(upbeat music) - Tara from Denton, Texas writes in to ask, you said that C.S. Lewis is in your top five of people who have influenced you the most. Who are the others in your top five? - I wondered if that question might come back. (laughing) When I said five, I didn't even think about five when I said it, but so-- - Okay, so let's just be clear here before we go on.

You just threw out the top five as a general parameter, not because you had it all figured out. - Absolutely, absolutely. I would not put him at the top. I'll see if I can fit him in, okay? (laughing) Right at the top, I'm gonna put Bill and Ruth Piper.

- Yes, absolutely. - Okay, mom and dad. Because of tens of thousands of influences that are incalculable and unremembered by little boy John Piper, right? I mean, who of us could begin to estimate the impact of Christian parents on us even if we can't remember decisive theological turning points?

So I'm gonna rank my parents right at the top, give them the honor that I think they're due, and they're way, way above C.S. Lewis in shaping me, I am sure. Secondly, Daniel Fuller, my teacher in seminary, introduced me to a way of reading the Bible called arcing, and he introduced me to a great, glorious God whose pursuit of his glory is the overarching way the Bible is unified.

He introduced me to a great God of glory whose pursuit of his own glory, whose commitment to his own glory is the unifying principle of the Bible. So those two things, a way of reading the Bible that has borne fruit to this day now, 40 years later, and a vision of a sovereign God unifying the Bible through his pursuit of his own glory.

So Daniel Fuller is right up there in number two or three. Right under him comes Jonathan Edwards, whose book "Freedom of the Will" locked me down as a Calvinist and whose hand touches everything and inflames it. I mean, I just go to any part of Edwards just about and start reading and things get on fire.

I just don't know why he does that for me, but he does. He was alive to the glories of Christ, and so he's just unfathomably rich in the way he handles divine things. And probably right there is where C.S. Lewis is gonna fit in, and right under him is gonna come probably John Owen with the death of death on particular redemption and the mortification of sin in confirming in a rich way my understanding of future grace.

And I'm gonna throw in one more, a surprising one. E.D. Hirsch wrote a book called "Validity and Interpretation" in 1967, and the point of the book is simply this. There is such a thing as valid interpretation, interpretation that's right or wrong, and the criterion of that validity is the author's intention, and that's what you should pursue.

I mean, that is so simple. I mean, it seems to me like it's the most obvious common sense thing in the world that if I write a love letter to Noelle, I don't want her making up meaning, right? I want her to see my heart, know my heart, know my intention, and therefore, that's the way we should read the Bible as well.

- All right, so you give us four authors. I mean, let's say we talk about specific books and authors that we can read according to your list here. So it would be Edwards, Lewis, Owen, Hirsch. Then who would be number five if you have a free slot now? - I think I should probably throw into that mix a contemporary author, and the top three, I'm gonna put J.I.

Packer, R.C. Sproul, Sinclair Ferguson. In other words, these men are latter-day Puritans, and what made the Puritans so rich is that they were utterly saturated with the Bible. They had a huge God. They pushed that God with that Bible into all the areas of life, and so every time I have picked up those guys and read them, my heart has been warmed, my mind has been made sharper, so that's where I'd send people.

- Excellent, that's fantastic. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Please email your questions to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. At desiringgod.org, you'll find thousands of other free resources from John Piper. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)