25 Books Every Christian Should Read: A Guide to the Essential Spiritual Classics

Chapter 1

On the Incarnation

St. Athanasius

You must understand why it is that the Word of the Father, so great and so high, has been made manifest in bodily form. He has not assumed a body as proper to His own nature, far from it, for as the Word He is without body. He has been manifested in a human body for this reason only, out of the love and goodness of His Father, for the salvation of us men.

ATHANASIUS WAS BORN in Alexandria in 297. As a boy, he was taken on by the patron Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria. When, in 318, Arius of Alexandria began to communicate his views that Jesus was made by God and was thus subordinate to God, Athanasius wrote On the Incarnation as a refutation of Arius’s ideas.

Athanasius first came to prominence in his own right at the Nicaean Council in 325, where he and Alexander successfully argued against Arius, who was later excommunicated by Alexander. When Alexander died, Athanasius succeeded him as bishop of Alexandria. His writings and his speeches at the Nicaean Council had already established him as a natural counterpoint to the Arian philosophy, and indeed his tenure as archbishop was in many ways characterized by this role. Although Arius’s ideas had been refuted at the council, they continued to circulate. Influenced by one of Arius’s friends, Emperor Constantine himself applied to Athanasius that Arius be readmitted to communion. Athanasius refused, leading to the first of five exiles that he underwent for his belief in Jesus’ divinity.

In Athanasius’s seminal work he explains the central tenet of Christian thought, how and why God became man in Jesus Christ, effectively refuting a heresy popular at the time of this fourth-century writing—namely, that Jesus was not equal to or of one substance with God.

The ideas Athanasius expresses in On the Incarnation, in particular the concept of Jesus Christ the God-man, were central in his refutation of Arian thought. On the Incarnation is a work of apologetics, hence its persuasive tone. Athanasius mentions by name various other heretical ideas that were making the rounds at the time of his writing. One was the Platonic idea that God created the earth from some kind of preexistent matter; another was the Epicurean idea that no thought or Mind was behind creation at all, that all things came about through some haphazard process of self-origination. Athanasius refutes the idea that the world and its creatures were not created by God, using logic and the Scriptures as evidence. Further, if God made the world from some preexistent matter, God would not be the creator, but simply a craftsman.

Then he describes what he calls the divine dilemma—namely, that once humankind broke faith with God by disobeying and eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it opened itself to the powers of evil. And then what was God to do? God could not let his creation be destroyed, writes Athanasius. After all, we are made in God’s image. It would be worse than if we were never made at all. Simple repentance could not be sufficient to return us to God’s grace, since God could not remain true if this were the case. Drastic measures were needed—so the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world.¹ This Word had always been with us but now was with us in a new way. Moved by compassion for humans that death should have the mastery of us, the Word took on a human body and surrendered it to death for all. Such an act could only have been performed by God. As Athanasius writes, the rescue of mankind from corruption was the proper part only of Him Who made them in the beginning.²

Of course, another essential reason for God becoming man was so that we could know our creator. As Athanasius writes, For of what use is existence to the creature if it cannot know its Maker?³ Although we should have been able to know God through being made in God’s image or by creation or by the law and prophets, we so successfully obscured these sources by falling prey to death and corruption that God had to send Jesus so that we could know God once again. Since humans were looking for God among the created things, earthly things, God came to us in this way, a simple means so that we could understand. But God could not come simply to die and then rise again. Jesus let himself be seen as a man, doing and saying things that showed clearly that he was not only man, but God. But Athanasius hastens to add that Jesus’ body was not a limitation to God, but an instrument.⁴ He was in the body and at the same time in all things. Being in that body did not defile God but rather sanctified the body. Jesus’ actions as described in the Bible—eating and drinking and so forth—show that he was a man, but his other actions—healing and driving out evil spirits and performing miracles—equally show that he is God. And then the miraculous, stupendous event occurred. As Athanasius writes, The body of the Word, then, being a real human body, in spite of its having been uniquely formed from a virgin, was of itself mortal and, like other bodies, liable to death. But the indwelling of the Word loosed it from this natural liability, so that corruption could not touch it. Thus it happened that two opposite marvels took place at once: the death of all was consummated in the Lord’s body; yet, because the Word was in it, death and corruption were in the same act utterly abolished.⁵ So because of this death, all who believe in Christ shall no longer die, as was our lot by law.

