Book Recommendations

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I’ve listed a few books that I’ve found to be really influential in my life. I hope they speak to you as they spoke to me.

Also, check back often as I’ll be continually updating my list.

(I’ve link the titles to Amazon, in case you want to purchase any of these titles.)

Business/Secular Books

Nicholas Carr 

• The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains 

Robert Cialdini

• Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

Henry Cloud and John Townsend

• Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No To Take Control of Your Life

Stephen King

• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Gus Lee

• Courage: The Backbone of Leadership

Jordan Peterson

• 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

Kim Scott

• Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity

Simon Sinek

• Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

Peter Thiel and Blake Masters

• Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

Chris Voss

• Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It 

Books about Scripture

Bartosz Adamczewski

• Retelling the Law: Genesis, Exodus-Numbers, and Samuel-Kings as Sequential Hypertextual Reworkings of Deuteronomy
• Hypertextuality and Historicity in the Gospels 
• Heirs of the Reunited Church: The History of the Pauline Mission in Paul’s Letters, in the So-Called Pastoral Letters, and in the Pseudo-Titus Narrative of Acts
• Constructing Relationships, Constructing Faces: Hypertextuality and Ethopoeia in the New Testament Writings

Margaret Barker

• Temple Theology: An Introduction

John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan Reed

• In Search of Paul: How Jesus’ Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom

Northrop Frye

• The Great Code: The Bible and Literature
• Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” 

René Girard

• I See Satan Fall Like Lightning (If you want to dig in deeper, you can check out Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World.)

Richard B. Hays

• Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness
• The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation, A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics

Luke Timothy Johnson

• The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels

Jonathan Klawans

• Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism

Bruce Metzger

• The New Testament: Its Background, Growth, & Content

E. Randolph Richards and Brandon O’Brien

• Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible

James Scott

• Exile: A Conversation with N. T. Wright 

Fr. Paul Tarazi

• The Rise of Scripture
• The Old Testament Introduction (3-vol. Set) 
• The New Testament Introduction (Paul and Mark)(Luke and Acts)(Johannine Writings)(Matthew and Canon)
• Land and Covenant 

Paul Veyne

• A History of Private Life: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium (Though this isn’t about scripture, it’s essential for understanding the culture of the New Testament, especially the letters of Paul.)

N.T. Wright

• Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters
• Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
• The New Testament in Its World: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians

Books about Church Health and Religion

Joseph Campbell

• The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Gary Chapman

• The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts 

James Cone

• The Cross and the Lynching Tree

Lisa Cressman

• Backstory Preaching: Integrating Life, Spirituality, and Craft

Viktor Frankl

• Man’s Search for Meaning The Classic Tribute to Hope from the Holocaust

Edwin Friedman

• Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue

Miroslav Volf

• Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation

Fr. Michael White and Tom Corcoran

• Rebuilt: Awakening the Faithful, Reaching the Lost, and Making Church Matter

Books about Church History

Charles Freeman

• A.D. 381: Heretics, Pagans, and the Christian State

David Bentley Hart

• The Story of Christianity

Philip Jenkins

• The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-and How It Died

Fr. John Anthony McGuckin

• The Eastern Orthodox Church: A New History

Books about Orthodoxy and Spirituality

Anonymous

• The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues on His Way

Fr. John Behr

• The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death 
• The Way to Nicaea 
• The Nicene Faith
• The Cross Stands While the World Turns: Homilies for the Cycles of the Year
• Becoming Human: Meditations on Christian Anthropology in Word and Image

Olivier Clément 

• Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary, 2nd Edition

Lev Gillet

• Orthodox Spirituality: An Outline of the Orthodox Ascetical and Mystical Tradition

Gary Neal Hansen

• Kneeling with Giants: Learning to Pray with History’s Best Teachers 

Frederica Mathewes-Green

• Welcome to the Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity

Thomas F. Mathews

• The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art

Henry Maguire

• The Icons of Their Bodies

Fr. John Anthony McGuckin

• The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to its History, Doctrine, and Spiritual Culture

Fr. John Meyendorff

• Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes

Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky

• The Meaning of Icons

Fr. Alexander Schmemann

• For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy
• Of Water and the Spirit: A Liturgical Study of Baptism
• The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom

Robert Taft

• Beyond East and West: Problems in Liturgical Understanding 

Patristics (Church Fathers)

Athanasius

• On the Incarnation

Basil the Great

• On Social Justice

Cyril of Jerusalem

• Lectures on the Christian Sacraments: The Procatechesis and the Five Mystagogical Catecheses

Ephrem the Syrian

• Hymns On Paradise

Gregory of Nyssa

• The Life of Moses

Irenaeus of Lyon

• On the Apostolic Preaching

John of Damascus

• The Fount of Wisdom
• Three Treatises on the Divine Images

Maximus the Confessor

• On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

Melito of Sardis

• On Pascha

Symeon the New Theologian

• The First-Created Man
• On the Mystical Life: The Ethical Discourses (Vol. 1)(Vol. 2)