I'm re-reading Eugene Peterson's masterpiece, Eat This Book. I first read it in April 2006, and it challenged, encouraged, and stimulated me so much as a minister of the Word that I vowed I'd read it again! Today, I invite you to reflect on a bold claim that Peterson makes: "Exegesis is foundational to Christian spirituality" (p. 52).
Doing exegesis is an "enormous inconvenience," Peterson admits, "particularly to those of us who feel an inclination and aptitude toward the spiritual" (p. 52). After all, we are "insiders to the ways of God," and we've learned the art of listening to God as He whispers to us between the lines of the biblical text (p. 52).
But, as Peterson points out, "a close relationship doesn't guarantee understanding" (p. 53). We have a written word to read and attend to, and we had better get it right! So, he argues, "the more 'spiritual' we become, the more care we must give to exegesis. The more mature we become in the Christian faith, the more exegetically rigorous we must become. This is not a task from which we graduate" (p. 53).
Why don't we graduate from the task of exegesis? Peterson explains: "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. . . . Exegesis is a dust cloth, a scrub brush, or even a Q-tip for keeping the words clean" (p. 53).
Amen! What's left to say?! Only that "exegesis is an act of love. It loves the one who speaks the words enough to want to get the words right. . . . Exegesis is loving God enough to stop and listen carefully to what he says" (p. 55).
Posted by Steve Mathewson at 12:01 PM on August 14, 2007
