Studying war for the three-front battle

Here's how you fight the three-front battle as a Christian:

1. The battle with the Devil is fought by knowing the Bible in the parts-in-relation-to-the-whole way; and knowing sound doctrine which is five solas, doctrines of grace, covenant - federal - theology.

2. The battle with the world is fought by studying worldview analysis and getting understanding and perspective on just how and why the Christian worldview is transcendent and correcting and all-encompassing of every worldview fallen man has ginned up.

3. The battle with the flesh (our fallen nature) is fought by learning a practical language which describes clearly the features of our fallen nature, and as well describes the psychology of what is possible and indeed normal for man no longer in the bonds of sleep, self-ignorance, and debilitating weakness.

[Good sources for the first category are numerous and summed up in the difficult word 'puritan.' It is called generally Reformed Theology, of which great individual authors are many. One great trinity would be Louis Berkhof's Manual of Christian Doctrine, John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and Thomas Boston's Human Nature in its Fourfold State. Good sources for the second category are James Sire, The Universe Next Door; David Naugle, Worldview: The History of a Concept; Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth (and anything else by her). A good source for the unusual third category doesn't come from the mainstream, academic or otherwise. You have to go into the esoteric realm. Ouspensky's Fourth Way is a cache of raw material on this subject (get the paperback as eBook editions are horrible and missing much of the original). Take it from there...]

Related note: Christian books on spiritual warfare are attractive to a believer but ultimately unsatisfying because they lack the practical nature and necessary subject matter listed above. I mean, for instance, you can't do battle with the world and defend yourself against the onslaught of the world until you know the worldviews you're dealing with. And you can't get control of your fallen nature (if you don't control it, it controls you) until you can *see* it, and that requires language and method to accomplish. And you get nowhere in all this without downloading the living, quickening, supernatural word of God into you by dedicated, cover-to-cover complete readings, once, three times, seven times...