Canon of Theologians

Reading is an exercise in listening and learning. I hope by God’s grace to spend some time each month listening to and learning from the following dead theologians. I got the idea from Mark Dever. But it was C.S. Lewis who supplied the inspiration:

“It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones. Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.”

–C.S. Lewis, “Introduction” in St. Athanasius, De Incarnatione Verbi Dei (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1944/1993), 4-5.

None of these men were perfect. They all made mistakes. But their writings have withstood the test of time.  I hope some of the great books of the past will bear fruit in the present by identifying and perhaps even correcting some of my own “characteristic mistakes.” I look forward to keeping company with these old friends and having the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through my mind for a little while each month.

My Canon of Theologians

January
Early Church Fathers (1st-3rd centuries)

February
Augustine (354-430)

March
Martin Luther (1483-1546)

April-May
John Calvin (1509-1564)

June-July
John Owen (1616-1683)

August
John Bunyan (1628-1688)

September
Jonathan Edwards (1703 – 1758)

October
Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-1892)

November
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)

December
Various Contemporary Theologians