The Anglican Way in Catechetical Ministry
The Anglican Way in Catechetical Ministry
Anglican Formation, #1
I delivered this lecture at the Anglican session of the Evangelical Theology Society in Denver in 2022. Much of the material in the lecture comes from an essay originally published in the C.S. Lewis Institute’s online quarterly, “Knowing and Doing.” You may find the original article at this link.
INTRODUCTION
Several years ago, I attended a workshop on the prayerbook led by Archbishop Bob Duncan. He had a major influence on the 2019 BCP, so his insights were extremely helpful. However, I was especially interested in a somewhat off-the-cuff remark he made about Anglican spirituality in general. That is…. he noted that the Collect for Purity offers us one of the best and most concise summaries of the Anglican Way of Christian spirituality.[i]
You are welcome to pray it with me:
Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Anglican way - summarized in the collect - commends a particular pattern of life. It presupposes the objective reality of God (it has a dogmatic foundation) and leads the faithful (hearts laid bare before God our maker) on a path of reconciliation and assimilation to God. This path is mediated by God’s own Word, which infuses our liturgical and sacramental rites. The Holy Spirit guides and empowers our faithful participation in Christ’s redeeming work.[ii]
The Anglican Way of prayer and worship is - and this is why many of us are here - one of the great treasures of Christianity because its purpose is to shape us - collectively and individually - into the likeness of Jesus Christ - hearts and minds given to God for his Glory.
I’d argue that the enduring value of the Anglican Way is that it synthesizes spiritual, liturgical, and dogmatic interests so that each of these finds its rightful place in relation to the others and ultimately in relation to God.
Spiritual or ascetical theology without dogma becomes a kind of essentialist mysticism or subjectivism.
Dogma without spirituality is subject to all the abuses of enlightenment rationality. It becomes cold, lifeless, merely extrinsic. Belief reduced to cognitive assent.
Liturgy without these other two is ceremonial and symbol with no referent in reality.
Within Anglicanism, all of these are properly ordered to each other and to the ultimate end of assimilation to God …. so that none becomes disordered or disordering (This applies - I would argue - to all the formularies - BCP, Ordinal [now in the BCP], Homilies, Articles).
It’s also true - I will argue - of our catechism. Included in the BCP from the very beginning (1549) and retaining an ancient four-fold structure, our catechism sometimes gets a bad rap. I’ve heard critics suggest that catechesis is outdated and irrelevant - mere rationalism or didacticism unfit for the times and unhelpful in our context.
And that’s unfortunate.
So what I’d like to illustrate today is this: The catechism has a structure similar to the collect for purity and commends the same pattern of life - a life of Holiness.
Like the collect, the catechism begins with the reality of God revealed in the gospel story and affirmed in the creed, moves us toward reconciliation with God through prayer and sacrament, and leads us toward union with God in love.
Likewise, the ministry of catechesis can and should, synthesizes spiritual, liturgical, and dogmatic interests so that each of these finds its rightful place in relation to the others and ultimately to God.
As I move forward, I won’t offer a commentary on a particular Anglican catechism (1549, 1662, or the ACNA’s 2013 “to be a Christian). Instead, I’ll focus on the basic, four-part structure of catechetical ministry, which has roots in the early church and survives to this day.
But first, I’d like to say a few things about the nature and importance of catechesis among the church’s ministries.
