Something - simplicity...

I was going through my theology books and stacking them in different piles designated in ways like "must read" and "don't know" and "staple" and so on, and I just casually picked up the book called Unseen Warfare (really a very, very strikingly Work-like book, but it is associated with the Philokalia afterall) and opened it to a random page, and it was talking about how it's not good being ignorant, but it's also not good going in the other extreme of having too much knowledge. I know what it meant. It went on to say that you have to be able to gather what you know to be true and important to mind and act on it. Too much knowledge spoils it all. This is obvious, but I was just in the midst of kavetching about which books I "needed" to read and I was making difficult decisions and so on.

The fact is this: I read theology to find the inevitable Work correspondences...mostly. I mean I read it to learn it (which I've already done, basically), but then I continue to go through it to validate Work teachings. I HAVE the Work teaching. The Unseen Warfare book would tell me: you have all that at the practical, rare level. Don't spoil it chasing and accumulating too much scattered knowledge on top of it all.

So then I'm reminded of the power of having the Work sources, the Bible, and the Homeric epics. Or my 7 book list solely. I got to the summit. Emptying the superfluous material and the material that is maybe very good but that is in the same category yet still less than for instance the Work.

I can't abandon a Calvin or aBrakel just yet, though. But these numerous tomes I can. And have been.

OK, I just whittled it down to 12. My 7 book list plus (and this isn't cheating) three books by Calvin counted as one, that makes 8; then the Christian's Reasonable Service, Witsius' Econony of the Covenants, Riplinger's In Awe of Thy Word (because I find it to be a remarkable book on truly rare and foundational subject matter), and Unseen Warfare (the ISBN: 0913836524 edition, which I can vouch for as being excellent and complete). That's 12. (Of course the 7 book list is Bible, Homer, On War, Wealth of Nations, Fourth Way, Plutarch, and Thucydides.)

I bit the bullet and deleted the systematic theologies like Berkhof's, because I've pretty much learned the contents of them. The theology books left are deeper. I have the basics.

Ultimately the Bible itself is deepest, and the Work (studied and done) is deepest. And Homer is essentially, and charmingly, powerful...