Appendix: A Guide for Young Christians
Appendix
A Guide for Young Christians
by Dr. John W. Robbins
When God saves sinners, he causes us to believe ideas about himself and about ourselves--ideas that we formerly thought were false, foolish, or unimportant. In an instant, God resurrects us from the spiritual death of unbelief and makes us believe the truth about both Jesus Christ and ourselves. Scripture refers to this regeneration in several figures of speech: being born again, enlightening the mind, resurrection from the dead, and giving us a heart of flesh for our heart of stone. What this figurative language literally means is that God affects our minds directly, causing us to accept as true, ideas we formerly thought were not true. He gives truth-- metaphorically called light in Scripture--directly to our minds.
Jesus had a conversation with Peter that illustrates the point: Jesus asked Peter, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus responded to Peter, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in Heaven.” Now Peter had traveled and lived with Jesus, and certainly he had heard Jesus preach many times. But Jesus says that it was God the Father who revealed these truths to Peter’s mind directly. Jesus explicitly denied that Peter had come to believe them using his own resources, for “flesh and blood did not reveal” these truths to Peter--God the Father had revealed them directly. We are all like Peter; Peter was not only answering Jesus’ question for the rest of the Apostles; he was answering for all believers.
But God did not give Peter--and he does not give us--all truth in an instant. He gives us the truths that save us, but they are not all the truth he intends for us to know. When we are saved, he gives us part of the truth, the fundamentals as it were, but we will be learning truth the rest of our lives. We will never exhaust all the truth that God has to teach us, even during endless years in Heaven. But with all the distractions competing for our attention today, many young Christians need some guidance on where to find that truth, and how to study.
When we were saved, the truths we believed came from the Bible. We may not have been reading the Bible at the time; perhaps we were listening to a sermon in church or on the radio; perhaps we were simply talking to a friend, or meditating in our home. But whether we actually had a Bible before us or not, we are saved only by believing the truths found in the Bible. As we grow, that is, as we learn more and more of God’s truth, we will continue to find them only in the Bible. Again, we may be reading the newspaper when God uses a story on crime, for example, to remind us of some truth that we had read in the Bible the day before. God causes us to understand what we read in the Bible, and to believe it.
God’s truth is found only in the 66 books of the Bible. That does not mean that all other books are absolutely false, for some authors have studied the Bible for years and have written excellent discussions of the truths of the Bible--discussions that the Holy Spirit can use to help the young Christian to understand God’s Word more quickly and more accurately than he might if he relied merely on his own abilities. But the statement does mean that the Bible is the only source of truth. Whatever truths other authors have, they have received them from God’s Word.
Christianity Is Unique
The young Christian should understand that Christianity is unique. Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No man comes to the Father but by me.” Christianity is not one among several competing religions, each of which possesses some truth and has some value. Jesus Christ is “the Truth.” All others are imposters. Other religions promise to satisfy our senses, our feelings, our desires, and our wills, but Christianity alone satisfies our minds. Alone among the religions of the world, it offers us truth. You have probably seen the bumper sticker: “Jesus is the answer.” If we understand that in the Bible alone Jesus has given us the answers to our questions, we can understand how Jesus is the answer to our questions about God, man, and the universe. Scripture provides us with information that can be found nowhere else. Christianity denies that any other religion is true; that all roads lead to Heaven; and that there is any other name under heaven by which we must be saved.
Because Christianity is the truth, it must be understood and believed--not caught, felt, sensed, or encountered. Because Christianity is the truth, the importance of understanding, knowledge, and wisdom cannot be overstated. God himself is a God of truth. Deuteronomy 32:4 describes God as “a God of truth.” In John 14:6 Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man comes to the Father but by me.” In John 14:17 the Holy Spirit is called the “Spirit of Truth.” One of the tools a young Christian should obtain very early, as we will discuss below, is a good concordance, for it will assist him in quickly finding the hundreds of passages in Scripture in which understanding, truth, wisdom, and knowledge are praised.