When I first opened [On the Incarnation] I discovered by a very simple test that I was reading a masterpiece, for only a mastermind could have written so deeply on such a subject with such classical simplicity.

—C. S. Lewis

It was important that Christ’s death be public so as not to incur any doubt that he truly was dead, that it occur on the cross because he who healed could not grow sick, and that it be at the hands of others so that it could not be said that he planned his own death in some special way that enabled him to rise again. As Athanasius writes, A marvelous and mighty paradox has thus occurred, for the death which they thought to inflict on Him as dishonor and disgrace has become the glorious monument to death’s defeat.⁶ For Athanasius, every part of the cross is significant, from its being viewed as cursed—adding to the symbolism of Christ’s overcoming the curse of death and thus becoming a curse himself (Gal 3:13)—to its causing Christ to die with his hands outstretched, as if reaching out to both the Jews and the Gentiles to draw them together in him. By his death and resurrection, Christ rendered death impotent, a bound and helpless former tyrant.

Why On the Incarnation Is Essential

Athanasius is a key figure in Church history because of his essential contributions to the doctrine of the Trinity. Theologically speaking, he is remembered for his description of Christ as co-equal in substance with the Father. Whether Athanasius actually originated this expression or not is unknown, but because of his eloquent expression of it in On the Incarnation, his name has become most closely tied with it.⁷ But Athanasius’s writings are notable for more than just doctrine. The ideas Athanasius expands upon in On the Incarnation are bedrock elements for faith. He explains just why God had to become man and why God had to die. And most important, he makes it clear that Christ had to be God; otherwise he could not effect our salvation. God created us; God called us good, so when we responded with disobedience and fell so deeply into corruption that we were held hostage by sin and death, God did the only thing possible to save us: taking form in a human body so God could die. By countering the corruption of death with Jesus’ perfect incorruption, God conquered death once and for all. These points have wide-reaching implications for our spiritual formation. As editorial board member Frederica Mathewes-Green, author of The Illumined Heart, writes, "On the Incarnation gives a clear presentation of a Christian doctrine that is essential for understanding human life and the nature of salvation."

Reflecting on God’s taking on a human body in order to save us teaches us about the great importance we have in the eyes of God. And it also teaches us about our bodies and the process of discipleship. We have fallen into corruption, but our bodies are not to blame. Indeed it was in a body that Christ saved and continues to save us. Our bodies are blessings, and spiritual formation itself is an embodied process, not something that is done just with our minds or even just with our hearts. Without the body’s involvement we cannot be said to be practicing discipleship.

What Athanasius also helps to restore for us, which perhaps we can only find in a book as old as this one, is a renewed understanding of the jaw-dropping awe we should feel at the Incarnation. For example, in chapter 7, Refutation of the Gentiles, Athanasius takes pains to describe why God took form in a human instead of as the moon or a star. His answer is interesting—that the moon and the stars had not strayed from God’s path. But perhaps something even more interesting to reflect on is that we are so used to the concept of the Incarnation that few would even think to ask such a question today. Athanasius can help renew in us some of the wonder we should feel at the radical act that is the Incarnation.

Finally, reading On the Incarnation makes it clear that there are no new heresies. The beliefs Athanasius takes on are still present in our world today—that God made all things out of preexisting matter, that everything originated by a haphazard method of self-creation, that Jesus was simply a man. Studying Athanasius’s persuasive words can help us steer clear of any such misapprehensions about God. It can also help us understand just how dangerous such ideas are, because they can lead us to devalue our bodies, cheapen our view of God, or even question our salvation.

