I have been an avid reader for more than 50 years. I am the son of a man who I remember habitually reading a book a day. My father’s reading was purely for pleasure. Most of my reading is related to my obsessive accumulation of information. I have always enjoyed learning. Had it ever crossed my mind to do so, I might have entertained the notion of becoming a professional student. I always loved going to school and would sit in on classes that I was not enrolled in while in engineering school to hear the professors teach interesting things.
Following my conversion and called to the Gospel ministry, the direction of my reading habits significantly changed. Since 1974 I have assiduously read military history, biblical history, Bible surveys, archaeology, systematic theologies, commentaries, hermeneutics, and the like. I am not a scholar and do not pretend to be a scholar. I am a pastor who studies the Bible and who spends considerable time every day reading.
I have learned some things about reading that I would like to share with you along the way. These are my opinions. Some of you who read this blog read more than I do and are better trained than I am. If you spot something in my comments that you disagree with, based upon your higher level of training or more extensive experience as a reader, I would greatly appreciate whatever comments you might have.
Footnotes. Unless I am reading for pleasure, I tend to be a little suspicious of a book addressing a serious subject that provides no or almost no footnotes. An exception to this would be a book like Curt Daniel’s The History and Theology of Calvinism. This is the book I am reviewing a chapter at a time in this blog. Though the author provides some footnotes, the breadth and depth of his study and his astonishing bibliography prove that his work would likely overwhelm most readers with footnotes had he not chosen to use them sparingly.
I become suspicious when the author produces a supposedly serious book of 400 to 500 pages without providing footnotes to establish that his propositions are not his alone but are held by credible people. I also become suspicious when the author resorts to Strong’s Concordance to establish the meaning of a word rather than a legitimate Hebrew or Greek lexicon. Strong’s is useful for a Church member looking for clarification but is not sufficient for a credible student of Scripture.
Here is another one. When the author includes Greek words using the Greek alphabet but is unaware that the sigma at the end of the Greek word is different than the sigma anywhere else in a Greek word, you know the author has not taken an introductory course in Greek. An example would be the Greek word for sepulchre or burial place, shkόV, where the initial sigma is s , and the final sigma is V. I am not suggesting the author who does this is not worth reading. I am pointing out that what he says about Greek is suspect.
A final comment on footnotes has to do with an author whose theology is Arminian. He may embrace the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, though he might object to the word ‘perseverance’ and favor ‘eternal security’ instead. However, in all other respects, he is at least an Arminian and very possibly a Pelagian. Yet all of his footnotes are references to works produced by Puritans! Is it not interesting that an author would publicly oppose Puritans and decry Calvinists while relying almost exclusively on their support of his position on the subject of prayer?
Dictionaries. Should not Baptist preachers have at least a rudimentary handle on the historical-grammatical approach to interpreting God’s Word? Fundamental to this approach to studying Scripture is the task of ascertaining what the words and idioms found in the Bible meant to the human author God used to write Scripture and the audience to whom the text was initially directed. How ridiculous it is then for a pastor to resort to Webster’s 1828 Dictionary to discover a word’s definition?
Dictionaries are not authoritative sources for the determination of what a word or phrase ought to mean. Dictionaries are sources of varying authority for the meanings of words at the time of the dictionary’s publication. Therefore, a dictionary that was published in 1828 might be good for ascertaining the range of meanings of words as they were used by English speakers living in the United States in 1828. However, such a dictionary would not necessarily be handy for English speakers living in Great Britain, Australia, or New Zealand in 1828. As well, such a dictionary might be pretty misleading to an American English speaker in 2021.
The meanings of words are not static, until they are written down. Words contain meanings according to the contexts in which they are used, either in writing or in speech, by the population using those words. To phrase the matter another way, dictionaries do not tell us what words mean. Dictionary publishers engage in massive research to discover what the population they serve tells them the words in their dictionary mean. Then, after the dictionary is published, it is useful to individuals to use the dictionary to discover what the publisher’s opinion is according to their research.
Meaning? Do not insult my intelligence by persuading me what a word means, based upon a dictionary published in 1828. No matter how scholarly or godly the publisher was in 1828, a dictionary published in 1828 is almost 200 years outdated. No responsible writer would use a dictionary published in 1828 to advance his argument for the meaning of a word in 2021. What that word may have meant in 1828 is no indication of what that word means in 2021.
If you have an issue with the paragraph above, you are surrendering your position as an interpreter of Scripture using the historical-grammatical approach to hermeneutics.
Subject Matter. We live in a free country, and an author can write on anything he chooses. However, I tend to favor an author who writes to improve the conversation. For example, my book, The Church of Jesus Christ: 28 Things Every Christian Ought To Learn, is the most comprehensive ecclesiology I have ever seen. I wrote the book to meet what I perceived to be a need. While there were many Baptist histories, there were no ecclesiologies that do justice to the New Testament doctrine of the Church, in my opinion.
Let me turn to books dealing with prayer. I must confess that I have always been bored with the writing of E. M. Bounds. I do not doubt that he was a godly man, and he wrote many books on prayer. But I have found his works uninteresting. But that is just me. As well, I have read Prayer – Asking And Receiving by John R. Rice several times. I don’t like it very much, though John R. Rice had the reputation of being an incredible prayer warrior. Praise God for him.
I wonder why pastors resort to a contemporary author on such an essential subject as prayer, especially when a newer prayer book does not seem to add anything to the conversation. Does Exploring Prayer With Jack Hyles contribute to the discussion? I don’t think so. The very first chapter titled God’s Mind Can Be Changed completely turns me off. Then there is chapter 21; God Needs Your Personality. Really? I am not persuaded his book on prayer adds anything to the conversation. Instead, it is unscriptural and harmful to a correct understanding of prayer in light of what we know about the nature of Almighty God.
I like Charles Spurgeon’s Only A Prayer Meeting. I like Lockyer’s All The Prayers Of The Bible. And I find John Bunyan’s book Prayer unsurpassed. After studying the subject of prayer in God’s Word, I would personally be at a loss to add anything beyond what Spurgeon, Lockyer, or Bunyan have to say. Of course, there are always good Puritans on the topic, but you get my drift. Why write a book on a subject that is already well covered by good men of the past?
Those are
my thoughts for today arising from my half-century of book reading. Do you have
a constructive comment? How about a snarky criticism? I would like to hear from
you.
