More Thoughts on Reading

When CJ Mahaney asked the question about reading, Al Mohler weighed in and now Ligon Duncan shares his reading habits.  Here’s an excerpt regarding the books that have most impacted his life:

1. The Westminster Confession of Faith.
Yes, it’s only about fifteen pages long (without Scripture references)
but it is the apex of Protestant Orthodox confessional formulations and
a model of pastoral theology and doctrinal clarity.

2. B.B. Warfield, The Religious Life of Theological Students.
Warfield got all over me in seminary, and my admiration grows yearly.
He answered Barth a quarter-century before Barth published his views.
He out-read, out-thought and out-wrote every man of his generation, but
we aren’t listening to him. the loss is ours. His Inspiration and Authority of the Bible is magisterial and still unchallenged.

3. J.I. Packer, Knowing God.
I first met Dr. Packer as a teenager, at a Bible Conference. I’d read
him before I met him, and I’ve loved his lecturing and writing ever
since. His Fundamentalism and the Word of God has been equally influential on me. And his A Quest for Godliness has fueled hundreds of hours of meditation and reflection.

4. Sinclair Ferguson’s Kingdom Life in a Fallen World – a popular, devotional treatment of the Sermon on the Mount that still thrills my soul.

5. John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied - grabbed me for the doctrines of grace and has never let go.

6. J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism spoke to realities I had already seen with my own eyes in mainline churches. Seminal. As was Ned Stonehouse’s biography of J Gresham Machen.

7. J.C. Ryle, Holiness – like Owen’s Mortification of Sin – cut me to the quick.

8. David F. Wells, No Place for Truth
- provided me with a grid for assessing church and culture that was
dramatically important for everything I am tyring to do in the church
and the churches today.

9. Calvin’s Institutes – reading them through with David Calhoun at Covenant Seminary was one of the great privileges and delights of my life.

10. Turretin’s Institutes of Elenctic Theology - still, I think, my favorite ST text.

11. Irenaeus’ Against Heresies, Prescription Against Heretics and Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching
– all reveal the early Fathers with their best foot forward. Hearing
Irenaeus describe the elder who taught him, who was himself taught by
John (yes, that John, the one whom Jesus loved, the Apostle), sent
chills up and down my spine the first time I read it – and still
thrills me at the thought of our closeness to the Apostles.

12. Tertullian – you pick it, is it Against Marcion, On the Flesh of Christ, Apology or what? No one was more fiery in rhetoric, and yet as substantive as Tertullian.

13. Athanasius – On the Incarnation (and CS Lewis’ famous “Old Books” introduction).

14. Luther – On the Bondage of the Will, with Packer’s great introduction.

15. Donald Macleod, Behold Your God, A Faith to Live By, The Person of Christ. The modern theologian who has pastored me most by his writing and preaching.

Yup – another big-time Nerd for the glory of God.