The largest tradition, and its many internal divisions.
11 topics · 11 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
The Spiritual Exercises
Ignatius of Loyola · 1548
A structured four-week programme of prayer and self-examination meant to help a retreatant discern God's will for their own life, which became the…
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Confessions
Augustine of Hippo · 398
The first Western autobiography, and still the sharpest account of wanting to want something different from what you want.
+3 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith
John of Damascus · 743
Systematises Greek patristic theology into the first comprehensive doctrinal summary of Eastern Christianity, and remains the reference point…
+5 more at this level
11 works
Ignatius of Loyola
A structured four-week programme of prayer and self-examination meant to help a retreatant discern God's will for their own life, which became the disciplinary core of Jesuit formation.
about 4 hours to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026Augustine of Hippo
The first Western autobiography, and still the sharpest account of wanting to want something different from what you want.
about 7.5 hours to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026Eusebius of Caesarea
The first continuous history of the church from the apostles to Constantine, written by a participant in the Nicene controversy, and the single source underlying almost everything later historians know about Christianity's first three centuries.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Anonymous
Instructs a contemplative to approach God not through concepts, images or reasoning but through a deliberate darkening of the intellect — a cloud of unknowing — that clears space for love alone.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Adolf von Harnack
Argues from close historical reading of the Gospels that the essence of Jesus's message is the Fatherhood of God and the infinite value of the human soul, stripped of the dogma later councils built on top of it.
link checked 17 Sept 2026John of Damascus
Systematises Greek patristic theology into the first comprehensive doctrinal summary of Eastern Christianity, and remains the reference point Orthodox theology still argues from or against.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Martin Luther
Answers Erasmus's defence of free will by arguing that fallen human beings can do nothing whatsoever toward their own salvation, so grace must be entirely and unilaterally God's doing — the argument Luther himself considered the decisive one of his career.
link checked 17 Sept 2026John Calvin
Organises Reformed doctrine around the paired knowledge of God and of oneself, arguing that true theology begins from the creature's total dependence rather than from any independent human reason.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Friedrich Schleiermacher
Defends religion to Enlightenment sceptics by relocating its essence away from doctrine or morality and into a pre-conceptual feeling of absolute dependence, founding what became liberal Protestant theology.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Henry R. Percival (ed.)
Collects the canons and creeds of the seven councils recognised by both Eastern and Western Christianity, with introductions explaining the specific dispute each council actually convened to settle.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Albert Schweitzer
Surveys a century of scholarly attempts to reconstruct the historical Jesus and argues each biographer ended up describing his own image reflected back at him, while the real Jesus is best understood as an apocalyptic prophet mistaken about the imminent end of the world.
link checked 17 Sept 2026