Soren Kierkegaard Søren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher and religious thinker who wrote literary and philosophical essays that reacted against Hegelian philosophy and the state church in Denmark, setting the stage for modern existentialism. Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen, the youngest of seven children. He spent his formative years under the influence of his devout father whose teachings stressed the suffering of Christ. Kierkegaard went to study philosophy and theology at the University of Copenhagen

Soren Kierkegaard

John Locke Locke, John (1632-1704), English philosopher, who founded the school of empiricism. Locke was born in the village of Wrington, Somerset, on August 29, 1632. He was educated at the University of Oxford and lectured on Greek, rhetoric, and moral philosophy at Oxford from 1661 to 1664.

John Locke

C.S.. Lewis Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, November 29, 1898, Clive Staples "Jack" Lewis was to become one of the worlds most prolific and popular authors. Lewis's criticism, fiction, and apologetic essays stay in print, and are continually reprinted in various bindings and new collections. Lewis's life and work have been also the focus of countless books since his death in 1963. Lewis was a professor of Medieval and Renaissance literature at Cambridge University

C.S. Lewis

A.W. Towzer Aiden Wilson Tozer was born April 21, 1897, on a small farm among the spiny ridges of Western Pennsylvania. Able to express his thoughts in a simple but forceful manner, Tozer relying on the power of God and the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the utilization of his gift of language to nourish hungry souls, pierce human hearts, and point earthbound minds toward God.

A.W. Tozer

Francis Thompson His poetry, usually on spiritual subjects, is noted for its brilliant imagery and sonorous language. Francis Thompson was educated for the Roman Catholic priesthood at Ushaw College but in 1877 entered Owens College, Manchester, to study medicine. Relinquishing his medical studies in 1885, he went to London, where he lived a destitute life, suffering from ill health, poverty, and opium addiction

Francis Thompson

Adoniram Judson Born in Massachusetts in 1788, Adoniram Judson entered Providence College (now Brown University) at seventeen years old, and also attended Andover Theological Seminary. Judson was an American Baptist missionary, lexicographer, and Bible translator to Burma. Judson helped form the American Baptist Missionary Union. Having mastered the Burmese language, writing, and speaking it with the familiarity of a native and the elegance of a cultured scholar, In 1834 Judson completed a translation of the whole Bible into the Burmese language. During the Anglo-Burmese War, he spent twenty-one months in prison. From 1845-1847, after thirty-four years in Burma, he took his only furlough to his native land. Returning to Burma, he spent his remaining years working on his English-Burmese dictionary. He died in 1850 and was buried at sea.

Adoniram Judson

Watchman Nee In 1903, Watchman Nee was born in Foochow, China of second-generation Christian parents. Watchman Nee attended no theological schools or Bible institutes, yet he acquired an exceptional knowledge concerning God's purpose, Christ, the Spirit, and the Church through his study of the Bible as well as the writings of spiritual men and women. During his early ministry, he spent one-third of his income on books by Christian authors. He was brilliantly gifted in his ability to select, comprehend, discern, and memorize appropriate material. Watchman Nee gleaned all the good, scriptural points from his collection of over 3,000 of the best Christian books, including nearly all the classical Christian writings from the first century on.

Watchman Nee

Gene Scott Dr. Gene Scott earned his Ph.D in Philosophies of Education at Stanford University in 1957; in 1992, he was the featured cover story for the Stanford Alumni Magazine. For over 40 years Dr. Scott has served as an ordained minister, including 15 years in the mission field, and in executive capacities with major Protestant denominations and educational institutions.

Gene Scott

Ravi Zacharias Mr. Zacharias was born in India in 1946 and immigrated to Canada with his family twenty years later. He received his Masters of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Mr. Zacharias has been honored by the conferring of a Doctor of Divinity degree from Houghton College, a Doctor of Laws degree from Asbury College and a Doctor of Divinity degree from Tyndale College and Seminary, Toronto. Ravi Zacharias has spoken in over fifty countries, including the Middle East, Vietnam and Cambodia (during the military conflict) and in numerous universities worldwide, notably Harvard, Princeton and Oxford University. He has addressed writers of the peace accord in South Africa, President Fujimori's cabinet and parliament in Peru, and military officers at the Lenin Military Academy and the Center for Geopolitical Strategy in Moscow. He is well-versed in the disciplines of comparative religions, cults and philosophy and held the chair of evangelism and contemporary thought at Alliance Theological Seminary for three and a half years.

