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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Podcast The Catechism in a YearFr. Mike Schmitz, 2023 · 365 episodes, about 15 minutes each · The Catechism of the Catholic Church read aloud and explained, a few paragraphs a day.
Helps with: What do the sacraments do?; What is conscience?; Is morality objective and knowable?; Who can be saved?; Who interprets revelation?
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St. Augustine · about 13 hours · Free volunteer recordings of the public-domain translations at LibriVox.
Helps with: How does grace move the will?; How fallen is human nature?; What is happiness?
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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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Film Jesus of NazarethFranco Zeffirelli, 1977 · about 6 hours, a miniseries · The life of Christ from the Annunciation to the Resurrection, faithful to the Gospels.
Helps with: Where does your eye rest in Christ: His divinity or His humanity?; How should Scripture be read?
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Film Of Gods and MenXavier Beauvois, 2010 · about 2 h · The Trappist monks of Tibhirine, living among their Muslim neighbors, decide whether to stay as civil war closes in.
Helps with: What is suffering for?; May a Christian take up the sword?; Who can be saved?
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Film The Island (Ostrov)Pavel Lungin, 2006 · about 1 h 50 min · A Russian Orthodox monk, a holy fool, lives in repentance for a sin of his youth.
Helps with: The way of prayer; What is salvation for?; What is suffering for?
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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The Great HeresiesHilaire Belloc, 1938 · about 160 pages · Arianism, Islam, the Albigensians, the Reformation and the modern attack, told briskly as the Church's great quarrels. Partisan, and meant to be.
Helps with: How are we made right with God?; Who interprets revelation?; The office of Peter; The body and its desires
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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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Augustine of Hippo: A BiographyPeter Brown
Helps with: How does grace move the will?; How fallen is human nature?; Church and state
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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 Stripping of the AltarsEamon Duffy, 1992
Helps with: Liturgical development; What do the sacraments do?; How are we made right with God?
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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