Think (The Life of the Mind and the Love of God)

John Piper's book, Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God, promises to help readers think about thinking and about how the heart and mind glorify God together.

In its depth and thoroughness, in its reliance on Scripture, and in its unapologetic dogmatism, it is pure Piper.

I love books about thinking, and have enjoyed many, from Moreland's Love God With All Your Mind to Blamire's The Christian Mind and Maxwell's Thinking for a Change. Piper's Think is unlike all the above; in fact, early in the book, he takes pains to distinguish it from those books and others. I was glad he did.

Think confines itself to thinking-as-reading, and particularly to thinking-as-Bible-reading. Piper more or less acknowledges that it is possible to think apart from reading, but he sees reading and thinking as nearly interchangeable.

His Biblical exposition, as usual, is thorough and engaging. As a Bible reader, student, and preacher, I found these sections--particularly chapter four--the most interesting in the book.

I must admit, however, that I was somewhat disappointed in the book as a whole, primarily because Piper's agenda--and his approach--didn't always hit the mark with me. He is such a thorough thinker and teacher that he generally takes great pains to prove things I don't need him to prove to me. And his perspective is so thoroughly Modernist as to frequently leave me cold.

But I'm glad I read the book. And if you have any interest at all in thinking-as-reading, or solid Biblical hermeneutics, or the follies of relativism, you will be, too.