Books on Theology: Suggestions

[Bogey]

Piggy backing off of Dave's Bible thread, what other "theological" books have you read, enjoyed, and more importantly, found memorable.  All religious groups invited along. I would also encourage any suggestions from any of our atheists friends here as well that would like to share books that they found to be important reads upholding their beliefs.

As a disclaimer, I would appreciate that we respect what others post here and just use this as a resource thread.  Civil debate is welcome, but please check your heated arguments at the door.

Thanks!

[Tapio Dmitriyevich]

Religion, discussion, dogma, it's all getting complex and complicated - this one brings you down. From the writing style it's big fun.

[Xenophanes]

Piggy backing off of Dave's Bible thread, what other "theological" books have you read, enjoyed, and more importantly, found memorable.  All religious groups invited along. I would also encourage any suggestions from any of our atheists friends here as well that would like to share books that they found to be important reads upholding their beliefs.

As a disclaimer, I would appreciate that we respect what others post here and just use this as a resource thread.  Civil debate is welcome, but please check your heated arguments at the door.

Thanks!

John L. McKenzie, The Two Edged Sword
______________, Dictionary of the Bible
______________, A Theology of the Old Testament
______________, The New Testament Without Illusion

Hubert J. Richards, The First Christmas: What really happened?
_______________, The Miracles of Jesus: What really happened?
_______________, The First Easter: What really happened?
_______________, Death and After: What will really happen?

Buttrick, ed., The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible

Jean Danielou, God and the Ways of Knowing

B. W. Anderson, ed., Creation in the Old Testament

Jacques Maritain, Scholasticism and Politics
______________, The Range of Reason
______________, The Degrees of Knowledge
______________, Art and Scholasticism
______________, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry

Etienne Gilson, A Gilson Reader, ed. A. C. Pegis
-----------------, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages
____________, God and Philosophy

Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, 3 vols.
___________, Myth and Reality
___________, The Sacred and the Profane

Christopher Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture

G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
_____________, The Everlasting Man
_____________, Complete Father Brown
_____________, Saint Thomas Aquinas
_____________, Autobiography

Hick and Hebblethwaite, Christianity and other Religions, selected readings

Bernard Shaw, "Don Juan in Hell," which is Act III of Man and Superman

John R. Hinnells, ed., A Handbook of Living Religions

K. M. Sen, Hinduism

The Principal Upanishads

The Bhagavad Gita

The Dhammapada

Speaking of Siva, poems by Basavann, Devara Dasimayya, Mahadeviyakk, Allama Prabhu, translated by A. K. Ramanujan

Ninian Smart, World Religions: A Dialogue (lucky if you can still get this short book)
__________, Reasons and Faiths

The Greek Plays (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes)

Plato, Timaeus, also Phaedo, Republic, and Laws

Aristotle, Book XII of the Metaphysics

Plotinus, Enneads

St. Augustine, Confessions
___________, The City of God

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica

Karel Capek, The Absolute at Large (novel, quite funny)

Hartshorne and Reese, The Philosophers Speak of God

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Le milieu divin

[Xenophanes]

Religion, discussion, dogma, it's all getting complex and complicated - this one brings you down. From the writing style it's big fun.

Yeah Nietzsche wrote great short pieces and aphorisms.  I consider him primarily a psychologist, though. Thus Spake Zarathustra has some fascinating stuff.

[david johnson]

Te Deum: The Church and Music by Paul Westermeyer
Foundations of Christian Music by Foley
CS Lewis

dj

[bwv 1080]

K. M. Sen, Hinduism

cool list

I have that book on order from Amazon - did you know he is the grandfather of Nobel-prize winning economist Amaryta Sen?

I would add the various historic creeds & confessions which are available at various internet sites such as:

http://www.spread-the-word.org/creeds/creed_links.htm


and the Council of Trent:

http://history.hanover.edu/early/trent.htm

[c#minor]

Freud has an essay on religion/theology that's at least an interesting read. It kinda gave me the final push into the "dark side" but it is just as fascinating to see how the guy thought.

For the life of me i can't remember the name of the essay or if it was an excerpt from a book. If any of you all found it or know of it I would very much appreciate it if you all could give me the name or a link or something.

[Wanderer]

Regarding Orthodoxy, the works of Kallistos Ware are particularly recommended (especially The Orthodox Church and The Orthodox Way).

[vandermolen]

'The Varieties of Religious Experience' by William James.

[Xenophanes]

Freud has an essay on religion/theology that's at least an interesting read. It kinda gave me the final push into the "dark side" but it is just as fascinating to see how the guy thought.

