Scripture Memory throughout Church History:

Early Christian apologists memorized large portions of the OT so that they could show Jewish skeptics that Jesus was the Messiah even if a scroll was unavailable (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho).

Clergy in the early church knew that the common person could not afford (or read) the Scriptures, so they developed the text-heavy liturgy. The hope was that God’s word would stick in people’s minds so that they could meditate on the Scriptures throughout the week.

Monks in the 6th century were required to memorize 2 epistles and 20 psalms before entering the monastery (Mark Noll, Turning Points).

In the 7th century one was required to memorize one epistle, all the psalms, and a major prophet before becoming a deacon in the Egyptian Church (may have gotten details a bit wrong; I think Dr. Haykin mentioned it in this lecture: https://www.ligonier.org/learn/conferences/scripture-early-church-2017-winter-conference/preaching-gods-word-early-church/).

As an Augustinian monk, Martin Luther memorized all the Psalms and recited them once a week.

Many of John Calvin’s sermons (especially on Paul’s epistles) focus on only one or two verses. This was meant to enable his audience to memorize the week’s text so that they could reflect on it. Spurgeon seemed to follow Calvin’s method fairly tightly.

2 Takeaways:

(1) I don’t know of a single denomination that has a Scripture memory requirement for ordination, and that seems like a bad thing. IMO, it takes more dedication to memorize an epistle than to read an ST and regurgitate it. It’d show how much someone valued the Word.

(I’d be interested to know if any denoms do make it a requirement.)

(2) If we want to be in-step with the historic Christian church, Scripture memory needs to be a top spiritual discipline for us. Having a printed Bible in our hands is an indictment, not an excuse.

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