metaphysical riddle to be solved but as a grammar of speech to be learned. As a kind of grammatical formation, catechesis in the Trinity seeks to bring clarity and coherence to the way Christians worship, pray, proclaim the gospel, and read Scripture. These I take to be some of the primary activities of Christian life, as well as some of the primary ways Christians come to know God. They are also fundamentally linguistic activities, modes of speaking and listening to and with God. Trinitarian catechesis succeeds when it is able to form persons such that their speaking and hearing are sufficiently cultivated so as to know God in these primary Christian activities.”

Catechesis and Trinity, Part I: Speaking the Trinity

apologetics

Barking Against the Truth: Augustine as Catechumen

Barking Against the Truth: Augustine as Catechumen

How Ambrose helped Augustine find it harder to disbelieve Christianity:

This ability to “make it harder to disbelieve” is an important catechetical task. Yes, the catechist aims to build up and edify new believers. The catechist explains and initiates others into the basic elements of doctrine, spirituality, and ethics. And yet the catechist does this work without presuming that everyone is “already there.” In a catechetical context, there will be many who, like Augustine the catechumen, are not quite convinced of the Christian faith, even if they no longer hold to any of the alternatives. Creating an atmosphere in which the truth of the Christian faith can be “recognized” by these kinds of people is an important function of catechesis, one that catechists would do well to cultivate.

Proclaiming Christ to All the Nations, Including our Own

Proclaiming Christ to All the Nations, Including our Own

For Christians, Bediako claims, all religions (as traditions of response) are ultimately responding to the presence of the Holy Spirit, which is active in each religion to varying degrees. The question that the apologist or missionary might ask, then, is: What are the aspects of this particular matrix that point toward or away from Christ? More theologically: Where is the Holy Spirit already active in this religion, either leading people toward Christ or being prevented from doing so? Their task next is to “demonstrate how the Scriptural witness to the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, illuminated by the Holy Spirit, is the clue to the yearnings and quests in the religious lives of people.”