Figures
Whose voices do you want beside the text?
89 writers across 12 traditions, 890,366 references to 33,536 verses. Switch anyone on or off; the reader only shows the people you choose. By default only the three most-read are on: Augustine of Hippo, Martin Luther, George Whitefield.
Modern Devotional 0/2 on
Devotional writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
George MacDonald
Novelist and preacher
A Scottish minister turned novelist and fantasist. C. S. Lewis called him his master; his Unspoken Sermons argue for a God whose love is a consuming fire.
Evelyn Underhill
Writer on mysticism
The English writer whose Mysticism surveyed the Christian mystical tradition for modern readers, and who led retreats for the Church of England.
Literature & Poetry 0/7 on
Poets and novelists for whom Scripture was the deepest source.
John Donne
Poet and Dean of St Paul's
The poet who became Dean of St Paul's and the most brilliant preacher of Jacobean England. His sermons and Holy Sonnets wrestle with death, sin and grace.
George Herbert
Poet and country parson
A country parson whose one book of poems, The Temple, published after his death, is the finest devotional verse in English.
Søren Kierkegaard
Danish philosopher
The Danish philosopher of faith, anxiety and the individual before God, who attacked comfortable Christendom and read the Bible as a letter addressed to the reader personally.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Novelist
The Russian novelist who read the New Testament in a Siberian prison camp and made the questions of guilt, freedom and grace the substance of his novels.
Leo Tolstoy
Novelist and moral teacher
The author of War and Peace who, in later life, took the Sermon on the Mount literally, rejected the church, and preached non-resistance to evil.
Christina Rossetti
Poet
One of the great Victorian poets, devout and reclusive, who wrote verse-by-verse devotional commentary on the whole of Revelation.
Francis Thompson
Poet
A poet rescued from opium addiction and destitution in London, whose 'The Hound of Heaven' pictures God's relentless pursuit of the soul.
Scholarship & Public Theology 0/8 on
Biblical scholars and public theologians of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Keil & Delitzsch
German Old Testament scholars
Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Lutheran scholars whose Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, in twenty-five volumes, remained the standard conservative work for a century.
B. F. Westcott
Bishop of Durham, Greek scholar
Cambridge scholar and Bishop of Durham, co-editor of the critical Greek New Testament, whose commentaries on John and Hebrews weigh every word of the original.
Abraham Kuyper
Theologian and Prime Minister of the Netherlands
A Dutch pastor, journalist, university founder and prime minister, who taught that there is not one square inch of life over which Christ does not say 'Mine'.
Adolf von Harnack
Church historian at Berlin
The leading church historian of his time, whose lectures What Is Christianity? presented a liberal Protestant Jesus stripped of dogma, and provoked replies for decades.
B. B. Warfield
Princeton theologian
The last great theologian of old Princeton, who defended the inspiration of Scripture and wrote with exacting care on the person of Christ.
Herman Bavinck
Reformed theologian
Kuyper's colleague and the most learned of the Dutch Reformed theologians. His four-volume Reformed Dogmatics engages the whole Christian tradition.
Albert Schweitzer
Theologian, physician, musician
The polymath whose Quest of the Historical Jesus concluded that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, and who then left academia to run a hospital in Gabon.
J. Gresham Machen
New Testament scholar at Princeton
A Princeton New Testament scholar who argued in Christianity and Liberalism that liberal theology was a different religion, and founded Westminster Seminary.
Social Gospel 0/2 on
The Kingdom of God as a demand for social justice.
Charles Sheldon
Congregational minister
A Kansas pastor whose novel In His Steps asked a congregation to do nothing for a year without first asking 'What would Jesus do?'
Walter Rauschenbusch
Baptist theologian
A Baptist pastor in New York's Hell's Kitchen who became the theologian of the Social Gospel, reading the Kingdom of God as a demand for social justice.
Black Church & Abolition 0/8 on
Writers who read Scripture from within slavery and the struggle against it.
Olaudah Equiano
Abolitionist and writer
Kidnapped from Africa as a boy, he bought his freedom, became a Christian and a sailor, and wrote the autobiography that helped end the British slave trade.
Lemuel Haynes
Congregational minister
A veteran of the Revolution and the first Black man ordained in America, who pastored a white congregation in Vermont for thirty years.
Phillis Wheatley
Poet
Brought from West Africa to Boston as a child and enslaved, she became the first African American to publish a book of poems, many of them on Scripture and faith.
