# Thinking of 'weeding out' my library of well erm theological weeds!



## Jon 316 (Apr 29, 2009)

I have a reasonable sized library - been collecting books since I got saved. 

I've only recently started adding 'reformed books'. 

I guess the categories go like this

1) Some recent Reformed stuff
2) Some good Theological dictionaries (not nessacarily reformed)
3) Some good arminian classics i.e Tozer
4) Some not so good arminian stuff
5) Some pentecostal books which I gleaned good stuff out of in the past
6) Some heretical pentecostal books (although 'classics' in a pentecostal sense
7) Some really bad Charismatic books i.e Hinn, Tommy Tenney (blush)

You get the picture

Anyway, I've been thinking- do I scrap the chaff and start again? 

Or do I scrap the worst of the collection but keep the stuff I consider helpful?

Or just keep it all? 

I have resistance to chucking out stuff because 

1) I am a hoarder
2) I love books
3) I learn stuff even from stuff I disagree with
4) The books can be good for quotes when showing certain teachings to be false

What did others do who came into calvinistic thinking later on in their journey?


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## toddpedlar (Apr 29, 2009)

I didn't have a WHOLE lot, but I definitely would have scrapped categories 4-7 and some of 2 and 3. What I did have I sold for a load of dough on ebay and bought a lot more #1's.


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## Jon 316 (Apr 29, 2009)

toddpedlar said:


> I didn't have a WHOLE lot, but I definitely would have scrapped categories 4-7 and some of 2 and 3. What I did have I sold for a load of dough on ebay and bought a lot more #1's.



Is selling or giving away books with bad doctrine ok? i.e is it not infecting others? Just wondering...


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## Berean (Apr 29, 2009)

Jon 316 said:


> Is selling or giving away books with bad doctrine ok? i.e is it not infecting others? Just wondering...



That's what I was thinking. Maybe a fire? Or recycling if available. I did this with a couple RC bibles I had.


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## py3ak (Apr 29, 2009)

If you are not short on funds or storage space there is no issue with keeping what you have for reference. Often you will wish to lay your hand on a book to provide the exact reference for some particularly egregious bit of nonsense you seem to recollect.

But when you go to them for reference you should have a "mouthwash" book around - some volume of short essays that are reliably good that can get the foul taste of rubbish out of your mouth. C.S. Lewis, George Orwell and Aldous Huxley all have short pieces that are good for that purpose.


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## Jon 316 (Apr 29, 2009)

py3ak said:


> If you are not short on funds or storage space there is no issue with keeping what you have for reference. Often you will wish to lay your hand on a book to provide the exact reference for some particularly egregious bit of nonsense you seem to recollect.
> 
> But when you go to them for reference you should have a "mouthwash" book around - some volume of short essays that are reliably good that can get the foul taste of rubbish out of your mouth. C.S. Lewis, George Orwell and Aldous Huxley all have short pieces that are good for that purpose.



lol!


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## PresbyDane (Apr 30, 2009)

Some of the books I used for bow practice and the rest I threw away


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## The Author of my Faith (Apr 30, 2009)

I have really bad books myself. But why throw them out. They can be of more use than books by Calvin and the other great Reformers. Binny Hinn's Books are MUCH More useful than Calvin's ever could be. Just the other day I had to bring in a piece of furniture from my backyard and used Benny Hinn's book as a door stop.  lol.

I would do what you conscience tells you. I do not think it is a crime to have those books as references and to be helpful when sharing Reformed views with other arminians, you can show them the craziness of people like copeland, hinn, dollar, etc.

But I would not sell them to others or even give them away. I know you would never sell or give away a Jehovah's Witness Bible to someone and some of those authors are just as off as the Watchtower. I do have a JW Bible and use it whenever they come to my door to show the erroneous translation.

God Bless


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## PuritanCovenanter (Apr 30, 2009)

I have regretted getting rid of some of the chaff when I needed to get a reference for something that I was commenting on. But I would definitely keep it in a dark corner of my basement.


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## Puritan Sailor (Apr 30, 2009)

I kept most of my heretical works just for reference material. I have always toyed with the idea of writing a book on the pentacostalism some day, kind of a theological autobiography of my journey out of it with some theological reflection, or perhaps a PhD topic of some kind. Plus it's good to show other people still trapped in that way of thinking what their teachers actually did say, and that we are not just trying to slander their prophetic gifts or put God in a box. 

I also have some of the liberal stuff too like Bultmann, Brunner, Barth, Schweitzer, and Schleiermacher. Mostly for reference since so many scholars reference them. It also helps me to understand what guys like Machen, Allis, Young, and Van Til were up against all those years.


