A BEGINNER'S CHRISTIAN BOOKSHELF compiled by Professor David Lyle Jeffrey The following list is divided into three categories: (1) classic works of Christian spirituality and devotional theology; (2) post-enlightenment and modern works of Christian intellectual and cultural criticism; (3) great novels, poems and plays whose Christian content and/or asking of questions central in their importance to accountable Christian reflection make them a desirable part of the well-tempered, well-furbished apostolic mind. I. CLASSIC FOUNDATIONS Athanasius On the Incarnation of the Word Augustine Confessions The City of God Enchiridion of Faith, Hope, and Love Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount The Teacher (De Magistro) Boethius Consolation of Philosophy Gregory the Great Pastoral Care John Chrysostom Homilies on 1 and 2 Corinthians Anselm of Canterbury Truth, Freedom and Evil Cur Deus Homo? Proslogion Basil On the Holy Spirit Bernard of Clairvaux On Loving God Sermons on Charity Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica, 5 vols. (Christian Classics) Theological Texts, ed. Thomas Gilby (Oxford) Commentary on John's Gospel Bonaventure The Mind's Road to God Walter Hilton Ladder of Perfection Thomas à Kempis Imitation of Christ Martin Luther On the Bondage of the Will Commentaries on Galatians, Romans John Calvin Institutes Commentary on Deuteronomy Thomas More The English Prayers of Sir Thomas More Blaise Pascal Pensées Thomas Browne Religio Medici Richard Baxter Saints' Everlasting Rest Ignaius of Loyola Spiritual Exercises John of the Cross Dark Night of the Soul Theresa of Avila The Way of Perfection Lancelot Andrewes Private Prayers Isaac Watts Guide to Prayer William Law Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life Phillip Doddridge The Rise and Progress of the Soul John and Charles Wesley Spiritual Writings (Paulist Press) Charles Simeon Memoirs John Henry Newman Apologia Pro Vita Sua Søren Kierkegaard Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing (Princeton) Fear and Trembling The Present Age: The Difference Between A Genius and an Apostle (Harper and Row) C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity Screwtape Letters God in the Dock and Other Essays Dietrich Bonhoeffer The Cost of Discipleship Watchman Nee The Normal Christian Life Sit, Walk, Stand The Release of the Spirit J.I. Packer Knowing God A.W. Tozer The Knowledge of the Holy Josemaria Escriva The Way Christ is Passing By Simone Weil Waiting for God Hans Urs Von Balthassar On Prayer John Paul II Letter to Families The Splendor of Truth The Gospel of Life Crossing the Threshold of Hope Ut Unum Sint II. CHRISTIAN INTELLECTUAL AND CULTURAL CRITICISM A. Focusing on the Patristic Era Jaroslav Pelikan The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (Chicago) Bernard Lonergan The Road to Nicea F.F. Bruce The Canon Of Scripture Tradition Old and New The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from First Beginnings to the Conversion of the English (Eerdmans) B. Medieval through Reformation Fredrick Coppleston A History of Philosophy (Penguin) C.S. Lewis The Discarded Image (Oxford) Gillian Evans The Language and Logic of the Bible, 2 vols. (Cambridge) Beryl Smalley The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame) Etienne Gilson Thomas Aquinas The Christian Philosophy of St. Bonaventure A Christian Philosophy (PIMS) Alistair McGrath The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation (Blackwells) Heiko Oberman Luther (Image) William J. Bowsma John Calvin (Oxford) Dom David Knowles Saints and Scholars E. Harris Harbison The Christian Scholar in the Age of Reformation C. Enlightenment and Early Modern Donald Davie A Gathered Church William Paley Evidences of Christianity D.L. Jeffrey, ed. English Spirituality in the Age of Wesley (Eerdmans) D. Modern 1. Arts and Humanities Hannah Arendt Between Past and Future Men in Dark Times Herbert Butterfield Christianity and History (Bell) Dorothy Sayers The Mind of the Maker (Methune) G.K. Chesterton The Everlasting Man (Doubleday Image) Orthodoxy (Doubleday Image) Jacque Ellul The Technological Society (Seabury) Propaganda The Humiliation of the Word (Eerdmans) Hope in a Time of Abandonment (Seabury) T.S. Eliot The Idea of a Christian Society W.H.V. Reade The Christian Challenge to Philosophy John A. MacMurray The Self as Agent (Faber) Persons in Relation (Faber) George Grant Technology and Justice David L. Jeffrey People of the Book: Christian Identity and Literary Culture (Eerdmans) Harry Blamires The Christian Mind (Seabury) Mark Noll The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Eerdmans) Paul