Book Review: Eat This Book

A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading
by Eugene H Peterson

Review by Rev Dr Darren Cronshaw

Peterson has a delightful way of elevating the craft of biblical leadership and its foundational skills – focusing our eyes on Jesus, celebrating everyday spirituality, listening to people in pastoral conversations, and listening to God in prayer and the Bible. In Eat This Book he invites us to digest thoroughly what God addresses to us in Scripture. His challenge is not just to mine the Scriptures for nuggets of inspiration or historical information, but to read them on their own terms, and to live them as we read them. As an early rabii suggested, we take in the Bible not with our ears but with our feet – we learn best by following. It is an invitation to enter into the story and make it our own, not just read it as another story disconnected from our lives. The process is not about knowing more as much about becoming more. With our identities grounded in Christ and our lives bathed in Bible-reading, we will live outlive our surrounding society – our hope will be ‘fresh against formidable odds’ (p.19).

Peterson draws his readers towards a more attentive and awe-inspiring reading of this book. He quotes Kafka: “If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it? … A book must be like an ice-axe to break the frozen sea within us.” (p.8) Like a dog at a bone, or like St John was invited to “eat it, eat this book” as described in Revelation, Peterson invites his readers to engage in ‘spiritual reading’ of the Bible; ‘reading that enters our souls as food enters the stomachs, spreads through our blood, and becomes holiness and love and wisdom’ (p.4). This discipline has classically been known as lectio divina.

One of the most challenging aspects of the book is his critique of self-referential authority where personal experience is elevated above the Bible as authority for living. New interest in everyday spirituality and spiritual formation is terrific, but if this is accompanied by disinterest in the Bible, we will lack balance and grounding: ‘An interest in souls divorced from an interest in Scripture leaves us without a text that shapes these souls. In he same way, an interest in Scripture divorced from an interest in souls leaves us without any material for the text to work on’ (p.17). He challenges what he labels as a new highly personalised and individualised Trinity that many refer to for authority – my Holy wants, my Holy needs and my Holy feelings.

Peterson elevates exegesis, not just for preaching preparation but for direction in following Jesus. Exegesis loves the speaker of the words enough to commit to get the meaning of the words right; ‘nothing more than a careful and loving reading of the text’ (p.55). It is not just reading the text but entering into its world and letting it read us. This can never be replaced by online sermon resources and televised inspiration from Christian superstars.

I grieve the poor preaching I hear about that is often a reflection of preachers who know how to access illustrations online or get ideas from American preachers from sermoncentral.com but rarely delve into Scriptural background or even read an occasional commentary! I marked a set of preaching class sermons recently. The students were required to list their sources. Websites and well-known names were common. Half the students drew on personal stories and experience, which I applaud – it’s much better than just second hand stories, and even second hand stories are easier to listen to than sermons that sound like didactic theology lectures. But there was not one commentary in any of the twenty bibliographies!

Peterson also elevates liturgy as part of our Bible reading. Liturgy is what pulls everything in our lives before God, and does so with a huge community of others throughout the world and throughout history. It draws us into a hermeneutics of adoration – seeing how splendid God is, and sends us out into a life of worship – living out our obedience in the light of God as revealed in Scripture.

The discipline of ‘eating this book’ and spiritual reading that expresses itself in obedient action has classically been known as lectio divina, comprising four elements:

-       lectio – read the text and hear what it is saying beyond the surface.

-       meditatio – meditate the text, not like fragmented ‘fortune cookie’ statements but ruminating on its images and stories as appreciative insiders.

-       oratio – pray the text and engage God, as with a quarrel and wrestling match not just a friendly greeting and embrace. To pray the text, we can learn especially from the prayer book of the Psalms and the teaching of Jesus’ life and prayer.

-       contemplatio – live the text in our ordinary lives, bridging so called sacred and secular divisions and developing the habit of living what we read and pray.

Practising these elements, in a cyclical and not just linear manner, helps us hear the text as spoken and revealed to us by God.

I was especially fascinated to read of Peterson’s reflection as a Bible translator of the popular Message version. I love how he describes the translator’s task to engage people’s hearts and souls and not just their minds: ‘This is the intended end of true translation, to bring about the kind of understanding that involves the whole person in tears and laughter, heart and soul, in what is written, what is said’ (p.125). Peterson translated the Bible as one of ‘God’s secretaries’ into a new accessible paraphrased Bible version. Yet translation is what he had already done for thirty-five years as a pastor – helping make the message neighbourhood-specific. The Word should never sound pompous or distant, and Peterson’s The Message was his attempt to show how the Bible can be spoken in the common speech we use with our friends and children and read imaginatively and prayerfully.

Here is a snapshot of Peterson’s passion for reading and living the Bible well:

‘The most important question is not “What does it say?” but “what does it mean and how can I live it?” I wanted to gather a company of people together who read personally, not impersonally, who learned to read the Bible in order to live their true selves, not just get information that they could use to raise their standard of living. I wanted to counter the consumer attitude that uses the Bible as a way to gather religious data by which we can be our own gods, and then replace it with an attitude primed to listen to and obey God, to take us out of our preoccupations with ourselves into the spacious freedom in which God is working the world’s salvation. I wanted to somehow recover that original tone, that prophetic and gospel “voice” that stabs us awake to a beauty and hope that connects us with our real lives.’ (pp.175-176)

Hearing the Bible as what God is saying and allowing it to transform our communities – is a task that captures my imagination.

Rev Dr Darren Cronshaw is the BUV’s Coordinator of Leadership Training and Pastor at Auburn Baptist Church. He hosts a monthly lunchtime Peterson reading group; to join in, email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it