Richard Allen
Founder of the AME Church
Born enslaved in Philadelphia, he bought his freedom, was ordained a Methodist preacher, and founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Sojourner Truth
Abolitionist and preacher
Born into slavery in New York, she walked away to freedom and spent forty years preaching, speaking against slavery and for women's rights.
Frederick Douglass
Abolitionist and orator
The escaped slave who became the leading abolitionist orator in America. His Narrative distinguishes the Christianity of Christ from the Christianity of the slaveholders.
Frances E. W. Harper
Poet and lecturer
A free-born Black poet, novelist and lecturer for abolition and temperance, whose verse retells the stories of Moses, Vashti and Ruth.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Scholar and activist
Sociologist, historian and co-founder of the NAACP. The Souls of Black Folk includes his account of the faith and sorrow songs of the Black church.
Catholic (modern) 0/3 on
Modern Catholic voices, from Newman to Chesterton.
John Henry Newman
Anglican preacher, later Cardinal
The leader of the Oxford Movement who became a Roman Catholic and a cardinal. His Parochial and Plain Sermons, preached at St Mary's Oxford, are among the finest in English.
Thérèse of Lisieux
Carmelite nun
A Carmelite nun who died at twenty-four and whose Story of a Soul, describing her 'little way' of trust, made her one of the most loved saints of modern times.
G. K. Chesterton
Journalist and apologist
The English journalist, novelist and controversialist whose Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man defended Christianity with paradox and good humour, and helped bring C. S. Lewis to faith.
Puritan & Evangelical 1/22 on
Three centuries of English-speaking Protestant commentary, preaching and devotion.
John Owen
Puritan theologian
The most learned of the English Puritans, Cromwell's chaplain and vice-chancellor of Oxford. His exposition of Hebrews runs to seven volumes.
John Bunyan
Tinker and preacher
A tinker imprisoned twelve years for preaching without a licence, who wrote The Pilgrim's Progress in jail. Almost every sentence he wrote echoes the King James Bible.
Matthew Henry
Nonconformist minister
A Presbyterian minister in Chester whose Commentary on the Whole Bible, warm and practical, has been read for three centuries and is still the best-known English commentary.
John Gill
Baptist pastor and scholar
A London Baptist pastor of enormous learning in Hebrew and rabbinic literature, who wrote an exposition of every verse of the Bible.
Jonathan Edwards
Pastor and theologian
The pastor of Northampton, Massachusetts, whose preaching sparked the Great Awakening and whose treatises on the will, the affections and true virtue made him America's foremost theologian.
John Wesley
Founder of Methodism
The Anglican priest who preached across Britain for fifty years and organised the Methodist movement. His Notes on the Bible were written to be plain enough for anyone.
George Whitefielddefault
Evangelist
The open-air preacher of the Great Awakening on both sides of the Atlantic, heard by crowds of thousands and admired even by Benjamin Franklin.
Adam Clarke
Methodist scholar
A Methodist preacher and orientalist whose commentary on the whole Bible was strong on languages and manuscripts, and independent in its judgments.
Charles Finney
Revivalist
The lawyer turned revivalist whose campaigns and Lectures on Revivals defined American evangelicalism in the nineteenth century.
Charles Hodge
Princeton theologian
For fifty years the leading theologian at Princeton Seminary. His commentary on Romans and three-volume Systematic Theology defined Old School Presbyterianism.
Albert Barnes
Presbyterian pastor
A Philadelphia pastor whose Notes on the New and Old Testaments, written for Sunday-school teachers, sold over a million copies.
JF
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown
Three Scottish and Irish commentators
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown, whose Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) became the most widely used one-volume commentary in the English-speaking world.
J. C. Ryle
Bishop of Liverpool
The first Bishop of Liverpool and a plain-spoken evangelical Anglican. His Expository Thoughts on the Gospels go passage by passage through all four.
Andrew Murray
Dutch Reformed pastor in South Africa
A South African pastor whose devotional books, especially Abide in Christ on John 15, spread the deeper-life teaching of the Keswick movement worldwide.
Hannah Whitall Smith
Quaker speaker and writer
A Quaker from Philadelphia whose The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life became a classic of the holiness movement.
Hudson Taylor
Missionary to China
The founder of the China Inland Mission, who adopted Chinese dress and took the Gospel into the interior. Union and Communion is his meditation on the Song of Songs.
