Doctors of the Church: Thirty-Three Men and Women Who Shaped Christianity

by Bernard McGinn

This book is designed to tell ordinary readers everything they always wanted to know about these important leaders but didn't know who to ask. This is the only book that provides the perennial wisdom of all thirty-three doctors for any who wish to deepen their grasp of the roots of the Christian faith.

Genres: Theology, Christian, Religion, Biography

208 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1999

About the author

Bernard McGinn, the Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School, is widely regarded as the preeminent scholar of mysticism in the Western Christian tradition. He has also written extensively on Jewish mysticism, the history of apocalyptic thought, and medieval Christianity.

A cum laude graduate of St. Joseph's Seminary and College in Yonkers, NY, he earned a doctorate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1963 and a PhD in history from Brandeis University in 1970. After teaching theology for a year at The Catholic University of America, he joined the Chicago faculty in 1969 as an instructor in theology and the history of Christianity and was appointed a full professor nine years later. Dr. McGinn was named to the Donnelley chair in 1992. He retired in 2003.

The recent recipient of a Mellon Foundation Emeritus Grant, he also has held a Fulbright-Hays Research Fellowship, an American Association of Theological Schools research award, two research fellowships for work at the Institute for Advanced Study at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a research fellowship at the Institute for Ecumenical and Culture Research at St. John's University, and a Lily Foundation Senior Research Fellowship.

Dr. McGinn has delivered invited lectures at some one hundred colleges and universities in North America, Europe, and Israel. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Medieval Academy of America.  Past-president of the International Society for the Promotion of Eriugenean Studies, the American Society of Church History, and the American Catholic Historical Association, he is member of the board of The Eckhart Society. He served as editor-in-chief of the Paulist Press series Classics of Western Spirituality and currently serves as a member of the editorial boards of Cistercian Publications, The Encyclopedia of World Spirituality, The Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, and Spiritus.