Theopedia

Didache

Definition

The Didache (Greek for “teaching”), fully titled the Teaching of the Lord to the Gentiles by the Twelve Apostles, is an early Christian manual of church practice, probably written around AD 100.1 It opens with ethical instruction organized around “two ways,” one of life and one of death, then gives directions for baptism,2 the eucharist,3 and the support of traveling teachers.4 The early church read it widely and valued it, but never received it as part of the New Testament canon.5

Historical Development

Dating and use of the Gospels

Most datings place the Didache around the turn of the second century, making it roughly contemporary with some of the latest-written New Testament documents.1 At one point the manual instructs, “Nor should you pray like the hypocrites, but as the Lord commanded in his gospel, you should pray as follows, ‘Our Father in heaven…,’” quoting a form of the Lord’s Prayer close to Matthew 6:9-13.6 Michael Kruger notes that “it seems hard to resist the notion that there is some relationship between the Didache and Matthew here,” citing Christopher Tuckett’s assessment, and that Udo Schnelle argues the Didache’s own word “gospel” (Did. 8.2; 11.3; 15.3-4) means specifically Matthew’s Gospel.6

The Didache also warns its readers, “Do not abandon the commandments of the Lord, but guard what you have received, neither adding to them or taking away,” language that deliberately echoes the warning of Deuteronomy 4:2 against adding to or subtracting from the law. Kruger observes that in the Didache this warning has shifted from protecting the Old Testament’s commandments to protecting “the commandments of the Lord,” meaning Jesus’s own teaching, wherever it could be found in writing.7 Kruger takes the Didache’s extension of Old Testament-style textual protection to a Gospel text as evidence that a written Gospel of Matthew already carried real authority for the Didache’s community by the turn of the century, even though no fixed New Testament canon yet existed.7

Classification among the early Christian writings

Eusebius of Caesarea, writing his Ecclesiastical History in the early fourth century, sorted the Christian writings known to him into four categories: books “recognized” by the whole church, “disputed” books still regarded as canonical despite some disagreement (James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John), “rejected” books that were theologically orthodox and useful but not canonical, and “heretical” forgeries to be refused outright.8 The Didache fell into the third category, alongside the Shepherd of Hermas, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Epistle of Barnabas, and the Gospel of the Hebrews: writings “acknowledged to be generally ‘orthodox’ in their theology… but rejected as it pertains to their canonical status.”8 Kruger argues that this third category itself confirms that early church fathers could value and use a book without thereby treating the canon’s boundaries as loose or undefined; using the Didache did not mean regarding it as Scripture.8

Content and Practice

The Two Ways and pre-baptismal instruction

The Didache opens with moral instruction contrasting a “way of life” and a “way of death,” drawing heavily on the ethical teaching found in the Sermon on the Mount, before turning to baptism.9 It directs that this ethical instruction should ordinarily precede baptism itself, and closes the section with a concession to those who cannot meet its full demand: whoever “can bear the whole yoke of the Lord will be perfect,” but “the one who cannot should do what he can” (Did. 6.2).10

Baptism

The Didache’s baptismal instructions read:

Now concerning baptism, baptize like this: … Baptize into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in living [that is, running] water. But if you do not have living water, baptize in other water. And if you are not able to baptize in cold water, do so in warm. And if neither is available, pour water three times on the person’s head in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The person baptizing and the person being baptized should fast before the baptism, and any others who can. But the person being baptized must fast for one or two days.2

Ronald Heine notes both continuity and divergence from New Testament practice here: the trinitarian formula matches Matthew 28:19, and immersion is still the norm, though pouring is permitted when sufficient water is unavailable. What the New Testament does not describe is the Didache’s requirement of a period of prior ethical instruction and of fasting by the candidate (and others able to join) before the baptism.11

Eucharist

The Didache’s closing eucharistic prayer invites those who are holy to come and exhorts anyone who is not to repent first (Did. 10.6).12 Bavinck notes that the Didache calls the Supper a “pure sacrifice,” appealing to Malachi 1:11, among the earliest evidence of the church speaking of the Lord’s Supper itself, not only prayer or almsgiving, as a “sacrifice.”3

