John Piper (theologian)

Biography

Piper was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Bill and Ruth Piper. His father was a traveling evangelist and church planter. When he and his older sister were still young, the Pipers moved to Greenville, South Carolina, where he spent the remainder of his youth and graduated from Wade Hampton High School.

At six years old, Piper was converted to faith in Christ at his mother's knee while on vacation in Florida. He remarks that it "blows him away" that he was saved at six years old, not because he remembers the event, but because the Bible tells him what happened to him. When he shared his testimony on his website, desiringgod.org, he said that it's very dangerous to rely on one's memory or experience when pondering when God saved them. He states this is the case, because both are fallible and can be misleading. Thus, he wants to encourage others like himself who can't remember the exact date of their conversion, by pointing them to what the Bible says.

He married Noël Henry in 1968, and together they have four sons, a daughter, and twelve grandchildren.

Piper attended Wheaton College (1964–68) majoring in literature and minoring in philosophy. Studying romantic literature with Clyde Kilby stimulated his poetic side, and today he regularly composes poetry to celebrate special family occasions as well as annually composing story-poems (based on the life of biblical characters) for his congregation during the four weeks of Advent.

In college, he was originally on the pre-med track, only to decide to go into ministry during a bout of sickness, while listening to the sermons of Dr. Harold John Ockenga over the radio, from his hospital bed. He then completed a Master of Divinity degree at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. While at Fuller, he took several courses from Daniel Fuller and through him discovered the writings of Jonathan Edwards. Along with C.S. Lewis, Edwards and Fuller are noted influences in Piper's life and ministry.

Piper received his Doctor of Theology degree in New Testament Studies at the University of Munich, Germany (1971–74) under Leonhard Goppelt. His dissertation, Love Your Enemies, was published by Cambridge University Press and Baker Book House. Upon completion of his doctorate, he taught Biblical Studies at Bethel University and Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota, for six years (1974–80).

His mother died in December 1974 in a bus wreck in Israel. Piper's 1990 booklet What's the Difference? included a tribute to her.

On January 11, 2006, Piper announced that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. According to a letter sent to his church, he and his doctors believed that the cancer was fully treatable. Piper responded to his diagnosis with the following:

This news has, of course, been good for me. The most dangerous thing in the world is the sin of self-reliance and the stupor of worldliness. The news of cancer has a wonderfully blasting effect on both. I thank God for that. The times with Christ in these days have been unusually sweet.

Piper underwent successful surgery on February 14, 2006.

His father died on March 6, 2007.

Ministry

In 1980, Piper became Pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he ministered until March 31, 2013. Piper hit the evangelical scene after the publication of his book Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (1986) and has continued to publish dozens of other books further articulating this theological perspective. In 1994, he founded Desiring God Ministries, with the aim of "spread[ing] a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ." Desiring God Ministries offers all of Piper's sermons and articles from the past three decades—and most of his books—online free of charge, while also offering Piper-related media for sale, and regularly hosting conferences.

Piper took an eight-month leave of absence from his ministry from May 1, 2010 to January 9, 2011.

He announced in June 2011 that he would soon step down from his role of pastor. A candidate to succeed him was announced in March 2012, and on May 20, 2012 Jason Meyer was voted in (784 Yes to 8 No) to be the next Pastor for Preaching & Vision, replacing John Piper.

On March 31, 2013 (Easter Sunday), Piper preached his final sermon as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist and announced in an open letter to the congregation that he and his family would be moving to Tennessee for at least a year so that the new leadership can develop a strategic vision for the church without distractions.

In 2010, a Festschrift was published in his honor. For the Fame of God's Name: Essays in Honor of John Piper included contributions from Don Carson, Sinclair Ferguson, G. K. Beale, Thomas R. Schreiner, Wayne Grudem, Al Mohler, C. J. Mahaney, Mark Dever, John MacArthur, and Bill Mounce.

Christian hedonism

Piper advocates Christian hedonism and teaches that "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him" and that God's highest pursuit ("his glory") and man's deepest and most durable happiness come together in one pursuit—namely, the pursuit of joy in God.

