Spiritual Classics and Protestant Spiritual Training

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Fred Sanders, in his fascinating essay on evangelicalism in Reading the Christian Spiritual Classics: A Guide for Evangelicals, suggests that the evangelical charism is book recommending!

That is as hilarious as it is accurate. We are the book recommending people. Growing up in evangelicalism was basically one long constant conversation about the current “must-read” books. That is a gift, it turns out, and it isn’t new.

Reflecting with his new seminary students at Princeton in 1903, B.B. Warfield reflects on what spiritual classics every seminary student should have read, or, if they haven’t, what they should be reading. The list is, admittedly odd, but that is what makes it so interesting. He lists these 12 spiritual classics:

1. Augustine’s Confessions

2. Thomas A’Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ

3. The Theologica Germanica (for my post on why this is both interesting, and dangerous, see here).

4. Bishop Andrewes’ Private Devotions

5. Jeremy Taylor’s Life of Christ

6. Richard Baxter’s The Saints’ Everlasting Rest

7. Samuel Rutherford’s Letters

8. John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress

9. Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici

10. William Law’s Serious Call

11. John Newton’s Cardiphonia

12. Bishop Thomas Wilson’s Sacra Privata

For a long time now I’ve been fascinated about the idea of spiritual classics. What makes a book a classic? Why these books and not others? Often, it has nothing to do with the writing or the organization (or even the topic). There are just some books that uniquely speak to the lived-reality of life with Christ.

The fact that Jeremy Taylor’s Life of Christ is on this list, for example, is just odd. This is basically a harmonized paraphrase of the Gospels. Others seem obvious, like Augustine’s Confessions or A’Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ.

I am leaving the comments open for this post and would love to hear what books you were encouraged to read, especially if you grew up in the church, that were considered spiritual classics in your tradition. What were the go-to spiritual texts? Were these included? Was the list totally different?