Geoff

On the Twitter, Jennifer Guo pondered which books she should read before seminary. My normal response would be to remember that scene from Good Will Hunting about library fees and Harvard education. But on the other hand, seminary can be super useful and if you’ve counted the cost, so to speak, then I shouldn’t attempt discouraging anybody. Guo seems, if her blog is any indication, to be well read and informed. So she doesn’t need my recommendations. I won’t recommend language books because I’ll assume that people go to seminary precisely to learn the languages. But, if I had to recommend important books to read prior to attending:

1. Pick a solid book on logic and critical thinking. Perhaps Peter Kreeft’s Socratic Logic. Also, for paper writing read Weston’s Rulebook for Arguments.
2. Read the whole Bible and the Apocrypha, Seminary is not the right place to be surprised by the content of the Holy Writ.
3. Read Fee and Stuart’s How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth.
4. Read Overnight Student by Mike Jones. It is no longer available online, but I summarize his method here.
5. Read any brief book on public speaking, perhaps Dale Carnegie’s brief book The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Public Speaking. Obviously there is more to it than he says, but he makes it simple. And if you use the study technique in The Over Night Student then you’ll get to practice often.
6. After this, read Precious Remedies for Satan’s Devices by Thomas Brooks and put it into practice. Seminary can leave you associating your devotional life with the burden of studying, learn to resist this. Seriously, schedule devotional time and never miss it unless there is a serious emergency. Morning is best.
7. Learn to use a planner and don’t start seminary until it become a nearly religious practice.
8. Read a book about financial management and put it into practice.

There is a giant stack of books that transformed how I read and preach the Bible, these are books and practices that will help you in seminary and beyond.

George Herbert has been one of my favorite poets since 2005 or so. One of his longer poems, the Church Porch, contains an interesting few stanzas concerning the vigorous or strenuous life that would fit right into a book by Teddy Roosevelt. If you aren’t a fan of poetry, just read the bold lines:

Flie idlenesse, which yet thou canst not flie
By dressing, mistressing, and complement.
If those take up thy day, the sunne will crie
Against thee: for his light was onely lent.
God gave thy soul brave wings; put not those feathers
Into a bed, to sleep out all ill weathers.

Art thou a Magistrate? then be severe:
If studious; copie fair, what time hath blurr’d;
Redeem truth from his jawes: if souldier,
Chase brave employments with a naked sword
Throughout the world. Fool not: for all may have,
If they dare try, a glorious life, or grave.

O England! full of sinne, but most of sloth;
Spit out thy flegme, and fill thy brest with glorie:
Thy Gentrie bleats, as if thy native cloth
Transfus’d a sheepishnesse into thy storie:
Not that they all are so; but that the most
Are gone to grasse, and in the pasture lost.

This losse springs chiefly from our education.
Some till their ground, but let weeds choke their sonne:
Some mark a partridge, never their childes fashion:
Some ship them over, and the thing is done.
Studie this art, make it thy great designe;
And if Gods image move thee not, let thine.

This is very motivating reading. If God’s image in you, stir you not unto your child’s education, then let your own image! Remove all sloth from your life and do useful, soul enlarging things (fill thy breast with glorie!). Whatever your employment do it with such excellence that your life or at least your death will be glorious! Flee idleness, run not from the troubles of life by sitting about pouting. Aha! Great stuff.

Why you should read it:

1. It is one of the few “church Bibles” we protestants have. Even though it was produced by the state of England, at the time, that was indistinguishable from the Anglican Church.
2. It is an important piece of literature in Western Civilization.
3. It isn’t under copyright.
4. It is the inspired writ, so reading it is just good for you.
5. Pulling a quote from the KJV has a poetic effect that is rhetorically useful simply due to our built in reverence for the king’s English.
6. Due to the effort required to follow each sentence, if you’re a lazy reader, you may find yourself reading it more carefully.

Why you should read other translations:

1. The King James Bible can be hard to understand (this can be remedied with a dictionary).
2. The King James Bible, though it has some excellent renderings, also has some places where the rendering is uncertain (look up the marginal notes and the 1611 preface). Certain modern findings related to ancient Semitic languages have helped us, especially in OT translations.
3. The Greek Text underlying the King James Bible, though a marvelous achievement in its day, has been advanced upon in many ways. Note: if you wish to have a Greek Text on the cheap, you can get that version from the Trinitarian Bible Society website for 10 bucks. I don’t know that any other bound edition of the GNT is so inexpensive. (Note: that website seems to be a KJV Only website, but a ten dollar GNT is hard to pass up if you don’t already have one. I have that text type GNT already, otherwise I would buy it.)
4. Because you should read the Bible in the dialect most similar to your own if you aren’t a Bible scholar.