Andy Naselli

Thoughts on Theology

John Piper

John Piper’s Fundamentalist Father

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John Piper just posted an article entitled “A Birthday Gift to My Father on His 89th Birthday.” The second section of this brief article—which quotes his father quoting Bob Jones Sr.—opens with this:

“My father was a card-carrying fundamentalist, with a twist. He was irrepressibly happy in the grace of God. I suspect there are a lot of fundamentalists out there like that. For all I know, I may be one. So here is a taste of what I grew up with, which may be why abstaining from dancing, smoking, drinking, movie-going, and card-playing never felt like big sacrifice.”

On a similar note, Piper dedicates The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright to his father:

“This is the year (2007) that my father died. Who can estimate the debt we owe our fathers? Bill Piper preached the gospel of grace for over seventy years, if you count the songs and testimonies at the nursing home. He was an evangelist—the old southern, independent, fundamentalist sort, without the attitude. He remains in my memory the happiest man I ever knew” (p. 9).

Piper: “The Future of Justification”

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David Mathis, John Piper’s “Executive Pastoral Assistant,” just posted “The Future of Justification for the Rest of Us” on the Desiring God blog.

 

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My favorite part of Mathis’s post was learning that Piper’s book is available for free as a PDF!

This is a wise post. Mathis explains why “not everyone should read John Piper’s new book on justification,” but he also suggests how to profit from the book without reading it from cover to cover. He concludes,

“Don’t feel out of the loop or way behind if you haven’t heard of Wright and the NPP. You shouldn’t necessarily feel the need to familiarize yourself with them. But reading some of these key sections and chapters may help strengthen your theology of justification and ward off attacks on this precious doctrine when they come.”

John Piper: “Praise God for Fundamentalists”

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John Piper just posted an article on his blog entitled “Praise God for Fundamentalists.” He responds to the 2005 FBF resolution “On the Ministry of John Piper.” He concludes,

“What I want to say about Fundamentalism is that its great gift to the church is precisely the backbone to resist compromise and to make standing for truth and principle a means of love rather than an alternative to it. I am helped by the call for biblical separation, because almost no evangelicals even think about the doctrine.

“So I thank God for fundamentalism, and I think that some of the whining about its ill effects would have to also be directed against the black-and-white bluntness of Jesus.”

Update:

  1. Mike Riley, “On the Ministry of John Piper” (published on the FBF site). Riley wrote this for the FBF.
  2. Mike Riley, “Piper and the FBF Resolution” (published on Riley’s blog). Riley wrote this today in response to Piper’s blog post referenced above.
  3. Michael Bird, “Praise God for Fundamentalists?” Bird lists six reasons that he “cannot praise God for them.”
  4. Will Pareja, “John Piper on Fundamentalism.” Pareja begins, “Dr. Piper: You have no idea how far words like these go, my brother.”

Piper on Romans 8:18-25

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I’ve heard dozens of John Piper‘s sermons on MP3, but yesterday at the The Gospel Coalition conference, I had the privilege of hearing Piper preach in person for the first time.

  • It was the most moving sermon I’ve ever heard Piper preach. It compelled me to worship my sovereign God, long to be with Him, and hate what He hates.
  • The Gospel Coalition’s site will have audio and video from the conference available for free in about three weeks, but Desiring God has already posted the manuscript and MP3 of Piper’s sermon entitled “The Triumph of God in the New Heavens and the New Earth,” an exposition of Romans 8:18-25.
  • The MP3 does not include D. A. Carson‘s introduction in which he gave an anecdote about D. Martyn Lloyd Jones‘ powerful preaching and then described John Piper as the modern-day Lloyd Jones.

Two Convicting Quotes from Piper on Owen

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I read this article this morning:

I found these two quotations particularly convicting and challenging:

  • “Packer says that the Puritans differ from evangelicals today because with them, ‘. . . communion with God was a great thing, to evangelicals today it is a comparatively small thing. The Puritans were concerned about communion with God in a way that we are not. The measure of our unconcern is the little that we say about it. When Christians meet, they talk to each other about their Christian work and Christian interests, their Christian acquaintances, the state of the churches, and the problems of theology—but rarely of their daily experience of God.'”
  • “One great hindrance to holiness in the ministry of the word is that we are prone to preach and write without pressing into the things we say and making them real to our own souls. Over the years words begin to come easy, and we find we can speak of mysteries without standing in awe; we can speak of purity without feeling pure; we can speak of zeal without spiritual passion; we can speak of God’s holiness without trembling; we can speak of sin without sorrow; we can speak of heaven without eagerness. And the result is a terrible hardening of the spiritual life.”