Ravi Zacherias

C. T. Studd Forward Ever, Backward Never! "Some wish to live within the sound of Church or Chapel bell; I want to run a Rescue Shop within a yard of hell." --C.T. Studd, 1860-1931. C. T. Studd was the son of a wealthy Englishman, Edward Studd. He attended Cambridge University from 1880 to 1883 and was converted there to Christ through the preaching of D. L. Moody. Shortly afterwards young Studd and six other students dedicated their lives and wealth to the Lord Jesus Christ and offered themselves to Hudson Taylor for work in China.

C.T. Studd

G.K. Chesterton Born in London, Chesterton was educated at St. Paul's, but never went to college. He went to art school. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.'s Weekly.

G.K. Chesterton

Paul Tournier Paul Tournier was born in Geneva in 1898. From an early age knew he wanted to practice medicine. Tournier went on to become a medical student at the University of Geneva from which he earned his MD. During his time at university, he helped the International Red Cross after the First World War in their work of repatriating Russian and Austrian Prisoners of War. After graduating from the university in 1923, he spent one year as a junior doctor in Paris, before returning to Geneva to spend a further four years at the Polytechnic. Then, in 1928, he entered private practice in Geneva, and remained in it until his retirement. Tournier became deeply interested in Calvinism and the Reformed faith in his post-university years, along with his extensive involvement in civic and medical groups. As a result of his interest in religion, he began to delve more deeply into the relationship between medicine, counseling, and spiritual values. For a period of time, he seriously considered giving up medicine for counseling but decided instead to combine the two. Tournier developed and practiced what he called the medicine of the person, in which medical knowledge, counseling, and religion are combined, breaking away from the pattern established for psychiatry by Freud. Paul Tournier was a general practitioner in Geneva for nearly fifty years.

Paul Tournier

Karl Barth Karl Barth, b. Basel, Switzerland, May 10, 1886, d. Dec. 9, 1968, is considered by some the greatest Protestant theologian of the 20th century and possibly the greatest since the Reformation. More than anyone else, Barth inspired and led the renaissance of theology that took place from about 1920 to 1950. He studied at the universities of Bern, Berlin, Tubingen, and Marburg and held pastorates in Switzerland between 1909 and 1921. During this time, he became known as a radical critic both of the prevailing liberal theology and of the social order. Liberal theology, Barth believed, had accommodated Christianity to modern culture. The crisis of World War I was in part a symptom of this unholy alliance. In his famous commentary on Romans (1919), Barth stressed the discontinuity between the Christian message and the world. God is the wholly other; he is known only in his revelation; he is not the patron saint of culture, but its judge. Between 1921 and 1935, Barth held professorships at Gottingen, Munster, and Bonn. He engaged in controversy with Adolf von Harnack, holding that the latter's scientific theology is only a preliminary to the true task of theology, which is identical with that of preaching. With the rise of Adolf Hitler, Barth emerged as a leader of the church opposition to Nazi control, expressed in the Barmen Declaration of 1934. Deprived of his chair at Bonn, he returned to Switzerland and from 1935 until his retirement in 1962 was professor at Basel, exercising a worldwide influence

Karl Barth

Francis Shaeffer Philadelphia in the late 1920's, a teenager, Francis Shaeffer, decided that he didn't need God. He had tried church, and it didn't give him the answers he was looking for. After a time of living as a self-proclaimed agnostic, he decided to read the Bible, beginning with Genesis, and see for himself if God exists. Within six months, he was convinced that God is real and that the Bible is His revealed Word. In 1930, eighteen-year-old Francis August Schaeffer acted in faith towards God. Schaeffer graduated from Faith Theological Seminary in 1938, and served as pastor of several churches throughout Pennsylvania and Missouri. In the late 1940's, Schaeffer toured Europe on behalf of the American Council of Christian Churches. To his astonishment, he saw even greater needs there and moved to Switzerland to work with youth. Along with his wife Edith, Schaeffer founded the Children for Christ ministry in 1948 in Lausanne. Having three daughters already, Schaeffer was familiar with the challenges of teaching young people. In the meantime, he continued touring, lecturing, and studying history and philosophy. In 1955, he formally opened his chalet in Huemoz, Switzerland as a "home" for solid Bible teaching, where anyone could come and listen to thought-provoking analysis of Scripture. This haven of spiritual rest and discovery was named L'Abri. Pastor and author Dr. Harold Brown says, "L'Abri's initial theological impact was not made institutionally...but indirectly, through individuals whom the Schaeffers came to know and whose lives they changed." One of the foremost Christian thinkers and apologists of this century, Schaeffer wrote twenty-four books, which have been translated into more than twenty languages. Schaeffer died in his home on May 15, 1984. President Ronald Reagan said: "It can rarely be said of an individual that his life touched many others and affected them for the better; it will be said of Dr. Francis Schaeffer that his life touched millions of souls and brought them to the truth of their Creator."

