Catechesis Institute Research

One aim of the Catechesis Institute is to contribute new research on the history, theology, and practice of catechesis. Here you will find links to select research books and articles from CI staff and fellows. This is not an exhaustive list, but only what pertains most directly to the work relevant to catechesis.

Knowledge, faith, and Early Christian Initiation (Cambridge University Press, 2023)

by Alex Fogleman

How did early Christians teach new believers to know God in catechesis? In this book by Catechesis Institute Director Alex Fogleman, the reader encounters a dynamic narrative of the early history of Christian catechesis, from the second to the fifth century in Italy and North Africa. Chapters are devoted to leading figures in the Western Patristic era—Tertullian, Irenaeus, Cyprian, Hippolytus, Ambrose, Augustine, as well as several others less well known—and charts a variety of theological “ways of knowing.” The books discusses not only the political and social aspects of the early church but also the modes of teaching and communication that helped establish Christian identity in this formative period.

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Sensing the Sacred: Recovering a Mystagogical Vision of Knowledge and Salvation (Cascade, 2023)

by Hanna J. Lucas

This book offers a theological vision of learning informed by the mystagogical homilies of Ambrose of Milan, Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom, and Theodore of Mopsuestia. In dialogue with these four patristic mystagogues, Hanna Lucas articulates a theological epistemology that sees knowledge as part of the “capacitation” of our nature for heavenly mysteries and union with God. This book offers a holistic and integrated theory of knowledge that envisions one all-encompassing divine pedagogy that orients all of life toward union with God. In contrast with the “incapacitations” of modern and postmodern epistemologies, Sensing the Sacred offers an integrative, unitive, and eschatologically oriented vision of knowledge.

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Catechized for Beatitude: Theology as Initiation and Apprenticeship (Catechesis Institute, 2023)

By Hans Boersma

In this thought provoking new book in the Catechist Handbooks series, leading theologian and Anglican priest Hans Boersma tackles the most important question for recovering a robust practice of church-based catechesis: What is it ultimately for?

Beginning with an account of the loss of a sacramental teleology in modernity, Boersma charts a constructive account of what it might mean for catechesis to be not just teaching “stuff” about God but about initiating new believers into God’s very own life. Catechesis, Boersma argues, should be understood as a form of mystagogy. It is an apprenticeship in which the Divine Master leads us by the hand and draws us into fellowship with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Catechesis is aimed at nothing less than seeing God face to face.

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Virtuous Persuasion: A Theology of Christian Mission (Lexham Press, 2022)

By Michael Niebauer

In Virtuous Persuasion, Michael Niebauer casts a holistic vision for Christian mission that is rooted in theological ethics and moral philosophy. Niebauer proposes a theology of mission grounded in virtue. Becoming a skilled missionary is more about following Christ than mastering techniques. Christian mission is best understood as specific activities that develop virtue in its practitioners and move them toward their ultimate goal of partaking in the glory of God. With Virtuous Persuasion, you can rethink the essence of Jesus’s Great Commission and how we seek to fulfill it.

2023 Outreach Magazine Resource of the Year for Missional/Cross-Cultural Studies

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Teaching for Spiritual Formation: A Patristic Approach to Christian Education in a Convulsed Age (Cascade, 2020)

By Kyle R. Hughes

In Teaching for Spiritual Formation, Kyle R. Hughes advances a fresh vision of Christian teaching and learning by drawing upon the riches of the Christian tradition, synthesizing the wisdom of the early church fathers with contemporary efforts to cultivate a distinctively Christian approach to education. Of interest to catechists and to a wide range of Christian educators, this book examines how the writings of five significant church fathers can illuminate our understanding of the vocation of teachers, the nature of students, the purpose of curriculum, decisions about pedagogy, and how spiritual formation works. Hughes offers habits and practices that can help bring this vision of Christian teaching and learning to life, challenging Christian educators to sharpen their approach to the integration of faith and learning in practical and accessible ways.

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Alex Fogleman

“The Apologetics of Mystery: The Traditio apostolica and Appeals to Pythagorean Initiation in Josephus and Iamblichus,” Vigiliae Christianae 77, no. 2 (2023, online November 7, 2022). https://doi.org/10.1163/15700720-bja10061

“Confitendum et Proficiendum: Augustine on the Rule of Faith and the Christian Life,” Pro Ecclesia 34, no. 1 (2022): 457–77. https://doi.org/10.1177/10638512221112039

“Anger, Prayer, and the Transformation of Desire: Augustine’s Catechumenate as an Emotion-Shaping Institution,” Church History 91, no. 2 (2022): 227–44. Available open access.

“Tertullian as Catechist: The Example of De baptismo,” Studia Patristica 126 (2021): 279–88. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv27vt51m.26

“‘Since Those Days All Things Have Progressed for the Better’: Tradition, Progress, and Creation in Ambrose of Milan,” Harvard Theological Review 113, no. 4 (2020): 440–59. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0017816020000218

“Peccatrix Ecclesia: Hilary of Poitiers’s De mysteriis as Biblical Ecclesiology,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 28, no. 2 (2020): 33–59. https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.2020.0001

Hans Boersma

Pierced by Love: Divine Reading in the Christian Tradition

Seeing God

Scripture as Real Presence

Sacramental Preaching

Heavenly Participation

D.H. Williams

Retrieving the Tradition

Evangelicals and Tradition

Tradition, Scripture, and Interpretration

“Catechism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants.”

Curtis Freeman

Pilgrim Letters: Instruction in the Basic Teachings of Christ. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2022.

Undomesticated Dissent: Democracy and the Public Virtue of Religious Noncomformity (Baylor University Press, 2017)

Contesting Catholicity: Theology for Other Baptists (Baylor University Press, 2014);

A Company of Women Preachers: Baptist Prophetesses in Seventeenth-Century England (Baylor University Press, 2011),

Baptist Roots: A Reader in the Theology of a Christian People (Judson Press, 1999)

“The Humanity of Christ and Embodiment in the Sacraments: Theodorean Christology and Experiential Mystagogy.” In Early Christian Mystagogy and the Body, edited by Nienke Vos and Paul van Geest, 83:141–52. Peeters Publishers, 2022. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2tjd6xw.10.

Michael Niebauer

Virtuous Persuasion: A Theology of Christian Mission. Lexham Press, 2022.

“Moral Cognition and the Development of Christian Virtue,” Bulletin of Ecclesial Theology 9, no. 2 (2022): 85–101.

Nicholas Norman-Krause

“Theologies of Labor and the Limits of Capital,” Journal of Moral Theology 11, Special Issue 2 (2022): 58–77.

Greg Peters

The Monkhood of All Believers: The Monastic Foundation of Christian Spirituality. Baker Academic, 2018.

The Story of Monasticism: Retrieving an Ancient Tradition for Contemporary Spirituality .Baker Academic, 2015.

Reforming the Monastery: Protestant Theologies of Religious Life. Cascade, 2014.