God reveals his mind, that is, himself, to us in Scripture alone. God has graciously given us a book of a thousand pages to read, study, meditate on, understand, and believe. We grow spiritually only when we “bite,” “chew,” and “digest” the Word of God. “Biting” is reading the Bible or listening to the reading of Scripture. “Chewing” is comparing one passage of Scripture with other passages of Scripture, or memorizing a passage of Scripture and thinking about its meaning, or listening to or reading an exposition of Scripture. “Digesting” is meditating--not the mindless meditation of Eastern religions, in which the goal is to empty one’s mind of thought--but the intellectual meditation of Christianity, in which the goal is to fill the mind with the thoughts of God revealed in the Bible. By pondering them, turning them over and over in our mind, all the while asking God to help us understand their meaning and to see how they relate to other truths in the Bible, we digest the spiritual food--the intellectual food--God has given to us in the Bible. “Digesting” is first understanding and then believing the truths of Scripture. As with eating a meal, we can do all three things--biting, chewing, digesting--simultaneously, after taking the first bite. We do not wait until the first bite of food is digested before we take a second. And as with eating a meal, it is important to bite, chew, and digest God’s Word on a daily basis. As we digest the truth of the Bible, we grow in grace and knowledge, which is the prayer that the apostles utter in their letters to the churches. As we grow, we are able to articulate the truths we have learned more and more clearly, more and more consistently, more and more accurately. We become fruitful. But if we do not read the Bible, if we do not think about its message, if we do not understand what it means, we cannot and will not grow as Christians. Just as there is no royal road to learning, there is no mystical road to spiritual growth. The Bible itself, while commending the trusting attitude of children toward their parents, an attitude that should be our model of Christian faith toward our Father in Heaven, commands us not to remain children in understanding, but to grow up: “Brethren, do not be children in understanding; however, in malice be babes, but in understanding be mature” (1 Corinthians 14:20). Growing requires food; a Christian’s only food is the Scriptures; and his only provider is God Himself, who feeds us daily.
The First Book
Because of the absolutely crucial role of the Bible in your growth and life as a Christian, it is important to acquire and read an accurate translation. All Bibles are not alike. In the twentieth century there have been dozens of Bible versions published in English. Many of these are not translations at all, but paraphrases, condensations, amplifications, and adaptations. None of these is suitable for the study of the Bible. When God inspired the Bible, he inspired not only general ideas, but also the exact words the apostles and prophets wrote down. Consequently, for an English version to be accurate, it must recognize the importance of the individual words, and stick as closely as possible to a word-for-word translation. Any purported translation of the Bible that treats its actual words loosely is misleading. Such a loose translation will also make a close study of the text impossible. Of the commonly available versions, the young Christian should acquire and study the King James or the New King James versions and avoid those versions, such as the New International, the New English, the Revised Standard, and Bibles produced by cults such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Roman Catholic Church-State, for they treat the actual words that God inspired with less respect than they deserve. Another good though less easily available translation is the Modern King James Bible, available from Sovereign Grace Publishers in Indiana.
As the Christian grows, he will want to learn the Greek alphabet, and later some Greek grammar, so that he will be able to check the translations against the original Greek of the New Testament. A good Greek textbook, though it is now 75 years old, is J. Gresham Machen’s New Testament Greek for Beginners. It is scheduled for release by The Trinity Foundation in early 2000.
Once he has an accurate translation of the Bible to study, the young Christian should read the Bible from cover to cover, Genesis to Revelation, in order, with no skipping. It is sometimes surprising to talk to Christians who have been saved for years who have not even once read the entire Bible. Part of our sinfulness is our laziness, and Satan uses every vice and device he can to keep us from reading the Word. The first time through the Bible, the young Christian may not understand much of what it says. That is normal. When one studies any new subject, whether that subject be history, geometry, or the Bible, he is likely to miss most of what he reads the first time he reads it. The first time a youngster tries to ride a bicycle he is likely to fall. That is no reason to give up--otherwise no one would learn either to ride a bike, to conjugate a verb, or to understand theology. Learning requires study, just as riding requires practice. The young Christian should not borrow the books mentioned in this essay, but acquire them for his library. They should be readily available for easy reference and study. They will prove useful to him, his family, and his friends for a lifetime.
There are several good reference works that will help a young Christian understand what he reads. A good concordance--both Strong’s Concordance and Young’s Concordance are based on the King James Version and remain the most thorough concordances available--is indispensable to Bible study. (A concordance is an alphabetical list of words that appear in the Bible, together with the citation for each appearance, and information about the Greek and Hebrew originals. It functions as a cross-reference and an elementary dictionary.) In addition to a concordance, a Bible encyclopedia and dictionary are very helpful for furnishing background information on the culture, geography, customs, and technology of the cities and nations mentioned in the Bible. Two very helpful encyclopedias are the two-volume Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia and the five-volume Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible.
