I earnestly believe that pastors and theologians should be among be most well-read. St. Andrews College requires their Bachelor of Arts students to have read the following texts before graduating. This might be a good starting place for those desiring greater involvement with the history of ideas.

THEOLOGY

Anselm, selections
Athanasius, On the Incarnation
Augustine, The City of God
Augustine, Confessions
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion
Irenaeus, Against Heresies
Luther, Bondage of the Will
Luther, 1520 tracts
New Testament
Old Testament
St. Benedict, Rule
Anselm, Proslogion and Monologion
Aquinas, Selections from the Summa

NATURAL SCIENCE

Darwin, On The Origin of Species
Euclid, Elements
Newton, Principia (selections)

SOCIAL & POLITICAL SCIENCE

(Traditio) Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
Aristotle, Ethics and Politics
Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers
Hobbes, Leviathan
John of Salisbury, Policraticus
Locke, On Civil Government
Machiavelli, The Prince
Marsiglius de Padua, Defensor Pacis (selections)
Marx, Das Capital or Communist Manifesto
Plato, Republic
Rousseau, Social Contract
U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence
Weber, Protestant Ethic

HISTORY

Bede, Ecclesiastical History
Herodotus, Histories
Plutarch, select lives
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War
William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum or Henry of Huntington, Historia Anglorum

EPICS

Beowulf
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
Dante, Divine Comedy
Homer, Iliad
Homer, Odyssey
Milton, Paradise Lost
Ovid, Metamorphoses
Spenser, Faerie Queene
Vergil, Aeneid

DRAMA

Aeschylus, Oresteia
Aristophanes, selections
Euripides, selections
Shakespeare, selections
Sophocles, Theban plays

NOVELS

Austen, representative title
Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress
Cervantes, Don Quixote
Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, representative title
Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Faulkner, The Sound and The Fury
Goethe, Faust
Melville, Moby Dick

LETTERS

Aristotle, On Rhetoric
Plato, Gorgias or Phaedrus
Pseudo-Cicero, Rhetorica ad Herennium or Cicero, De Inventione
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria
Aristotle, Poetics
Montaigne, selections
Plutarch, Moralia (selections)

ART & ARCHITECTURE

Palladio, The Four Books of Architecture
Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture
Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, On the Abbey of the Church of St. Denis and its Art Treasures
Vitruvius, On Architecture

PHILOSOPHY

Aquinas, selections from Summa
Aristotle, selections
Berkeley, selections
Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy
Duns Scotus, selections
Derrida, selections
Descartes, Meditations
Hume, selections
Kant, selections
Leibnitz, selections
Locke, selections
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Plato, selections
Russell, selections
Plotinus, selections
William of Ockham, selections
Wittgenstein, selections