The Imitatio Christi (The Imitation of Christ), composed around 1418-1427 and attributed to Thomas a Kempis (c. 1380-1471), a Dutch Augustinian canon from the Windesheim congregation, is the most widely read Christian book after the Bible. Translated into more than fifty languages and published in more than three thousand editions, it has been read by Catholics and Protestants alike, by mystics and active reformers, by Benedict XVI and by Dag Hammarskjold. Thomas Aquinas and Saint Ignatius reportedly valued it above all books outside Scripture. John Wesley read it as a student at Oxford and was converted to serious Christianity by it. William Wilberforce was strengthened by it during the parliamentary campaign to abolish the slave trade. John Henry Newman translated portions of it. The book's influence on Western spirituality and practical philosophy is incalculable, and its opening sentence is one of the most quoted in intellectual history: 'What does it profit thee to enter into deep discussion concerning the Holy Trinity, if thou lack humility?'
The Thinker and His Work
Thomas a Kempis was a member of the Brethren of the Common Life, a lay and semi-monastic movement founded by Geert Groote in the Netherlands in the late fourteenth century. Groote's spirituality - known as the Devotio Moderna - emphasized practical piety, interior prayer, lectio divina (devotional reading of Scripture), humble service, and the imitation of Christ's life rather than speculative mysticism or academic theology. Thomas entered the monastery of Mount Saint Agnes near Zwolle around 1399 and spent virtually his entire life there, copying manuscripts (he was an exceptionally skilled scribe), writing, and practicing the contemplative life the Devotio Moderna taught.
The Imitatio Christi exists in four books. The first (On the Imitation of Christ and Contempt of the Vanities of the World) contains the philosophical and ascetic principles. The second (On the Interior Life) describes the inner life of devotion. The third (On Interior Consolation) is the longest and most theologically rich - a series of addresses from Christ to the soul and the soul's responses. The fourth (On the Blessed Sacrament) treats the Eucharist as the summit of the spiritual life.
Biblical Texts Engaged
Matthew 11:29 - 'Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls' - is the Imitatio's governing text, establishing the imitation of Christ's humility as the highest vocation of the Christian soul. The book's entire framework is apprenticeship to Christ: not the imitation of external acts but the formation of the interior disposition of meekness and lowliness that Jesus himself exemplifies. Every chapter of Book I returns to this theme: the highest learning is self-knowledge, the most profitable study is of one's own sinfulness, the greatest wisdom is humility before God.
Philippians 2:5-8 - 'Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant' - grounds the Imitatio's theology of kenosis and humility. Christ's self-emptying is not merely an exemplar to be admired but a pattern to be interiorly reproduced in the soul. The soul imitates Christ not by external performance but by the interior disposition of self-giving love that chooses service over status, humility over pride.
John 8:12 - 'I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life' - provides the epistemological framework: the imitation of Christ is not merely moral apprenticeship but the path of genuine illumination. The soul that follows Christ acquires a wisdom that transcends academic learning because it comes from the source of all truth rather than from the creature's finite intellect.
Core Argument
The Imitatio's philosophical thesis is stated in its famous opening: 'What doth it profit thee to enter into deep discussion concerning the Holy Trinity, if thou lack humility, and be thus displeasing to the Trinity? For verily it is not deep discourse that maketh a man holy and upright, but a virtuous life maketh him dear to God.' This is not anti-intellectualism but a specific claim about the relationship between theoretical and practical knowledge: theoretical knowledge without the virtue that it is meant to serve is not only useless but dangerous, because it feeds the pride that is the root of all spiritual disorder.
The practical wisdom (phronesis) required for the Christian life is not derived from speculation about God's nature but from attentive following of Christ's way - particularly his humility, his patience in suffering, and his love of God and neighbor. This following is interior: the kingdom of God is within (Luke 17:21), and the soul's life with God takes place in the interior chamber (Matthew 6:6) rather than in external religious performance.
