Most Influential Christian Books

Posted on September 4, 2013 by PS

After a search across the internet for the most influential texts in Christian history came up empty, I decided to create my own.  It is admittedly biased toward western, evangelical, Protestant books with a skew toward more recent publications.  I define influential based on the number of people impacted, its prevalence and persistence as a key seminary text or its consideration as foundational to a specific denomination.  I’m sure there are a lot of gaps on the list, so I’d love your ideas for how to improve the it.  It’s ordered by date and includes texts such as creeds and Bible translations.

  • The Didiche (~100)
  • Against Heresies (180) – Irenaeus
  • On the Incarnation (318) – Athanasius
  • Nicean Creed (325)
  • Codex Sinaiticus (mid-300s)
  • Life of Antony (360) – Athanasius
  • Confessions (400) – Augustine
  • Latin Vulgate (405) – Jerome
  • City of God (413-426) – Augustine
  • Creed of Chacedon (451)
  • The Rule of St Benedict (530) – Benedict
  • The Philokalia (400-1500) – Various
  • On Loving God (1128) – Bernard
  • Book of Sentences (1150) – Peter Lombard
  • Summa Theoligica (1272) – Thomas Aquinas
  • Revelations of Love – Julian of Norwich
  • Imitation of Christ (1418-1427) – Thomas a Kempis
  • Gutenberg Bible (1456)
  • 95 Theses (1517) – Martin Luther
  • Bondage of the Will (1525) – Martin Luther
  • German Bible translation (1522, 1534) – Martin Luther
  • Commentary on Galatians (1535) – Luther
  • Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536) – John Calvin
  • The Divine Comedy (1555) – Dante Alighieri
  • Acts and Monuments (aka Foxe’s Book of Martyrs) (1563) – John Fox
  • Dark Night of the Soul (1584) – John of the Cross
  • Spiritual Exercises (1522-1524) – Ignatius
  • Common Book of Prayer (1549) – Thomas Cranmer
  • Heidelberg Catechism (1563)
  • King James Bible (1611)
  • Westminster Confession (1646)
  • Death of Death (1647) – John Owen
  • Reformed Pastor (1657) – Richard Baxter
  • Paradise Lost (1667) – John Milton
  • Pensees (1669) – Blaise Pascal
  • Pia Desideria (1675) – Philip Jacob Spener
  • Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) – John Bunyan
  • Institutes of Elenctic Theology (1679-1685) – Francis Turretin
  • Attributes of God (1682) – Stephen Charnock
  • New England Primer (1687)
  • Body of Divinity (1692) – Thomas Watson
  • Practice of the Presence of God (~1700) – Brother Lawrence/Joseph de Beaufont
  • Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707) – Isaac Watts
  • Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1728) – William Law
  • Religious Affections (1746) – Jonathan Edwards
  • Diary of David Brainerd (1749) – Jonathan Edwards
  • Plain Account of Christian Perfection (1766) – John Wesley
  • Lectures on Revival (1835) – Charles Finney
  • Missionary Travels (1857) – David Livingstone
  • Holiness (1877) – JC Ryle
  • Systematic Theology (1871) – Charles Hodge
  • Diary of George Muller – George Muller
  • In His Steps (1897) – Charles Sheldon
  • Lectures on Calvinism (1898) – Abraham Kuyper
  • Quest for the Historical Jesus (1906) – Albert Schweitzer
  • Orthodoxy (1908) – GK Chesterton
  • The Scofield Study Bible (1909) – Cyrus Scofield
  • The Fundamentals (1910-1915) – RA Torrey
  • Christianity and Liberalism (1923) – J Gresham Machen
  • My Utmost for His Highest (1924) – Oswald Chambers
  • Church Dogmatics (1932 – 1967) – Karl Barth
  • Cost of Discipleship (1937) – Dietrich Bonheoffer
  • The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) – CS Lewis
  • Christ and Culture (1951) – Richard Neibuhr
  • Mere Christianity (1952) – CS Lewis
  • Late Great Planet Earth (1970) – Hal Lindsey
  • Knowing God (1973) – JI Packer
  • The Celebration of Discipline (1978) – Richard Foster
  • Desiring God (1986) – John Piper
  • The Purpose Driven Life (2002) – Rick Warren

The list is compiled from a variety of sources, but one of the most interesting is this bake off for the best Christian book of all-time

For a list of the top 100 events in Christian history, look through this issue of Christian History magazine.

Posted in Culture, Theology | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Prioritized Bible Passages to Memorize

Posted on August 23, 2013 by PS

This prioritized Bible memory passage list is roughly based on Crossway’s most frequent ESV Bible searches and supplemented to expand the breadth of topics covered.  Hopefully, it will be helpful to you as you consider what to memorize.

