A READING LIST FOR THE HUMANIST CHRISTIAN I offer below a reading list of key humanist Christian texts that should prove challenging and inspiring not only to the humanist Christian but to the non-humanist Christian and the non-Christian humanist who are willing to put to the test their long-cherished views of man, God, and the universe. Now let me make clear right away that this is not a list of all the Great Books of the Western Tradition, nor is it a list of all the books that an educated reader should be acquainted with. The list confines itself to three specific categories: 1) Greco-Roman (pre-Christian) works that are compatible with the themes, goals, and perspectives of humanist Christianity and that may
even be seen as helping to prepare a foundation for the future truths of Christ; 2) works written since the time of Christ that embody (in whole or in part) the spirit of humanist Christianity as it has been developed throughout this book; 3) miscellaneous and assorted works that, though written by authors who (for one reason or another) don't really fit the humanist Christian mold, address issues or present ideals that I feel will be of interest to readers of the list. In accordance with these limitations, I have consciously and purposely left off the list not only those authors and works that are directly opposed to humanist Christianity (Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, etc.) but those that offer a weak, non-credal Christianity that robs true humanist Christianity of its power and reality (the deism of the Eighteenth Century, the idealism of German Romanticism, the "soft gnosticism" of American Transcendentalism, etc.). Let me state again: I do not mean to suggest in any way that the humanist Christian should avoid reading such books (indeed, if he is to understand the world in which he lives and to be an effective witness both for the Gospel of Christ and for the dignity of man, then he must possess at least some knowledge of those ideals and principles that stand in opposition to his own); however, if I were to include all such works on my list, then I would be merely offering my reader a catalogue of the Western Tradition. Such canonical lists are readily available from a number of fine publishers (Penguin, Norton, Oxford, University of Chicago, etc.); there is no reason for me to offer yet another. What I hope to provide instead is a select, carefully chosen list of works that have carried on, for more than two-and-a-half millennia, a dynamic, engaging, at times unpredictable humanist-Christian dialogue: a dialogue which I have attempted, in and through this book, to "log-on" to. In order to keep the list to a manageable length, I have generally included only one or two key works for each author; except for those authors included under category three, it is fairly safe to conclude that all works by that author will have relevance to the humanist Christian. Finally, it should be noted that the list is intended to serve a dual function as both a reading guide for the humanist Christian and a bibliography for the book you have just read. On the list, you will find not only all those humanist Christian works discussed in the above chapters but a host of other works that, though they did not find their way directly into my confessions, have helped to shape my views and opinions on all the topics covered above. The list is, of course, personal, but I have tried to be as inclusive as possible. In category two, I have carried the list down to our century, and it is here, I suppose, that my list will generate the most controversy. Please do not be offended if your "favorite author" does not appear in this part of the list. I have been sparing in my contemporary choices, lest the list devolve into a catalogue of "Christian celebrities," and lose its focus on perennial classics. To help strike a balance, I have concluded category two with a baker's dozen of contemporary writers (listed alphabetically) who seem to me to be carrying on, in one way or another, the humanist Christian dialogue that is the focus of this book. This "sub-list" is by no means exhaustive (it is not meant to be), and it excludes those who are specifically preachers (Billy Graham), apologists (Josh McDowell), scholars (Mark Noll), and modern explicators of doctrine (J. I. Packard). Rather, it keeps its focus on the humanities, on those who have sought, along with their predecessors on the list, to fuse into a single stream the humanist strivings of Athens and the Christian truths of Jerusalem. NOTE: In category two, I have placed an asterisk (*) by the names of those authors who, though they clearly belong on this list, have a tendency to mute somewhat the humanist side of the humanist Christian equation. This "muting" can generally be traced to a mindset that is vaguely (though not heretically) ascetic, that is drawn toward determinism and away from free will, and/or that downplays (via mysticism or puritanism) the full value of our worldly existence. # A READING LIST FOR THE HUMANIST CHRISTIAN (short poems and essays are enclosed in quotation marks) PRE-CHRISTIAN HomerThe Iliad The Odyssey Hesiod Theogony Works and Days Aeschylus Prometheus Bound The Oresteia Sophocles Oedipus the King Antigone Philoctetes The Women of Trachis Euripides The Bacchae Hippolytus Plato The Apology of Socrates The Republic The Symposium Phaedrus Phaedo Timaeus Aristotle The Poetics Nicomachean Ethics Virgil "Fourth Eclogue" The Aeneid Boethius The Consolation of Philosophy CHRISTIAN [All Eastern and Latin Fathers, with the exception of Origen, Athanasius, and Aquinas, require an *, the Eastern less so than the Latin, though Augustine, being the first to truly and systematically fuse Athens and Jerusalem, is