Beyond the books
Listen, watch and history
Not everyone learns best from a page. Here are podcasts, lectures, audiobooks, videos and films worth your time, and the histories that explain how each question came to be asked. Each names the questions it helps with.
To listen to
Podcasts, recorded lectures and free audiobooks: for the commute, the walk, the dishes.
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Ancient Faith Ministries · many Orthodox podcasts · Orthodox Christian podcasts on prayer, the Fathers, icons and the spiritual life: the Eastern tradition from within.
Helps with: What is salvation for?; The way of prayer; How should we speak of God?; Icons and images; God's essence and His energies
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Peter Adamson, 2010 · hundreds of 20-minute episodes · The whole history of philosophy, a short episode at a time, including the late antique, Byzantine, Islamic and medieval thinkers other surveys skip.
Helps with: Do natures and essences really exist?; Is 'being' said of God and of creatures in the same sense?; God's essence and His energies; Why is the good good?; Where does knowledge begin?; Faith and reason: who has the last word?; What makes you this one and no other?; Is there a spiritual soul?
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Matt Fradd, 2016 · weekly episodes and long interviews · Conversations and debates on God, morality and the Church, starting from St. Thomas. Also on video.
Helps with: Can reason know that God exists?; What is happiness?; Marriage, sex and the body's meaning; Rules or character?
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Peter Kreeft · many talks, most under an hour · A Boston College philosopher on God, suffering, heaven and happiness: clear, funny, and easy to listen to on a walk.
Helps with: Can reason know that God exists?; What is suffering for?; What is happiness?; Is truth objective?; What is heaven's happiness, at its heart?
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Bishop Robert Barron · weekly episodes, about 30 to 45 minutes · Bishop Barron on faith and culture, answering listeners' questions on God, the Church and the arts.
Helps with: Are the world's learning and arts a danger or a gift?; Faith and reason: who has the last word?; Can reason know that God exists?
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The Thomistic Institute · hundreds of recorded lectures, about an hour each · Lectures given by Dominicans and Catholic scholars on university campuses, on God, the soul, ethics and grace in the tradition of St. Thomas.
Helps with: Can reason know that God exists?; Is morality objective and knowable?; Is there a spiritual soul?; Are you free?; How does grace move the will?; Faith and reason: who has the last word?; What is happiness?
To watch
Documentaries, video courses and films that carry an argument.
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The Thomistic Institute, 2020 · short videos, about 10 minutes each · A free video course in the thought of St. Thomas, taught by Dominican friars.
Helps with: Can reason know that God exists?; Do natures and essences really exist?; Is there a spiritual soul?; Is morality objective and knowable?; Faith and reason: who has the last word?
The history behind the questions
Many disagreements make sense only once you know how they arose. Start with the approachable ones.
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Scholasticism: Personalities and Problems of Medieval PhilosophyJosef Pieper, 1960 · about 180 pages · Short portraits of the schoolmen, and why the medieval marriage of faith and reason held and then came apart.
Helps with: Faith and reason: who has the last word?; What is theology for?; Do natures and essences really exist?
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The Orthodox ChurchTimothy (Kallistos) Ware, 1963 · about 350 pages · The standard introduction to Eastern Orthodoxy, half history, half belief and worship, by an English convert who became a bishop.
Helps with: The procession of the Holy Spirit; The office of Peter; What is salvation for?; God's essence and His energies; What are the Eastern Catholic Churches?; Icons and images
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A History of PhilosophyFrederick Copleston, SJ, 1946 · 9 volumes · The standard survey from the Greeks to the twentieth century, by a Jesuit who explains each thinker fairly before weighing him. Read the medieval volumes for the background to most questions here.
Helps with: Do natures and essences really exist?; Is 'being' said of God and of creatures in the same sense?; Where does knowledge begin?; Why is the good good?; Faith and reason: who has the last word?; Is morality objective and knowable?; Is truth objective?; What makes you this one and no other?
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The Evolution of Medieval ThoughtDavid Knowles, 1962 · about 350 pages · A Benedictine historian's clear single-volume account of medieval philosophy, from Augustine to Ockham.
Helps with: Do natures and essences really exist?; Is 'being' said of God and of creatures in the same sense?; Why is the good good?; Faith and reason: who has the last word?; Where does knowledge begin?
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A Secular AgeCharles Taylor, 2007 · about 900 pages · How the West went from a world where belief was the default to one where it is one option among many.
Helps with: How is God related to the world?; Church and state; May the state restrain false religion?; Reform or tradition?
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History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle AgesÉtienne Gilson, 1955 · about 800 pages · Gilson's detailed history of how Christian thinkers from the Fathers to the fourteenth century used and changed philosophy.
Helps with: Do natures and essences really exist?; Is 'being' said of God and of creatures in the same sense?; Why is the good good?; Faith and reason: who has the last word?; What makes you this one and no other?; How does creation speak of God?
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The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of DoctrineJaroslav Pelikan, 1971 · 5 volumes · What the Church believed, taught and confessed, century by century, East and West, by a scholar who ended his life in Orthodoxy.
Helps with: Does doctrine develop?; The procession of the Holy Spirit; How are we made right with God?; How does grace move the will?; Icons and images; God's essence and His energies
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The Spirit of Mediaeval PhilosophyÉtienne Gilson
Helps with: Faith and reason: who has the last word?; Can reason know that God exists?; Are the world's learning and arts a danger or a gift?
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The Unintended ReformationBrad S. Gregory, 2012 · about 600 pages · How late-medieval metaphysics and the Reformation's quarrels, without anyone meaning it, produced a secular, pluralist West.
Helps with: Is 'being' said of God and of creatures in the same sense?; How are we made right with God?; Who interprets revelation?; Is truth objective?; Church and state