ON CATECHETICAL MINISTRY
In the New Testament and throughout church history, catechesis refers to instruction in the most fundamental truths of Christian faith. It suggests the church’s responsibility for handing on wisdom long preserved - what Paul calls the “good deposit,” and the epistle to Jude calls “the faith once delivered.” The post-apostolic emphasis on a “rule of faith,” the deposit of faith, the Sensus Fidei (sense of the faithful), the “consensus faith”[iii] suggests a continuity of teaching. Irenaeus, for example, suggests in Against the Heresies, that
“The Church, scattered though it be throughout the whole world to the very extremities thereof, hath received from the Apostles and their disciples faith in one God.” He writes further that “The Church, having received this body of doctrine, in its entirety carefully guards it, as dwelling in one house; her faith is in accordance with it, and her preaching and instruction and tradition are in harmony with it, as though they were uttered with one mouth.”[iv]
C.S. Lewis has the same reality in mind when he writes of Mere Christianity. This is from his little essay, “On the Reading of Old Books”:
“Measured against the ages “mere Christianity” turns out to be no insipid interdenominational transparency, but something positive, self-consistent, and inexhaustible. I know it, indeed, to my cost. In the days when I still hated Christianity, I learned to recognise, like some all too familiar smell, that almost unvarying something which met me, now in Puritan Bunyan, now in Anglican Hooker, now in Thomist Dante. It was there (honeyed and floral) in Francois de Sales; it was there (grave and homely) in Spenser and Walton; it was there (grim but manful) in Pascal and Johnson; there again, with a mild, frightening, Paradisial flavour, in Vaughan and Boehme and Traherne.”[v]
Believers through the ages have sought to guard this one faith and pass it along in various ways but especially through catechetical ministries. Among Christian traditions holding to the threefold office of bishops, priests, and deacons, guarding this apostolic faith is among the central responsibilities of bishops collectively and individually, within their own dioceses. For example, the Constitutions and Canons of the ACNA state that “the chief work of the College of Bishops shall be the propagation and the defense of the Faith and Order of the Church, and in service as the visible sign and expression of the Unity of the Church.”[vi]
Michael Ramsey suggests that a bishop should be able to recognize and keep this one true faith because he knows “enough history to avoid facile enthusiasm for novelties for their own sake, and enough of the deeper things of theology to distinguish what is shallow and superficial from what is likely to be lasting. As the keeper of the tradition of Christ he will know what are the things which are not shaken.”[vii]
The value of Catechesis is thus twofold: First, it can help us guard against the extreme subjectivism of our culture. The ministry of Catechesis insists that there are windows giving us the right view into the whole of the bible, guideposts which can be followed as we interpret scripture, and pillars upon which a thoughtful, articulate faith should be built. For nearly 2,000 years, Christians have generally agreed that the faith can be guarded by focusing on these basic guideposts (1) The story of the gospel - narration, (2) the Apostle’s Creed, (3) The Lord’s Prayer[viii] (4) and the Ten Commandments.
Together, these guideposts help us to articulate the form of the “faith once delivered” without becoming doctrinaire.
Second, catechesis rightly practiced insists and demonstrates that head knowledge is not sufficient on its own. These four guideposts become a synthesis ordered to the formation of whole persons - head and heart, mind and will - ascetical, liturgical, dogmatic dimensions of our faith all working together inseperably.
The God of Christian faith - the Triune God - cannot be known, related to, or followed as though he were merely one being among others. This is because, God is not a solitary being – set apart from other, lesser beings, communicating knowledge of Himself as one being would to another. Rather, the Triune God is, to quote the apostle Paul, is the one in whom ―we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). The God of Christian faith is beyond being and yet is made known in the person of Jesus Christ.
Thomas Aquinas once said that “the knowledge of God is “produced by an assimilation of the knower to the thing known, so that assimilation is said to be the cause of knowledge.”[ix]
The guideposts of classical catechesis presuppose that Christians need to achieve an assimilative knowledge of God. For that reason, the greatest Christian catechists have sought, not only to teach the biblical story, but to guide new Christians into a process of assimilation to that story, so that the life and mission of Jesus Christ will shape the beliefs, prayer, worship, and moral convictions of God’s people.
Catechesis as envisioned by the early church and by Anglicans who’ve adopted the same ancient structure - is Instruction for Assimilation.
THE GUIDEPOSTS OF CATECHESIS
At this point, I’ll spend some time on each of the four enduring themes of catechesis.
THE STORY OF THE GOSPEL: The NARRATIO
By the end of the second century, Christians were required to learn the new faith over an extended period of time (perhaps several years) before their baptisms. Celsus, the famous pagan philosopher and harsh critic of Christianity, once quipped that “if all people wanted to be Christians, the Christians would no longer want them.”[x] At this time, the church was growing rapidly, and it was assumed that a new Christian could not worship or pray to the one true God without learning of God’s own self-identification in Jesus Christ attested in the scriptures.
In Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, Irenaeus describes the importance of teaching the biblical story in such detail that God’s nature might be known by His dealings in salvation history. He writes,
“let him that offers himself to baptism learn these and the like things during the time that he is a catechumen; and let him who lays his hands upon him adore God, the Lord of the whole world, and thank him for his creation, for his sending Christ his only begotten Son, that he might save man by blotting out his transgressions . . . And after his thanksgiving, let him instruct him in the doctrines concerning our Lord’s incarnation, and in those concerning his passion, and resurrection from the dead, and assumption.[xi]
In the fourth and fifth centuries, a long catechetical process was still the norm.
Augustine of Hippo would begin the process with a single address to potential converts, and in that address, cover the whole sweeping history of salvation - what he called the “narration.” In response to an inquiry about how to cover so much material in a single address, Augustine wrote that “the narrative is complete when the beginner is first catechized from the text, ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth,” down to the present period of Church history.”[xii] Augustine encouraged catechists to focus on pivotal themes, prophecies, and events, which best pre-figure the life and work of Jesus Christ and his body, the Church. His principle of selection is captured well in this statement:
“…For no other reason were all the things that we read in the holy Scriptures written before our Lord’s coming than to announce his coming and to prefigure the Church to be. . .. Therefore, in the Old Testament the New is concealed, and in the New the Old is revealed.”[xiii]
After a compelling introduction to the over-arching narrative, inquirers could choose to enter the catechetical process where regular preaching would fill-in the initial introduction to the narratio. As they became part of the Christian community, the moral conduct of catechumens came under scrutiny, and they were expected to amend their lives if necessary.
THE CREED
The Apostle’s creed, in particular, provides a very basic overview of the biblical story and identifies the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as authors and central actors in that story as well as in the creation and ultimate salvation of the church. In teaching the theology of the creed, the faith is summarized in a way consistent with the biblical canon’s own formation.[xiv] The creed provides an interpretive framework in keeping with the development of historic Christian orthodoxy. Thus, we can say that, while the biblical canon possesses a magisterial authority, the creeds possess a ministerial authority.[xv]
Augustine of Hippo and other church fathers understood the value of the creed in exactly this way. In one of his catechetical sermons, Augustine commended the creed to catechumens during the season of Lent, not long before their baptisms:
These truths, that you are about to receive, that you will commit to memory and press in words, are neither new nor unfamiliar to you. For you are used to hearing them laid out in a variety of ways in holy Scripture and in sermons given in the church. But now they are to be handed over to you gathered together, compressed down, and arranged in a fixed order: so that your faith may be well grounded, your public profession prepared for, and your memory not overburdened.[xvi]
For Augustine, the creed offers a framework within which to fit the individual parts of the biblical story. William Harmless explains that “Augustine, like Cyril and Ambrose, saw the Creed as a compendium of the core elements of the faith.”[xvii] Whereas the biblical story introduces the catechumens to the sweeping history of God’s salvific work among the nations, the Creed acknowledges and affirms God Himself – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
THE LORD’S PRAYER
We can remember, however, that creedal truth is not a “thing in itself” or a block of revealed truth to be grasped out of context. Christians don’t learn the creed to become curators of God’s mysteries or Master of Theological knowledge. Creedal truth is an aid to faith and ordered to a life of prayer and love. Augustine explains that
The creed is learned by listening; it is written, not on tablets nor on any material, but on the heart. He who has called you to his Kingdom and glory will grant that, when you have been reborn by his grace and by the Holy Spirit, it will be written in your hearts, so that you may love what you believe and that, through love, faith may work in you and that you, no longer fearing punishment like slaves, but loving justice like the freeborn - may become pleasing to the Lord God, the giver of all good things.[xviii]
In a short but mature work focused on the most basic truths of Christianity, Augustine explains in greater detail how a knowledge of the Creed aids formation in faith, hope, and love.[xix] His comments on the subject express the principle of lex orandi, lex credendi,[xx] (“the law of praying is the law of believing.”) The basic contention of this principle is that prayer and worship are intimately and necessarily connected to belief. How, for instance, can we pray to a God that we do not know? How can we worship God if we’ve paid no attention to His self-disclosure in Holy Scripture? The flip side of this principle is that the ultimate purpose of clarifying belief is to enrich and properly order prayer and worship.
