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Five Great Classics in Translation

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Classic works of literature and theology gained in translation for modern English readers.

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1.The Riddle of Life
by J. H. Bavinck

In the spirit of C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, this book by eminent Calvinist thinker J. H. Bavinck offers a compact and compelling treatise on Christian belief.

Addressing big questions that haunt every thinking human being — Why are we here? Where do we come from? What is our destiny? How should we live? — Bavinck’s Riddle of Life also explores such essential topics as sin and salvation, Jesus the Redeemer, faith and idolatry, God’s great plan for creation, and the ultimate purpose behind our lives.

This lucid new translation by Bert Hielema of a classic text will make Bavinck’s profound reflections on faith and the meaning of human life accessible to a new generation of seekers.

2.Institutes of the Christian Religion
by John Calvin

John Calvin (1509–1564) originally wrote his famous Institutes of the Christian Religion in Latin. Beginning with the second edition of his work published in 1541, Calvin translated each new version into French, simultaneously adapting the text to suit lay audiences, shaping it subtly but clearly to teach, exhort, and encourage them. Besides reflecting a more pastoral bent on Calvin’s part, this 1541 Institutes is also notable as one of the founding documents of the modern French language.

Elsie Anne McKee’s masterful translation of the 1541 French Edition — the first-ever English version — offers full access to the brilliant mind of John Calvin as he considered what common Christian people should all know and practice.

See also our two-volume set of the 1559 edition of Calvin’s Institutes.

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3.The Theology of John Calvin
by Karl Barth

Though Karl Barth wrote his lectures on John Calvin more than seventy years ago, the wrestling of one theological giant with another can hardly fail to be exciting and instructive. Delivered at the University of Göttingen in 1922, Barth’s lectures offer a brilliant theological analysis of the Reformation — of Calvin in particular — while at the same time providing vital insights into the development of the theologian Barth himself.

Barth’s lectures open with an illuminating sketch of medieval theology, an appreciation of Luther’s breakthrough, and a comparative study of the roles of Zwingli and Calvin. The main portion of the lectures consists of an increasingly sympathetic, and at times amusing, account of Calvin’s life up to his recall to Geneva. In the process, Barth examines and evaluates the early theological writings of Calvin, especially the 1536 edition of the Institutes.

4.Medieval Exegesis, volume 1
by Henri de Lubac

Originally published in French as Exégèse médiévale, Henri de Lubac’s multivolume study of medieval exegesis and theology has remained one of the most significant works of modern biblical studies. Available now for the first time in English, this long-sought-after volume is an essential addition to the library of those whose study leads them into the difficult field of biblical interpretation.

The first volume in de Lubac’s multivolume work begins his comprehensive historical and literary study of the way Scripture was interpreted by the church of the Latin Middle Ages.

Examining the prominent commentators of the Middle Ages and their texts, de Lubac discusses the medieval approach to biblical interpretation that sought “the four senses” of Scripture, especially the dominant practice of attempting to uncover Scripture’s allegorical meaning. Though Bible interpreters from the Enlightenment era on have criticized such allegorizing as part of the “naivete of the Middle Ages,” de Lubac insists that a full understanding of this ancient Christian exegesis provides important insights for us today.

Volume 2 and volume 3 of Medieval Exegesis are also available as part of the Ressourcement series about retrieval and renewal in Catholic thought.

5.Notes from Underground
by Fyodor Dostoevsky

One of the most profound and most unsettling works of modern literature, Notes from Underground (first published in 1864) remains a cultural and literary watershed. In these pages Dostoevsky unflinchingly examines the dark, mysterious depths of the human heart. The Underground Man so chillingly depicted here has become an archetypal figure — loathsome and prophetic — in contemporary culture.

This vivid new rendering by Boris Jakim is more faithful to Dostoevsky’s original Russian than any previous translation; it maintains the coarse, vivid language underscoring the “visceral experimentalism” that made both the book and its protagonist groundbreaking and iconic.

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Peruse our full collection of classics in translation.


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