The New City Catechism: 52 Questions and Answers for Our Hearts and Minds: THE GOSPEL (The Gospel Coalition)

great book to help think about the "nuts and bolts" of christian faith.

I thought it would be more informative not just a memory test

Although bits of the various historic confessions and catechisms have been cut and pasted and modernised, the 52 simple questions and answers leave much to be desired. You will probably only notice the difficulties with this catechism if you are familiar with more helpful (and orthodox) catechisms.A few examples of some difficulties with this [“New City”] catechism:Q1 "What is our only hope in life and death? That we belong to God": this is taken from Heidelberg and replaces their very helpful, "that we belong to Christ, our faithful Saviour". By comparison, this Q1 in this shortened form could be read as universalism - 'we all belong to God'. Christ and His saving work has been airbrushed out, which is not necessary given the number of words available to the author per question.Q2 "What is God" - we might have expected, "Who is God", because He is a person.Q6 "How can we glorify God?"? The answer in the Westminster Shorter Catechism is that we do so according to the Word of God, the Scriptures, the Bible. Here the Bible has been removed and replaced with 'love': "By loving Him and obeying His commands and law" – this is a pity.Q10 re Command 4. "That on the Sabbath day we spend time in worship of God". Orthodox catechisms point out that the w h o l e day is for God. For a modern and American audience, this fact has been removed.Q15 re "what is the purpose of the law" - regrettably (perhaps because of space) only one of the three classic purposes of God's law gets mentioned in the answer.Q16 "What is sin?" has been supplemented with Keller's personal theology, so Q17 adds "What is idolatry?" This reflects a significant shift in belief, from man's basic problem being sin alone, to his problem being sin+idolatry (I don't have space here to develop fully why that is so vital an error). You need to work through what Keller teaches about idolatry and sin. To give a very brief summary, he says, "behind every sin is an idol ... idols are usually wanting too much of something good (e.g. family, work, recreation)" - this argument can lead to a redefinition of sin: "it's just a bit too much of what God approves of anyway", which undermines the whole meaning of sin, and thus of the purpose of salvation and Christianity.Q18 puts sin and idolatry as a pair - you will not find this in any orthodox confession - it is 'in house' heterodoxy from Mr Keller's own mis-reading of Scripture, sadly.Q34 gives "love and gratitude" as the s o l e motivations for obedience. This is, I think, a common modern weakness. These two motivations are indeed two Biblical motivations for obedience, but Scripture reveals about another eight at least. This concentration on two-only is, I think, a weakness of the very early Heidelberg catechism, from which this idea may be taken.Overall, the word 'love' occurs six times, and 'repentance' does not get mentioned at all. For those who know nothing, they will learn something from these very basic statements. For those who have access to the Westminster Shorter Catechism or any orthodox Catechism, this will be a downward move.Catechising is something you will do well to ‘get into’. I am working through the 1689 confession with a group of teenagers on Sunday afternoons and we are learning so much, it is very special & a great joy.You would do better, I think to consider one of:For children aged 4-10: 9781857925708 "My First Book of Questions and Answers", Paperback – 20 Mar 2011, by Carine MacKenzie, published by Christian Focus ... or ... for adults ...9781500862350 "Spurgeon's Catechism: With Scriptural Proofs" ... or ...9781870855242"Baptist Confession of Faith 1689" … all of which reflect the Bible’s teaching more accurately.I hope you will gain as much from good catechisms as (not so very) many of us have. What a privilege it is to have good short and accurate summaries of what the Bible teaches us :)