Eugene Peterson, the translator of The Message, is now writing a five-volume series on spiritual theology. The first was the magisterial and masterful Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places. Now, in Eat This Book, Peterson prophetically proclaims the centrality of the Bible to any true Christian spirituality. Peterson argues that we dare not read (or preach) the Bible merely for information, inspiration, or guidance for living. Peterson wants us to read the Bible personally, receptively, responsively to the Trinity who speaks through it: “We open this book and find that page after page it takes us off guard, surprises us, and draws us into its reality, pulls us into participation with God on his terms.”
Chapter 4 alone is worth the price of admission for preachers. Here are four appetizers on the subject of exegesis:
These words given to us in our Scriptures are constantly getting overlaid with personal preferences, cultural assumptions, sin distortions, and ignorant guesses that pollute the text. The pollutants are always in the air, gathering dust on our Bibles, corroding our use of the language, especially the language of faith. Exegesis is a dust cloth, a scrub brush, or even a Q-tip for keeping the words clean. (p. 53)
Exegesis is loving God enough to stop and listen carefully to what he says. ... But exegesis does not mean mastering the text, it means submitting to it as it is given to us. Exegesis doesn’t take charge of the text and impose superior knowledge on it, it enters the world of the text and lets the text ‘read’ us. Exegesis is an act of sustained humility: There is so much about this text that I don’t know, that I will never know. (p. 57)
We are fond of saying that the Bible has all the answers. And that is certainly correct….. But the Bible also has all the questions, many of them that we would just as soon were never asked of us, and some of which we will spend the rest of our lives doing our best to dodge. (p. 66)
The most important question we ask of this text is not, "What does this mean?" but "What can I obey?" A simple act of obedience will open up our lives to this text far more quickly than any number of Bible studies and dictionaries and concordances.
So go buy, then eat, this book.
Kevin Miller is assistant pastor of Church of the Resurrection in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, and vice president of Christianity Today, International.
Posted by Kevin Miller at 9:29 PM on February 24, 2007
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I am in the process of reading "Eat This Book," and I get more and more excited with each page. For a long time, I have been trying to find a way to take the "next step" in my personal Bible study, and Peterson's book has been an amazing help so far.
And I'm only a couple of chapters in!
Thanks for the good excerpts, Kevin.
Posted by: Sam O'Neal on February 26, 2007
I couldn't agree more. I have been deeply affected by this book. Peterson defines exegesis as "..the discipline of attending to the text and listening to it rightly and well." He notes that this is rigorous, disicplined, intellectual work that rarely feels "spiritual." Preaching is about words. This is a helpful corrective in an age where style is valued over substance. Great preaching pays attention to language. I must attend carefully to the biblical text and labor to craft my own language.
Posted by: John Koessler on February 27, 2007