How to Read On the Incarnation

On the Incarnation is a short book written in an engaging, persuasive tone. One way to read it may be to take it in chapters, taking time after each one to reflect and make sure we have really understood his points. In Celebration of Discipline, Richard J. Foster outlines four steps for study: repetition, concentration, comprehension, and reflection. These four steps are applicable to our reading of On the Incarnation and to every other book on the list. Whether for the entire book or for a particular chapter or passage, our first step, of course, is to read through the material, repeatedly bringing our minds to the subject matter before us. At the same time, we seek to concentrate on the material, with a focused singleness of purpose, if at all possible in an environment free from other stimuli. Third, we seek to comprehend what it is that we have read. Sometimes we need outside sources such as the Bible, other books, friends, and our experiences in order to come to this place of understanding. And, finally, we reflect on what we have read. Foster describes this important fourth step as the way we determine the significance of what we are studying: Reflection brings us to see things from God’s perspective. In reflection we come to understand not only our subject matter, but ourselves.⁸

On the Incarnation

CHAPTER 2: THE DIVINE DILEMMA AND ITS SOLUTION IN THE INCARNATION

6. We saw in the last chapter that, because death and corruption were gaining ever firmer hold on them, the human race was in process of destruction. Man, who was created in God’s image and in his possession of reason reflected the very Word Himself, was disappearing, and the work of God was being undone. The law of death, which followed from the Transgression, prevailed upon us, and from it there was no escape. The thing that was happening was in truth both monstrous and unfitting. It would, of course, have been unthinkable that God should go back upon His word and that man, having transgressed, should not die; but it was equally monstrous that beings which once had shared the nature of the Word should perish and turn back again into non-existence through corruption. It was unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by Him should be brought to nothing through the deceit wrought upon man by the devil; and it was supremely unfitting that the work of God in mankind should disappear, either through their own negligence or through the deceit of evil spirits. As, then, the creatures whom He had created reasonable, like the Word, were in fact perishing, and such noble works were on the road to ruin, what then was God, being Good, to do? Was He to let corruption and death have their way with them? In that case, what was the use of having made them in the beginning? Surely it would have been better never to have been created at all than, having been created, to be neglected and perish; and, besides that, such indifference to the ruin of His own work before His very eyes would argue not goodness in God but limitation, and that far more than if He had never created men at all. It was impossible, therefore, that God should leave man to be carried off by corruption, because it would be unfitting and unworthy of Himself.

7. Yet, true though this is, it is not the whole matter. As we have already noted, it was unthinkable that God, the Father of Truth, should go back upon His word regarding death in order to ensure our continued existence. He could not falsify Himself; what, then, was God to do? Was He to demand repentance from men for their transgression? You might say that that was worthy of God, and argue further that, as through the Transgression they became subject to corruption, so through repentance they might return to incorruption again. But repentance would not guard the Divine consistency, for, if death did not hold dominion over men, God would still remain untrue. Nor does repentance recall men from what is according to their nature; all that it does is to make them cease from sinning. Had it been a case of a trespass only, and not of a subsequent corruption, repentance would have been well enough; but when once transgression had begun men came under the power of the corruption proper to their nature and were bereft of the grace which belonged to them as creatures in the Image of God. No, repentance could not meet the case. What—or rather Who was it that was needed for such grace and such recall as we required? Who, save the Word of God Himself, Who also in the beginning had made all things out of nothing? His part it was, and His alone, both to bring again the corruptible to incorruption and to maintain for the Father His consistency of character with all. For He alone, being Word of the Father and above all, was in consequence both able to recreate all, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be an ambassador for all with the Father.