Support of traveling teachers and church order

The Didache instructs believers to support traveling teachers materially: “Take all the first fruits of vintage and harvest, and of cattle and sheep, and give these first fruits to the [teachers]. For they are your high priests.”4 Alongside such itinerant teachers, local leadership was still congregationally chosen. Bavinck cites the Didache, alongside the Shepherd of Hermas and 1 Clement, as evidence that the later distinction between a bishop with authority over presbyters and the presbyters themselves, familiar from Ignatius’s letters, had not yet developed in the communities it addresses: overseers and deacons were still chosen by, and with the consent of, the local congregation.13

Reformed Assessment

No Reformed confession addresses the Didache by name; it postdates the New Testament but was written centuries before the confessional era. The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession’s own principle for handling writings outside the sixty-six canonical books, stated of the Old Testament Apocrypha, states the broader logic Reformed theology applies to the Didache as well: such books, “not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon or rule of the Scripture, and, therefore, are of no authority to the church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings.”14 On this reasoning the Didache is read as a valuable early witness to how one late-first- or early-second-century church practiced baptism, the eucharist, and material support of its teachers, not as Scripture, exactly the distinction Eusebius’s own “rejected but orthodox” category already drew.8

Bavinck’s treatment of the Didache’s eucharistic language supplies a further, more particular assessment: he judges the early description of the Supper as an offering “innocent” in its original setting, since what was offered was the congregation’s own gifts, given in thanksgiving, not a re-presentation of Christ’s body and blood, and the prayer of thanksgiving was still offered by the whole congregation rather than a priest acting alone.15

Objections and Responses

Doesn’t the Didache’s language of the eucharist as a “pure sacrifice” support later Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox teaching that the Eucharist is a propitiatory sacrifice, offered again at every Mass? Bavinck traces the historical line from the Didache’s language to later sacrificial theologies of the Eucharist, but he also traces exactly what changed along the way. In the Didache and the period around it, the “sacrifice” language attached to the congregation’s own offerings of bread, wine, and other gifts, given in thanksgiving; the content of the sacrifice was these gifts, not the body and blood of Christ, and it was understood as a thank offering, not an offering that atoned for sin.15 Only later, as the Lord’s Supper separated from the communal meal and the sacrifice came to be understood as offered by the bishop acting alone rather than the congregation, did the sacrifice come to be identified with the elements themselves and, eventually, with Christ’s body and blood under those elements.16 The Didache’s own “pure sacrifice” language, on Bavinck’s reading, describes a congregational thank offering, not the developed doctrine later councils would draw from similar vocabulary.

Doesn’t the Didache’s demand for ethical instruction and fasting before baptism show that the earliest post-apostolic church already taught salvation by works, contrary to justification by faith alone? The Didache’s own language is more modest than a works-righteousness requirement: it commends bearing “the whole yoke of the Lord” as the ideal, but explicitly makes room for “the one who cannot” to “do what he can” (Did. 6.2), and its baptismal instructions cover how baptism should be administered without saying anything about what baptism itself accomplishes or merits.17 Heine notes that the Didache is comparatively restrained here: writings like 2 Clement and the Shepherd of Hermas go further, treating post-baptismal sin as far more difficult to resolve, and Tertullian a century later argued for delaying baptism altogether until a candidate could be certain of fulfilling its obligations.18 The Didache’s ethical instruction and fasting functioned as pastoral preparation for a serious commitment, within a document that never states a doctrine of how a sinner is justified before God one way or the other.

