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Eugene H. Peterson (1932-2018) was a pastor, scholar, author, and poet. He wrote more than thirty books, including his widely acclaimed paraphrase of the Bible, The Message; his memoir, The Pastor; and numerous works of biblical spiritual formation, including Run with the Horses.

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In Subversive Spirituality Peterson has gathered together a host of writings penned over the past twenty-five years that reflect on the overlooked facets of the spiritual life. Comprising occasional pieces, short biblical studies, poetry, pastoral readings, and interviews, this work captures the epiphanies of life with the pleasing pastoral style and inspiring depth of insight for which Peterson is well known. Peterson describes his book this way: "This gathering of articles and essays, poems and conversations, is a kind of kitchen midden of my noticings of the obvious in the course of living out the Christian life in the vocational context of pastor, writer, and professor. The randomness and repetitions and false starts are rough edges that I am leaving as is in the interests of honesty. Spirituality is not, by and large, smooth. I do hope, however, that these pieces will be found to be freshly phrased".

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SUBVERSIVE SPIRITUALITY

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Contents

Introduction.....................................................................ixSaint Mark: The Basic Text for Christian Spirituality............................3Back to Square One: God Said.....................................................16Spirit Quest.....................................................................32Writers and Angels: Witnesses to Transcendence...................................41The Seminary as a Place of Spiritual Formation...................................54The Holy Stump...................................................................63Jeremiah as an Ascetical Theologian..............................................80Learning to Worship from St. John's Revelation...................................84Apocalypse: The Medium Is the Message............................................91Resurrection Quartet.............................................................101Holy Luck........................................................................111Poetry from Patmos: St. John as Pastor, Poet, and Theologian.....................121Masters of Imagination...........................................................131Sheep in Wolfe's Clothing........................................................135Kittel among the Coffee Cups.....................................................141Mastering Ceremonies.............................................................147Teach Us to Care, and Not to Care................................................154Unexpected Allies................................................................169Novelists, Pastors, and Poets....................................................172Pastors and Novels...............................................................185A Conversation with Eugene Peterson..............................................195Haphazardly Intent: An Approach to Pastoring.....................................216Subversive Spirituality..........................................................236On Pentecostals, Poets, and Professors...........................................245Of Passion, Prayer, and Poetry...................................................257

Chapter One

Introduction

A quite remarkable thing has been taking place in this city in the last 25 years; spiritual theology has been named and recognized, appreciated and sought after. Spiritual theology is an honored, central, and ancient concern of the Christian church. But in the last two hundred years with the imperialistic ascendance of rationalism, accompanied by various and sundry reactions of romanticism, spiritual theology virtually disappeared from the scene. Rationalism and romanticism fought for the heart of humankind and between them pretty much divided up the spoils. Spiritual theology, pushed to the sidelines, survived academically in obscure corners of various libraries around the world. Spiritual theology, mostly ignored but sometimes demeaned in both church and world, became the specialty of small and often eccentric coteries of enthusiasts.

Meanwhile here in Vancouver, something quite different has been taking place: spiritual theology has been recovered as a discipline and concern that is basic to the entire Christian enterprise as it is thought through and studied in classrooms, prayed and practised in home and workplace, believed in the church and proclaimed in the world. Both the necessity and the attractiveness of spiritual theology has been worked out and demonstrated among us — an immense gift to both church and world. And a gift most timely, for it is quite clear that our culture, toxic with rationalism and romanticism, is in a bad way and getting worse. Those of us who pray for the salvation of the world cannot do without the rich flocks of wisdom and insight and prayer and maturity to which spiritual theology is shepherd.

The name most associated with this recovery and demonstration is James M. Houston. No one person pulls off an historical and cultural feat like this single-handed. He had, and has, colleagues, friends, and family who were and are part of it in large and small ways. But his name — his focused vision, his sacrificial faithfulness, the clarity of his thinking, the passion of his prayers — his name more than any other identifies this recovery of spiritual theology at this critical time as we approach the third millennium.

Because of what has been taking place in this city in the last 25 years, spiritual theology is no longer confined to the academic pursuits of medievalists. Because of what has been taking place in this city in the last 25 years, spiritual theology now carries the connotation of robust and mature spiritual health instead of being suspect as religious neurosis.

And because James Houston's name is so thoroughly associated with all this, it is fitting that this professorship be distinguished by the title, the James M. Houston Chair of Spiritual Theology.

Saint Mark: The Basic Text

The Gospel of St. Mark is the basic text for Christian spirituality. I use the definite article deliberately, the basic text. The entire canon of Scripture is our comprehensive text, the revelation that determines the reality that we deal with as human beings who are created, saved, and blessed by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. But St. Mark as the first Gospel holds a certain primacy.

1. The Form of the Text

No one had ever written a Christian Gospel before Mark wrote his. He created a new genre. It turned out to be a form of writing that quickly became both foundational and formative for the life of church and Christian. We are accustomed to believing that the Holy Spirit inspired the content of the Scriptures (2 Tim. 3:16), but it is just as true that the form is inspired, this new literary form that we call Gospel. There was nothing quite like it in existence, although Mark had good teachers in the Hebrew storytellers who gave us the Books of Moses and Samuel.

The Bible as a whole comes to us in the form of narrative, and it is within this large, somewhat sprawling narrative that St. Mark writes his Gospel. "We live mainly by forms and patterns," Wallace Stegner, one of our great contemporary storytellers, tells us, "... if the forms are bad, we live badly." Gospel is a true and good form, by which we live well. Storytelling creates a world of presuppositions, assumptions, and relations into which we enter. Stories invite us into a world other than ourselves, and, if they are good and true stories, a world larger than ourselves. Bible stories are good and true stories, and the world that they invite us into is the world of God's creation and salvation and blessing.

Within the large, capacious context of the biblical story we learn to think accurately, behave morally, preach passionately, sing joyfully, pray honestly, obey faithfully. But we dare not abandon the story as we do any or all of these things, for the minute we abandon the story, we reduce reality to the dimensions of our minds and feelings and experience. The moment we formulate our doctrines, draw up our moral codes, and throw ourselves into a life of ministry apart from a continuous re-immersion in the story itself, we walk...