8. For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world. In one sense, indeed, He was not far from it before, for no part of creation had ever been without Him Who, while ever abiding in union with the Father, yet fills all things that are. But now He entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level in His love and Self-revealing to us. He saw the reasonable race, the race of men that, like Himself, expressed the Father’s Mind, wasting out of existence, and death reigning over all in corruption. He saw that corruption held us all the closer, because it was the penalty for the Transgression; He saw, too, how unthinkable it would be for the law to be repealed before it was fulfilled. He saw how unseemly it was that the very things of which He Himself was the Artificer should be disappearing. He saw how the surpassing wickedness of men was mounting up against them; He saw also their universal liability to death. All this He saw and, pitying our race, moved with compassion for our limitation, unable to endure that death should have the mastery, rather than that His creatures should perish and the work of His Father for us men come to nought, He took to Himself a body, a human body even as our own. Nor did He will merely to become embodied or merely to appear; had that been so, He could have revealed His divine majesty in some other and better way. No, He took our body, and not only so, but He took it directly from a spotless, stainless virgin, without the agency of human father—a pure body, untainted by intercourse with man. He, the Mighty One, the Artificer of all, Himself prepared this body in the virgin as a temple for Himself, and took it for His very own, as the instrument through which He was known and in which He dwelt. Thus, taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because, having fulfilled in His body that for which it was appointed, it was thereafter voided of its power for men. This He did that He might turn again to incorruption men who had turned back to corruption, and make them alive through death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of His resurrection. Thus He would make death to disappear from them as utterly as straw from fire.

9. The Word perceived that corruption could not be got rid of otherwise than through death; yet He Himself, as the Word, being immortal and the Father’s Son, was such as could not die. For this reason, therefore, He assumed a body capable of death, in order that it, through belonging to the Word Who is above all, might become in dying a sufficient exchange for all, and, itself remaining incorruptible through His indwelling, might thereafter put an end to corruption for all others as well, by the grace of the resurrection. It was by surrendering to death the body which He had taken, as an offering and sacrifice free from every stain, that He forthwith abolished death for His human brethren by the offering of the equivalent. For naturally, since the Word of God was above all, when He offered His own temple and bodily instrument as a substitute for the life of all, He fulfilled in death all that was required. Naturally also, through this union of the immortal Son of God with our human nature, all men were clothed with incorruption in the promise of the resurrection. For the solidarity of mankind is such that, by virtue of the Word’s indwelling in a single human body, the corruption which goes with death has lost its power over all. You know how it is when some great king enters a large city and dwells in one of its houses; because of his dwelling in that single house, the whole city is honored, and enemies and robbers cease to molest it. Even so is it with the King of all; He has come into our country and dwelt in one body amidst the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemy against mankind have been foiled and the corruption of death, which formerly held them in its power, has simply ceased to be. For the human race would have perished utterly had not the Lord and Savior of all, the Son of God, come among us to put an end to death.

10. This great work was, indeed, supremely worthy of the goodness of God. A king who has founded a city, so far from neglecting it when through the carelessness of the inhabitants it is attacked by robbers, avenges it and saves it from destruction, having regard rather to his own honor than to the people’s neglect. Much more, then, the Word of the All-good Father was not unmindful of the human race that He had called to be; but rather, by the offering of His own body He abolished the death which they had incurred, and corrected their neglect by His own teaching. Thus by His own power He restored the whole nature of man. The Savior’s own inspired disciples assure us of this. We read in one place: For the love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge that, if One died on behalf of all, then all died, and He died for all that we should no longer live unto ourselves, but unto Him who died and rose again from the dead, even our Lord Jesus Christ. And again another says: But we behold Him Who hath been made a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God He should taste of death on behalf of every man. The same writer goes on to point out why it was necessary for God the Word and none other to become Man: For it became Him, for Whom are all things and through Whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Author of their salvation perfect through suffering. He means that the rescue of mankind from corruption was the proper part only of Him Who made them in the beginning. He points out also that the Word assumed a human body, expressly in order that He might offer it in sacrifice for other like bodies: Since then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, He also Himself assumed the same, in order that through death He might bring to nought Him that hath the power of death, that is to say, the Devil, and might rescue those who all their lives were enslaved by the fear of death. For by the sacrifice of His own body He did two things: He put an end to the law of death which barred our way; and He made a new beginning of life for us, by giving us the hope of resurrection. By man death has gained its power over men; by the Word made Man death has been destroyed and life raised up anew. That is what Paul says, that true servant of Christ: For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. Just as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive, and so forth. Now, therefore, when we die we no longer do so as men condemned to death, but as those who are even now in process of rising we await the general resurrection of all, which in its own times He shall show, even God Who wrought it and bestowed it on us.⁹

