Honors Program

Books

The following list is a representation only – it is not for the purpose of ordering textbooks.

simple book doodle

Freshman Year

HNRS 150: Origins: Athens and Jerusalem (Fall)

  • The Epic of Gilgamesh
  • The Book of Genesis
  • The Book of Exodus
  • The Book of Ruth
  • The First Book of Samuel
  • The Book of Esther
  • The Book of Job
  • The Book of Proverbs
  • The Book of Ecclesiastes
  • The Book of Isaiah
  • Homer, Iliad
  • Homer, Odyssey
  • The Presocratics
  • Plato, Symposium
  • Plato, Apology
  • Plato, The Republic
  • Sappho (Selections)
  • Sophocles, Oedipus Rex & Antigone
  • Euripedes, Medea
  • Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
  • Confucius, The Analects
  • Lao Tzu, Tao de Ching
student sits on the floor in between library shelves

HNRS 190: Rome Through Early Church (Spring)

  • Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe
  • Virgil, The Aeneid
  • Cicero, On the Good Life
  • Epictetus, Discourses
  • Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
  • The Buddhist Scriptures
  • The Book of Leviticus
  • The Gospel of Luke
  • The Gospel of John
  • The Acts of the Apostles
  • First Epistle to the Corinthians
  • Epistle to the Galatians
  • Epistle to the Ephesians
  • Epistle to the Hebrews
  • Ovid, Metamorphoses (selections)
  • Origen, On First Principles (Book IV)
  • Diodore of Tarsus and St. John Chrysostom
  • St. Augustine, The Confessions
  • St. Augustine, City of God (selections)
  • The Bhagavad Gita
  • Kalidasa, The Recognition of Sakuntala
  • Tacitus, The Annals (selections)
  • Eusebius, The History of the Church (selections)
  • The Martyrdom of Saints Perpetua & Felicitas
  • Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word
  • Cyril, On the Unity of Christ
  • The Nicene Creed
  • The Chalcedonian Creed
  • Boethius, the Consolation of Philosophy

Sophomore Year

HNRS 250: Medieval Western Civilization (Fall)

  • Beowulf
  • Bede, An Ecclesiastical History of the English People
  • The Dream of the Rood
  • Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names and The Mystical Theology
  • The Psalms
  • The Song of Solomon
  • The Book of Malachi
  • The Gospel of Matthew
  • The Qur'an
  • St. John of Damascus, Three Treatises on the Divine Images
  • The Rule of Saint Benedict
  • St. Hildegard of Bingen, selected writings
  • St. Anselm of Canterbury, selected writings
  • St. Bernard of Clairvaux, selected writings
  • Abelard and Heloise, selected letters
  • The Lais of Marie de France
  • Al-Ghazali, Deliverance from Error
  • Ibn TuFayl, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān
  • Murasaki Shikibu, Tale of Genji
  • Moses Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed
  • St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (selections)
  • St. Bonaventure, The Journey of the Mind to God
  • Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
3 students gathered outside reading books

HNRS 290: Late Medieval and Early Modern Western Civilization (Spring)

  • Christine de Pizan, The Book of City of Ladies
  • Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
  • Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
  • Desiderius Erasmus, In Praise of Folly
  • Epistle to the Romans
  • Epistle of James
  • Martin Luther, selected writings
  • John Calvin, The Institutes (selections)
  • The 39 Articles
  • The Canons of Trent
  • The Confessions of Dositheus
  • St. Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises
  • St. Teresa of Avila, the Interior Castle
  • Tales from 1,001 Nights
  • Francis Bacon, selections
  • Nicolaus Copernicus, selections
  • Galileo Galilei, selections
  • Isaac Newton, selections
  • René Descartes, Discourse & Meditations
  • Blaise Pascal, Pensées
  • Bartolome de las Casas, The Destruction of the Indies
  • Francisco de Vitoria, De Indis
  • Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Poems, Protest, and a Dream
  • William Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream and Hamlet (selected plays may vary)
  • Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (selections)
  • John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Origin of Inequality
  • George Fox, selected writings
  • Margaret Fell, selected writings
  • William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost

Junior Year

HNRS 350: Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries (Fall or Spring)

  • The Gospel of Mark
  • David Hume, An Enquiry Regarding Human Understanding
  • Jonathon Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affairs
  • John Wesley, The Scripture Way of Salvation
  • The Journal of John Woolman
  • Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (selections)
  • The Federalist Papers (selections)
  • The Declaration of the Rights of Man
  • The American Declaration of Independence
  • Washington's Farewell Address
  • Selected English Romantic Poetry (Blake, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge, etc.)
  • Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
  • Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
  • Immanuel Kant, Grounding for Metaphysics of Morals
  • Georg W.F. Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History
  • Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
  • Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
  • Epistle to Philemon
  • Henry Thoreau, Walden
  • Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
  • Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address
  • Charles Darwin, Origin of Species and The Descent of Man (selections)
  • Emily Dickinson, selected poems
  • Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love
  • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
  • John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
  • Abraham Kuyper, Sphere Sovereignty
  • Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals
  • Christina Rosetti, selected poems
  • W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

Senior Year

HNRS 450: Twentieth Century

  • Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
  • William James, The Will to Believe
  • Leo Tolstoy, A Confession
  • Mahatma Gandhi, Political Writings
  • G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
  • Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
  • Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents
  • Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
  • Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
  • C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
  • Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism
  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
  • Simone Weil, Waiting for God
  • T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets
  • Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem
  • Alexander Solzhenitsyn, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
  • Flannery O’Connor, Selected Stories
  • Martin Luther King Jr., Selected Letters and Speeches
  • Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
  • Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion is Christianity?
  • Toni Morrison, Beloved
  • Shūsaku Endō, Silence
  • Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace
  • The Book of Daniel
  • The Book of Revelation

HNRS 490: Integration Thesis

  • James K.A. Smith, How (Not) to be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor

This course is intended to be the pinnacle of the Honors Program at George Fox. Over the past four years you have explored a wide range of great and influential works. Your horizons have been broadened, your knowledge increased, and your critical skills sharpened. Most significantly, we have thought together about Western civilization from a Christian perspective.

As a culmination of this program, we ask you to contribute to the store of Western knowledge. The contribution will usually take the form of a scholarly paper or work of art, but other possibilities may be negotiated with the director of the Honors Program and a faculty sponsor.

This project may be combined with another senior capstone project as long as all relevant parties agree on requirements. Normally, combined projects will need to be larger and/or more sophisticated than a single project.

As of the 2021 school year, the Senior Thesis course may become optional to provide students an opportunity to complete the Honors Program in 3 years. Contact us for more details.

students in classroom reading books
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