Guest Post

Sarah Coakley's runners-up

Suppose someone who hasn't
been keeping up with theology for the past 25 years now wants to read the most
important books written during that time. What five titles would you suggest?

We posed this question to
eight theologians and published their responses in our fall books issue. Of
course, it's hard to narrow a list down to just five titles—so a couple of them
passed along some additional choices as well. We're posting these runners-up here
on the blog.

Sarah Coakley teaches at Cambridge and wrote Powers and Submissions. Here
are her top five picks:

Andrew Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition

Steven Payne, John of the Cross and the Cognitive Value of Mysticism

Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God

Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter, editors. Feminist Epistemologies

William T. Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ

For her comments, see the magazine article. Here are four additional selections from Coakley:

Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory

John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason

William P. Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience

Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief

See more theologians' top
choices
. What would be your picks?

Steve Thorngate

The Century managing editor is also a church musician and songwriter.

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