Ten Great Christian Biographies

All right, this is what I love to find, men of stature recommending good books. I've especially been looking for recommendations of biographies, and Dr Mohler has been gracious enough to provide his readers with this. Here is a list of the titles he is recommending. Please be sure to follow the link to read his comments on each title.

Ten Great Christian Biographies:

"Reading the biographies of persons whose lives represent a significant influence on the Christian church is especially enriching. Each of the biographies listed below invites the reader into an adventure that is both literary and theological. These are ten of the biographies I consider most important from recent decades. They are listed in chronological order rather than by ranked importance."

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All descriptions listed below are provided by CBD. For Dr Mohler's comments see his article (a link is provided above).

Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, New Edition By Peter Brown / University Of California (Amazon)

"A great work, likely to be esteemed a classic. It is an intellectual biography, a portrait in depth of the man, and a brilliant study of the period,"---New York Review of Books. Brown reviews the latest scholarship as well as newly discovered letters and sermons in a long, substantial epilogue. 576 pages, softcover.

Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox By G.K. Chesterton / Random House, Inc. (Amazon)

Chesterton's Aquinas is a man of mystery. Born into a noble family, Thomas chose life of a mendicant friar. Lumbering and shy - his classmates dubbed him "the Dumb Ox" - he led a revolution in Christian thought. Possessed of the rarest brilliance, he found the highest truth in the humblest object. Having spent his life amid the vast intricacies of reason, he asked on his deathbed to have read aloud the Song of Songs, the most passionate book in the Bible. As Albert the Great, Thomas's teacher, predicted, the Dumb Ox has bellowed down the ages to our own day. Chesterton's book will enlighten those who would consign Thomas to the obscurity of medieval times. It will confound those who would use Thomas to bolster arid schemes of Christian rationalism. Rather, it will introduce the wondrous mystery of the man who, after a life of unparalleled genius, was seized by a vision of the Unknown and said: "I can write no more. I have seen things which make all my writings like straw." 197 pages, softcover, Image Books.

Here I Stand Life of Martin Luther By Roland H. Bainton / Abingdon Press (Plume, 1995 Amazon)

On a sultry day in July of the year 1505 a lonely traveler was trudging over a parched road on the outskirts of the Saxon village of Stotternheim. He was a young man, short but sturdy, and wore the dress of a university student. As he approached the village, the sky became overcast. Suddenly there was a shower, then a crashing storm. A bolt of lightning rived the gloom, and knocked the man to the ground. Struggling to rise, he cried in terror, "St. Anne help me! I will become a monk." The man who thus called upon a saint was later to repudiate the cult of the saints. He who vowed to become a monk was later to renounce monasticism. A loyal son of the Catholic Church, he was later to shatter the structure of medieval Cathololicism. A devoted servant of the pope, he was later to identify the popes with Antichrist. For this young man was Martin Luther.

William Tyndale: A Biography By David Daniell / Yale University Press (Amazon)

Daniell's illuminating, in-depth biography reveals the literary genius of the man whom biblical scholars view as the Bible's Shakespeare. You'll gain a greater understanding of Tyndale and appreciation for the master Bible translator's contribution to Christian literature and the spreading of God's Word. 429 pages, hardcover from Yale.

A Life of John Calvin By Alister McGrath / Blackwell Publishing Inc. (Amazon)

History occasionally produces figures whose influence on their own and successive generations is immense. Marx, Freud and Lenin had such an influence, and so, Alister McGrath argues, does John Calvin. This book provides a fresh and lucid exploration of Calvin's life and influence, his theology and his political thought, and his determining of the course of European history. It traces Calvin's remarkable impact on the development of modern Western attitudes to work, wealth, civil rights, capitalism and the natural sciences.

Jonathan Edwards: A Life By George M. Marsden / Yale University Press (Amazon)

Jonathan Edwards led an intellectual and rich spiritual life beyond the more well known fire-and-brimestone sermons he delivered in colonial America. In this biography, Edwards' life is carefully detailed from observing God's handiwork as a child to his adolescent struggles with faith and his powerful preaching in the revivals that dominated the Connecticut Valley in the First Great Awakening and beyond to Edwards' successful mission to the Indians.

The Life of George Whitefield, Volume 1 By Arnold Dallimore / Banner Of Truth (Amazon)

Many reasons combine to make this full-scale portrait of Whitefield a biography of impressive importance. Whitefield's life provides in itself a story scarcely paralleled. From the age of 24 when he commanded the largest congregations yet seen in America, until his death 30 years later, his was the voice heard by the English-speaking world. By common consent he was the greatest preacher of the 18th Century, and of his preaching gifts J. C. Ryle wrote, "No Englishman, I believe, dead or alive, has ever equaled him." This first volume, covering the years from Whitefield's birth in 1714 to his second visit to America in 1739-40, throws new light on several aspects of Whitefield's early life and traces both in depth and with vivid simplicity the beginning of 'the Great Awakening.'

George Whitefield: The Life and Times of the Great Evangelist of the Eighteenth Century - Volume 2 By Arnold Dallimore / Banner Of Truth (Amazon)

Harry Emerson Fosdick: Preacher, Pastor, Prophet by Robert Moats Miller / Oxford University Press (Amazon)

Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America By D.G. Hart / P & R Publishing (Amazon)

A study of Machen's thought and career that says much about the isssues that unsettled mainstream Protestantism's hold on American intellectual and cultural life.

D.M. Lloyd-Jones: The First 40 Years, 1899-1939 Vol. 1 By Iain H. Murray / Banner Of Truth (Amazon)

This is the first of two volumes describing the life of the great British preacher and teacher Martin Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981). Under his leadership Westminster Chapel of London was established as the foremost evangelical pulpit in England. Volume one contains Lloyd-Jones' childhood years in Newcastle Emlyn (Wales) and school years, up to the time he began his ministry at Westminster Chapel (1938). This authorized biography is written by co-worker and friend, Iain Murray.

D.M. Lloyd-Jones: The Fight of Faith Vol. 2 By Iain H. Murray / Banner Of Truth (Amazon)

Many thanks to Dr Mohler for sharing these recommendations. I am working on adding these into the TheoSource database and will post a notice when the work is complete.

Ten Great Christian Biographies