When I started this site in 2016, I wanted to understand Christianity better – to understand its traditions and history, its different thinkers across time. I went out and bought Augustine’s Confessions, and just kept going.
Here, we explore the big four Christian theologians – Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin. Different people might shift that list around a little – but if you’re looking for a place to start, this is as good as any.
Augustine
Augustine was the first proper theologian I ever read. Born in the 4th century, his major works include City of God, written in the wake of the sack of Rome, Confessions, and On The Trinity.
Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas sits at the heart of the Catholic faith. His major work, the Summa Theologiae, unified Aristotelian thought with Christian doctrine. I’ve only read the first part of it, the Prima Pars, but that took me most of a full year. It has a dialectic structure, sort of like a debate, where he lays out a series of arguments in favour of one position, and then counters those arguments with his actual position.
Luther
Luther is the guy responsible for starting the Protestant Reformation. Some people say he’s less a theologian and more a reformer, a revolutionary, but we read his stuff anyway. It’s interesting to see the start of it all. We focus on his 1520 trilogy: Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, Prelude on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and On the Freedom of a Christian, all published right before his excommunication in 1521.
Von Balthasar: Anxiety and the Church
In The Christian and Anxiety, the Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar largely focuses on the relationship between anxiety and the individual. However, in the closing pages, he touches on anxiety and the church. We might when we’re feeling…
Luther: Warning, Contains Math
Alright, final week with On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church. I’m about halfway through On the Freedom of a Christian, which is the third one of the 1520 publications, and I don’t currently have anything to say about it, so we…
Luther: On Marriage
As in the last few weeks, we’re continuing on with Luther’s Prelude on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church. This week we’re dealing with Luther’s views on marriage, which, depending on your perspective, are either quite surprising, or not. In this…
Luther: By Faith Alone
If you know anything about Luther, you’ll probably be familiar with his idea of justification by faith. It’s basically the idea that you don’t get justified or saved by your actions, but by faith alone. You might also be familiar…
Luther: Wine’s Fine
This week we’re dealing with the second of Luther’s three 1520 texts, A Prelude on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church. It’s a great example of what’s at stake for Luther in writing these tracts. Strictly speaking, this is a text…
Luther: You’re a Priest and So Am I
So Luther has three major texts that all come out in 1520. 1520 is kinda his year – he gets ordered to renounce a bunch of his books, produces these three major works, and then in 1521 he gets excommunicated.…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
Calvin
Calvin is a grumpy little shit, but he’s also probably the single most influential Protestant theologian. I read his Institutes of the Christian Religion, and it was very angry, and increasingly I agree with a lot of what he says, God help me.