The Lord’s Prayer has always been among the guideposts of catechesis because it is fundamentally covenantal. In the Our Father, Jesus teaches us to pray from within the covenantal context of promise and fulfillment, as participants in God’s story of redemption. The Lord’s prayer trains us to ask for (desire) what God has already promised.
The Lord’s Prayer has always been considered paradigmatic for all Christian prayer? It assumes a christ shaped life. It postures us, properly, before the God affirmed in the creed and thus perfectly expresses the principle of Lex Orandi.
Faithful Christian prayer is always shaped by the knowledge of God’s will (thy kingdom come, thy will be done) and is thus always dependent on God’s prior revelation. Again, in the words of St. Augustine, “How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed (Rom. 10:4)?”
Likewise, there is a clear and intimate connection between knowing God and loving (Matt. 22:36-40, 1 Jn. 4:7). We must know God to love Him, and we must love God and others to truly know Him. Christians through the ages, have emphasized the biblical truth that formation in the love of Christ is well served by instruction in matters of faith (the creed), in matters of prayer (the Lord’s prayer), and in God’s commands (love). The Latin phrase, lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi obviously adds to the more ancient dictum and captures the truth that our praying and believing inform and shape our living.
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
It may seem strange that catechesis should reach back into the Old Testament in order to instruct new believers in the law given to Moses. However, the practice makes good sense if we approach the Bible as a narrative whole. Remember Augustine’s hermeneutical rule, cited above: “in the Old Testament the New is concealed, and in the New the Old is revealed.”[xxi] So what is concealed in the Ten Commandments, and how is it revealed in the New Testament? Obviously, this question is answered for us in Jesus’ words: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”[xxii] Accordingly, the process of catechesis has formation in love as its ultimate aim. Augustine is straightforward in the Enchiridion:
All the commandments of God, then, are embraced in love, of which the apostle says: ‘Now the end of the commandment is charity, out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned.’ Thus, the end of every commandment is charity, that is, every commandment has love for its aim. But whatever is done through fear of punishment or from some other carnal motive and has not for its principle that love which the Spirit of God sheds abroad in the heart, is not done as it ought to be done, however it may appear to men.[xxiii]
We can distinguish the love mentioned here, which is the aim of all Christian formation, and the sentimentality that so often passes for love. Instruction in the Commandments can help us make this distinction, since they teach that loving God requires putting away all idols, keeping the sabbath holy and refusing to take God’s name in vain (Ex. 20:3-8). In other words, we are not to love any God but the one true God who has revealed his character, nature, and purposes through Jesus Christ, the one attested to in the bible’s history of salvation.
It requires us to avoid taking God’s name in vain, which is to identify God with anyone other than Jesus Christ who said, “whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn. 14:9b). God revealed that His name is YHWH (I Am) at the burning bush (Ex. 3:1-17), and this name conceals as much as it reveals until Jesus Christ brings clarity with statements such as this: “before Abraham was, I Am” (Jn. 8:48).
The commandments also teach that our love for others is living and active, not mere sentiment. Love is worked out as we honor others and seek justice in relationships with our parents, spouses, and neighbors (Ex. 20:12-17). In all our relationships, motives are especially important, as Augustine insists:
For it is from [the commandments] that we hear this voice: ‘The end of the commandment is charity,’ and ‘God is love.’ Wherefore all God’s commandments, one of which is, ‘Though shalt not commit adultery,’ and all those precepts which are not commandments but special counsels, one of which is, “It is good for a man not to touch a woman,’ are rightly carried out only when the motive principle of action is the love of God, and the love of our neighbor in God.’[xxiv]
CONCLUSION
Many of your recognize that an emphasis on the biblical story has been very much in fashion in recent decades. Articles, essays, books, church curricula, and videos[xxv] have been produced to help Christians understand, once again, that the Bible tells one story of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation and that Christians are to enter, imaginatively, into the biblical world to identify with its characters and overall plot.
The history of catechesis serves as a good reminder that we are hardly the first generation to have understood the Bible’s narrative character. We should also take note of the fact that, in the early church, the narratio was only the first stage in the process of forming new Christians. As important as the story of scripture was and is, the ultimate goal of Christian discipleship is not only an extrinsic knowledge of the biblical story but a participatory knowledge of God through formation in love (see 1 Jn. 4:7-8). Christian formation requires both the head and the heart – knowledge, will, and active trust. The ministry of catechesis introduces Christians to this kind of formation.