If you were to learn everything, you’d know most of the top 10 highlighted verses, top 50 most searched verses, the most frequently used book (adjusted for length) and much of the top 15 most frequently used chapters.  It’s viable to complete the list in five years by learning approximately one chapter every two months (~25 verses) January through October and using November and December as review time.

  • Romans 8:1-39 (conquering in the Spirit)
  • 1 Corinthians 13 (the nature of love)
  • Romans 3 (law, sinfulness and salvation)
  • Ephesians (if you’re going to memorize one book, this is it; dense in doctrine and practice)
  • Matthew 5-7 (Sermon on the Mount)
  • James 1 (testing, doing the Word)
  • 1 Peter 4 (suffering)
  • John 3:1-21 (born again through the Son)
  • Philippians 2:1-18 (humility)
  • Philippians 4:4-13 (peace and practice)
  • Colossians 1:9-23 (the nature of Jesus)
  • Colossians 3 (living with hearts set on things above)
  • Exodus 20:1-20 (10 commandments)
  • Psalm 23 (death)
  • Psalm 51 (repentance)
  • Psalm 139 (God’s omniscience)
  • Proverbs 31:10-31 (characteristics of a godly woman)

See Long Bible Passages to Memorize for additional ideas.  If you need help memorizing, try the Fighter Verses app.

Posted in Discipleship, Family | Tagged , | 1 Comment

John Owen’s Four Characteristics of a Christian Man – JI Packer

Posted on August 18, 2013 by PS

John Owen has written some of the most significant and weighty works on the nature of man and sin.  They should be tackled by every Christian who wants to know God’s grace and forgiveness more deeply.  As a sample of his thinking, JI Packer does a great job of distilling Owen’s thoughts about man into four characteristics – man himself, fallen man, redeemed man and regenerate man.

  • The Christian is a man with three faculties:
    • Understanding: The mind guides, directs, chooses and leads.  It is the power to apprehend.  Through the mind, we know good (God, His truth and His law).  God addresses through our mind with His Word, so to serve God correctly, we must understand the guide He has provided for us
    • Affection: The drives (positive and negative) which lead to choices based on whether one is drawn or repelled from an object.  The drives have the emotional content of love, hope, hate etc.  Through our affections, we desire good
    • Will: The will provides the power of action and to do what is good
  • The Christian is a fallen man:
    • Sin has alienated us from God and ourselves by pervasively polluting us
    • The fruit of sin is disorder in the soul and dis-integration of character
    • We are ‘without strength’ to obey God (Romans 5:6) because our sin, at its root, makes us dodge, defy and disobey Him
    • The only healthy Christian is a humble, broken-hearted one where living must be founded on self-abhorrence and self-distrust because of indwelling sin’s presence and power.  Self-confidence and self-satisfaction argue self-ignorance
  • The Christian is a redeemed man
    • Redemption by Christ is the heart of doctrine, and faith and love to Christ must be the heart of Christian devotion
    • Jesus paid our debts, earned life for us, and to free us from sin’s guilt, now lives to deliver us from sin’s power
  • The Christian is a regenerate man
    • We are a new creature in Christ with a circumcised heart
    • Our heart becomes a lifelong battlefield between ‘the flesh’ and ‘the spirit’ (Galatians 5:17, Romans 7:23)

Source: A Quest for Godliness (The Spirituality of John Owen)

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Puritan Gospel Emphases

Posted on August 14, 2013 by PS

JI Packer’s summary of Puritan Gospel emphases helps correct some subtle ways the modern church has gone astray in its presentation of the message of salvation.  Packer makes five points:

  1. Correct diagnosis of the plight of man: Our situation is not one of only guilt for sin, but of pollution from it and bondage to it.  We are not merely weak, but in a corrupt state of enmity to God.  A minister’s job is to make this state clear such that “the index of the soundness of a man’s faith in Christ is the genuineness of the self-despair from which it springs.”.
  2. Clear analysis of the issue of sin: God is presently hostile to the sinner and they are condemned in the future without His grace.  A minister must make a broken relationship with God intolerable and drive sinners to repentance
  3. Correct understanding of the goal of grace: The goal is God’s glory for His’ name sake, not our own sake.  Our salvation is a means to a greater end
  4. Reliance on the sufficiency of Christ: We trust in Jesus and his work that is adequate to save us
  5. Gratefulness for the condescension of Christ: The greatness of what Jesus left shows the depth of His love and His patience shows His kindness

In contrast, the Gospel is frequently presented as man-centric in purpose, downplays the threat of God’s wrath and under emphasizes the degree to which sin corrupts us.  See True and False Gospels Contrasted , Complete Gospel or Calvin’s Gospel for more details.

