Where Do I Start with Reading Old Writers? | The Whole Counsel

How to Choose Safe Older Writers to Read

Jeremy, if someone were to come to you and say, okay, so older writers, I've never read them. In fact, I don't know people that do read them. And I mean, you know, a Puritan, in my opinion, when I was younger, was a man that landed in America on the Mayflower, and he had big buckles on his shoes.

And you know, he ate Quaker oats. So I didn't know anything about a Puritan until later. How would you, in the sea of names that are now available, especially with the Internet, how do you direct people to be able to pick good writers if they don't have someone near them that they can ask?

Yeah. In the absence of that personal recommendation, which is, I think, probably the safest way to proceed, you've got to know the parameters you're working within. So there are some publishers that you would say the older material that they are republishing is typically going to be the safer, better stuff.

Again, if we're saying that over time the cream's risen to the surface, they're skimming off that cream and they're churning into butter and they're sending it out to us. So whether that's something like maybe Banner of Truth or Reformation Heritage books, there's a few republishers.

They're doing new stuff as well, which is grand, but there's almost an inbuilt quality control at this point that you can say, I generally think I'm going to be okay with these particular volumes, these particular authors.

Letting Trusted Publishers Introduce You to New Authors

Yeah, you could almost picture it in your mind, these publishers become a friend who introduce you, who bring to your doorstep new friends. And if you recognize the friend, you say, well, I'm going to go ahead, I'm going to let him in the living room and get to meet this new author.

Yeah, I think that's one of the safest ways. And you mentioned, too, that really have proven themselves faithful. I think another way is to consider reading the men that are heroes, so to speak, I don't like that word, but our favorite authors, the ones that benefited them.

So that's actually how I came to the Puritans. So I had dabbled in Charles Spurgeon, but I remember reading after a few sermons, I went to his autobiography, that big four-volume monster, and I think I drowned a few times before I made it through, but I remember Spurgeon saying that there's a group of people called the Puritans who lived on lion's marrow.

That took a long time for me to figure it out, but I realized what he's saying. He said, you know, they ate giant food, and they were enormous spiritual giants. But he also mentioned a guy named George Whitefield, and he said Whitefield really lived, compared to him, we have a poor dying rate of Christianity.

So I went and found a book on Whitefield, and I read this book by J .C. Ryle on Whitefield, that little paperback. That was a wonderful, warm-hearted introduction. But when I read Whitefield, I was surprised to find that he talked about the same guys, these giants among men called Puritans.

So that led me to John Flavel, or a John Owen. So I worked my way back. If MacArthur or a Sproul admired a Spurgeon, then I would read, I wanted to read the men that my heroes were reading. I wanted to drink from the well they drank from.

And then I just worked my way back like that.

Reading Backward Through Christian History

Well, you used the illustration of inviting someone in, say, hey, these guys are going to come into my living room. They're going to sit down with me. We're going to be friends. And after a while, it's as if they say, hey, I think you'd really like one of my other friends.

Why don't we get him in as well? And as you begin to do that reading, this range of reference or frame of reference begins to develop. And again, you have this sense that you're within safe bounds reading a man that this man might recommend, and sometimes with qualifications.

But they're setting those boundaries for you. They're introducing you to new people. And as you say, obviously, they're not recommending people forwards, but the people who are closest to us, you can trace those paths backwards.

And again, eventually, you find yourself saying, so who is this Augustine dude? And what was his hippo? And then you find out, oh, OK, Augustine of hippo. And so who's Tertullian then? And so really, you get this capacity to step back the whole span of Christian histories in front of you.

And you see these beautiful, sparkling lines of connection. So that all along the timeline, these are not people who are standing alone, but there's this glorious succession taking place. And then we have the privilege, God willing, of being both the inheritors of what's gone before, and also those who are passing it on to those who are coming afterwards.

Using Biographies to Judge an Author's Writings

Right. One other thing I would recommend with reading the older writers, since they're not alive during our day, is that it's always beneficial, I've found, to get my hands on a good biography regarding the person.

So when I read Samuel Rutherford, who is one of my favorites, I don't find his writing easy to read. I find his books pretty difficult. But when I read his biography, and then I came back to his books, I wanted to know what that man had to say.

So a biography, knowing the author, can either lend weight to what they say, and so the words carry greater benefit. Or it can make his words light in my eyes, where I think, this is not a man I want to spend a lot of time listening to.

So I generally try to find a good, maybe concise biography on the author, if I've never read him before.

Have you ever done it the other way around, where you've read a biography and thought, wow, I've got to go away and read whatever this man wrote? Yeah, that has happened. Yeah.