Sound catechesis requires that Christians learn the story of scripture and submit themselves to the Lordship of the Bible’s author and primary subject. It has an epistemology of love (assuming that true knowledge of God entails loving others) and a hermeneutic of love (assuming that a proper reading of scripture entails a transformative encounter with Jesus Christ who first loved us). Love is the shape of Christ’s body and of the Christian life.
The process of catechesis focuses on heart, mind, and habit, while the content of catechesis provides something like a roadmap, which should enable new Christians to make sense of this new life offered in Jesus Christ, witnessed by the church, and attested in the Bible. It keeps us grounded in the realization that discipleship is always personal but that it also entails handing over a particular faith, “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jd. 1:3). How does catechesis guard and hand on the apostolic faith? It captures the basic form of Christian faith by focusing on:
The Biblical Narrative: Christians need to learn the biblical narrative and come to understand themselves from within its dramatic unfolding, as sinners saved by grace.
The Creed: Christians need to know the true God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who is both author and primary subject of the biblical story.
The Lord’s Prayer: Christians live in repentance, which involves putting off rebellious wills and learning to pray sincerely that God’s will be done.
The Ten Commandments: Christians are to love God above all else, and understand that our love for God is worked out in tangible ways in relation to family, friends, and neighbors.
This basic catechetical framework has served the church well from the very beginning, and it will no doubt continue to do so. Because we are all made in God’s image and have restless hearts apart from our creator, churches will always find people
[i] So what is the Anglican Way? The Anglican Communion website defines it well, in my opinion: The Anglican Way is a particular expression of the Christian Way of being the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ. It is formed by and rooted in Scripture, shaped by its worship of the living God, ordered for communion, and directed in faithfulness to God's mission in the world.1
Likewise, the ACNA’s own definition is this…..”To be Anglican is not to embrace a distinct version of Christianity, but a distinct way of being a “Mere Christian,” at the same time evangelical, apostolic, catholic, reformed, and Spirit-filled.”
I would only add that the “distinct way” mentioned in the ACNA definition, is for Anglicans, mediated by the formularies which have a real, but always proximate and provisional, authority in Anglican ecclesial life. Anglicans contend that our particular tradition - tied to the formularies - offers an excellent, concrete way of practicing the one, holy, catholic and apostolic faith 1 https://www.anglicancommunion.org/theology/theological-education/the-anglican-way.aspx#:~:text=The%20Anglican%20Way%20is%20a,God's%20mission%20in%20the%20world.
[ii] The collect for purity was included in Cranmer’s original 1549 prayerbook, as well as in the 1559, 1662, and in nearly every Anglican Prayerbook used around the world, after the 1662. It’s an ancient prayer.
Its composition is attributed [by some] to St Gregory, Abbot of Canterbury c. 780. . . . It appears in the eleventh-century Leofric Missal, and in the Sarum rite it is part of the priest's private devotions before the start of the service.”1 It is found in the 14th century “Cloud of Unknowing.”
It is distinctively English and yet - it gets to the heart of apostolic faith. Its consistent with the ACNA’s own claim that, “to be Anglican is not to embrace a distinct version of Christianity, but a distinct way of being a “Mere Christian,” at the same time evangelical, apostolic, catholic, reformed, and Spirit-filled.”
1 (Paul Bradshaw, Gordon Giles, and Simon Kershaw, "Holy Communion," chap. 6 in Companion to Common worship, ed. Paul Bradshaw, vol. 1, Alcuin Club Collections 78 (London: SPCK, 2001), 110).
[iii] It was Vincent of Lerins who argued for a clear and recognizable consensus faith passed down through the generations and developed according to clear criteria. He coined the famous phrase, ubique, temper, et ab omnibus (always, everywhere, and by everyone) to distinguish this faith from heresies. For a recent defense of Lerin’s proposal, see Thomas G. Guarino, Vincent of Lérins and the Development of Christian Doctrine () (Baker Books, 2013).
