theophiles.org - Some Top Fives.

Written by whitemice

Monday, 16 April 2012 18:57

Over at Patheos is an extremely short post about the author's top-five most influential books. Or it is his "Top Five favorite, most influential" which may not be the same things as just "most influential". Also over at Internet Monk the thread continues. I'm a sucker for a top-list-of as I'm a habitual organizer, and these types of articles also make for light easy reading. It got me pondering what my top-five would be; I suspect they wouldn't be nearly as auspicious and literary as these fellows [I could never get over the fact that Dante's Divine Comedy felt terribly dated; although possibly only because so much more current material are D.C. adaptations]. It is also a tough list to make because so much has changed over time. I'd certainly have to list a title or two by Arn Rand as I grappled with a sympathy for Objectivism in High-School at the same time I was also reading Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Ultimately they did help clarify and steer me towards my present identity - I rejected them utterly. I doubt I could stomach reading Rand today; I lack the alienated testosterone fueled self-involvement that comes so easy during the fever of youth. So for that chapter Tolkien and Lewis won out. But I've found much 'official' religious writing to be very unsatisfying. I so remember being given Lewis' Mere Christianity and being utterly underwhelmed. Lewis as a lecturer failed completely compared to Lewis as the author. On the other hand the Screwtape letters and the Great Divorce were magnificent, they seemed to intersect with the day to day world so much more than the 'real' apologetics. Miro Slav's "The End of Memory" would certainly make my list. EoM is an excellent example of a heady intellectual book from which one can take both an increased understanding and principles that have clear application in every day life. And it is provoking, At the beginning I wanted to reject what he was saying. So I guess this isn't a list, but it has got me pondering what that list would be.

Comments

SteveGus

|2012-05-16 10:38:52

Mine would probably look rather unusual. I'd have to include ---

Charles Baudelaire, Les fleurs du mal. Yes, this. Really. I can think of no other work of literature so shot through with Christian principles, while at the same time being obviously addressed to unbelieving people who think themselves above that sort of thing.

Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation. Another antidote against pride.

Blaise Pascal, Pensees. I think he intended to leave it exactly like what we have. This way, the reader has to organize it into an argument.

James Scott, Seeing Like a State. The problem with human plans is that they must be carried out by human beings.

David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. One of the best essayists of the twentieth century, cut down too early by depression, the author was a committed Christian who never really wore it on his sleeve. Or did he? The title essay is a meditation on his experience on a cruise ship. His observations of the crew and of the manipulative nature of the experience poisoned all the pampering he got.

PineHall - Some of My Influential Books

|2012-05-16 10:42:01

Not counting the Bible, here are some of the books that have influenced me.

1) "What's So Amazing about Grace?" by Philip Yancey
This book really made me aware of how revolutionary is the idea of grace (and forgiveness). I think this is what sets the Christian Faith a part from the other faiths.

2) "The Body: Being Light in Darkness" by Charles Colson and Ellen Santilli Vaughn
This book made me more aware of how as Christians, we are lights in the darkness. There are a ton of great and inspiring stories in this book.

3) "What's So Great about Christianity" by Dinesh D'Souza
This book is a great apologetics book that covers a lot of ground in a few pages. It is good for combating the new Atheists and their books.

4) "The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church" by Reggie McNeal
This book is a wakeup call for the Church. Society has changed and most churches are stuck in the past. It is an eye opening book.

5) "A Short Explanation of Dr. Martin Luther's Small Catechism"
Luther's Small Catechism is a concise summary of the Christian Faith, and this book expands and adds the corresponding scripture to the catechism. This book was foundational in my understanding of the Christian Faith. There is a newer version of the book available today.

6) "The Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkein
This book baptized my imagination and got me into fantasy and science fiction. I like the world that it created.

Well that is some of the most influential books that I have read. I don't think I would want to say they are my top 6 because tomorrow I might be biased a different way.

emperorbma

|2012-05-17 17:49:49

I actually don't read all that much (I know, surprising, right?) but I can think of a few works that I have read that were pretty influential off the top of my head: (Not counting the Bible, of course)

1) "The Book of Concord" by Martin Luther, et al.
Obviously it is very important to have a basis in one's own faith tradition and know the reasons behind it.

2) "The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel" by C.F.W. Walther
Influential in shaping my views about how Lutheran teaching sees Scriptural truth as interacting within the Scriptures themselves and how they should apply to the Christian's daily walk of faith.

3) "Christ and Culture" by H. Richard Niebuhr
Served to increase my awareness of how Christianity and culture influence each other and the different strategies and approaches found in other Christian faith traditions.

4) "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Dr. Jared Diamond
Takes an interesting approach to explaining how Western culture gained the influence it did.

5) "Hyperspace" by Dr. Michio Kaku
A really nice, accessible book that gives a basic grounding in what string theory and other advanced physics topics are about...

emperorbma

|2012-06-11 14:08:29

Also, "Bondage of the Will" seems to be nudging its way up this list very fast, I think, as I am reading it.

PineHall - A Classic Book

|2012-06-12 11:01:56

Good! I am glad you are able to enjoy "Bondage of the Will". I had a hard time getting though it because Luther was so polemic. I don't like that style of writing.

emperorbma

|2012-06-14 18:06:52

It's certainly a bit disconcerting that Luther was polemical and probably he didn't want to stoop to it either. I did get the impression that it owes more to Luther being genuinely disappointed in Erasmus, whom he had previously respected. Luther felt that Erasmus was far too intelligent to make the kinds of equivocations being made in his Diatribe on Free Will and probably sought to rouse Erasmus from his Papally coerced stupor.

Luther seems to suggest that he'd normally ignore such arguments except that 1) his fellow Protestants asked him to respond and 2) because only Erasmus had actually touched on the real core issue of the Reformation, despite the flailing format, which suggested that Erasmus's Diatribe might have been a "show piece."

It is a very interesting piece, primarily, because it is indeed at the center of Reformation theology. It is also interesting because it is very influential outside the Lutheran Concord due to John Calvin's influence on the formation of the Reformed and Arminian sects that follows largely from his own reading of this work.

laika

|2012-07-04 22:48:40

emperorbma wrote:

I actually don't read all that much actually don't read all that much...

That surprises. I would've imagined quite otherwise.

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Last Updated on Wednesday, 09 May 2012 10:12

Our valuable member whitemice has been with us since Thursday, 10 September 2009.

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