Christian Spirituality: The Classics is a unique and comprehensive guide to thirty key Christian spirituality texts. Ranging from Origen and Augustine to Jonathan Edwards, Therese of Lisieux and Thomas Merton, it offers a view of the texts which is founded in scholarship, but which also presents them as living documents that invite- even compel -contemplative reflection and existential response.

Each chapter briefly describes the classic text's author and audience, gives a synopsis of its contents, suggests some of its influence in history, and then explores aspects of the...