Saturday, November 04, 2006

20 books that have inluenced me

Following the example of Ben Myers over at Faith and Theology I will post the list of 20 books that have influenced me theologically. I read most of them while I was at the seminary and since I don't have copies of most of them I really could not get back to them and recall how a particular book had its impact on me. These books affect me either positively or the other way around.

1.Jurgen Moltmann. The Crucified God
2.Deitrich Boenhoffer. The Cost of Discipleship
3.Karl Barth. Evangelical Theology
4.Augustine. Confessions
5.Allister McGrath. Trinity
6.Stanley Grenz. Theology for the Community of God
7.David Bosch. Transforming Missions
8.Paul Tillich. The Eternal Now
9.Fisher Humphreys. The Death of Christ
10.Hans Kung. Does God Exist?
11.William Placher. History of Christian Theology
12.Richard Neihbur. Christ and Culture
13.John Macquarrie. Principles of Christian Theology
14.Eberhard Jungel. The Doctrine of the Trinity
15.Gordon Kaufman. Theological Imagination
16.Miroslav Volf, et. al. The Future of Theology
17.Helmut Thelicke. A Little Exercise for Young Theologians
18.C.S. Song. Third Eye Theology
19.Francis Schaeffer. The God Who is There
20.Kosuke Koyama. Water Buffalo Theology

2 comments:

byron smith said...

Thanks for posting this - an interesting list. How did you find the collected edited by Volf (The Future of Theology? I started it, but got distracted by other things and never made it back. Is it something you'd recommend or was it one that affected you 'the other way round'?

Joey said...

Hi Byron,

This is the one book that I really sought out when I was looking for materials for my Moltmann research which until now is still hanging in the air. I found it the library in the seminary (Phils.). This one affected me positively.

Since I could not go back to it right now I could not tell you exactly how it afffected me but Volf in his part says that theology will no longer be dominated by one person at one point of time like Barth did in his time. He sees it as set back but in one way it is also good. The other essays are meant to interact with Moltmann's ideas like Catherine Keller's assessment that his theology has evolved into pneumatological experientalism which is considered to be a theological breakthrough because it retrieves the place of experience as a basis for any doctrine about the Holy Spirit.

Other essays by other up and rising theologians interacts in their own ways to Moltmann's theology with predictions on how it will affect the future of theology.

I would surely recommend this as good reading. I hope you can go back to it and share some thoughts about it on your blog.