One Comfort in Life and in Death

Elector Frederick III of the Palatinate commissioned the catechism in 1563 to give his territory a single, settled teaching document after years of confessional argument between Lutheran and Reformed parties within his own court and university. He set two Heidelberg theologians, Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus, to the drafting, though how the work divided between them is not precisely recorded and later scholarship has questioned the tidy story that Ursinus supplied the theology and Olevianus the warmth. The result organizes its 129 questions and answers around three themes announced in its own second question, the misery of sin, deliverance through Christ, and gratitude expressed in a godly life, a structure that lets it teach guilt, grace and gratitude in that order rather than starting from abstract doctrine. Its opening question and answer set the tone for everything after: what is your only comfort in life and in death, and the answer, that the believer belongs body and soul, in life and in death, not to themselves but to their faithful savior Jesus Christ. Divided into fifty-two sections, one for each Sunday of the year, it was written to be preached through in a full annual cycle, not merely memorized once.