A Study Guide for On the Incarnation

1. Which heresy that Athanasius takes on do you think is most present today? The Arian idea that Jesus was subordinate to God, the Platonic idea that God created the earth from preexisting matter, or the Epicurean idea that no Mind was behind creation?

2. What is the divine dilemma? What does this dilemma say about our worth in God’s eyes?

3. By coming to earth in a human body, Athanasius writes, God met us halfway. When, then, the minds of men had fallen finally to the level of sensible things, the Word submitted to appear in a body, in order that He, as Man, might center their senses on Himself, and convince them through His human acts that He Himself is not man only but also God, the Word and Wisdom of the true God.¹⁰ How does Jesus Christ make it easier for you to relate to God?

4. Athanasius writes, His body was for Him not a limitation, but an instrument, so that He was both in it and in all things, and outside all things, resting in the Father alone. At one and the same time—this is the wonder—as Man He was living a human life, and as Word He was sustaining the life of the universe, and as Son He was in constant union with the Father.¹¹ What does Athanasius mean by saying that the Word contained all things?

5. Athanasius anticipates that some might ask why Christ had to die on the cross for all, why he could not simply die a private death of sickness or old age. His response, in part, is that if Christ had died quietly in his bed, it would have looked as if he were no more than another human; he who healed could not himself sicken and die. What do you make of his reasoning? Why do you believe Christ died on the cross?

6. According to Athanasius, although we may have found death horrible before, once we are believers in Christ, we despise death, deride it as a bound and helpless former tyrant, and indeed go eagerly to meet it.¹² How have you manifested this in your own life?

7. Athanasius takes great pains to explain why it was fitting and necessary for God to enter a human body and also how God operated while in human form, anticipating questions such as why God did not take the form of the sun or moon or stars (his answer being that they had not deviated from their paths as humans had). Would such arguments even occur to you? Do you have questions about God’s coming in human form? If so, how do Athanasius’s arguments answer them, and if not, why do you think the concept of God in a human body does not feel difficult or surprising to you?

8. In the second part of his Refutation of the Gentiles, Athanasius argues for Christ with cultural examples of people in his time forsaking idols and oracles as proof of Christ’s identity and power. But since the Word of God has been manifested in a body, and has made known to us His own Father, the fraud of the demons is stopped and made to disappear; and men, turning their eyes to the true God, Word of the Father, forsake the idols and come to know the true God. Now this is proof that Christ is God, the Word and Power of God.¹³ What similar claims might a contemporary Christian make? How do you read this argument in contemporary times? Do you find any of Athanasius’s arguments less than compelling? If so, why? How does the passage of time since he made them affect your answer?

9. What differences do you see between your own faith, forged after two thousand years of Christianity, and that of Athanasius, writing just a few hundred years after Christ’s life?

My Personal Top 5

GAYLE BEEBE

1 I first read C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity when I was a junior in high school. It provided a reasonable, commonsense approach to the Christian faith that I found compelling then, and still do today.

2 Shortly thereafter, I read Augustine’s Confessions. This was such a remarkable and helpful excavation of the longing for God that lies at the heart of every honest spiritual journey.