For the life of me i can't remember the name of the essay or if it was an excerpt from a book. If any of you all found it or know of it I would very much appreciate it if you all could give me the name or a link or something.

The idea that people project their ideals and ideas onto god has a long history.  Modesty almost forbids that I mention my own good self, for long ago in ancient Greece I proposed that human beings conceive gods in their own image.  You can find a good short account of my views at that time in:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/

In the 19th century, Ludwig Feuerbach, developed a projection theory in The Essence of Christianity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Feuerbach

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ludwig-feuerbach/

I understand that in Totem and Taboo (1913) Freud developed a peculiar theory of an original horde in which the father claimed all women for himself, but was killed by his sons, who then felt guilty and established law and religion.  There is, of course, no evidence for this theory and the historians of religion don't seem to think much of it.

Freud wrote a number of books on religion:

The Future of an Illusion (1927)

Civilization and its Discontents (1930)

Moses and Monotheism (1939)

A number of writers have found Freud's theories applicable to religious phenomena.  Here is a link to a sympathetic article:

http://www.trialectics.com/Essays/Freud%27s%20view%20of%20Religion.htm

[Xenophanes]

cool list

I have that book on order from Amazon - did you know he is the grandfather of Nobel-prize winning economist Amaryta Sen?

I would add the various historic creeds & confessions which are available at various internet sites such as:

http://www.spread-the-word.org/creeds/creed_links.htm


and the Council of Trent:

http://history.hanover.edu/early/trent.htm

Thanks for your kind remarks, also for the excellent links. 

The books I listed are those I have found particularly memorable over a span of almost 50 years, and many are ones which introduced me to new ways of thinking. In some cases, I could think of more definitive or comprehensive works, but that would be a different list.

I was not aware that Kshiti Mohan Sen was Amaryta Sen's grandfather.  Any way, K. M. Sen's little book on Hinduism is a sympathetic but not uncritical introduction. It is somewhat old, 1961, and so cannot discuss modern scholarly controversies about such things as the origins of Hinduism.  In the back, there are some texts, notably the astonishing Song of Creation (Rig Veda 10.129) and the short Isa Upanishad, both of which are terse and enigmatic, and some sections of the Gita.

[vandermolen]

Strongly recommend 'God: A Guide for the Perplexed' by Keith Ward (2003), which I took with me on a longish train journey today.

This is what one reviewer wrote:

Wry, but delightfully non-ironic - a tour guide through the intellectual history of God ....

I have found it to be very informative and also entertaining - not something common in books on theology!

[Xenophanes]

Strongly recommend 'God: A Guide for the Perplexed' by Keith Ward (2003), which I took with me on a longish train journey today.

This is what one reviewer wrote:

Wry, but delightfully non-ironic - a tour guide through the intellectual history of God ....

I have found it to be very informative and also entertaining - not something common in books on theology!

I hope it's better than Karen Armstrong's A History of God, which though fairly wide-ranging is mostly pretty conventional.  It does present a lot of history and issues many readers have not heard of before, so it is an eye-opener for many as the reviews on Amazon.com attest. 

I was thinking of putting William James Varieties of Religious Experience in my list of books but forgot to put it in.

[drogulus]

     It's interesting to examine the theology/existence relationship. Could you have a theology, or would there be any point to it, if a god was thought to be a likely being in the normal sense? That is, not in the "this is the voice I use to lie to children" mode so familiar to us here.

          God Makes Surprise Visit To Local Church

     I think surprise is a bit of an understatement, because churches and gods don't coexist: The existence of one depends on the nonexistence of the other. With a god there's no need of a church, indeed no motive for one. With a church there's clearly no need to complicate things further. What would happen to religious freedom if our untethered preferences suddenly were forced to conform to something beyond intuitions?* The odds that such an event would miraculously (probably the right word) harmonize with ones own desires seems awfully low. It's best for all concerned if the current arrangement continues. I'm sure any self-respecting god would agree, and worshippers of all sorts act as though they agree, too. 

     _{* The small number of people who think that statements ought to conform to some standard beyond intuition shouldn't have a problem with an evident god any more than they do with extrasolar planets or actual flying saucers landing in Central Park. I certainly don't. I don't care so much about what exists as I do about the standards used to evaluate statements about these odd things. It's the infomercial principle applied to life: If it's too good to be true, it isn't. At least, that is, until it can be demonstrated otherwise.}

[haydnguy]

"The Cost of Discipleship", by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.