I usually resist writing articles of the sort one sees occasionally extolling lists of books one ought to read.  My usual reaction to such articles is, “These people do so much reading, and I don’t. I barely have time for the other things I’m supposed to do.”  Either that, or “Great, another dozen books I should be reading that I’m not going to.” I’ll file that in my folder “More things to feel guilty about.”

But a problem arose after I wrote an article recently (“Why Theology?”) in which I suggested that, although there is a lot of bad theology that misleads people, there is also a lot of good theology that helps people gain a better understanding of their faith.  This is important because, as humans, it is in our nature to ask questions, and it is important that we have good answers.

But here’s the problem. After the article appeared, a bunch of people wrote me with a question: What is a good book in theology I should read? (In retrospect, I should have seen that coming.)

Having read my share of medieval texts, I know that the proper answer to any question is: “It depends.”  Had St. Thomas been writing the response, it might begin: “A good book can be said in several ways.”  “Good” for what end? “Good” for what person?  “Good” for what stage of life?

So, for example, were someone to ask me, “Name a really good book in theology,” I would say, “Augustine’s Confessions!”  It changed my life.  It was instrumental in my conversion to the Catholic faith.  But I was a college student, and I had a college student’s questions.  To find Christians who were serious thinkers, as serious and rigorous as Plato and Aristotle, was to me a revelation of its own.

But if someone asks, “What’s a good first book in theology?” would I say: “Augustine’s Confessions”?  Maybe not.  The Confessions can be tough going if you’re not ready for that sort of thing.

How about Aquinas’s Summa Theologica?  Nothing better, in one sense.  But it’s not exactly the first thing you’d give every person interested in Catholicism.  “Objections, replies to objections, respondeo.  Huh? Where’s Jesus?”

I know people who would likely say: “Read Dante!” Reading Dante is always a good idea. But giving a novice either Dante or Aquinas would be like handing a person learning English Shakespeare’s Hamlet and saying: “Here, read this. It’s great English.”  It is, but you could forgive the person for wondering: “Yes, thank you, but do you have anything a little easier to start with?”

So look, there’s nothing better than Augustine’s Confessions, Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, or Athanasius’s On the Incarnation (to name just three of many), so read them if you’re ready.  But they might not be the best for everyone who wants that “one good book in theology.”

If you want a “good book,” how about the “good book”?  The Bible.  Nothing better.  But again, it can be a hard slog, especially when you get into Leviticus and Numbers.  I’m told Fr. Mike Schmitz’s podcast “The Bible in a Year” is good if you want something to listen to.  I take it he now has “The Catechism in a Year.”  That would probably work for some people.  I continue to think that the best way of approaching the Scriptures is to get them each day at daily Mass.  But it’s not an either/or.

I could suggest various “lives” of the saints.  Some are good; some are filled with bad, pious fictions.  Better to read books written by saints.  But if someone unprepared were to read, say, St. John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul or St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s Autobiography, it might weird them out. Those works are great, but they’re probably not the best books for beginners.

So how about a book for beginners, for people who aren’t used to reading philosophy and theology and maybe aren’t ready yet for “the dark night of the soul”?

When people have in the past asked me this question in person, I have often recommended C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. No, he wasn’t Catholic, but it’s a good place to start.  His essays in God in the Dock and Christian Reflections are also good.  They also have the added benefit of being relatively short.  G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy can also be good, but Chesterton’s style can also be a little too “Victorian” for some.

I sometimes recommend Thomas Merton’s Life and Holiness for people I think are perhaps looking for something more “spiritual,” because it’s short, beautifully written, and does some basic things well. Frank Sheed’s Theology and Sanity is also good for people who want something more “theological” without being overwhelming.  There are more.  I have no doubt readers have many of their own.  How about Fulton Sheen?  How about Pope Benedict’s series Jesus of Nazareth?  Yes, and yes.

But about all these books, one can say what doctors say about medicines:  Some things work a lot of the time; a lot of things work some of the time; but nothing works all of the time.

But given all that, there is one book I always recommend: Another Sort of Learning by the late Fr. James Schall, a frequent contributor to The Catholic Thing.  This book has the wonderfully revealing sub-title:

Selected Contrary Essays on the Completion of Our Knowing
or How Finally to Acquire an Education While Still in
College, or Anywhere Else: Containing Some Belated
Advice about How to Employ Your Leisure Time
When Ultimate Questions Remain Perplexing in
Spite of Your Highest Earned Academic Degree,
Together with Sundry Book Lists Nowhere
Else in Captivity to Be Found (Ignatius Press).

So if you get that book, it will give you a host of good suggestions.  Most won’t be “theology” per se, but it will give you good options, and all of them will help you gain a better understanding of your faith.

Then read Augustine. And Aquinas.  And Dante.