The famous complaint about the 'curious desire for knowledge' - 'what doth it profit thee to discourse learnedly concerning the Trinity if thou be void of humility?' - situates the Imitatio in a specific late medieval intellectual context: the disputes of the scholastic theologians, which Thomas regards as substituting intellectual achievement for genuine spiritual formation. The book is not a rejection of theology but a reorientation of theological activity toward its proper end: not the satisfaction of intellectual curiosity but the knowledge of God that transforms the knower.
Intellectual Context
The Devotio Moderna was a reform movement that reacted against both the speculative mysticism of the Rhineland tradition (Eckhart, Tauler, Ruysbroeck - whose writings Thomas read and valued, but whose language he distrusted) and the academic scholasticism of the university theologians. Its model was the early monastic tradition - Cassian, Bernard of Clairvaux, the Desert Fathers - and its spirituality was disciplined, affective, practical, and centered on the humanity of Christ and the liturgical-sacramental life of the Church.
Reception and Critique
The Imitatio's influence crosses confessional boundaries in a remarkable way. Erasmus, who was educated by the Brethren of the Common Life, absorbed its practical piety and brought it to his humanist reform program. Luther's emphasis on the interior life and on the imitation of Christ's suffering (theologia crucis) reflects Imitatio themes even as he rejected its monastic framework. Ignatius Loyola carried the Imitatio with him throughout his life; it became the bedside book of the Society of Jesus.
John Wesley read the Imitatio at Oxford in 1726 and recorded in his journal that it filled him with 'a sincere intention to be really, inwardly religious.' George Whitefield was similarly moved. The Methodist and evangelical revivals of the eighteenth century drew on the Imitatio's emphasis on interior conversion and practical holiness even as they departed from its Catholic sacramental framework.
Critics from within Catholicism (including Erasmus) sometimes felt the Imitatio was too hostile to learning and culture - that its suspicion of intellectual life could become an excuse for ignorance. From outside Catholicism, the Imitatio's emphasis on self-mortification and contempt of the world has been criticized as psychologically unhealthy and as undervaluing the goodness of creation.
Legacy
The Imitatio Christi established the genre of Christian spiritual formation literature that runs through Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle, John of the Cross's Ascent of Mount Carmel, Francis de Sales's Introduction to the Devout Life, Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Holy Dying, and William Law's A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. All of these works share the Imitatio's central conviction: that genuine Christianity is primarily a matter of interior transformation, and that this transformation is achieved through the disciplined practice of prayer, self-examination, and the imitation of Christ's virtues.
Key Passages
'What doth it profit thee to enter into deep discussion concerning the Holy Trinity, if thou lack humility, and be thus displeasing to the Trinity?' (Book I, ch. 1)
'There is naturally in every man a desire to know, but what profiteth knowledge without the fear of God? Better of a surety is a lowly peasant who serveth God, than a proud philosopher who watcheth the stars and neglecteth the knowledge of himself.' (Book I, ch. 2)
'Rest from inordinate desire of knowledge, for therein is found much distraction and deceit. Those who have knowledge desire to appear learned, and to be called wise. Many words satisfy not the soul, but a good life refresheth the mind, and a pure conscience giveth great confidence towards God.' (Book I, ch. 2)
Contemporary Relevance
The Imitatio Christi addresses the contemporary crisis of 'information anxiety' - the overwhelming abundance of knowledge and the impoverishment of wisdom - with a directness that has not been surpassed. Its insistence that what matters is not how much one knows but what one does with what one knows, and that character formation (virtue) is the proper goal of education, resonates with contemporary discussions of character education, contemplative practices in schools and workplaces, and the growing recognition that the academy's production of knowledge without the cultivation of wisdom is a fundamental educational failure. Thomas a Kempis's meditation on the futility of learning without love anticipates - and perhaps surpasses - contemporary education reformers who argue that character development is at least as important as cognitive achievement.