My review of "The Lives of Great Christians" by The Teaching Company

Enjoyed this course!
Review Date: July 18, 2010
Overall Review: 5 stars (out of 5)

"This is another great course from the TTC. I really learnt a lot from it.
Here are the positives, negatives and summary of key insights/enjoyed that I particularly enjoyed.

Positives:
+ Prof William Cook is enthusiastic and passionate - he certainly loves the subject
+ He is a great story teller; very engaging
+ He presents varieties of Christian characters from various eras, Christian denominations and geographies
+ He provides a balanced view of the Christian characters (i.e., including their more 'negative' aspects)
+ He provides the backdrop of the history of Christianity to create context for the lives of the Christians discussed
+ Great summary at the end (final chapter) summarising what the great Christians have in common

Negatives: Can't find any; perhaps could cover more great Christians (e.g., St Padre Pio in the 20th century) but this would make the course too long perhaps. 24 lectures I think is just the right length for this course

Some key insights/ideas which I enjoyed:
1. The Christian maxim (expressed by 17th-century Lutheran Johann Arndt): "At the Judgment, God will not ask people what they know but, rather, how they have loved"
2. St Antony of Egypt argued that anyone who knows himself / herself knows God (i.e., he emphasised the importance of the 'inward journey')
3. St Antony of Egypt recommends the acceptance of criticism as well as praise with equality
4. Monk Evagrius of Pontus wrote a work on prayer:
- Any desire for vengeance blocks people when they try to pray
- The state of prayer is one of imperturbable calm
5. Amma Syncletica said that it is possible to be a solitary while living in a crowd and that a solitary might, in fact, live in the crowd of his own thoughts
6. St Augustine: Despite the fact and the sins we commit throughout our lives, we are nevertheless made to praise God, and we cannot find peace until we do so
7. St Benedict: "Idleness is the enemy of the soul"
8. Bernard of Clairvaux described God as a lover in his meditative reading on the Song of Songs
9. Clare of Assisi: Christ is the mirror into which we must gaze
10. Catherine of Siena wrote, "We always become one with the object of our love"
11. Bernardino of Siena defined how one can both be a successful merchant and a good Christian. He believed that the only Christian justification for being wealthy was that the rich had the means to be generous to the poor
12. St Thomas More made the case for a life of "rolling up one's sleeves" and try to make the world a little better (in an imperfect world)
13. John Wesley urged Christians to aim for a life of "Christian perfection" (as per Matthew 5:48)
14. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who died in a Nazi concentration camp, in the middle of suffering, learnt the necessity to live a life of trust (faith) on God
15. Maximilian Kolbe volunteered to die in place of a stranger in Auschwitz in 1944
16. Mother Teresa: "The only way to conquer the world is through love", and that holiness begins with people divesting themselves of their own wills and surrendering to God
17. The final chapter summarised the commonality of the diverse Christians outlined in this course: All were rooted in scripture (Old and New Testaments), all were fully committed, all balanced prayer (contemplative) and active (serving) life, all practiced humility (in the sense of recognising one's place in the universe, which is, far from the center of it), and all were great lovers (of God and of people)."