Peter Adam is vicar emeritus at St. Jude’s Carlton, formerly principal of Ridley College Melbourne, and vicar of St. Jude’s. His publications include Speaking God’s Words: A Practical Theology of Preaching, Hearing God’s Words: Exploring Biblical Spirituality, Written for Us: Receiving God’s Words in the Bible, The Message of Malachi, The Majestic Son: The Letter to the Hebrews, and Walking in God’s Words: Ezra and Nehemiah. He speaks at training conferences for preachers. Peter Adam is a founding member of the Council and the Executive Committee of The Gospel Coalition Australia.
TGCA: Were you a reader when you were young?
I must confess to being a bibliophile if not a bibliomaniac. It is closely linked to being a compulsive reader. (I have to exercise great restraint not to read the label on the milk carton every morning at breakfast).
As a child I was a determined reader (with a torch under the bedclothes). The first book I remember reading and learning by heart was a gripping thriller called See Sam Run (Sam was a small back dog). The content was as follows, with one sentence per page: ‘Run, Sam, run …Sam runs … See Sam run.’ It certainly lived up to its title, and like an excellent PhD thesis, had no extraneous content. Unlike most PhD theses, it had pictures. The Swiss Family Robinson was my first big book, and my favourite book as a child. It opened a door to another wonderful world.
I remember my first day at Sunday School at the age of 11. The teacher told us that God did not like new clean Bibles: he much preferred Bibles which looked well-used. So when I got home I got out my new Bible, scribbled in the margins, and loosened some pages. Surely God would approve!
TGCA: What books did you read as a teenager?
I remember as a troubled young teenager reading Markings, by Dag Hammarskjöld, who had been secretary-general of the United Nations. There was one page which was a great encouragement. Why do other people look confident when I feel unsure of myself? One reason is that I see the results of their decisions, while I feel my own indecision.
At school I won a Divinity prize for knowing the name of Eutychus, the young man who fell asleep during Paul’s sermon. The prize was Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll.
TGCA: What about your first Christian books?
I was converted at the age of 16. My first Christian books were Puritan commentaries found by chance in a second-hand bookshop: Thomas Manton’s commentaries on James and on Jude, and John Brown on Hebrews, all in the Geneva Series of Commentaries, published by Banner of Truth. I read them intensely and repeatedly. They opened up the Scriptures, taught me theology, and showed me how to apply the Bible. I was deeply influenced by John Stott’s Christ the Controversialist. I learnt that what people believe matters, and that so many of Christ’s disagreements were fundamentally theological. I learnt my theology of the atonement from The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, by Leon Morris. And I was greatly helped by a book of short articles by Benjamin Warfield, Biblical Foundations. And I was and am profoundly challenged by Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship. I later did my PhD on the theology of the imitation of Christ in Bonhoeffer’s thought.
TGCA: What about other Christian books?
I read lots of missionary biographies when I was first converted, and found them both encouraging and challenging. These included biographies of Henry Martyn, William Carey, The Cambridge Seven, David Brainerd, and Hudson Taylor. I love reading biographies and autobiographies. They are a great way to learn how human beings are formed and shaped, and how they form and shape themselves. And they are also a great way to learn about the human society and the age in which the people lived, and how they interacted with their community and society.
I like reading history, because it is so illuminating to see human life outside the assumptions and characteristics of the early 21st Century. Knowing another era well gives us a place to stand and view our own era more objectively. When George Whitefield was a newly converted student at Oxford, he experienced mild opposition and ridicule. His observation was this: ‘These, though little, were useful trials. They inured me to contempt, lessened self-love and taught me to die daily’. I don’t find that positive response to suffering today!
TGCA: Do you read when you are on holidays?
I enjoy summer holidays when I can read big books without interruption. Last summer I found the biography of Daniel Wilson, Bishop of Calcutta from 1832-58 on the web. He was a strong evangelical leader, and constant, generous and courageous throughout his long ministry in India. I also read Peter Brown’s The Eye of the Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West 350-550 AD. It is a fascinating insight into the growth of Christianity in the Roman Empire, and the corrupting power of wealth. And how amazing to learn that the North African Church bribed the Emperor to condemn Pelagius! (Though of course that fact just shows that their theology of human depravity was an accurate self-diagnosis, even if their morality was deficient.)
Some favourite autobiographies and biographies are Victor Klemperer, I shall Bear Witness 1933-41, and
To the Bitter End 1942-45; Lyman Abbott’s Henry Ward Beecher; Richard Francis, Judge Sewall’s Apology; Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt; Rose Macaulay’s Letters; and Hensley Henson, Retrospect of an Unimportant Life (in 3 vols!).
TGCA: What good books have you read recently?
Here are some great books!
William Dalrymple, Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan (1839-42), explores the complexity of trying to invade and rule Afghanistan, and is a sorry account of a striking British defeat.
Larry Siedentop, Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism, explains how we became so driven by individualism.
Marilynne Robinson has also written great books of essays, in which she articulates her humane theism. These include The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought; Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self; and When I Was a Child I Read Books.
Another great read was Phyllis Mack’s Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment.
I enjoyed Leland Ryken, Literary Introduction to the Books of the Bible.
I recently read EJ Dionne’s book on the Republican movement in the USA, Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent. I now plan to re-read Judith Brett’s Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class, to ‘compare and contrast.’
I enjoy reading any history, 18th and 19th century European fiction, and murder mysteries. I always forget ‘who did it’, so I can re-read an Agatha Christie with fresh enthusiasm every time.
TGCA: You have an interest in indigenous issues in Australia. What books have influenced you most?
Richard Trudgen, Why warriors lie down and die; Bill Gamage, the Biggest Estate on Earth; James Boyce, 1835: the Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia; John Gascoigne, The Enlightenment and the Origins of European Australia. And I am now reading Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu , Black Seeds: agriculture or accident?
TGCA: How do you assess books on Biblical Theology?
I have just finished writing a commentary on Esther for the Reading the Bible Today series, published by Aquila. I consulted a number of popular books on Biblical Theology, and discovered by looking at the Index of Bible passages that many of them did not include any reference to the book of Esther! My policy on books on Biblical Theology is now, ‘No Esther, no buy!’
TGCA: You have written some books. Any surprises?
My commentary on Malachi has been translated and published in Turkish, and in Chinese. I am told that this book is the only commentary on Malachi in Turkish. I hope I got it right.
TGCA: What book would you take to a desert island?
I repeat GK Chesteron’s reply, ‘A book on boat-building’.
TGCA: What are the books that have influenced you most in your ministry?
The Bible… and Handley Moule’s biography of Charles Simeon, minister, preacher, and trainer of preachers in Cambridge in the 19th Century.
John Stott’s Christ the Controversialist, and Leon Morris’, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross.
