Alex Fogleman
Making Disciples

An overview of Alex’s Fogleman new book, Making Disciples: Catechesis in History, Theology and Practice. In this book, Fogleman presents catechesis as a basic but comprehensive introduction to what Christians believe, hope, and love.

Making Disciples
Alex Fogleman
What was Lent like in the Early Church?

A fourth-century pilgrim on Lenten catechesis: “After the Creed has been repeated to the bishop, he addresses them all and says: ‘For these seven weeks you have been taught all the law of the Scriptures and you have also heard about the faith; you have also heard about the resurrection of the flesh and also the whole meaning of the Creed, as far as you can hear while still catechumens: but those things that are of a higher mystery, that is, of baptism itself, you cannot hear, being still catechumens.’”

What was Lent like in the Early Church?
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

Cyprian On Mortality

Cyprian On Mortality

Cyprian of Carthage: “What a significance, beloved brethren, all this has! How suitable, how necessary it is that this plague and pestilence, which seems horrible and deadly, searches out the justice of each and everyone and examines the minds of the human race; whether the well care for the sick, whether relatives dutifully love their kinsmen as they should, whether masters show compassion to their ailing slaves, whether physicians do not desert the afflicted begging their help, whether the violent repress their violence, whether the greedy, even through the fear of death, quench the ever insatiable fire of their raging avarice, whether the proud bend their necks, whether the shameless soften their affrontery, whether the rich, even when their dear ones are perishing and they are about to die without heirs, bestow and give something! Although this mortality has contributed nothing else, it has especially accomplished this for Christians and servants of God, that we have begun gladly to seek martyrdom while we are learning not to fear death. These are trying exercises for us, not deaths; they give to the mind the glory of fortitude; by contempt of death they prepare for the crown.”

The Constraint of the Word: Graham Ward on Gregory of Nyssa

The Constraint of the Word: Graham Ward on Gregory of Nyssa

Graham Ward on Gregory of Nyssa’s Great Catechetical Oration: “The ‘system’ [of catechesis] is not an abstract set of propositions set out by the ministers who preside and to which allegiance is given by those taught. It is, first of all, intrinsic to the word itself as the Logos; the word of faith that teaches. The system is the constraining and necessary logic of the Logos. It is co-relative to both a social and institutional practice (teaching) and an operation (being saved). It is implicated in ‘the mystery of godliness’ or the hidden working of piety. Its aim is salvation through conversion.”

Fear as Lack of Faith?

Fear as Lack of Faith?

From an article by Alex Fogleman published at Church Life Journal:

To live—to live well—is an act of supernatural grace. In order to embrace both Lent and Easter, then, we need a deep habituation in the Church’s way of being, a way infused with sacramental grace through the sacraments, even if received spiritually. Though most of us are, for the time being, cut off directly from participation in the life-giving sacraments, that does not stop the church from being herself—in her members—a sacrament of Christ, formed from the bleeding side of the New Adam during the sleep of his passion. We celebrate life amidst death, then, because we have been catechized into Christian existence. To be an Easter people and to sing Hallelujah, we must have our entire frame of reference aligned towards a transcendent order, the supernatural mystery of Christ our creator and redeemer.

Catechesis for the Third Way

Catechesis for the Third Way

Gerald Sittser explains why the catechumenate emerged as a result of the “gap” between Christianity and Roman culture: “A simple conversion was not enough, for Romans had to be converted to an entirely different belief system and way of life that was as alien to them as a language like Chinese is to English speakers. This huge gap required time, patience, and purposefulness. Anything short of that would have undermined the very faith that Christian leaders proclaimed, Roman critics opposed, and martyrs died for, a faith rooted in the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

What is a Monk?

What is a Monk?

Greg Peters draws on Augustine, Cassian, and Pseudo-Dionysius to show that, although “monasticism is associated historically with celibacy and other forms of asceticism (such as poverty, stability, and unwavering obedience), single-mindedness is another consistent element of monasticism, and the one that seems to be more essential in the earliest tradition . . . . Thus, to be a monk is to be one, not divided; to be unified in one’s goal of coming into union with God. Though many believers live in a multitudinous manner, a μοναχός will set herself apart by living simply and singly. A monk is single-minded.”

Getting to the Root: Catechesis, Tradition, and the Contemporary Church

Getting to the Root: Catechesis, Tradition, and the Contemporary Church

Bryan Hollon on “catechesis and discipleship”: Catechesis is closely tied to tradition—though tradition understood as the dynamic process of passing on what has been received, rather than a stale list of non-biblical credenda. Tradition also entails an “assimilation” of the new believer to the biblical narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. It is the appropriation of the person to a form of life.

Catechesis against the Gnostics

Catechesis against the Gnostics

Not differentiating between catechumens and fideles, the ease of the quick promotion—these problems that Tertullian identifies in gnostic groups have to do with a more basic problem, and that is the rejection of a kind of faith that involves virtue, a rejection of the notion that Christianity entails a transformed life acquired through disciplina—a word that means not only discipline but education, instruction, and training.

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.”