Charles Spurgeon
Baptist preacher in London
The 'Prince of Preachers', who filled the Metropolitan Tabernacle for thirty years. Over 3,500 of his sermons were printed, each on a text, and his Treasury of David expounds every psalm.
E. M. Bounds
Methodist minister and writer on prayer
A Methodist minister and Confederate chaplain whose small books on prayer, written late in life, are still in print.
D. L. Moody
Evangelist
A shoe salesman who became the most famous evangelist of his age, preaching to millions in Britain and America and founding the Moody Bible Institute.
Amy Carmichael
Missionary in India
An Irish missionary who spent fifty-five years in South India rescuing children from temple service, and wrote poetry and letters from her sickbed.
Oswald Chambers
Teacher and chaplain
A Scottish Bible teacher and chaplain to troops in Egypt, who died at forty-three. His wife compiled his talks into My Utmost for His Highest, the best-selling devotional of the twentieth century.
A. W. Pink
Bible teacher
An itinerant English Bible teacher, almost unknown in his lifetime, whose Studies in the Scriptures were rediscovered after his death and reprinted widely.
Reformation 1/4 on
The sixteenth-century reformers who put the Bible into the hands of the people.
Martin Lutherdefault
Reformer at Wittenberg
The Augustinian friar whose protest against indulgences began the Reformation. He translated the Bible into German and preached through the Gospel and Epistle readings of the church year.
William Tyndale
Bible translator, martyr
The first to translate the New Testament into English from the Greek, working in exile and burned for it. Much of the King James Version is his wording.
John Calvin
Reformer at Geneva
The Reformer of Geneva and the most systematic mind of the Reformation. He wrote commentaries on nearly every book of the Bible, prized for their clarity and restraint.
John Knox
Reformer of Scotland
The fiery leader of the Scottish Reformation, a preacher who confronted queens and wrote the history of his own struggle.
Medieval 0/6 on
Monks, schoolmen and mystics from Bede to Thomas à Kempis.
Bede
Monk of Jarrow
A monk in Northumbria who never travelled far but knew everything. His Ecclesiastical History tells how England became Christian; his commentaries carried the Fathers to the Middle Ages.
Anselm of Canterbury
Archbishop of Canterbury
Archbishop of Canterbury and the founder of scholastic theology. Cur Deus Homo asks why God became man and answers in terms of satisfaction for sin.
Bernard of Clairvaux
Abbot of Clairvaux
The dominant churchman of twelfth-century Europe and a mystic of the love of God. His eighty-six sermons on the Song of Songs never got past chapter three.
Thomas Aquinas
Dominican theologian
The Dominican whose Summa Theologica ordered all of theology into questions and answers. Every article rests on a text of Scripture, and his commentaries on the Gospels and Paul are meticulous.
Julian of Norwich
Anchoress and mystic
An anchoress in Norwich whose Revelations of Divine Love, the first book in English by a woman, reflects for twenty years on a series of visions of the crucified Christ.
Thomas à Kempis
Augustinian canon
A canon in the Netherlands whose Imitation of Christ became, after the Bible, the most widely read book of Christian devotion.
Syriac Fathers 0/2 on
The Aramaic-speaking church of Syria and Persia: Scripture read in a language close to Jesus’ own.
Aphrahat
The Persian Sage
The earliest Syriac Christian writer whose works survive, living under Persian rule. His twenty-three Demonstrations argue from Scripture alone, with almost no trace of Greek philosophy.
Ephrem the Syrian
Deacon and hymn writer
A deacon of Nisibis and Edessa who taught theology through hymns. The Syriac church still sings them; his poetry reads Scripture through symbol and paradox.
Latin Fathers 1/8 on
The Latin West from Tertullian to Gregory the Great, with Augustine at the centre.
Tertullian
Latin apologist at Carthage
The first major Christian writer in Latin, a lawyer's mind with a sharp tongue. He coined the word Trinity and defended the faith before the Roman authorities.
Cyprian
Bishop of Carthage, martyr
Bishop of Carthage through persecution and plague. His letters and treatises on unity, prayer and the lapsed shaped how the Western church understood itself.
Hilary of Poitiers
Bishop of Poitiers
Bishop of Poitiers, exiled to the East for opposing Arianism, who brought Greek Trinitarian thought into Latin in his twelve books On the Trinity.
Ambrose
Bishop of Milan
Governor turned bishop of Milan, who stood up to emperors and whose preaching drew Augustine to the faith. He read the Old Testament allegorically in the manner of Origen.
