Books on the History of Ideas

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Great Christian Thinkers By Hans Küng ISBN 0-8264-0848-6
Description:
This is a compelling assessment of the teachings and writings of the men Hans Küng deems to be the greatest Christian thinkers of the past two millennia. Küng does not rest with summing up their theology, but asks what these thinkers have to offer to the present age and specifically what lessons they teach Christians today. Küng covers St. Paul origin, Calvin, Luther, Aquinas, Bart, and Augustine.

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"This superb book reads like the transcribed notes of an excellent classroom lecturer; clear, original, insightful, and interconnected . . . one of our most accessible treatises on Christian theology." Publishers Weekly

CS Lewis on Scripture by Michael Christensen ISBN: 0849901154

His thoughts on the nature of Biblical inspiration, the role of revelation, and the question of inerrancy
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A Short History of Byzantium By John Julius Norwich ISBN 0-679-772693
Description:
With wit, intelligence and an unerring eye for riveting detail, Lord Norwich tells the dramatic history of Byzantium from its beginnings in A.D. 330 when Constantine the Great moved the imperial capital from Rome to the site of an old Greek port in Asia Minor called
Byzantium and renamed it Constantinople, to its rise as the first and most long-lasting Christian empire, to its final heroic days and eventual defeat by the Turks in 1453. There were centuries of bloodshed in which the empire struggled for its life; centuries of controversy in which men argued about the nature of Christ and the Church; centuries of scholarship in which ancient culture was kept alive and preserved by scribes; and, most of all, centuries of creativity in which the Byzantine genius brought forth art and architecture inspired by a depth of spiritually unparalleled in any other age.
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If Byzantium is less familiar today than ancient Greece or the Roman Empire, that is no fault of John Julius Norwich ...In his shorter telling of the history between the founding of Constantinople in 330 and its fall in 1453, Lord Norwich has sacrificed none of the virtues of the longer work: lively narration and a taste for the eccentric anecdote and revelatory detail. NY Times Book Review Michael Anderson From my short time with "A Short History of Byzantium", I can only guess that the original 3 volume work is a brilliant one. Lord Norwich has an excellent grasp of the history of the era. He manages to connect one event to the next as if it were a well written movie. At times the large scale editing and cutting that it must have taken to condense a work of this magnitude is evident in its dizzying pace and sometimes stifled narrative. to What makes the book compelling however, is Norwich's description of characters. He writes about emperors, generals, and rebels as if he were standing in the crowd when they were crowned, thwarted, or killed. A new 'main character'is introduced every few pages and Norwich manages to draw the reader into each one. A 1200 year empire deserves the attention of any student of history, and John Julius Norwich has written a landmark contribution to the subject. Ryan Keating La Mirada, CA

The Passion of the Western Mind:... By Richard Tarnas ISBN 0-517-57790-9
Description:
Ten years in the making and already receiving wide critical acclaim, The Passion of the Western Mind is a major new inquiry into the evolution of our culture's consciousness, from the dawn of Western civilization to the dawn of the twenty-first century. This is the epic story of our intellectual and spiritual heritage, a story never before told with such breadth of focus and clarity of insight.
In a rich and beautifully crafted narrative, Richard Tarnas traces the fascinating interplay of philosophy, religion, and science as they converge to mold our culture and our worldview. He offers us the great sweep of our past, while capturing the details that reveal just what was at stake in the major struggles and controversies of Western thought. Here for the first time is a book that brings to life the compelling drama of that monumental enterprise. Here are the great minds and their pivotal ideas, from ancient Greece to the Renaissance, from the Scientific Revolution to our own postmodern age: Socrates and Plato, Augustine and Aquinas, Copernicus and Galileo, Descartes and Kant, Freud and Jung, and many more. Rigorous in his intellectual and historical grounding, yet passionate in his approach, Tarnas has written a work that is as exhilarating as it is enlightening - a work of art as much as a work of scholarship. In a climax worthy of this remarkable history, Tarnas completes the book with an astonishing new interpretation of that four-thousand-year evolution. Drawing on the most recent advances in several fields, he sets forth an inspired vision of what may lie before us as we enter the new millennium. When this extraordinary synthesis was first presented at Cambridge University, it was enthusiastically acclaimed by an international gathering of leading philosophers, theologians, and scientists. Many consider it one of the most profound analyses of Western intellectual and spiritual history ever articulated. Eloquent in its language, panoramic in its scope, this is epic history written in the grand narrative manner. The Passion of the Western Mind is truly a liberal education in a single volume.
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"In addition to its clear expression, cogent argument, and insightful interpretation, this work is distinguished by its masterful relating of the history of philosophy to other disciplines historically considered- particularly the cosmology of the Greeks, the theology of the Christian Middle Ages, the astronomy of the modern West, and the psychology of the twentieth century."
	Robert A. McDermott Chairman, Philosopy Department Baruch College, City University of New York