[iv] Irenaeus, Against Heresies, book I, ch. x, i-ii.
[v] See Lewis’ “Introduction” to Athanasius, On the Incarnation (Yonkers, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 7–8.
[vi] Constitutions and Canons, Anglican Church in North America, Article X.1.
[vii] Michael Ramsey, The Christian Priest Today, (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1994), 98.
[viii] Instruction in the Lord’s prayer has often been accompanied by instruction in the sacraments. As a catechist myself, I consider this instruction essential, though I won’t address the sacraments in this essay.
[ix] As we love God, and give ourselves in devotion to him, we share his life and imitate him. Then we discover him to be not only the source of our being, but the source of our virtues as well. Then we know the loving kindness of that God who knows even of the sparrow’s fall. Then we know the compassion of that God who sends his rain upon the just and the unjust alike. Then we know the tenderness of that Father who awaits the prodigal’s return. Then we know the loving entreaty of that Friend who stands at our door and knocks. In God is the root of all love. Only as we love him and share his love do we love our neighbor as ourself…
If we love God, therefore, with all our heart and soul and mind, we are conformed to his love. If we are conformed to his love, we love all whom he loves, and he loves all men. If we love God with our whole being, we love our neighbors as we love ourselves, and if we do not love our neighbors as ourselves, then we do not love God. ‘Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that liveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that liveth not knowers not God; for God is love…. If we love one another, God dwellers in us, and his love is perfected in us.’ (Hooker’s Theology of Common Prayer, 10).
[x] Origen, Contra Celsum, trans. Henry Chadwick (Cambridge University Press, 1980), 133.
[xi] Ireneaus, Apos. Const. VII.39. Translation is taken from Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 7, 475–76.
[xii] De catechizandis rudibus 3.5, cited William Harmless, Augustine and the Catechumenate (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2014), 126.
[xiii] Ibid., 128. Melito of Sardis exemplifies Augustin’e dictum in his famous interpretation of the passover. The entirety of This is the lamb that was slain. This is the lamb that was silent. This is the one who was born of Mary, that beautiful ewe-lamb. This is the one who was taken from the flock, and was dragged to sacrifice, and was killed in the evening, and was buried at night; the one who was not broken while on the tree, who did not see dissolution while in the earth, who rose up from the dead, and who raised up mankind from the grave below. (I need to look this up - see my Clothed with Christ lecture for full quote.
[xiv] The early creeds and the biblical canon were mutually formative. Indeed, development of the creeds can be traced from the summative preaching of the apostles (the kerygma), through the rule of faith. The rule of faith is little more than a summation of the biblical narrative, and if you place a version of it beside the Apostle’s Creed, it is very obvious that the creed is a condensed and memorable version of the rule of faith. Moreover, the rule of faith was widely acknowledged in the second and third centuries as a standard of Christian orthodoxy and was one of the key criteria used to determine which of the controversial books would be included in or excluded from the biblical canon. In the words of Michael Bird, the rule of faith and the creedal tradition stemming from the rule of faith “go together like peanut butter and jelly or like Vegemite and avocado….The formation of the biblical canon and the origin of the early creeds arose out of processes that were concurrent and mutually influential,” Michael F. Bird, What Christians Ought to Believe: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine Through the Apostles’ Creed (Zondervan, 2016), 29.
[xv] Michael Horton makes this argument in various publications. See his The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2011).
[xvi] St. Augustine, Sermon 214.1, translated and cited in Harmless, Augustine and the Catechumenate, 277.
[xvii] Ibid.
[xviii] St. Augustine, Sermon 212.2. Cited in Ibid., 276.
[xix] Augustine, The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Love (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1996), VII.
[xx] Although we find the truths of this principle expressed throughout the writings of early church figures, Prosper of Aquitaine (390-455) is generally credited with first using this particular wording.
[xxi] De catechizandis rudibus 4.8, Cited in Harmless, Augustine and the Catechumenate, 128.
[xxii] Compare Luke 7:27.
[xxiii] Augustine, The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Love, 139.
[xxiv] Ibid., 139–40.
[xxv] There have been far too many works to mention in a footnote. However, an inquisitive reader might do a google search with terms like “the story,” the drama of scripture,” “metanarrative of scripture,” and more.