A Third Testament

A modern pilgrim explores the spiritual wanderings of Augustine Pascal Blake Kierkegaard Dostoevsky Tolstoy and Bonhoeffer. Based on a television series on these notable thinkers A Third Testament brings to life seven men whose names are familiar enough but whose iconoclastic spiritual wanderings make for unforgettable reading. Muggeridge s concise biographies are an accessible and manageable introduction to these spiritual giants who carried on the testament to the reality of God begun in the Old and New Testaments. St. Augustine a headstrong young hedonist and speechwriter who turned his back on money and prestige in order to serve Christ Blaise Pascal a brilliant mathematician who pursued scientific knowledge but warned people against thinking they could live without God William Blake a magnificent artist-poet who pled passionately for the life of the spirit and warned of the blight that materialism would usher in Soren Kierkegaard a renegade philosopher who spent most of his life at odds with the church and insisted that every person must find his own way to God Fyodor Dostoevsky a debt-ridden writer and sometime prisoner who found in the midst of squalor and political turmoil the still small voice of God Leo Tolstoy a grand old novelist who swung between idealism and depression loneliness and fame and a duel awareness of his sinfulness and God s grace Dietrich Bonhoeffer a pastor whose writings and agonized involvement in a plot to kill Hitler cost him his life but continue to inspire millions