Christian Literature

Setting himself the task of authoring a modern-day apologetic, N. T. Wright offers Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (2006) as a contemporary treatment of the same ground covered by C. S. Lewis in his classic Mere Christianity, published in 1952. Simply Christian attempts to lay out as clearly and simply as possible the fundamental manner in which Christianity makes sense, and why it is capable of answering the most important questions that the human... Read Simply Christian Summary

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is a sermon written by Jonathan Edwards, pastor of the Congregational church of Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1741, during the period of the First Great Awakening. Edwards delivered the sermon to remarkable effect on July 8, 1741, in Enfield, Connecticut, during a revival tour, and it was published shortly thereafter in Boston. Though its hellfire-and-brimstone style is not typical of Edwards’s work, it quickly became his best-known publication... Read Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God Summary

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Summa Theologica (originally Summa Theologiae) is the principal work of Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), an Italian friar, philosopher, and theologian and one of the central figures in medieval Christian thought. Aquinas wrote the Summa between 1265 and 1273, intending it to serve as a summation of all known theological learning for seminarians. He never finished the massive Latin work, but what he completed has influenced Roman Catholic theology and Western thought in general. Aquinas’ central... Read Summa Theologica Summary

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Surprised by Joy is C.S. Lewis’s spiritual autobiography, tracing the steps that led up to his conversion to Christianity. This guide refers to the 1955 Harcourt Brace & Company/Harvest Books edition. Lewis was born in 1898 in Ireland and begins his story with his childhood in Belfast, where he and his family lived in a maze-like house full of empty attics and heaps of books. He was close with his older brother, and together they... Read Surprised by Joy Summary

Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion (2010) is a memoir written by Catholic priest Gregory (Greg) Boyle. The memoir relays Boyle’s experiences serving as the leader of the Dolores Mission Church in the gang capital of the world, Los Angeles. Boyle, a Jesuit, performed his earliest missionary work in an impoverished Bolivian village. There, Boyle gained two lifelong attributes: an unyielding desire to help the poor and the ability to speak Spanish... Read Tattoos on the Heart Summary

That Hideous Strength (1945) is a science-fiction novel by writer C.S. Lewis. Lewis subtitled the book “a Modern Fairy-tale for Grown-ups.” The book is the third installment in the renowned Space Trilogy, which also includes Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra. Though characters and plot devices from the two previous books appear in That Hideous Strength, it’s written so that it can be read as a standalone book. Like Lewis’s other work, the novel... Read That Hideous Strength Summary

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The Abolition of Man is a short book about education and moral values by C.S. Lewis. Its full title is The Abolition of Man; or, Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools. The book originated as a series of three lectures that Lewis, a noted literature scholar and popular Christian writer, delivered at the University of Durham in England in 1943.Lewis begins by critiquing a... Read The Abolition of Man Summary

The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ is a sacred text in the Latter Day Saint tradition, commonly called Mormonism. It was first published in 1830 by Joseph Smith, Jr., an American religious leader from upstate New York. The book presents itself as a collection of ancient documents attributed to various authors, spanning several centuries of composition. These documents tell the story of an offshoot group of ancient Israelites who traveled by ship... Read The Book of Mormon Summary

Elizabeth George Speare’s The Bronze Bow was originally published in 1961 and won the Newberry Medal for excellence in children’s literature in 1962. Told in the third-person limited perspective of the young Jewish protagonist, Daniel, this work of historical fiction takes place in Galilee during the time of Jesus. The Jews search earnestly for a leader to liberate Israel from Roman occupation, and Daniel dedicates his life to avenge his father’s murder at the hands... Read The Bronze Bow Summary

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The Case for Christ, by Lee Strobel, originally published in 1998, follows Strobel’s nonfiction, journalistic investigation into the claims of Christianity. Strobel is both a journalist and a lawyer—he earned an undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and a law degree from Yale before joining the Chicago Tribune as a legal affairs editor. But when his wife, Leslie, becomes a Christian, Strobel launches into an “all-out investigation into the facts surrounding the... Read The Case for Christ Summary

The Christmas Box (1993) is a holiday-themed, loosely autobiographical novel by American author Richard Paul Evans. It tells the story of Richard, a workaholic who learns important lessons about the meaning of Christmas and the importance of family. He makes these discoveries with the help of an elderly widow and an angelic entity who visits Richard in his dreams. Evans was a 31-year-old advertising executive and had no formal writing experience when he self-published The... Read The Christmas Box Summary

This guide refers to the 2003 Penguin Classics edition, translated by Henry Bettenson and edited by G.R. Evans. Your page numbers may vary. Please note that this guide covers only Part 1 (Books 1-10) of the 22 books of City of God. Begun in 413 AD, only a few years after the Sack of Rome, City of God is Augustine’s rejoinder to pagan misconceptions of Christianity. In the aftermath of a disastrous and unprecedented attack... Read The City of God Summary

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