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## Whitefield (Apr 30, 2009)

Jon 316 said:


> Is selling or giving away books with bad doctrine ok? i.e is it not infecting others? Just wondering...



I struggle with the same thing when I weed out my books. I resolved it by asking myself the question, "Would I give away poison? a loaded gun? etc." You get the point. I usually send them to the trash heap of history.


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## Reformed Thomist (Jul 26, 2009)

I have kept all my Roman Catholic books, including Bibles. I figure it's an important part of my personal history. And it's nice to have them for reference and apologetics purposes.


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## Philip (Jul 26, 2009)

If we're going to be weeding out all bad theology, then we need to throw away our theological libraries entirely, in my opinion. Even Calvin and Luther are wrong on certain points.


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## Prufrock (Jul 26, 2009)

P. F. Pugh said:


> If we're going to be weeding out all bad theology, then we need to throw away our theological libraries entirely, in my opinion. Even Calvin and Luther are wrong on certain points.



Being wrong on a few things does not make one have bad theology. To say "Calvin was wrong on certain points; therefore, Calvin is bad theology" is quite a stretch.


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## greenbaggins (Jul 26, 2009)

I think it is very important for shepherds to have a target on all false theology. One has to read it occasionally to know "what they're saying." I keep loads of heretical stuff for this reason (especially heretical commentaries, as occasionally they will come up with something valuable in spite of themselves). I would say that for laymen, it is much better to have only good stuff.


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## Philip (Jul 26, 2009)

If Calvin is wrong on a point, then that point is bad theology.

My pastor has an extensive theological library that includes Christians of all stripes. Even my more limited library includes much that I disagree with (Bonhoeffer, Thomas a Kempis, etc.) but that doesn't mean I should throw it out. Without heresy, we wouldn't understand orthodoxy nearly so well. Heretics bear witness to the truth as well as the orthodox.


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## Wayne (Jul 26, 2009)

Re4mdant said:


> Some of the books I used for bow practice and the rest I threw away



While at Westminster in the late 70's, a student transferred from Gordon-Conwell. The student related a story about another student who had gone to help Dr. Roger Nicole with some household chore in the basement of Nicole's home. As they reached the basement, this student was amazed to see still that the good doctor's enormous library spilled down into the basement and books were stacked everywhere in vertical columns.

As they made their way to the work area, the student couldn't help looking at some of the books at the tops of these stacks. A second edition of Calvin's _Institutes_ in French, first editions of many Puritan works, and other rare jewels abounded. But then, to the student's horror, he also began to notice that, in good New England fashion, there was water everywhere on the floor of the basement.

"Dr. Nicole!" he cried out, "these books on the floor are being ruined by the water!" Nicole barely noticed, but replied, "Don't worry about those down there--those are the Arminians."


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## Prufrock (Jul 26, 2009)

P. F. Pugh said:


> Without heresy, we wouldn't understand orthodoxy nearly so well. Heretics bear witness to the truth as well as the orthodox.



I think we just need to beware of how cavalierly we throw around statements like the above: I have seem far too many college-age folk pick up a volume of N.T. Wright either to understand the issues better, or to attempt to refute it, only to be drawn in by his teaching. We, of course, must often work on a case-by-case basis, but in most cases I would be much more comfortable giving a copy of Waters or Venema to a brother or sister who wants to understand Wright, rather than giving them Wright himself. We must never forget that Christian teaching isn't simply an academic exercise, but that there is a necessary pastoral element wherein we must take care as to _how_ and through _what medium_ truth and information are presented.


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## Reformed City Rockers (Aug 1, 2009)

You can either keep your bad theology books to reference them in polemics. You can take em out to the gun range and use them for target practice. You can take those bad theological books out when you go camping and use them as TP. You can give those books to a friend who will reference them in polemics. You can sell them to Archives Book store in Pasadena and get a whole lot of small and I do mean small cash. So there is a lot you can do with unwanted bad theology books. In the case of Federal Vision Books or New Perspective on Paul books or books written by Roman Catholics who converted from protestant evangelicalism; burn baby burn!!!!!! Arminian and Dispensational books you can make an artful collogue of silliness.


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## DMcFadden (Aug 1, 2009)

When in the pastorate, I bought all sides of all issues (typical Fuller grad I guess ). When going into institutional ministry 12 years ago, I got rid of more than 2,500 volumes and kept the rest.