Jerome
Translator of the Vulgate
The scholar who translated the Bible into Latin from the Hebrew and Greek, producing the Vulgate that the West would read for a thousand years. His letters are learned, sharp and quotable.
Augustine of Hippodefault
Bishop of Hippo
Bishop of Hippo and the most influential theologian in the history of the Western church. His sermons on John and the Psalms were preached to ordinary North Africans; the Confessions and City of God were read by everyone after.
Leo the Great
Bishop of Rome
Pope who turned Attila back from Rome and whose Tome, read at Chalcedon, gave the church its language for the two natures of Christ.
Gregory the Great
Bishop of Rome
Monk, then pope, who sent missionaries to England and wrote the Pastoral Rule for bishops. His Morals on Job is a vast moral and mystical reading of one book.
Greek Fathers 0/17 on
The theologians of the Greek-speaking East, from the Apostolic Fathers to John of Damascus.
Clement of Rome
Bishop of Rome
One of the earliest Christian writers outside the New Testament. His letter to the church at Corinth, written around AD 96, quotes the Old Testament constantly and was read in churches for centuries.
Ignatius of Antioch
Bishop of Antioch, martyr
Bishop of Antioch who wrote seven letters to churches while being taken to Rome to die. They are the earliest witness to how the second generation of Christians read the apostles.
Polycarp
Bishop of Smyrna, martyr
Bishop of Smyrna, remembered as a disciple of the apostle John. His one surviving letter, to the Philippians, is woven almost entirely out of New Testament phrases.
Justin Martyr
Philosopher and apologist
A Greek philosopher who became a Christian and kept his philosopher's cloak. He argued that Christ is the Logos every thinker had been groping toward, and read the Old Testament as a book about Jesus.
Irenaeus
Bishop of Lyons
Bishop of Lyons and a link to the apostles through Polycarp. Against Heresies defends the unity of the Old and New Testaments against the Gnostics, and is the first sustained use of John's Gospel.
Clement of Alexandria
Teacher at Alexandria
Head of the catechetical school at Alexandria, at home in Greek literature and philosophy. He treated the best of pagan thought as a preparation for the Gospel.
Hippolytus
Presbyter at Rome
A learned presbyter at Rome who wrote against heresies and produced the oldest surviving Christian commentary, on Daniel.
Origen
Biblical scholar at Alexandria and Caesarea
The first great Christian biblical scholar, who produced the Hexapla and commentaries on most of the Bible. His Commentary on John is the earliest surviving commentary on a Gospel.
Athanasius
Bishop of Alexandria
Bishop of Alexandria for forty-five years, seventeen of them in exile, for insisting that the Son is fully God. On the Incarnation is the classic short statement of why God became man.
Cyril of Jerusalem
Bishop of Jerusalem
Bishop of Jerusalem whose Catechetical Lectures, delivered to candidates for baptism, walk through the Creed with a Scripture proof for every clause.
Gregory of Nazianzus
Archbishop of Constantinople, 'the Theologian'
One of the three Cappadocian Fathers and the finest orator of the Greek church. His Five Theological Orations shaped the doctrine of the Trinity.
Basil the Great
Bishop of Caesarea
Bishop of Caesarea, monastic founder and defender of the Holy Spirit's divinity. His Hexaemeron, nine sermons on the six days of creation, was read for a thousand years.
Gregory of Nyssa
Bishop of Nyssa
Basil's younger brother and the most philosophical of the Cappadocians. He wrote on the making of man, the soul, and the endless ascent toward God.
John Chrysostom
Archbishop of Constantinople, 'golden-mouthed'
The greatest preacher of the Greek church, whose hundreds of homilies work through Matthew, John, Acts and the letters of Paul verse by verse, with an eye always on how his hearers lived.
Cyril of Alexandria
Patriarch of Alexandria
Patriarch of Alexandria who led the case against Nestorius at Ephesus. His long commentary on John reads the Gospel as a sustained statement of Christ's divinity.
Theodoret of Cyrus
Bishop of Cyrus
Bishop of Cyrus in Syria and the last great writer of the Antiochene school, known for sober, historical exegesis and a church history of the Arian years.
John of Damascus
Monk of St Sabas
A monk near Jerusalem, writing under Muslim rule, whose Exposition of the Orthodox Faith summed up the Greek Fathers and became the standard textbook of the Eastern church.