Three very useful guides in studying the Bible are the Westminster Standards, consisting of the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Larger Catechism, and the Shorter Catechism, all written in the 1640s. More than 350 years later, the Westminster Confession remains the best summary of the Bible yet written. The Confession summarizes in 33 short chapters the teaching of Scripture on everything from Scripture itself to the Last Judgment. Gordon Clark’s commentary on the Confession, What Do Presbyterians Believe? is unsurpassed. It is the best short introduction to what the Bible teaches. The young Christian should read What Do Presbyterians Believe? and the Scripture verses cited in it very early in his studies. This will give him an introduction to the whole system of truth taught in Scripture and will enable him to see the forest, not merely the trees. The Catechisms will help the young Christian grasp the meaning of important terms in Scripture, such as justification, adoption, predestination, and alone, as well as understand such basic items as the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer. A useful study guide to the Westminster Confession is W. Gary Crampton’s Study Guide to the Westminster Confession, available from The Trinity Foundation.
The goal of seeing or understanding the big picture early in one’s Christian life is very important. It is one of the reasons why the young Christian ought to read the entire Bible through, in order, from Creation to Consummation. Unless the young Christian can see the big picture, he will not understand the many details that one also finds in Scripture. Many older Christians remain lost in the details, not knowing what Abraham has to do with Jesus, nor love with law. They know some Bible stories and have memorized a few favorite verses, but how all these things fit together into one whole escapes them. They may not even realize there is a whole, not seeing the forest for the trees. (This is not to say, of course, that memorization of Scripture is bad; Scripture itself says it is very good: “Your Word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” As he reads, the young Christian should commit verses and entire passages on such topics as Scripture, God, Jesus, and salvation to memory.)
After he has read What Do Presbyterians Believe? the young Christian should take the time to study what is perhaps the best systematic theology ever written: The Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin. While keeping in the mind the whole of God’s message to his people, The Institutes fills in many of the details. It is organized in roughly the same fashion as the Westminster Confession of Faith, beginning with a discussion of how we can know God and ending with a discussion of government. The young Christian will find it helpful to organize his detailed studies in the same fashion. The major topics to be studied are
The Doctrine of Scripture
The Doctrine of God
The Sovereignty of God and God’s Decree
The Doctrines of Creation and Providence
The Doctrine of Sin
The Doctrine of the Covenant
Jesus Christ
The Doctrine of the Atonement and Salvation
The Doctrine of Justification and Faith
The Doctrine of Sanctification
The Doctrine of Worship and the Church
The Doctrine of Marriage and the Family
Civil Government and Society
Church History
A Christian Philosophy
The Defense of the Faith
Cults and Pseudo-Christianity
There are many good books useful to the young Christian who has reached that point in his growth that he wants to dig into the details of Christianity.
The Doctrine of Scripture
On the doctrine of Scripture, which is foundational for all of Christianity, the young Christian should acquire, read, and re-read such books as these:
God’s Hammer: The Bible and Its Critics, by Gordon Clark
Clark explains what it means to say the Bible is truth, and how we may know it is truth.
The Divine Inspiration of the Bible, by Louis Gaussen
Gaussen was a nineteenth-century Swiss pastor whose book assembles and organizes in one place the hundreds of statements in Scripture in which Scripture claims to be the Word of God. The effect of Gaussen’s work is the refutation of any critic who suggests that the Bible claims to be God’s Word in only a few instances, and that it is really not the Word of God, but a work of mere men. The Divine Inspiration of the Bible is scheduled for release by The Trinity Foundation in late 2000.
The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, by Benjamin Warfield.
Warfield was a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. His book is an excellent explanation of the doctrine of the verbal (the exact words) and the plenary (the entire Bible) inspiration of the Scriptures.
The Battle for the Bible, by Harold Lindsell
Lindsell chronicles, explains, and refutes the attack on the inerrancy of the Bible within churches calling themselves evangelical. Previously Roman Catholic and modernist churches had denied the inerrancy of Scripture; from the 1950s on more and more men and churches that identified themselves as “evangelical” denied the inerrancy of Scripture as well.
There are several books that are helpful to the young Christian who faces objections of unbelievers that the Bible is contradictory or simply historically inaccurate. Among these are the following:
Alleged Bible Contradictions Explained, by George DeHoff
Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible, by John Halley
Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, by Gleason Archer
The last book by Archer is the most recent; the first two are older, though still useful, works.