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Michael J. Kruger, Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), chap. 6, “The Corporate Reception of the Canon”: “The Didache is an early Christian manual of church practice probably from around the turn of the century (c. AD 100).” ↩ ↩2

  2. Heine, Classical Christian Doctrine, chap. 13, quoting Didache 7. ↩ ↩2

  3. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 22, “The Spirit’s Means of Grace”: “the Supper was viewed as an offering brought to God by the congregation as a ‘pure sacrifice,’ as the Didache, appealing to Malachi 1:11, already calls it.” ↩ ↩2

  4. Jamie Dunlop, Budgeting for a Healthy Church: Aligning Finances with Biblical Priorities for Ministry (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2019), chap. 8, “Communication: Using the Budget As a Pastoral Tool,” 137-146, quoting Didache 13. ↩ ↩2

  5. Kruger, Canon Revisited, chap. 8, “Problem Books and Canonical Boundaries.” ↩

  6. Kruger, Canon Revisited, chap. 6: “Christopher Tuckett comments, ‘It seems hard to resist the notion that there is some relationship between the Didache and Matthew here.’ Likewise, Udo Schnelle argues that ‘the Didache means by “the gospel” [Did. 8.2; 11.3; 15.3, 4] the Gospel of Matthew.’” ↩ ↩2

  7. Kruger, Canon Revisited, chap. 6: “Most noteworthy, the ‘commandments of the Lord’ in this passage of the Didache no longer refer to the Old Testament commandments as in Deuteronomy 4:2, but now refer to the teachings of Jesus.” ↩ ↩2

  8. Kruger, Canon Revisited, chap. 8: “The ‘rejected books’ (νόθα) are books acknowledged to be generally ‘orthodox’ in their theology… but rejected as it pertains to their canonical status. These writings include the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Didache, and the Gospel of the Hebrews.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  9. Heine, Classical Christian Doctrine, chap. 13: “Baptism should be preceded, it asserts, by the instruction in Christian ethics contained in the first six chapters of the Didache. These ethical instructions are derived from the Bible, many coming from what we call the Sermon on the Mount.” ↩

  10. Ronald E. Heine, Classical Christian Doctrine: Introducing the Essentials of the Ancient Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), chap. 13, “The Washing of Regeneration,” 144-154. ↩

  11. Heine, Classical Christian Doctrine, chap. 13: “There is both continuity with and divergence from the practice of baptism in the New Testament in the Didache. The baptismal formula agrees with that in Matthew 28:19… The instructions in the Didache diverge from the New Testament in suggesting that there is a period of ethical instruction before baptism and in the demand that the person being baptized fast before the baptism.” ↩

  12. Heine, Classical Christian Doctrine, chap. 13: “In the prayer of thanksgiving to be offered at the conclusion of the eucharistic service, anyone who is holy is invited to come; anyone who is not is exhorted to repent (Did. 10.6).” ↩

  13. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality”: “This change in government did not come about in all the churches at the same time, at least in the West. It is not found in the Didache, the Shepherd of Hermas, or 1 Clement.” ↩

  14. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/1689), chap. 1, “Of the Holy Scriptures,” para. 3. ↩

  15. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 22: “This was innocent as long as the Lord’s Supper was really regarded as a meal and a thanksgiving prayer was offered on behalf of the entire congregation. The content of the sacrifice was not the body and blood of Christ, but the gifts assembled by the congregation, so that in the early period people thought in this connection only of a thank offering and not an expiatory offering.” ↩ ↩2

  16. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 22: “the Lord’s Supper and the love feasts separated, and the Supper increasingly acquired the character of a sacrifice offered not by the congregation but by the bishop… To the extent that the bishop was viewed as a priest, the thanksgiving as a consecration, and the Lord’s Supper as a sacrifice, the realistic union of bread and wine with the body and blood of Christ also had to become more appealing.” ↩

  17. Heine, Classical Christian Doctrine, chap. 13: “It includes instructions for how baptism should be administered but does not say anything about baptism’s purpose.” ↩

  18. Heine, Classical Christian Doctrine, chap. 13: “The writer of the Shepherd of Hermas says he has heard that one should live purely after baptism and never sin again… Tertullian, writing at the beginning of the third century, had a very rigoristic attitude. He argues that there is no salvation without baptism.” ↩