3 Then, during my first year of seminary I read Pascal’s Pensées. For the first time in my life I experienced the full wealth of conviction of my Christian faith. Pascal taught me how to use the power of reason to think clearly about the Christian faith, but he also helped me recognize the limits of reason. His three orders of reality provided the thought forms I needed to see the right way to address and answer the questions that come to every honest seeker.

4 During this same time, I read John Woolman’s Journal. This eighteenth-century American Quaker provided one of the most profound examples of how to live for God and allow every encounter to be a sacramental moment filled with divine grace.

5 Finally, while in my doctoral studies at Claremont, I read Calvin’s Institutes from cover to cover. What a remarkable discussion of how we come to knowledge of God and grow in it. In so many respects, Calvin’s Institutes anticipated and addressed so many issues of what it means to grow in our knowledge of Christ—to live a life that exemplifies his presence in our life.

GAYLE D. BEEBE is the current president of Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, and is the author or editor of ten books, including Longing for God: Seven Paths of Christian Devotion.

Chapter 2

Confessions

St. Augustine

You made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you.

ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO was born in Thagaste, Numidia (now Algeria), in 354 to a pagan father, Patricius, and a Christian mother, Monica. His intellect and public-speaking skills led him to a profession as a teacher and speaker in first Rome and then Milan. After a long dalliance with Manicheanism, a school of thought exalting science and astrology and positing life as a struggle between the spiritual world of light and the material world of darkness, he became a Christian and was baptized at age thirty-two. Afterward he became a priest and founded his own monastic order.

Widely regarded as Christianity’s first spiritual autobiography, Augustine’s Confessions is the story of his restless heart’s journey to God.

Augustine wrote Confessions in 397 and 398, shortly after being named bishop of Hippo, as both a description of his personal journey to Christ and a statement of faith. His story, addressed to God, is as much prayer as it is autobiography. His conversational tone belies an enviable intimacy with God. Much of Confessions focuses on sin and grace. In fact, after some words of praise and some philosophical musings, he begins by wondering if even as a baby he was truly innocent. His mother chose not to have him baptized, ostensibly because she believed it better that he be baptized after he had gotten his inevitable sinning out of his system. Augustine writes, It would, then, have been better if I had been healed at once and if all that I and my family could do had been done to make sure that once my soul had received its salvation, its safety should be left in your keeping, since its salvation had come from you. This would surely have been the better course. But my mother well knew how many great tides of temptation threatened me before I grew up, and she chose to let them beat upon the as yet unmoulded clay rather than upon the finished image which had received the stamp of baptism.¹

Augustine paints a very dark picture of the great tides of temptation and describes an adolescence characterized by lust and fornication. But the pivotal moment for him is when he steals some pears and has his first real recognition of sin. This incident also introduces the idea of true, or spiritual, friendship, an important theme throughout Confessions. Augustine realizes that without the negative influence of his companions, he would never have stolen those pears, since he had no interest in eating them. With a group of companions, however, such an act was fun. As Augustine grew older, he continued to recognize the importance of friendship. In Book IV he writes about a close friend who dies from a fever. Despite the fact that he believes their relationship was not a true friendship since they were not both Christian, writing, For though they cling together, no friends are true friends unless you, my God, bind them fast to one another through that love which is sown in our hearts by the Holy Ghost,² his friend’s death leaves Augustine feeling as though he is living with half a soul. Even as he extols the charms of friendship—talking and laughing together, discussing books, learning from each other—he also exhorts us, If your delight is in souls, love them in God, because they too are frail and stand firm only when they cling to him.³ For we must always be careful not to exalt above God even those good gifts from God: The good things which you love are all from God, but they are good and sweet only as long as they are used to do his will.⁴

