What They Preached, and What They Taught Next

People sometimes ask why the gospel can be put in a sentence when the Christian life clearly cannot. The New Testament answers that without ever arguing about it, because it uses two different words and keeps them apart.

One is kērygma, the proclamation: the thing you announce, out loud, to people who have not heard it. It occurs eight times. The other is didachē, the teaching: what you say to people who have. It occurs thirty. The first is short and fixed. The second is long and practical, and it never stops.

The sentence that came before the New Testament

Paul is writing to Corinth around AD 55, and he stops to say that what follows is not his:

1 Corinthians 15:3-5 · KJV

For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve

Delivered and received are the words a rabbi used for handing on a fixed tradition, and Paul uses them deliberately. He is quoting something older than the letter it sits in, and probably older than any book in the New Testament. Four clauses, and they are all events: He died, He was buried, He was raised, He was seen. Two of them are anchored in the Scriptures Israel already had, and two of them have witnesses whose names are given.

There is no theory of the atonement in it. No model of how the death works, and this site has a whole letter on the models and how they differ. The proclamation does not settle that question. It reports.

Peter preaching it, four times

Luke records the same skeleton in sermon after sermon, to different crowds, and it holds its shape. At Pentecost:

Acts 2:23-24, 32, 36 · KJV

Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death… This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses… Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.

In Solomon's porch: “killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses” (Acts 3:15). In Cornelius's house: “whom they slew and hanged on a tree: Him God raised up the third day, and shewed him openly” (Acts 10:39-40). In the synagogue at Antioch: “they took him down from the tree, and laid him in a sepulchre. But God raised him from the dead” (Acts 13:29-30).

Same four beats every time. Killed, and the hearers are told plainly who did it. Raised, and God is the one who does the raising. Witnessed, by named men. And then, in every single case, something is asked of the hearer: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you” (Acts 2:38), “Repent ye therefore, and be converted” (Acts 3:19), “whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins” (Acts 10:43).

That is the whole proclamation. It fits on a card, and the apostles never expanded it and never shortened it.

And then, immediately, the other word

Three thousand people respond at Pentecost, and Luke tells you in one sentence what happened next:

Acts 2:42 · KJV

And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.

The word behind “doctrine” there is didachē. The proclamation had done its work; now there was teaching, and a table, and prayers, and a people to belong to. Paul puts both words in one line to Timothy: “kēryxon the word… with all longsuffering and didachē” (2 Timothy 4:2). Preach, and teach. They are not the same job.

The book named after the second word

We have one of those teaching manuals, and it is named for exactly this. The Didache, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, from very early in the second century and possibly the first, is what the church said to people after they believed. Sixteen short chapters: the Two Ways, one of life and one of death; then baptism, fasting, prayer, the Eucharist, hospitality, how to test a travelling prophet, and a closing call to watch for the Lord's return.

Notice what is not in it. It does not argue that Christ rose. That is settled before anyone opens it; it is the proclamation, and this is the teaching. The Didache is about what you do on Wednesday.

And notice the shape of the instruction, because it is gentler than people expect. On baptism it says pour if you have no river. On the yoke it says bear what you can if you cannot bear the whole. The site takes that up on its own page, Do That Which Thou Canst.

Why this is worth keeping straight

Almost every argument this site works through is an argument about the didachē, not the kērygma. How baptism works, what the table is, whether a Christian can fall away, how the age ends: all of it is teaching, and the church has divided over teaching for two thousand years. None of it is the proclamation, and the proclamation is what makes someone a Christian in the first place.

That cuts two ways and it should.

It is a rebuke to anyone who makes a secondary teaching the test of whether another person belongs to Christ. The thing delivered first of all is four clauses about a death and a resurrection, and a man can hold those and still be wrong about a great deal. Loving the Church You Disagree With is the long version of that.

And it is a rebuke to the opposite error, the idea that since the proclamation is short, the teaching is optional. Three thousand people believed and then continued stedfastly in the teaching. Nobody in Acts is proclaimed at and left there. Faith Is a Verb works that out from the other end.

Where this lands

The gospel is short because it is news. Something happened, in public, and there were witnesses; you do not need a system to report an event. The Christian life is long because it is a life, and a life needs teaching, a table, and other people.

Say the short thing to someone who has not heard it. Then do not leave them there.

Study the passages

• 1 Corinthians 15:3-5: delivered, and received
• Acts 2:22-38: Pentecost, and what was asked
• Acts 3:13-19; 10:39-43; 13:29-38: the same four beats, three more times
• Acts 2:42: the teaching, named the day the church began
• 2 Timothy 4:2: both words in one sentence
• Romans 16:25; 1 Corinthians 15:14: what the proclamation is called

The line Paul drew around this, and the three marks that define a false teaching, are in What Makes a Teaching False. Greek occurrence counts checked against the Berean translation tables in our own library: kērygma (Strong's G2782) eight times, didachē (G1322) thirty. Scripture quotations from the King James Version. The Didache is quoted and linked in the public-domain G. C. Allen (1903) translation.