(upbeat music) - Jacob from Olive Branch, Mississippi writes in to ask this, Pastor John, I'm a 20 year old college student. I love to read theology, but sometimes I find it incredibly difficult to do. I especially enjoy reading Jonathan Edwards and John Owen. Reading theology, however, is hard. It's not like other genres where you can read large passages straight through.

I often find myself splitting my reading into short segments. My question is how do you, Pastor John, read the works of men like Owen and Edwards? What tips do you have for people like myself who enjoy it, but also struggle with it? - If by struggle, Jacob, you mean when reading Owen and Edwards, you must slow down and take it in smaller sections so that you can ponder it and digest it, then this is the kind of struggle I think everybody should have, should have, not must have, but should have.

That kind of reading is exactly the way I think Owen and Edwards should be read. I say almost everybody. You know, almost everybody should read it like that because there are a few geniuses in the world, all right? I know that. Some of them have asked me why I do certain things.

I say, because I'm a cripple. I use a crutch because I'm a cripple. I'm not like you. A genius can read maybe 50 pages at a sitting, remember it all, understand it all, reproduce it all, use it all. I'm not like that. Neither are most human beings. So no one should measure himself by people like that.

Nobody should build seminary curricula for people like that. Nobody should assign reading lists for people like that. Nobody should develop pedagogy for people like that. There are only one or two in the world, maybe 10 or 100 or 1,000, but they're not in our classes. They're not in our churches by and large.

They can make their own way. They don't need anybody to plan anything for them. So you and me, Jacob, we're normal, and we need to talk about this. So thank you for asking the question. So back to the question. How do I read Owen and Edwards? And what tips do I have for you to read him if you're struggling with longer sections?

And since I'm one of you, my answer to the first question, how do I read, really is the answer to the second question, what are my tips for you? So I'll simply give you some specific examples that I remember reading Owen and Edwards. Back in the late '70s, when I bought my first edition, two volumes of Edwards, they were published in 1974 by Banner of Truth.

I got them probably in '77. I can't remember exactly what year. And I decided, having flipped through the first volume, okay, I want to read the Doctrine of Original Sin. There it is, tiny print, two columns, many, many pages. How shall I do this? And I knew that I had little time for extracurricular reading on top of all my class preparations and everything, when I was teaching at Bethel College.

And so I decided I would read the Doctrine of Original Sin by Jonathan Edwards, 15 minutes a day. I think it was just before supper that I set it apart, a little alarm on my clock, ding, 5.15, gonna go up and eat at 5.30, start reading Edwards now. Stop 15 minutes later.

And I got it out and I looked, and it's just marked all up. It's underlined, it's got notes in the margins, it's got exclamation points, it's got comments, it's got lines drawn. You can't do that at 50 pages a shot. You can't read like that. I did the same thing in 1972, this is earlier now, '73 with an old musty copy of Religious Affections, 'cause the two volumes hadn't been published yet, in Germany during graduate school.

It was my Sunday evening church service by myself in a rocking chair in the corner of my room in Munich, Germany, reading once a week. And it took me a long time to get through that book. It was glorious. It was life-changing to meet Edwards slowly in little chunks in Religious Affections.

Here's one more example. When I came to Bethlehem to be the pastor in 1980, I wanted to get more clarity on the doctrine of particular redemption. So I put John Owen's "Death of Death" from his collected works on my bedside table and resolved I will read what I can, little bit, 10, 15 minutes before I go to bed every night.

Strange time to read one of the heaviest books, but I did it. I've got it marked up. It was solidifying and very helpful. And that's the way I have read many things. So here's a massive hope giver, I hope, to everybody who's like me, who not only reads slowly, but has a hard time putting pieces together as they read and has a hard time remembering what they read.

I wrote for people like that on page 129 in my book, "When I Don't Desire God, These Words." Suppose you read slowly like I do, maybe about 200 words a minute, which is about the speed at which I'm talking. Now, probably, if you read 15 minutes a day for one year, say just before supper or just before bed, you will read 5,475 minutes in the year.

Multiply that by 200 words a minute and you get 1,095,000 words that you would have read in a year. Now, an average serious book might have about 360 words per page. I counted some and made an average. So you would read 3,041 pages in one year during that 15-minute slot.

That's 10 very substantial books, all in 15 minutes a day. Or let's be more specific. John Calvin's Institutes, in the two volume that I have, is 1,521 pages in two volumes with an average of 400 words per page, which is 608,000 words. That means that even if you took a day off, let's just do six days a week, took a day off every week, you could read this great biblical vision of God and man, the Institutes, in about 33 weeks at 15 minutes a day, and you would be doing other reading besides.

So, Jacob, take heart. You call it a struggle. You can drop that word. This is a blessing. It is a gift that you enjoy, great theologians, and it's a gift that you can't breeze through them quickly. The world has enough people in it who read to say they have read.

It needs more people who care very little for pace and care very deeply about going deep. So be that kind of reader. - Wonderful, yes, thank you, Pastor John. Okay, quickly, for someone new to Jonathan Edwards, where should they start? Should they start with charity and its fruits? - No, I wouldn't start with charity.

My wife and I read charity in Germany on the couch a little bit every night, and frankly, found it wordy. I don't think it's written as well as Edwards' other books. I'm not sure why that is. I think it doesn't, I mean, everybody says Edwards is hard to read.

I think charity, at least in parts of it, not the last chapter, Heaven is a World of Love is in a class by itself. I mean, that's a classic. Everybody should read that, even if they don't read the rest of the chapters. I would generally say start with some sermons, collection of sermons, but if you're gonna take a big book, I would start with Religious Affections.

Religious Affections proved to me the most devotionally satisfying of all the works of Edwards. Reading it on a Sunday night in Germany for weeks on end while my heart was being dismantled by the laying back of the onion of sin and the description of the beauties of holiness, I would just, I would send them there if they are a very academic type and they really wanna tackle something hard, I think Edwards' greatest book is The Freedom of the Will.

But that's no place for a beginner to start. Devotionally, I think sermons like the Excellency of Christ or a divine and spiritual light immediately imparted to the soul or on the fatherhood of God or Christ's agony, I mean, those are just sermons that stand out in my memory as precious or the Religious Affections.

- Very good, excellent, thank you, Pastor John. And this episode reminds me of episode number 99 back when I asked the cliche question I know, "Stranded on a desert island, what books do you bring?" You can find Pastor John's answer in episode number 99 of this podcast and you can find it at desiringgod.org.

At the top of the page, click on the tab that says More and then click on Ask Pastor John. There you can search hundreds of past episodes, you can get the free apps and you can ask John Piper a bewildering question. All that and all made possible because of our generous financial donors who are behind the mission of Desiring God who make this podcast possible and who I know are listening right now, thank you.

Well, when you look at Christ, what do you see in him? The answer to that question determines everything and Pastor John will explain why tomorrow. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)