Francis Schaeffer

Eugenio Corti Eugenio Corti was born in Besana Brianza, Italy, in 1921. They say that one writes best about that which one knows best and has experienced. This is true specially of accounts of war told by those in the front lines. Eugenio Corti marked his debut as a writer with "Few Returned," the story of the retreating Italian army from major defeat at the Russian Front, and went on to write other major works of historical fiction. Eugenio Corti is one of the greatest Christian writers of the past half-century.Corti is revered not only by conservative Italian Catholics but by straight-thinking Protestants in France, Switzerland (Jean-Marc Berthoud), and the United States (Douglas Kelly). His literary output includes a magnificent play (The Trial and Death of Joseph Stalin), a memoir of his military service on the Russian front during World War II (published by University of Missouri Press as "Few Returned"), and among other works of fiction his magisterial three-volume novel,"The Red Horse." Eugenio Corti, is one of Italy's most distinguished postwar writers.

Eugenio Corti

John Milton John Milton was born in London, and was educated at St Paul's School and then at Christ's College, Cambridge (1625-32) During his Cambridge period, while considering himself destined for the ministry, he began to write poetry in Latin, Italian, and English.One of the greatest poets of the English language, best-known for his epic poem PARADISE LOST (1667). Milton's powerful, rhetoric prose and the eloquence of his poetry had an immense influence especially on the 18th-century verse. Besides poems, Milton published pamphlets defending civil and religious rights. On leaving Cambridge Milton had given up his original plan to become a priest. He spent the next six years at his father's home, writing during that time L'ALLEGRO, IL PENSEROSO (1632), COMUS (1634), and LYCIDAS (1637). In 1635 the Miltons moved to Horton, Buckinghamshire, where John pursued his studies in Greek, Latin, and Italian. He traveled in France and Italy in the late 1630s, meeting in Paris the jurist and theologian Hugo Grotius and the astronomer Galileo Galilei in Florence - there are references to Galileo's telescope in Paradise Lost. The theme of Fall and expulsion from Eden in PARADISE LOST had been in Milton's mind from 1640s. His ambition was to compose an epic poem to rival the works of ancient writers, such as Homer and Virgil. The poem was originally issued in 10 books in 1667, and in 12 books in the second edition of 1674.Concerned with the Puritan cause, Milton wrote a series of pamphlets against episcopacy (1642), on divorce (1643), in defense of the liberty of the press (1644), and in support of the regicides (1649). He also served as the secretary for foreign languages in Cromwell's government. After the death of Charles I, Milton published THE TENURE OF KINGS AND MAGISTRATES (1649) supporting the view that the people had the right to depose and punish tyrants.

John Milton

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born on February 4, 1906, in Breslau, Germany. Later a student in Tubingen, Berlin, and at Union Theological Seminary in New York as well as a participant in the European ecumenical movement. Bonhoeffer became known as one of the few figures of the 1930s with a comprehensive grasp of both German- and English-language theology. He wrote his dissertation, Sanctorum Communio, at the end of three years at the University of Berlin (1924-1927) and was awarded his doctorate with honors. Act and Being, his Habilitationsschrift, or qualifying thesis allowing him to teach at the University of Berlin, was accepted in July 1930. The following year, 1930-1931, Bonhoeffer spent a postgraduate year at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He assumed his post as a lecturer in theology at the University of Berlin in August 1931. In the winter semester 1931-1932 Bonhoeffer presented the lectures that were published as Creation and Fall. His final lecture courses at Berlin--published as Christ the Center--along with a seminar on the philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, were taught in the summer of 1933. His authorization to teach on the faculty of the University of Berlin was finally withdrawn on August 5, 1936. Bonhoeffer's theologically rooted opposition to National Socialism first made him a leader, along with Martin Niemueller and Karl Barth, in the Confessing Church (bekennende Kirche), and an advocate on behalf of the Jews. Indeed, his efforts to help a group of Jews escape to Switzerland were what first led to his arrest and imprisonment in the spring 1943. His leadership in the anti-Nazi Confessing Church and his participation in the Abwehr resistance circle (beginning in February 1938) make his works a unique source for understanding the interaction of religion, politics, and culture among those few Christians who actively opposed National Socialism, as is particularly evident in his drafts for a posthumously published Ethics. His thought provides not only an example of intellectual preparation for the reconstruction of German society after the war but also a rare insight into the vanishing social and academic world that had preceded it. Bonhoeffer was also a spiritual writer, a musician, and an author of fiction and poetry. The integrity of his Christian faith and life, and the international appeal of his writings, have led to a broad consensus that he is the one theologian of his time to lead future generations of Christians into the new millenium. He was hanged in the concentration camp at Flossenbürg on April 9, 1945, one of four members of his immediate family to die at the hands of the Nazi regime for their participation in the small Protestant resistance movement. The letters he wrote during these final two years of his life were posthumously published by his student and friend, Eberhard Bethge, as Letters and Papers from Prison. His correspondence with his fiance, Maria von Wedermeyer, has been published as Love Letters from Cell92.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

