Covenantal pedagogy in Deuteronomy 6:4–9: a formative orientation for Christian religious education in the digital age

Christian religious education faces a persistent tendency to reduce its pedagogical purpose to knowledge transmission, particularly in learning environments increasingly mediated by digital technology. Existing scholarship has critiqued this tendency from philosophical, pedagogical, and sociological perspectives, yet the relationship between the formative logic of Old Testament texts and contemporary questions of digital pedagogy in Christian religious education remains underdeveloped. This article argues that Deuteronomy 6:4–9 offers a pedagogical orientation grounded in the text’s own covenantal logic, one providing a basis for reassessing the dominance of the information paradigm in digital Christian religious education. Drawing on a biblical-theological approach, the article identifies four principles of covenantal pedagogy, namely intensive repetition expressed through weshinnantam, embodied practice, communal transmission, and intergenerational narrative. These principles are placed in critical dialogue with contemporary literature on digital technology and religious education. The analysis shows that covenantal pedagogy does not reject information or technology. It situates both within a more comprehensive framework of faith formation that encompasses the body, community, habitual practice, and identity across generations. The article contributes conceptually to scholarship on formation and identity in religious education, and extends that conversation into the context of Indonesian theological higher education.