Ricoeur History and Truth (Northwestern) George Marsden The Soul of the American University (Oxford) J.I. Packer and Thomas Howard Christianity: The True Humanism (Word) Nicholas Wolterstorff Reason Within the Bounds of Religion Keith Yandell Christianity and Philosophy (Eerdmans) 2. Science Herbert Butterfield Christianity and Science Paul Davies God and the New Physics The Mind of God Jean Daujat Physique moderne et philosophie traditionelle (Desclée) Le système du monde. Histoire des doctrines cosmologique de Platon a Copernic (Hermann) Le théorie physique (Minerva) Phillip Johnson Reason in the Balance: the Case against Naturalism (IVP) John Eccles and Daniel Robinson The Wonder of being Human, Our Brain and our Mind (Free Press) R. Harre The Philosophies of Science (Oxford) Theories and Things (Sheed & Ward) Casual Powers (Rowman & Littlefield) W. Heisenberg Physics and Philosophy, The Revolution in Modern Science (Harper) Mary Midgley Science and Salvation (RKP) Stanley Jaki Cosmos and Creator (Scottish Academic Press) The Relevance of Physics (Chicago) The Origin of Science and the Science of Origin (Scottish Academic Press) Angels, Apes, and Man (Sherwood) Jacques Maritain Science et Sagesse (Desclée) Roger Penrose The Emperor's New Mind Emile Simard La Nature et la portée de la methode scientifique (Laval) William Wallace Causality and Scientific Explanation (U. Mich.) From a Realist Point of View: Essays on the Philosophy of Science (U. Press of America) 3. Law Huntington Cairns Legal Philosophy from Plato to Hegel (Johns Hopkins) Benjamin Cardozo The Nature of the Judicial Process (Yale) Oliver W. Holmes The Common Law (Yale) Roscoe Pound Justice According to Law (Yale) Samuel Rutherford Lex Rex 4. Social Sciences Peter Berger A Rumor of Angels (Doubleday) C.S. Lewis The Abolition of Man (MacMillan) Jacques Ellul The Meaning of the City (Eerdmans) The Politics of God and the Politics of Man (Eerdmans) William K. Kilpatrick Psychological Seduction (Nelson) Neil Postman Amusing Ourselves to Death Paul Tournier The Meaning of Persons (SCM) Mary Stewart van Leeuwen The Person in Psychology (Eerdmans) Paul Vitz Psychology as Religion: the Cult of Self-Worship (Eerdmans) 5. Philosophical Theology Donald Bloesch Theology of Word and Spirit (IVP) Holy Scripture (IVP) The Battle for the Trinity (Vine) O. O'Donovan Resurrection and Moral Order (Eerdmans) T.F. Torrance God and Rationality (Oxford) The Trinitarian Faith (T & T Clark) Diogenes Allen Christian Belief in a Postmodern World(Westminster) Carl Henry God, Revelation and Authority 6 vols. (Word) A. Plantinga God, Freedom, and Evil (Eerdmans) A. Plantinga and N. Wolterstorff Faith and Rationality (Notre Dame) R. Swinburne The Coherence of Theism (Oxford) The Existence of God (Oxford) Faith and Reason (Oxford) Revelation (Oxford) Responsibility and Atonement (Oxford) Alasdair MacIntyre Three Rival Genealogies of Moral Inquiry (Notre Dame) Cardinal J. Ratzinger In the Beginning (Eerdmans) Bernard Lonergan Insight (Darton, Longman and Todd) Hans Urs Von Balthassar The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, 3 vols.; trans. E. Leiva-Merikakis (Ignatius) III. INDISPENSABLE WORKS OF LITERATURE Donald Davie Christian Poetry: An Anthology Dante Divine Comedy Christopher Marlowe The Tragicall Historie of Doctor Faustus William Roper The Life of Thomas More George Herbert The Temple John Donne Holy Sonnets, etc. Devotions John Bunyan Pilgrim's Progress Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners John Milton Paradise Lost Paradise Regained William Shakespeare A Winter's Tale Measure for Measure King Lear Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre Fyodor Dostoevski Crime and Punishment Brothers Karamazov Albert Camus La Peste Leo Tolstoy War and Peace Anna Karenina Resurrection G.M. Hopkins Poems François Mauriac Viper's Tangle Woman of the Pharisees The Leper's Kiss John Betjeman Summoned by Bells C.S. Lewis That Hideous Strength Till We Have Faces T.S. Eliot Poems Murder in the Cathedral Cocktail Party Charles Williams Descent into Hell All Hallows Eve J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings Graham Green The Power and the Glory The Heart of the Matter The End of the Affair Alexander Solzhenitsyn One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Walker Percy Lost in the Cosmos Second Coming Thanatos Syndrome Flannery O'Connor Collected Stories The Habit of Being Mystery and Manners Wendell Berry Fidelity (stories) Remembering (novel) Sabbaths (poems) The Country of Marriage (poems) Margaret Avison Collected Poems No Time George Bernanos Diary of a Country Priest P.D. James Children of Men