in a class by himself.] Origen On First Principles Athanasius On the Incarnation John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa Selected Sermons Jerome, Ambrose, Anselm, and Bernard of Clairvaux Selected Sermons Augustine The Confessions The City of God Francis of Assisi Various Hymns and Prayers Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica Dante The Divine Comedy Chaucer The Canterbury Tales Anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight William Langland Piers Plowman Julian of Norwich* Revelations of Divine Love Assorted Mystery Plays and Medieval Allegories, e.g., The Second Shepherd's Play Everyman Pico Della Mirandola Oration on the Dignity of Man Thomas à Kempis* The Imitation of Christ Erasmus The Handbook of the Militant Christian Luther* The Freedom of the Christian The Babylonian Captivity of the Church Calvin* The Institutes of the Christian Religion John of the Cross* The Dark Night of the Soul Teresa of Avila* The Interior Castle Ignatius Loyola* Spiritual Exercises Spenser The Faerie Queene, Book I Marlowe Dr. Faustus Shakespeare Measure for Measure The Merchant of Venice The Winter's Tale Descartes Discourse on Method Pascal Pensées Donne Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (aka, Meditations) Assorted Sermons Songs and Sonnets (esp. "The Good-Morrow, "The Sun Rising," "The Canonization," "Air and Angels," "The Flea," "Nocturnal on St Lucy's," "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning," "The Ecstasy," "Love's Deity," "The Funeral," "The Relique") Sacred Poems (esp. The Holy Sonnets, "Goodfriday, 1613: Riding Westward," "Hymn to Christ," "Hymn to God my God in My Sickness," "A Hymn to God the Father") Herbert The Temple (esp. "The Altar," "Easter Wings," "Redemption," "Jordan [1]," "The Windows," "Employment [2]," "The Pearl," "The Man," "The Pilgrimage," "The Collar," "The Pulley," "Love [3]") Browne Religio Medici Bunyan* Pilgrim's Progress Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners Milton "Areopagitica" "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity" "Lycidas" Paradise Lost Paradise Regained Samson Agonistes Dryden Absalom and Achitophel Paley Natural Theology Jonathan Edwards* Various Sermons John and Charles Wesley Sermons and Hymns Hugo The Hunchback of Notre Dame Les Misérables Hans Christian Anderson Collected Fairy Tales Coleridge "The Eolian Harp" Biographia Literaria [I would particularly encourage the reader to study closely Chapters 5-13 of this monumental work. In these chapters, Coleridge offers a humanist Christian reading of such great German philosophers as Kant, Jacobi, Schelling, and Fichte: philosophers who are somewhat too problematic (from a humanist Christian point of view) to appear directly on this list and yet who merit attention for their championing of the freedom of the will and of the necessity for man to ascend the rising path. Read in the context of Coleridge, these philosophers can stimulate and challenge the humanist Christian. Let me add here that, read with some caution, Schiller and Hegel can also provide deep and challenging insights on the spiritual nature of man.] Newman The Idea of a University Apologia Pro Vita Sua Tennyson In Memoriam A. H. H. Browning Assorted Dramatic Monologues (esp. "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister," "Johannes Agricola in Meditation," "The Bishop Orders His Tomb," "Fra Lippo Lippi," "Andrea del Sarto," "Caliban upon Setebos," "An Epistle to Karshish," "Saul," "Cleon," "Rabbi Ben Ezra," "Bishop Blougram's Apology") Ruskin The Stones of Venice Dickens A Christmas Carol Hard Times A Tale of Two Cities Hopkins Selected Poetry ("God's Grandeur," "The Windhover," etc.) Wallace Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ Dostoevsky The Brothers Karamazov Crime and Punishment Kierkegaard Either-Or Fear and Trembling George MacDonald Lilith and Phantastes Unspoken Sermons Chesterton Orthodoxy The Everlasting Man Biographies of Aquinas and St. Francis Maritain True Humanism Barth Selected Sermons and Commentaries Eliot Four Quartets Murder in the Cathedral The Sacred Wood Owen Barfield Saving the Appearances J. R. R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings The Silmarillion On Fairy Stories C. S. Lewis Mere Christianity Screwtape Letters The Great Divorce The Abolition of Man God in the Dock The Pilgrim's Regress The Chronicles of Narnia The Space Trilogy Till We Have Faces Dorothy Sayers The Man Born to be King The Mind of the Maker Translations of and Introductions to The Divine Comedy Flannery O'Connor Assorted Short Stories Bonhoeffer The Cost Of Discipleship Ethics Martin Luther King "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" Watchman Nee* The Spiritual Man Thomas Merton The Seven-Storey Mountain Julían Marías Generations: An Historical Method Francis Schaeffer The God Who is There M. Scott Peck The Road Less Traveled The People of the Lie Mortimer Adler, Frederick Buechner, Annie Dillard, Madeliene L' Engle, Philip Johnson, Alisdair McIntyre, Calvin Miller, Lesslie Newbigin, Eugene Peterson, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, John Stott, Elton Trueblood, Philip Yancey MISCELLANEOUS MoliereTartuffe Goethe Faust Blake The Songs of Innocence and Experience Wordsworth The Prelude "Ode: Intimations of Immortality" Byron Manfred Shelley Prometheus Unbound "A Defense of Poetry" Carlyle Sartor Resartus Melville Billy Budd, Sailor Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter "Young Goodman Brown" Tolstoy "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" Ortega y Gasset The Origin of Philosophy Unamuno The Tragic Sense of Life Steinbeck East of Eden Lagerkvist Barabbas Kazantzakis The Greek Passion Bradbury The Martian Chronicles | ||