As the Christian matures, he will hear about something called “textual criticism.” This is an important, matter, and it concerns the original Greek text of the New Testament on which all translations into English or other modern languages are based. Some modern unbelieving schools and scholars have sought to undermine confidence in the reliability of the Bible by casting doubt on the reliability of the Greek text. There are several books that are very useful for the more mature Christian to study on this matter. Among them are these:
The Future of the Bible, by Jacob van Bruggen
The Identity of the New Testament Text, by Wilbur Pickering
Logical Criticisms of Textual Criticism, by Gordon Clark
The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? F. F. Bruce
The first two books are a more general discussion of the whole field of textual criticism, while the last is a narrow examination of some of the conclusions reached by textual critics showing how capricious and whimsical they are in their judgments of the reliability of Greek texts of the New Testament.
While the student is mastering the doctrine of Scripture, he should be reading good commentaries on Scripture. There are several more general texts that act as helpful introductions to the Bible, and many commentaries on individual books of the Bible. Among the more general introductory texts are:
The Five Books of Moses, by Oswald Allis
The New Testament: An Introduction to Its Literature and History, by J. Gresham Machen
An Old Testament History of Redemption, by Franz Delitzsch
A Survey of the Bible, by William Hendricksen.
The last book is the most recent and up to date.
Helpful commentaries on the Bible include:
Commentaries on the New Testament, by William Hendricksen
Hendricksen is a twentieth-century Reformed theologian whose commentaries on several New Testament books are quite helpful.
Exposition of the Old Testament and New Testament, by John Gill
Gill is an eighteenth-century Reformed Baptist whose commentaries are quite helpful. Calvin’s Commentaries, by John Calvin
Calvin wrote a commentary on almost every book in the Bible, and his comments are still some of the most insightful available. A set of his commentaries is available in 22 volumes and on CD-ROM, and they will repay the student many times over.
Clark’s Commentaries, by Gordon Clark
Gordon Clark wrote commentaries on 12 New Testament books, and they are available in separate volumes:
Colossians
First Corinthians
First John
First and Second Thessalonians
New Heavens New Earth (1 & 2 Peter)
The Pastoral Epistles (1& 2 Timothy, Titus)
Philippians
Read them in any order you wish, according to your interests, but read them all. They are not technical commentaries, but commentaries intended to be read by ordinary Christians who want to grow in their understanding of the Bible.
Charles Hodge, one of the leading Reformed theologians of the nineteenth century, also wrote some excellent commentaries on Scripture, including Ephesians, First and Second Corinthians, and Romans.
Edward J. Young, one of the foremost Hebrew and Old Testament scholars of the twentieth century, wrote several excellent commentaries on Old Testament books, including
Commentary on Isaiah
Genesis 1
Genesis 3
My Servants the Prophets
Prophecy of Daniel
Psalm 139
The Doctrine of God
After studying the nature of Scripture and reading good commentaries on the Scriptures themselves, the doctrine of God is the next topic to tackle. Steven Charnock’s The Existence and Attributes of God is intimidating to a young Christian, for it is more than a thousand pages long, but it is worth the time and effort involved. Here are a few more books, not only to read before one reads Charnock, but also to add to one’s personal library:
Lord God of Truth, by Gordon Clark
The Holy Spirit, by Gordon Clark
The Trinity, by Gordon Clark
The Sovereignty of God and God’s Decree
The sovereignty of God has been a topic of debate within the churches since the time of the apostles. The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans answers some of the more common objections to the doctrine of the absolute predestination of God. Among the better discussions of this issue are these books, which the young Christian should acquire and study:
Absolute Predestination, by Jerome Zanchius
The Bondage of the Will, by Martin Luther
Calvin’s Calvinism, by John Calvin
The Five Points of Calvinism, Steele and Thomas
Predestination, by Gordon Clark
The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, by Loraine Boettner
Religion, Reason, and Revelation, by Gordon Clark
The Doctrines of Creation and Providence
There have been many books published on the topic of creation in the twentieth century, but virtually all of them are written from a scientific point of view or are narrowly focused on such topics as the length of the days of Genesis 1 or problems with the theory of evolution. No sound book-length discussion of the doctrine of creation written from a theological or philosophical point of view seems to be currently available. However, there are many chapters in other books that discuss the doctrine in very helpful ways. The young Christian should read the relevant chapters in Clark’s Predestination, Hodge’s Systematic Theology, and Calvin’s Institutes.
