If I could only pick ten authors to read for the rest of my life I’d pick:

1. David Powlison (counselor of counselors)  -  see his bibliography on this site for 439 resources.
David Powlison (1949 – 2019) was a counselor, professor, and the executive director of the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation. He received a BA from Harvard, MDiv from Westminster Theological Seminary, and his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and was also the senior editor of the Journal of Biblical Counseling. Notable recommended resources:
Books

• The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context. Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2010.

• Seeing with New Eyes: Counseling and the Human Condition Through the Lens of Scripture. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2nd ed., 2012.

• Good and Angry: Redeeming Anger, Irritation, Complaining, and Bitterness. Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2016.

• Making All Things New: Restoring Joy to the Sexually Broken. Wheaton, IL: Crossway,  2017.
  
  Articles

• Which Presuppositions? Secular Psychology and the Categories of Biblical Thought. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 12(4), 270-278. 

• Crucial Issues in Contemporary Biblical Counseling. Journal of Biblical Counseling, 9(3), 53-78.

• Critiquing Modern Integrationists. Journal of Biblical Counseling, 11(3), 24-34.

• Idols of the Heart and “Vanity Fair.” Journal of Biblical Counseling, 13(2), 35-50.

• Biological Psychiatry. Journal of Biblical Counseling. 17(3), 2-8. 

• Affirmations & Denials: A Proposed Definition of Biblical Counseling. Journal of Biblical Counseling. 19(1), 18-25.

• Is the Adonis Complex in Your Bible? Journal of Biblical Counseling. 22(2), 42-58.

• The Sufficiency of Scripture to Diagnose and Cure Souls. Journal of Biblical Counseling. 23(2), 2-14.

• Cure of Souls (and the Modern Psychotherapies). Journal of Biblical Counseling. 25(2), 5-36.

• The Therapeutic Gospel. Journal of Biblical Counseling. 25(3), 2-7.

• How Does Scripture Teach Us to Redeem Psychology? Journal of Biblical Counseling. 26(3), 18-27.

• Giving Reasoned Answers to Reasonable Questions. Journal of Biblical Counseling. 28(3), 2-14.

2. Francis Turretin (best systematician ever)
Francis Turretin (1623 – 1687) was a Reformed pastor-theologian, an ordained minister in Geneva and professor of theology at the Academy of Geneva. His three-volume Institutio Theologiae Elencticae was among the favorite theological works of Jonathan Edwards, Charles Hodge, Herman Bavinck, and the late R.C. Sproul. He epitomizes precision & Reformed scholasticism at its best. I would argue, Turretin is the most powerful thinker the Reformed tradition has ever produced. For ST, I also like Beeke, Hodge, Bavinck, Calvin, Berkohf, Horton, Frame, Reymond.

• Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 3 vols. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1997.
  
  

3. Frederick Copleston (historian of philosophy par excellence)
Frederick Copleston (1907 – 1893) was a British Jesuit priest, philosopher, and historian of philosophy. He debated the likes of Bertrand Russell and A. J. Ayer. His 11-volume history of philosophy is still to this day without equal.

• A History of Philosophy. New York City, NY: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2003.
  
  

4. Philip Schaff (early church fathers, church history & confessions)
Philip Schaff (1819 – 1994) was a prolific Protestant churchman, scholar,  author, and editor.  For example, his complete collection of the early church fathers are cross-linked to the Bible, and covers the first four centuries after Christ's death and spans more than 60 authors & over 2,500 works. Runner-up church historians would include Jaroslav Pelikan and Nick Needham. 

• History of the Christian Church, 8 vol. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2001. 

• Creeds of Christendom, 3 vol. Baker Books, 1984.

• The Complete Ante-Nicene, Nicene and Post-Nicene Collection of Early Church Fathers: Cross-Linked to the Bible. Catholic Way Publishing, 2014. 
  
  

5. Herman Bavinck (best systematic post 1800s + ethics)
Herman Bavinck (1854 – 1921) was the finest theologian of the neo-Calvinist movement known for his scope, balance, and doxological undercurrents. As a systematician, Turretin will give you an appreciation for the specialized method of theology, polemics, fine scholastic distinctions and generally help you overcome the "everyman is a theologian" syndrome while Bavinck has the ability to make any technical subject devotional while giving you range and judiciously interacting with more current philosophical movements.  

• Reformed Dogmatics, 4 vols. Baker Academic, 2008.

• Reformed Ethics, 4 vols. Baker Academic, 2025.

6. Richard Muller (modern HT)
Richard Muller (1948 – present) is one of the top (if not the most important) English-language historical theologians today. Muller's research and writing has largely focused on the reassessment of the development of Protestant thought after the Reformation, with emphasis on the nature and character of Protestant orthodoxy and Reformed scholasticism in the seventeenth century. I would buy everything he has ever written, though I should warn you he is not your popular-level author from "BigEva."  

• Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 4 vols. Baker Academic, 2003.

• Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology. Baker, 2006.
  
