Didache (The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles)

Reflection

The Didache — Greek for 'teaching' — is a short manual of Christian instruction composed within a generation of the apostles. It begins with 'The Two Ways' (chapters 1-6), a moral catechism for candidates approaching baptism. It then moves to liturgy and order: how to baptize (chapter 7), how to fast and pray (chapter 8), how to celebrate the Eucharist (chapters 9-10), how to receive traveling teachers and apostles (chapters 11-13), how to observe the Lord's Day (chapter 14), and how to appoint bishops and deacons (chapter 15). Chapter 16 closes with an eschatological warning.

Several details have shaped doctrinal conversation ever since. Baptism is to be in running water where possible; if not, in other water; if cold is unavailable, warm; and only in necessity is water poured on the head three times. Immersion is assumed; pouring is the emergency provision. The Eucharistic prayers are memorial and corporate, with thanksgiving for the cup and the broken bread; there is no language of transubstantiation. Fasting is prescribed on Wednesdays and Fridays. Prayer — the Lord's Prayer — is to be said three times a day. Local churches are governed by bishops and deacons, plural and local; there is no pope, no metropolitan, no curia.

The Didache shows the church one generation from the apostles practicing exactly what the New Testament describes — and nothing more. There are no church ages, no developed sacramental theology, no clerical hierarchy. Just baptism, Eucharist, prayer, fasting, and shared leadership. It is the apostolic deposit before later accretions.

Sources: Aaron Milavec, The Didache: Text, Translation, Analysis, and Commentary (2003); Kurt Niederwimmer, The Didache: A Commentary (Hermeneia, 1998); Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations (3rd ed., 2007).