The Doctrine of Sin
Gordon Clark’s The Biblical Doctrine of Man is an excellent discussion of the nature of man, the fall of man, and total depravity.
The Doctrine of the Covenant
O. Palmer Robertson’s The Christ of the Covenants is one of the best books on the subject.
Jesus Christ
We measure all of history by the birth of Christ, yet he is a figure widely misunderstood two thousand years after his birth. In The Incarnation, Gordon Clark has written a path-breaking book defending the Biblical doctrine that Christ was and is both fully God and fully man. Another important book in understanding Jesus Christ is The Johannine Logos. An older, standard work is The Person and Work of Christ, by Benjamin Warfield.
The Doctrine of the Atonement and Salvation
We recommend reading Clark’s book first, and then filling in the details with Smeaton.
The Atonement, by Gordon Clark
The Doctrine of the Atonement According to the Apostles, by George Smeaton
The Doctrine of the Atonement According to Christ, by George Smeaton
The Doctrine of Justification and Faith
While the apostles were still alive, the churches began departing from the Gospel by denying that we are justified by the righteousness of Christ alone. Paul wrote a polemic against such denials of the Gospel in his letter to the Galatians, and spent two chapters discussing justification in his letter to the Romans. But for 1,500 years, the Gospel was buried under a mass of legalism by the churches, until it enlightened the mind of Martin Luther in the sixteenth century, and from Luther spread across the globe. The young Christian should read these books on justification:
Commentary on Galatians, by Martin Luther
The Everlasting Righteousness, by Horatius Bonar
Faith and Saving Faith, by Gordon Clark
The Doctrine of Justification, by James Buchanan
Justification by Faith Alone, by Charles Hodge
Another good source of information on justification is The Trinity Review, which contains scores of essays on various topics, including many on justification by faith. One volume that is scheduled to appear in 2000 is A Different Gospel: The Theology of the Roman Catholic Church. A Different Gospel collects and organizes many of the essays published in The Trinity Review. The young Christian should keep in mind that the doctrine of justification is the central doctrine of the Bible, and that if it is denied, all the rest of one’s ideas, though they may sound very Christian, are not. The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Galatians damned men who denied the doctrine of the imputed righteousness of Christ even though they professed to believe in God, the deity of Christ, and many other doctrines of the Bible. Luther called the doctrine of justification the doctrine by which a church stands or falls, and Calvin called it the principal article of the Christian religion.
The Doctrine of Sanctification
Two of the best books on the subject are Jerry Bridges’ The Pursuit of Holiness and Gordon Clark’s Sanctification.
The Doctrine of Worship and the Church
A large part of the reason for the Protestant Reformation was the perversion of Christian worship that prevailed in the Middle Ages. An excellent discussion of the reform of worship in the sixteenth century is Carlos M. N. Eire’s book, War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin. War shows how superstitious the medievals were. A new book on the church and worship will be appearing in 2000, The Church Effeminate and Other Essays, edited by John Robbins. It is a collection of some of the best essays of that past few centuries on the structure, purpose, and function of the church and Christian worship. Contributors include Martin Luther, John Calvin, J. Gresham Machen, Gordon Clark, Charles Hodge, and J. C. Ryle. Douglas Bannerman’s The Scripture Doctrine of the Church Historically and Exegetically Considered is also very helpful.
The Doctrine of Marriage and the Family
The books of Jay Adams are unsurpassed in this field. Start with Christian Living in the Home.
Civil Government and Society
Christians have written a great deal on political matters, and some of the books are better than others. E. C. Wines’ The Hebrew Republic is a nineteenth-century work, and Gordon Clark’s Essays on Ethics and Politics is a more recent statement of Christian political theory.
Church History
Much of the history of the church is almost invisible to the modern historian. Soon after the first century and the deaths of the apostles, the churches fell into serious doctrinal errors, including serious errors in the doctrine of the church. A perverted form of church government arose, and for more than a millennium in the West oppressed those who professed Biblical faith. One of the practices of this organization, now known as the Roman Catholic Church, was the re-writing of history through the fabrication of false documents and the suppression of true. Consequently, it is difficult to obtain an accurate history of the church during the millennium when the Roman Catholic Church-State dominated Europe. Some books that are helpful, however, are:
The Complete Book of Martyrs, byJohn Foxe, originally published as Acts and Monuments in eight volumes
The History of the Christian Church, by Philip Schaff
The History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin, by J. H. Merle D’Aubigne
History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century, by J. H. Merle D’Aubigne
All of these books, with the exception of Schaff, are available in condensed versions.