Now, I only buy books in paper and print that are classics or biblically sound (a' Brakel, Bavinck, Turretin, Calvin's Commentaries, new edition of the _Potter's Freedom_, anything by Beeke, Pipa, etc.). I have been systematically eliminating books that are unused or that represent heterodox viewpoints. My goal is to have a collection of only Biblically sound books (even if there is some diversity of viewpoint) on my shelves.

My laptop has 10,400 volumes on it, 4,300 of them in Libronix (including quite a bit of the stuff Lane speaks of in his post) and that affords me more than enough opportunity for "researching" Romanist, Pentecostal, rank liberal or other heterodox views. Barth, Finney, Watchman Nee, Resotrationism's Cottrell, Barna, C. Peter Wagner, and just about any non-Reformed "names" you can think of can be found available in digital format. Libronix is pretty good about producing sets of "complete works" of all of the major voices in church history. If that is too expensive for you, the PBB "home made" Libronix resources are available in a strikingly wide range. And, third party folks have a couple of thousand things in the free e-sword format. I just couldn't bring myself to buy St. Thomas Aquinas from Libronix when it was available for free in the Libronix compatible PBB and the free e-Sword formats.

Complaints that it is "too hard" to read books on the computer hardly apply to heterodox books you want mainly for searches, quotations, and the like. And, who among us (except maybe a total renaissance man brianiac like Greenbaggins really _needs_ more than 5,000 to 10,000 books?


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## Reformed Thomist (Aug 1, 2009)

The great bulk of Thomas's output (and the great bulk of the _Summa theologiae_, for that matter) manages to avoid the heterodox categorization, I think. One can, in fact, purchase several edited anthologies of the 13th century Dominican's work, published over the last thirty years or so, which do not contain a single sentence of Papist claptrap!


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## Caroline (Aug 1, 2009)

I still have a lot of bad theology books that I use when I need a quote as an example of bad theology. Sometimes I even buy them used (never new, because I don't want to support the author), so I don't see any problem with selling them, as long as you are upfront about what they are.

I had a friend who left the WOF and sold all her Hinn, Hagin, etc on ebay, titled 'Heretical Book Sale'. Works for me.

Sometimes people just want to get something out of the house. My biggest angst was over my Bibles that I owned while in the UPCI--Bibles that had notes in the margins loaded with heresy and a whole lot of bad memories attached. But I still felt funny about burning or throwing a Bible into the trash. Ultimately, I offered my shepherding elder $50 to take them out and told him, "I don't want to know what you did with them. Just make them disappear." When he stopped laughing, he took the Bibles for free, and, no, I don't know what he did with them, but I assume it was dignified and within the guidelines of the Westminster Confession.

So ... *looks around nervously* If you want some Pentecostal books taken care of, I know a guy...


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## Reformed Thomist (Aug 1, 2009)

Caroline said:


> Ultimately, I offered my shepherding elder $50 to take them out and told him, "I don't want to know what you did with them. Just make them disappear."





That's the first time I've ever heard of anyone putting a 'hit' out on their unwanted Bibles.


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## DMcFadden (Aug 2, 2009)

Reformed Thomist said:


> The great bulk of Thomas's output (and the great bulk of the _Summa theologiae_, for that matter) manages to avoid the heterodox categorization, I think. One can, in fact, purchase several edited anthologies of the 13th century Dominican's work, published over the last thirty years or so, which do not contain a single sentence of Papist claptrap!



Nathan, I realized the positive value of St. Thomas and only used his example because Libronix is running a pre-pub special on what they call a retail of $350 ($150 pre-pub). My point was that there are a lot of books that one uses primarily for research purposes and they are often a bargain in digital format (especially when they are free!).


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## Brian Withnell (Aug 2, 2009)

Jon 316 said:


> toddpedlar said:
> 
> 
> > I didn't have a WHOLE lot, but I definitely would have scrapped categories 4-7 and some of 2 and 3. What I did have I sold for a load of dough on ebay and bought a lot more #1's.
> ...



I would take those that are antithetical to the gospel, and do what they did in Acts.



> And many of those who practiced magic brought their books together and began burning them in the sight of everyone; and they counted up the price of them and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.



I think 250 years of wages (the wage then was about the value of the silver coin they cite in the text) more of a testimony to the grace of God than I would anything else. I know some will disagree, but this is the only salient text I can find on such a subject. (And I could see limiting the category to be burned to those that are true heresy.)


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## AThornquist (Aug 2, 2009)

Reformed City Rockers said:


> You can take those bad theological books out when you go camping and use them as TP.



I kind of like the sound of _My Best Wipe Now_ or _The Purpose Driven Wipe_...


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