Complementarianism

Piper holds to a complementarian view of gender roles. This view says that the Bible teaches that a husband is called to lovingly lead, protect and provide for his wife and family, and that the wife should joyfully and intelligently affirm and submit to her husband's leadership. He also says that the Bible teaches that men are to bear the primary responsibility to lead the church and that therefore only men should be elders. Piper, along with Wayne Grudem, was co-editor of one of the books in this area, called Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. One of the chapters has been reprinted several times as an independent short book called What's the Difference?.

Calvinism

Piper's soteriology is Calvinist, and his ecclesiology is Baptist. He affirms the distinctively Calvinist doctrine of double predestination, which includes "unconditional reprobation" or damnation as a corollary to the Augustinian doctrine of unconditional election, and he subscribes to the Leibnizian view that God decreed this universe to be the best of all possible universes.

Piper believes in justification by faith alone apart from any works, and his teachings emphasize the need for the active and inevitable perseverance of the believer in faith, sanctification, and enduring sufferings, which he believes is evidence of God's saving grace. According to Piper, a once-professing Christian who does not faithfully persevere until the end demonstrates that he was mistaken about his election and was never a true believer in the first place.

Historical Creationism

Piper espouses a brand of creationism known as "Historical Creationism", and credits John Sailhamer's book Genesis Unbound to explaining the view. "Historical Creationism" states that God created the universe, planet Earth, and many creatures and things within Earth itself over the course of an indefinite time period before the first day of the week of Genesis 1, and that the days of the creation week were God changing a desolate piece of land into the blessed region of Eden, where God would bring Adam and Eve into existence and place them within it on the sixth day. "In verse 1, " Piper said, "'In the beginning he made the heavens and the earth,' he makes everything. And then you go day by day and he's preparing the land. He's not bringing new things into existence; he's preparing the land and causing things to grow and separating out water and earth. And then, when it's all set and prepared, he creates and puts man there." Piper acknowledged, however, that although it is his interpretation of the text, he is not dogmatic about the issue and that "every pastor should go ahead and say what he believes...I'm inclined to not draw that too narrowly."

Continuationism

Regarding spiritual gifts, Piper is a continuationist. That is, he believes that supernatural gifts such as prophecy, miracles, healings, and speaking in tongues have not ceased and should be sought by the church, in particular with regard to missions and evangelism. He does believe, however, that the office of apostle has ceased and that the gift of prophecy in the church is not the same as the inspiration of scripture. While he believes that God's supernatural revelation in the New Testament gift of prophecy is without error, he says that today, outside the biblically recorded Word of God, the prophet's perception, understanding and delivery of that revelation is imperfect and fallible, thus modern prophecies within the church are subject to sifting.

Eschatology

Piper describes himself as a "optimistic premillennialist" and holds a post-tribulation view of the second coming of Jesus and of the Rapture, which teaches that the Church will go through the Great Tribulation. Because of this belief, he maintains that Romans 11 teaches that a mass in-gathering of ethnic Israel will be saved when the hardening of their hearts is removed at Jesus' second coming. He therefore advocates the importance of hoping in the resurrection of the dead at Christ's return.

Law and covenant

Piper does not don any of the typical hermeneutical frameworks, but claims he is furthest from dispensationalism, and closest to Covenant Theology, or a New Covenant Theology in matters of the Law and covenants, but agrees with the dispensationalist belief that there will be a millennium. He says that the Law was meant by God to reveal sin and show man's inability to live up to God's righteous standards. Christians, living under the New Covenant, are not under the Old Covenant law but able to fulfill its intent through faith in Jesus Christ.

Piper teaches that God has only one covenant people, mostly believing Jews in the Old Testament, and now that people consists of all the followers of Christ, or the Church, whether Jew or Gentile. Piper asserts that Israel has rights from God to dwell in that land, but not because they are merely Jewish, and Jews who reject Jesus as Messiah have no divine right of claim on those promises. Piper also believes that all Christians, Jew or Gentile, will inherit the earth, including the land of Israel, when Christ sets up the Millennial Kingdom in the Second Coming.