J.R.R Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) was a major scholar of the English language, specialising in Old and Middle English. Twice Professor of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) at the University of Oxford, he also wrote a number of stories, including most famously The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955). John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, on 3 January 1892. His family returned to England after the death of his father, 15 February 1896. During WW1 Tolkien was sent to active duty on the Western Front, just in time for the Somme offensive. After the war, Tolkien joined with C.S. Lewis and became one of the founding members of a loose grouping of Oxford friends, known as "The Inklings". The club consisted of a number of friends who were all Christian men and who were all interested in literature. The group would generally meet on a week-day morning in the back room of a pub, generally on Tuesday's in the 'Eagle and Child' (informally known as the 'Bird and Baby'). On Thursday nights they would meet in Lewis's big sitting room at Magdalene College The prominent members included Major Warren Lewis, Hugo Dyson, as well as Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, R. E. Havard, and above all C. S. Lewis, who became one of Tolkien's closest friends, and for whose return to Christianity Tolkien was at least partly responsible. The Inklings regularly met for conversation, drink, and frequent reading from their work-in-progress. Tolkien died on 2 September 1973. He and his wife Edith are buried together in a single grave in the Catholic section of Wolvercote cemetery in the northern suburbs of Oxford. (The grave is well signposted from the entrance.) The legend on the headstone reads: Edith Mary Tolkien, Lúthien, 1889-1971 John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Beren, 1892-1973

JRR Tolkien

Os Guinness Dr. Os Guinness was educated in England, he did undergraduate studies at the University of London, and postgraduate studies at University of Oxford where he graduated with a D.Phil in the social sciences from Oriel College, he is a writer and speaker living in Northern Virginia. Os Guinness was born in China during World War II, he remained there until 1951 when the Communists forced most foreigners to leave. Since then he has lived mostly in England, Switzerland, and the United States. Dr. Guinness has written or edited more than twenty books, including The American Hour (Free Press, 1993), The Call (Word 1998), Time for Truth (Baker 2000), and Long Journey Home (Doubleday 2001). Since 1984, he has lived in the Washington, DC area. He was a Guest Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies and then a Guest Scholar and Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution. From 1986 to 1989 he was the Executive Director of the Williamsburg Charter Foundation, one of the drafters of the Williamsburg Charter, and co-author of the public school curriculum Living With Our Deepest Differences. He is a Senior Fellow and Vice Chairman of the Board at The Trinity Forum. His deep concern is to bridge the chasm between academic knowledge and popular knowledge, taking things that are academically important and making them intelligible and practicable to a wider audience, especially as they concern matters of public policy.

Os Guinness

George MacDonald George MacDonald was born in Huntly on the 10th of December 1824. He went to university in Aberdeen in 1840 and to Highbury College in 1848 to train as a Congregational minister. His first important original publication was the poem "Within and without" (1855) but a more important landmark was Phantastes (1858), his first major contribution to the genre of fantasy and a complex attempt to communicate that sense of "otherness" which is his abiding concern in his writing. George MacDonald was influenced by both English and German Romantic writers, and by Chrisitan poets of the Renaissance. MacDonald's writing and lecturing brought him great recognition and introduced him into the company of many of the leading Victorians of the time. His friends included many of the English pre-Raphaelites, social reformers such as Octavia Hill, radical churchmen such as F.D. Maurice, and, across the Atlantic, Emerson, Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Mark Twain. His work Phantastes with its poetry, and its visionary sense, was in turn an important influence on CS Lewis and his circle. MacDonald produced fantasy writing for both children and adults throughout his long career. In 1863 he published David Eiginbrod, the first of around two dozen novels. In it he gave expression to his belief in universal redemption. MacDonald survived many years of ill-health, partly by wintering abroad (often in Bordighera) during his later years. He died in Ashtead, Surrey on 18th September 1905.

George MacDonald