A good friend just sent me a delightful list of books from the Christian intellectual tradition. This particular list is from Dr. David Lyle Jeffrey and it entitled A Beginners Christian Bookshelf and is served up by the Yale Graduate Christian Fellowship.
Personally, I would have liked to see a work by Jonathan Edwards, but nonetheless a great list:
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
(HT - Sandy Young)