Augustine knew well the folly of exalting things above God. As a young man, despite the wishes of his devout mother, he was attracted to the Manichean religion. Because of their teachings, Augustine believed that God and evil both took material shape and that humans were small pieces broken from God, who was a bright, unbounded body.⁵ Augustine devoured and studied every book he could find, discovering inconsistencies within the Manichean teachings that no one was able to resolve for him. He took a teaching position in Rome, and then one in Milan, where he met Ambrose, the bishop who was to have a tremendous influence on him. Through the influence of Ambrose’s sermons, Augustine became more attracted to the Christian point of view. One important turning point came when he began to take some of the Old Testament passages figuratively rather than literally. He also came to understand that some things must be taken on faith, in contrast to the Manicheans, who professed to have a rational explanation for everything and then put forward a whole system of preposterous inventions which they expected their followers to believe on trust because they could not be proved.⁶ After careful and thorough study of the Platonists and then the Scriptures, Augustine found many of his intellectual issues with Christianity resolved. But he still could not bring himself to take that step of actually becoming a Christian, mostly because he feared continence, giving up the pleasures of the body. As he writes, My lower instincts, which had taken firm hold of me, were stronger than the higher, which were untried. And the closer I came to the moment which was to mark the great change in me, the more I shrank from it in horror.⁷ In misery over this internal conflict, Augustine flees to the garden behind his house, where he hears a child repeating in a singsong voice, Take it and read. Take it and read. So encouraged, Augustine returns to the Bible he has left near his friend Alypius and opens it to this passage: Not in revelling and drunkenness, not in lust and wantonness, not in quarrels and rivalries. Rather, arm yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ; spend no more thought on nature and nature’s appetites (Rom 13:13, 14).⁸ After reading these words, both Augustine and Alypius decide to become Christian, to Augustine’s mother’s great joy.

We find in [Augustine’s] delineation of the essence of religion and of the deepest problems of morality, such striking depth and truth of observation, that we must still honour him as our master, and that his memory is still able in some measure, even to-day, to unite Protestant and Catholic.

—Adolf von Harnack

At this point Augustine tells us that he has shared his confession with us so that other people may see that they, too, can be forgiven in God’s great mercy, grace, and love. But then he goes on to describe his life after believing in Christ, in addition to what his life was before he became a Christian. He shares his continued temptations to give in to his physical appetites, to ask for signs and wonders, and to desire being feared or loved by others. My life is full of such faults, he writes, and my only hope is in your boundless mercy.⁹

Why Confessions Is Essential

It is close to impossible to overestimate the influence of Augustine and his Confessions. Confessions was the first spiritual autobiography, a genre without which we can hardly imagine modern Christianity. Confessions established Augustine as the Christian apologist, after the apostles themselves. For better or for worse, Christianity as we know it has been interpreted through Augustine’s lens. Virtually every book that follows Confessions on our list was influenced by Augustine in some way—by his theology, his literary style, or both. Augustine broke away from the intellectual tradition he had been steeped in to write a book that focused on his feelings; he broke away from Christian tradition to write about the sinful person he was before and the temptations that continued after his conversion, in contrast to the biographies of his own day that focused on their subjects’ great piety or the circumstances leading up to their martyrdom. Instead, Augustine describes his personal journey toward Christian faith, the longings of his restless heart for God, and all the steps on his path to baptism. There is much in his journey for any Christian to relate to, up to and including the dramatic story of his final decision. Yet as is true for all of us, the story does not end there. Instead, baptism represents another beginning; the journey continues. Nor does becoming a Christian represent the end of Augustine’s temptations. In fact, the very same things continue to tempt him. The difference is that he now has Jesus to help him, and God’s grace and mercy to trust in when he falls prey to sin.

Augustine’s story is notable for the power of its narrative, which so many others have sought to emulate. Like all the stories in the Bible, Augustine’s story is a story of God’s love for and pursuit of us. From the very first words of his story, we see that Augustine is addressing God. His story is also a prayer. This literary device is entirely appropriate because the Lord is a constant presence for Augustine. Even before he was baptized, God was seeking Augustine every step of the way.

For Augustine, as for