Source: A Quest for Godliness (Chapter 10)

Posted in Discipleship, Theology | 2 Comments

Precious Remedies – Tim Challies Reading Classics Together

Posted on July 31, 2013 by PS

Tim Challies worked through the classic puritan book Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices by Thomas Brooks with his blog readers.  The book more or less exhaustively captures the ways that we’re drawn into sin and provides ways to protect ourselves.  You should definitely read the book, but Challies does a nice job of summarizing the key themes in his posts:

  • Satan loves to sail with the wind: Introduction to the series with the summary being a quote from Brooks, “Satan has snares for the wise and snares for the simple; snares for hypocrites, and snares for the upright; snares for generous souls, and snares for timorous souls; snares for the rich, and snares for the poor; snares for the aged, and snares for youth.”
  • Satan wants to help you: Themes include minimizing sin, rationalizing it because others have fallen as well, hiding the consequences and making repentance cheap
  • Satan wants to help you even more: More ways of being tempted to sin such as comparison with others, association with the wrong group of friends and the challenge of maintaining holiness
  • Eight ways Satan want to keep you from worship: The ideas here are making the world look attractive, showing that Christians are the minority, distracting thoughts filling the mind and reliance on past devotion to God rather than persistence and commitment in the present
  • Eight ways Satan convinces you to question your salvation: These topics cover focusing on sin rather than on our Savior, a misunderstanding of grace, relapses of sin and that only unbelievers face strong temptations
  • Twelve ways to preserve Christian unity: This summary shifts from temptations to benefits of sticking together as a church body, loving one another, forgiving wrongs and reconciling among other things
  • Ten ways to resist the devil: The series is wrapped up with this post.  It touches on points such as working for wisdom, resisting temptation, staying humble and communing with God
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Questions to Ask Before Joining a Church

Posted on July 22, 2013 by PS

The transition to a new church is difficult, so you’ll want to make a good decision rather than having to start over a year later.  Going beyond attending a worship service and reading the web site will help you avoid making a mistake.  Take the process slowly and give careful consideration to your motives for switching congregations before leaving your current church.  To ensure you’re in alignment with the new congregation, it’s important to ask some penetrating questions to a pastor or elder.  You should not ‘grill them’, but rather have an ongoing conversation over several interactions as you work towards making a commitment to the congregation.  The list of questions that follows provides a starting for topics to cover.  Some of the information (e.g., doctrinal statement) may be available online, but it’s still a good idea to get more color on each area.

  1. Please explain the Gospel (this sounds like an elementary question, but you can learn a lot based on the depth or shallowness of the explanation).  What is essential for salvation (e.g., some churches teach that baptism is required for the forgiveness of sins)?  Is Jesus the only way to be made right with God?
  2. What is the church’s doctrinal statement?  You should follow-up for clarification as appropriate regarding the nature of God, salvation etc.
  3. Which of the doctrinal positions do you see as church/denomination distinctives vs essentials of the Christian faith? Do I have to affirm all of the points to become a member or are some considered less significant (e.g., position on end times)?
  4. Does Scripture contain errors?  If so, in what areas?
  5. What role do creeds and catechisms play?  Does the church subscribe to any?  How does tradition affect interpretation of Scripture?
  6. What is the role of elders?  What are the requirements for them?  How are they selected?
  7. What is the role of the pastors?
  8. What is the process to become a member?  What are the expectations of members?
  9. What are the priorities of the church (e.g., missions, evangelism)?  What other like minded churches and organizations (locally and globally) do you work with to fulfill these priorities?
  10. What model for missions do you support?  How much of your budget is allocated to missions?  How are support decisions made?
  11. How does the church engage and serve the community?
  12. What do you see as strengths and weaknesses?
  13. What have been the highlights of the church during the past couple of years?
  14. (If you have children) What is the goal of your children’s ministry?  What do you expect a child to know and do by the time they graduate?
  15. What spiritual disciples do you practice?  What people or books have been most influential to you on during your spiritual journey?
  16. What do you see as the most difficult issues facing Christians today?  How are you preparing your congregation to handle these?
  17. What is the purpose of life?  How would you describe a mature Christian?  How does the church help Christians to mature in the faith (e.g., small groups, accountability partners, mentors etc)?  What is the role of pastors in this vs other members?
  18. What is the role of prayer within the church?  When does this take place?
  19. How is the church’s financial situation?  What is its policy on debt?  Does it have expansion plans?  Does it run special campaigns to raise funds?
  20. Has there ever been a church split (or mass exodus) over theology or another issue?  If so, what was the circumstance?
  21. What is the church’s position on [your issue of concern]?
Posted in Discipleship | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Calvin’s Summary of the Gospel

Posted on July 13, 2013 by PS

Here is a succinct quote from John Calvin about what he believed we should tell people about the Gospel.

