Catechesis and Christian Recitation: Teaching the Old Testament in a Digital Age

Abstract

Old Testament catechesis is too varied and too dependent on the story of the Old Testament (as we remember it) to be spiritually formative. Especially given the way the current secularized, “modern moral order” (Taylor) pressures Christians toward neo-Marcionism, the Christian church ought to take more seriously the way the Old Testament has been shaped by the Holy Spirit and the way it encourages catechesis to be done, that is, through memorization and recitation of the very words of the Old Testament, recovering Old Testament as Miqra. Such a practice is not only more in keeping with the Spirit's work in forming the Old Testament, but reciters will be able (a) to appreciate better its non-narrative sections (incl. law and poetry), (b) to pay attention to self-correcting features in its most difficult and violent passages, and (c) to have their imaginations and metaphors reshaped by its poetry. Such catechesis by recitation is not antithetical to classic “question-and-answer” catechisms, and it is easily recovered by beginning with reciting in households and/or reciting the Ten Commandments (as in the catechism of the Book of Common Prayer). In the end, this ancient, religious reading of the Old Testament is not too antiquated but timely and needed, given the postliterate nature of our current digital culture.