A Christian Philosophy
As the young Christian grows and understands in detail how Christianity is a whole system of thought, and not just scattered truths about God and man, he will become more and more interested in applying that system to such diverse topics as education, economics, politics, and philosophy. He will benefit greatly from studying the works of Gordon Clark in these fields, for Clark, more than any other writer, has applied Biblical truth to the whole of life and thought. He has earnestly sought to “bring every thought into captivity to Christ,” as each Christian is commanded to do. These are the books that the young Christian should acquire for his own library and study as his interests permit:
Against the World: The Trinity Review 1978-1988, edited by John W. Robbins
Against the World is a collection of 70 essays by various authors originally published in The Trinity Review. The essays discuss such topics as the role of Biblical law in the life of the individual and society, the arguments for the existence of God, psychology, economics, current events, apologetics, scientific creationism, the nature of the church, and many more.
A Christian Philosophy of Education, by Gordon Clark
A Christian View of Men and Things, by Gordon Clark
Education, Christianity and the State, by J. Gresham Machen
This book is a collection of essays and speeches by one for the most courageous and knowledgeable defenders of Christianity and freedom in the twentieth century.
Historiography: Secular and Religious, by Gordon Clark
Language and Theology, by Gordon Clark
Logic, by Gordon Clark
Thales to Dewey: A History of Philosophy, by Gordon Clark
The Defense of the Faith
Many books in apologetics have been published in the twentieth century, and nearly all of them espouse a Roman Catholic approach to the subject. Gordon Clark, however, developed a Biblical approach to the subject, and his principles for defending the faith are set forth best in these books:
An Introduction to Christian Philosophy, by Gordon Clark
The Philosophy of Science and Belief in God, by Gordon Clark
Three Types of Religious Philosophy, by Gordon Clark
Cults and Pseudo-Christianity
Three of the most influential pseudo-Christian movements are Roman Catholicism, Arminianism, and Pentecostalism. There are many good books about Roman Catholicism:
Counterfeit Miracles, by Benjamin Warfield
Counterfeit Miracles discusses not only the miracles of Christian Science, but also Roman Catholicism and other cults.
Ecclesiastical Megalomania: The Economic and Political Thought of the Roman Catholic Church, by John Robbins
This book is a detailed examination of the official statements of the Vatican on economic and political matters. It demonstrates the collectivism and totalitarianism of the Roman Catholic Church.
Graven Bread, by Timothy Kauffman
Quite Contrary, by Timothy Kauffman
These two books by Kauffman focus on the Roman Catholic doctrines of the Eucharist and Mary.
Papal Power, by Henry Hudson
Roman Catholicism, by Loraine Boettner
Two of the best books on the Charismatic Movement are
The Charismatics and the Word of God, by Victor Budgen
A Theology of the Holy Spirit, by Frederick Dale Bruner.
Perhaps the best antidote to Arminianism is John Gill’s The Cause of God and Truth, which examines every “Arminian” verse in the Bible and explains their meaning.
The Theology of the Major Sects, by John Gerstner is a useful guide to several cults. The Changing World of Mormonism, by Gerald and Sandra Tanner is an excellent explanation of the American religion of Mormonism by two former Mormons.
Martin and Deidre Bobgan have written several good critiques of psychology, showing that it is incompatible with Christian theology and how some prominent Christian leaders rely on psychology rather than the Bible.
Conclusion
This list of books, though relatively short, will give the young Christian an excellent theological education. More importantly, I have deliberately selected books by authors who can be trusted, for they accept the premise that The Bible alone is the Word of God. Of course, all uninspired books are liable to error, and these are no exception, but the young Christian can read and study them with confidence, praying all the while that God will enlighten him mind, keep him from error, and guide him into all truth. When he is done, he will be able to say with the Psalmist:
Oh, how I love your Law! It is my meditation all the day.
You, through your Commandments, make me wiser than my enemies; for they are ever with me.
I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your Testimonies are my meditation.
I understand more than the ancients, because I keep your Precepts.
I have restrained my feet from every evil way, that I may keep your Word.
I have not departed from your Judgments, for you yourself have taught me.
How sweet are your Words to my mouth!
Through your Precepts I get understanding; therefore, I hate every false way.
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