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The Via Christa Library
By Linda Mihalic
A library is “a building or room containing collections of books, periodicals, and sometimes films and recorded music for people to read, borrow, or refer to.” Knowledge is “the sum of what is known: the body of truth, information, and principles acquired by humankind.” The oldest extant library in Christendom is the Library of the Monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai, Egypt, founded 548–565 A.D., during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. Every library in the world grew from a single collection of books, to which other collections were later added. Oxford University’s Bodleian Library began with Humphrey of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Gloucester, who donated 281 books following his death in 1447. Thomas Jefferson’s personal library laid the foundation of our own Library of Congress.
You have your own personal library, too. Your brain is the mental hardware you built with the body you wear, your OS is the mind that was in Christ Jesus, and your soul is your immortal God-given software, which includes the ability to systematize and use whatever you feed it in the way of information. Thus, you are adequately equipped to begin walking the Via Christa. However, all the books in the world, physical or digital, will do you little good if you lack an inquiring mind capable of critically assessing the truth and validity of the knowledge it gains, while remaining open to new data.
“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”–Philippians 2:5
Edna Lister was dedicated to educating the whole person—heart, mind and soul. We who travel the trail she blazed advocate being well-educated and devoted to lifelong learning, especially in the fields of science, psychology, metaphysics, philosophy, and mysticism. She was an avid reader with eclectic tastes, yet favored Idealists including Pythagoras, Plato, Plutarch, Plotinus, a few Stoics and the British Idealists. As an idealist herself, she lived her philosophy daily—no ivory tower for her! She loved mysteries, which she claimed sharpened the powers of logic and deductive thinking. Science fiction, she said, was “history, pre-written.” She read all the magazines her sons subscribed to, including Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Amazing Stories, Science Fiction, etc. She credited her continuing education to her sons, who though born twelve years apart to different fathers, were themselves close and good friends. Her older son, Russell J. Elliott, was a mining engineer, as was his stepfather, Henry T. Abstein, Sr. Their son, Henry T. Abstein, Jr., was an aerospace engineer with Hughes Aerospace Group, and Boeing.
We have found several reading lists among her students’ papers—authors and books she had suggested. They reveal that she advocated a Classics education at minimum, an experience she had been deprived of as a young woman whose father did not believe women needed higher education. She was a single working mother from 1924 on, but her dream of being college-educated came true after she met Dr. Thomas Parker Boyd, who sponsored her matriculation (1925-1934) at what is now U. C. Berkley, where he taught. There she studied psychology, a field then in its infancy, and comparative religion, under Dr. Boyd’s mentorship.
Edna Lister’s Works include books, pamphlets and essays; however, the bulk of her work is found in the thousands of pages of sermon and lecture outlines she created for lecturing, teaching, preaching and public speaking.
Recommended Books and Authors
First and foremost, Edna Lister frequently said, Our chief textbook on the via Christa is the
Walking the Via Christa may profoundly shift your perception of what reality truly is, and expand your ability to see through the veils of illusion that too often mislead you in this world of mere appearances. The volumes included here cover various areas of study you may encounter on The Via Christa, but more importantly they dispel the surface glamour of what the world defines as “reality.”
We have included the translated works of many seminal thinkers and philosophers—Idealist, Platonist, Neoplatonist, and Judeo-Christian—who have formed or influenced the foundation of Western thought. All the works and authors listed here are intended to provide food for thought, new insights, and perspectives.
Anonymous
Aristotle
William W. Atkinson
Charles Bigg
Brand Blanshard
Bernard Bosanquet
Thomas Parker Boyd
F. H. Bradley
John Burnet
Joseph Butler
Stewart Candlish and Pierfrancesco Basile
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Clement of Alexandria
Lady Anne Conway
Ralph Cudworth
Russell Dancy
Ernest Dimnet
Diogenes Laertius
Theron Q. Dumont
Arthur S. Eddington
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Eusebius of Caesarea
E. H. Gifford, trans. (1903)
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Adolph Ernst Kroeger, trans. (1797)
Adolph Ernst Kroeger, trans. (1867)
Adolph Ernst Kroeger, trans., 1799
Lloyd Gerson
Sherry Abstein Gordon
Thomas Hill Green
Paul Guyer and Rolf-Peter Horstmann
Manly P. Hall
Christoph Helmig and Carlos Steel
Nicholas Herman
Carl A. Huffman
Sarah Hutton
Iamblichus
and a
W. R. Inge
Harold H. Joachim
Benjamin. Jowett
Nick Kampouris
George Karamanolis
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Abraham Lincoln
Brandon C. Look
Thomas Maguire
Andrew Moore
George F. Moore
Numenius of Apamea
Origen
Rudolf Otto
Nickolas Pappas
Plato
Plotinus
Plutarch
Porphyry
Proclus Diadochus
Erwin Rohde
Seneca
Edouard Schuré
Paul Shorey
Vladimir Solovyov
The Justification of The Good: An Essay on Moral PhilosophyAlbert Stöckl
A. E. Taylor
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Thomas Taylor
Katja Vogt
William Whewell
Thomas Whittaker
Eduard G. Zeller
Other Resources
Appendices
Detailed explanations of some frequently mentioned topics on The Via Christa
Bibliography
Books and authors referred to on The Via Christa
Glossary
Definitions of terms used on The Via Christa site, often emphasizing our particular useage.
Soul Inspiration The essays, poetry, plays, etc. quoted on The Via Christa, which bear witness to our uniquely Western Idealistic moral and ethical base.
Quotes to Ponder
Certain thoughts and writings quoted on The Via Christa.
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The Bodleian Library, founded in 1602, is the finest adornment to the Libraries of Oxford University. The Bodleian is famous for its stunning historic buildings, including the Radcliffe Camera, designed by James Gibbs in the Palladian style, constructed ca. 1737–49.
A library, is “a collection of books; a place in which literary, musical, artistic, or reference materials are kept for use but not for sale.”
Etymology of library: From the Latin librarium “book-case, chest for books,” in Medieval Latin librarius “concerning books,” from liber “book, paper, parchment.” Old English had bochord, literally a “book hoard.”
References
Harper, Douglas. “Etymology of library.” Online Etymology Dictionary. November 18, 2021.
Merriam-Webster, “Knowledge.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. May 27, 2022.
Merriam-Webster, “Library.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. November 18, 2021.