That man was alienated from God by sin, an heir of wrath, liable to the punishment of eternal death, excluded from all hope of salvation, a total stranger to the blessing of God, a slave to Satan, a captive under the yoke of sin, and, in a word, condemned to and already involved in, a horrible destruction; that, in this situation, Christ interposed as an intercessor; that He has taken upon Himself and suffered the punishment which by the righteous judgment of God impended over all sinners; that by His blood He has expiated those crimes which make them odious to God; that by this expiation God the Father has been duly satisfied and atoned; that by this intercessor His wrath has been appeased; that this is the foundation of peace between God and men; and that this is the bone of His benevolence towards them.

Source: Portrait of Calvin by T.H.L. Parker

Posted in Discipleship, Theology | 1 Comment

Order of God’s Decrees – BB Warfield Chart

Posted on June 23, 2013 by PS

BB Warfield created a helpful chart that outlines the order of God’s decrees (aka order of redemption).  Views of the nature and order of the degrees vary significantly by denomination.  If you’ve ever heard infralapsarian or supralapsarian referenced, they are different positions on this topic.  A relatively brief explanation of each can be found at Theopedia.

If you’d like to study the topic in more detail, see Warfield’s Plan of Salvation.

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The Three Components of Faith

Posted on June 10, 2013 by PS

One of the most common criticisms of Christianity is its reliance on faith.  The implication normally is that faith is a blind hope that something is true and the opposite of the fact based, repeatable experimentation that science supposedly produces.  Yet, faith actually consists of three components that Christians need to be familiar with and be able to explain in response to the blind faith view.  The three include knowledge, assent and trust.

  1. Knowledge: This is the object, idea or person that is actually believed in based the study of information such as historical documentation, eye witnesses accounts and/or experimentation.  The knowledge is the doctrinal component of the faith including that Jesus is the Son of God, was born of a virgin, rose from the dead etc.  John 20:31 explains that “these [things] are written so that you may believe…”, that is they provide a fact base for believing.  Jesus also provided evidence of His nature authority through His miracles.
  2. Assent: It is not adequate to just know something, so asset captures the conviction that the knowledge is true.  You could know about Area 51 and the lore that surrounds it, but not agree to the idea that an alien spaceship is housed there
  3. Trust: Trust takes the knowledge assented to and moves to the point of relying or depending on it completely.  It encapsulates the idea expressed in John 3:16 of believing in Jesus (John 3:16)

Let’s try to clarify the three components with a couple of examples.  James 2:19 tells us that the demons believe that God is one.  The demons are enemies of God, but they know and assent to the fact that He exists and is one being.  They have the first two areas of faith, but are missing the third because they don’t rely on Him.

The second example is a frequent sermon illustration.  In 1850s, Charles Blondin walked across Niagara Falls on a wire.  He did this many times using various props to prove his skill.  One day he asked the crowd if they believed he could carry someone on his back across the falls.  Based on his previous success (knowledge) the crowd responded that they believed that he could (assent).  However, when Blondin asked for a volunteer, no one was willing to step forward.  While they thought he could do it, they did not trust him enough to put his or her life in Blondin’s hands.

Of the three components, trust is the key.  We must allow Jesus to carry us across the chasm between us and God based on the merit of His life and sacrifice in His death, rather than depending on our own flawed works.  We must have faith in Jesus for salvation.  This faith isn’t blind or uninformed.  We receive the information about Jesus, agree that it’s true and then depend on God completely to provide the forgiveness that we don’t deserve.

Based on What Faith Is and Is Not

Posted in Apologetics, Discipleship, Theology | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Life Around the World in Pictures

Posted on June 7, 2013 by PS

A few photojournalist articles have been published in the past few months that show many eye opening (and often shocking) contrasts between cultures and standards of living across the world.  The three sets of images are focused on children’s toys (Toy Stories), children’s homes (Where Children Sleep) and families’ weekly diets (What the World Eats), but they also reveal much about differences in wealth, consumption, materialism and families.  The approach is similar to that used in a book published nearly 20 years ago called Material World, where the photographer convinced families all across the world to move all of their possessions into their front yard for a picture.

As you review the images, thank God for what He’s given you, seek contentment what with you have and strive to help those who are less fortunate that they may know the love of God through your help.

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