Who Has Been Most Influential in Your Life?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Tara from Denton, Texas writes in to ask,
00:00:06.960 | you said that C.S. Lewis is in your top five of people
00:00:10.060 | who have influenced you the most.
00:00:12.200 | Who are the others in your top five?
00:00:14.520 | - I wondered if that question might come back.
00:00:16.480 | (laughing)
00:00:17.680 | When I said five, I didn't even think about five
00:00:21.000 | when I said it, but so--
00:00:23.320 | - Okay, so let's just be clear here before we go on.
00:00:25.280 | You just threw out the top five as a general parameter,
00:00:27.780 | not because you had it all figured out.
00:00:29.200 | - Absolutely, absolutely.
00:00:30.540 | I would not put him at the top.
00:00:31.740 | I'll see if I can fit him in, okay?
00:00:34.700 | (laughing)
00:00:36.700 | Right at the top, I'm gonna put Bill and Ruth Piper.
00:00:40.940 | - Yes, absolutely. - Okay, mom and dad.
00:00:43.540 | Because of tens of thousands of influences
00:00:48.540 | that are incalculable and unremembered
00:00:53.660 | by little boy John Piper, right?
00:00:56.700 | I mean, who of us could begin to estimate
00:01:00.460 | the impact of Christian parents on us
00:01:04.200 | even if we can't remember
00:01:05.740 | decisive theological turning points?
00:01:08.400 | So I'm gonna rank my parents right at the top,
00:01:10.920 | give them the honor that I think they're due,
00:01:13.520 | and they're way, way above C.S. Lewis
00:01:15.980 | in shaping me, I am sure.
00:01:18.240 | Secondly, Daniel Fuller, my teacher in seminary,
00:01:24.640 | introduced me to a way of reading the Bible called arcing,
00:01:29.240 | and he introduced me to a great, glorious God
00:01:34.240 | whose pursuit of his glory
00:01:37.380 | is the overarching way the Bible is unified.
00:01:41.440 | He introduced me to a great God of glory
00:01:46.080 | whose pursuit of his own glory,
00:01:47.960 | whose commitment to his own glory
00:01:50.040 | is the unifying principle of the Bible.
00:01:52.200 | So those two things, a way of reading the Bible
00:01:54.580 | that has borne fruit to this day now, 40 years later,
00:01:58.440 | and a vision of a sovereign God unifying the Bible
00:02:01.840 | through his pursuit of his own glory.
00:02:03.240 | So Daniel Fuller is right up there in number two or three.
00:02:07.800 | Right under him comes Jonathan Edwards,
00:02:10.200 | whose book "Freedom of the Will"
00:02:11.960 | locked me down as a Calvinist
00:02:16.160 | and whose hand touches everything and inflames it.
00:02:23.120 | I mean, I just go to any part of Edwards just about
00:02:26.660 | and start reading and things get on fire.
00:02:29.500 | I just don't know why he does that for me, but he does.
00:02:33.300 | He was alive to the glories of Christ,
00:02:36.980 | and so he's just unfathomably rich
00:02:41.900 | in the way he handles divine things.
00:02:44.500 | And probably right there is where C.S. Lewis
00:02:46.660 | is gonna fit in, and right under him
00:02:48.540 | is gonna come probably John Owen
00:02:50.940 | with the death of death on particular redemption
00:02:54.480 | and the mortification of sin in confirming in a rich way
00:02:58.000 | my understanding of future grace.
00:03:00.040 | And I'm gonna throw in one more, a surprising one.
00:03:03.560 | E.D. Hirsch wrote a book called
00:03:06.880 | "Validity and Interpretation" in 1967,
00:03:09.880 | and the point of the book is simply this.
00:03:13.000 | There is such a thing as valid interpretation,
00:03:17.480 | interpretation that's right or wrong,
00:03:20.920 | and the criterion of that validity
00:03:24.060 | is the author's intention, and that's what you should pursue.
00:03:28.760 | I mean, that is so simple.
00:03:30.520 | I mean, it seems to me like it's the most obvious
00:03:32.760 | common sense thing in the world
00:03:34.240 | that if I write a love letter to Noelle,
00:03:35.960 | I don't want her making up meaning, right?
00:03:38.640 | I want her to see my heart, know my heart,
00:03:40.760 | know my intention, and therefore,
00:03:43.040 | that's the way we should read the Bible as well.
00:03:45.760 | - All right, so you give us four authors.
00:03:47.220 | I mean, let's say we talk about specific books
00:03:49.160 | and authors that we can read according to your list here.
00:03:52.320 | So it would be Edwards, Lewis, Owen, Hirsch.
00:03:54.600 | Then who would be number five if you have a free slot now?
00:03:57.800 | - I think I should probably throw into that mix
00:04:02.800 | a contemporary author, and the top three,
00:04:08.920 | I'm gonna put J.I. Packer, R.C. Sproul, Sinclair Ferguson.
00:04:16.680 | In other words, these men are latter-day Puritans,
00:04:21.680 | and what made the Puritans so rich
00:04:26.820 | is that they were utterly saturated with the Bible.
00:04:29.980 | They had a huge God.
00:04:31.440 | They pushed that God with that Bible
00:04:34.280 | into all the areas of life,
00:04:36.700 | and so every time I have picked up those guys and read them,
00:04:42.280 | my heart has been warmed, my mind has been made sharper,
00:04:46.540 | so that's where I'd send people.
00:04:48.620 | - Excellent, that's fantastic.
00:04:49.660 | Thank you, Pastor John,
00:04:50.780 | and thank you for listening to this podcast.
00:04:52.300 | Please email your questions to us
00:04:53.580 | at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:04:55.860 | At desiringgod.org, you'll find thousands
00:04:57.500 | of other free resources from John Piper.
00:04:59.420 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:05:00.300 | Thanks for listening.
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