  

7. John Calvin (the OG)
John Calvin (1509 – 1564)  is one of my all-time favorite figures in history. He "was a short Frenchman who spent his life in a city that did not always appreciate him. He came under fire almost immediately in his role in Geneva, lost his job over a fight on the sacraments, was nurtured back to wholeness by Martin Bucer, and only begrudgingly returned to Geneva to finish the reformation there." His commentaries on nearly the entire Bible remain a model of sound exegesis and practical, theological application and wrote what was until modern times the most widely published and read book of theology in English translation: The Institutes. He was extremely pastoral, prolific, and a true Renaissance man.  (I reccommend reading Ryan Reeves intro to Calvin and why he was more influential than Martin Luther in Who Was John Calvin and Why Was He Important? TGC, 10 June 2016) 

• The Institutes of the Christian Religion. 1541st French edition. Banner of Truth, 2014.

• Sermons on Ephesians, Banner of Truth, orig. pub. 1562, 1974. 

8. C. S. Lewis (jack-of-all-trades)
Clive Staples Lewis (1898 – 1963) was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century. I struggle to introduce him here. What hasn't he written on? A British Army veteran during WWI, decorated academic and professor, literary critic and theorist, novelist, essayist, apologist, broadcaster, and lay theologian. Moreover, during World War II, from 1941 to 1943, Lewis spoke on a religious program broadcast through BBC from London while the city was under periodic air raids which would then later become anthologized in the book known as Mere Christisanity. On almost every page hides a golden quote ready to be retweeted. He wrote more than 30 books which have been translated into more than 30 languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide.

• Mere Christianity

• A Grief Observed

• A Preface to Paradise Lost

• The Screwtape Letters

• The Abolition of  Man

• The Four Loves

• The Great Divorce

• The Weight of Glory

• The Problem of Pain

• Miracles
  
  

9. Fyodor Dostoyevsky or Leo Tolstoy (best novelist)
This is honestly a tie, depending on the day, but if I had to choose today it would be Dostoyevsky if for no other reason than that Tolstoy lived a long life, and thus had a chance to present his life work to the masses. This was not the case for Dostoyevsky, who died at 59, leaving us wanting more. If you asked me for more reasons, I would argue that Tolstoy came from an elite class, whereas Dostoyevsky lived his stories, exiled, imprisoned, and this shows in his works. One commentator said it like this: "Tolstoy’s characters tell me a lot about themselves; Dostoevsky’s characters tell me a lot about myself." I like Tolstoy's style, pace, and plots more; in fact, I agree with Tolstoy's own criticisms of Dostoyevsky, but alas I have chosen my victor. In truth, comparisons do ultimately ring hollow as "all mediocre novelists are alike; but every great novelist is great in his own way." Dostoyevsky (1821 – 1881) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and journalist. Numerous literary critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature. His works explore the human condition in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes.  It would not be an overstatement to say that his fiction is about everything human. He wards off the despair of life, successfully challenging the nihilist, and often shows through his characters that "the more talk, the less truth; the wise measure their words" (Prov. 10:19). 

• The Brother's Karamazov. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, orig. 1879; 2002.

• Crime and Punishment. Vintage, orig. 1866; 1993.

• The Idiot. Penguin Classics, orig. 1868; 2004.

• Notes from the Underground. Global Publishers, orig. 1864; 2023.
  
  

10. Flannery O’Connor (best short-stories)
In college, I wrote my senior capstone (32 pgs.) on Flannery O'Connor and I would like to introduce her by mingling in my own vested academic work on her. Flannery O'Connor (1925 – 1964) was an American, Southern Gothic writer. She authored two (and a half) novels, more than 30 short-stories, and a plethora of witty and incisive essays. In her ficiton, she relied heavily on the interplay between humor, irony, tragedy, and horror also known as the literary grotesque. Yet, if the grotesque is to be defined on its own terms, its forms cannot be divorced from what it does by effect on the reader, nor can the effect on the reader be merely in terms of emotion, since the grotesque is not merely an aesthetic. This strategy allowed Flannery to challenge any final or closed versions of reality or truth, to raise questions about what has been omitted from a particular point of view and to explore the paradoxical nature of human life by using familiar forms to its readers that can take on any combination of relevant structures. These structures are then distorted, exaggerated, or subverted to shock into communication some alternate vision of the author to the reader. As she contends, "I use the grotesque the way I do because people are deaf and dumb and need help to see and hear… I have to make the reader feel, in his bones if nowhere else, that something is going on here that counts. Distortion in this case is an instrument; exaggeration has a purpose… this is not the kind of distortion that destroys; it is a kind that reveals, or should reveal." Interestingly, in a letter to a fellow Catholic in the South, O’Connor once signed off: “Cheers and screams, Flannery.” This epigrammatic signature figuratively captures two extremes of response that her writing may elicit: high praise or strong disapproval. Not everyone reads her as she intended, but if they do, their lives are gauranteed to be changed. [*Below, I've linked the first page of my capstone if interested.]

• A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983.

• Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1962.

• Wise Blood: A Novel. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1960, 2007.