Eugene Peterson Spiritual Theology Series (5 vols.)

by Eugene H. Peterson

Publisher:

Eerdmans

, 2008–2013

Overview

This five-volume series on spiritual theology provides robust discussion focusing on the role of Scripture in the life of the individual and the church. Peterson offers greatly needed, down-to-earth counsel while exploring the conceptual and directional help we all need to live the Christian gospel well. By focusing on the life of Jesus and the implications of the gospel, this collection provides a clear, practical statement of what it means to actually live out the Christian life.

Key Features

• Offers a clear, practical statement of what it means to actually live out the Christian life
• Explores how Jesus used language, particularly in his parables and prayers
• Challenges the ways of the contemporary American church

Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology

• Author: Eugene Peterson
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Publication Date: 2008
• Pages: 380

Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places reunites spirituality and theology in a cultural context where these two vital facets of Christian faith have been rent asunder. Lamenting the vacuous, often pagan nature of contemporary American spirituality, Eugene Peterson here firmly grounds spirituality once more in Trinitarian theology and offers a clear, practical statement of what it means to actually live out the Christian life.

Writing in the conversational style that he is well known for, Peterson boldly sweeps out the misunderstandings that clutter conversations on spiritual theology and refurnishes the subject only with what is essential. As Peterson shows, spiritual theology, in order to be at once biblical and meaningful, must remain sensitive to ordinary life, present the Christian gospel, follow the narrative of Scripture, and be rooted in the “fear of the Lord”—in short, spiritual theology must be about God and not about us.

The foundational book in a five-volume series on spiritual theology emerging from Peterson’s pen, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places provides the conceptual and directional help we all need to live the Christian gospel well and maturely in the conditions that prevail in the church and world today.

A tour de force in spiritual theology, combining incisive cultural analysis and biblical exposition with a sweeping and engaging vision of the Christian life.

—Christianity Today

Eat This Book

• Author: Eugene Peterson
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Publication Date: 2009
• Pages: 200

Eugene Peterson is convinced that the way we read the Bible is as important as that we read it. Do we read the Bible for information about God and salvation, for principles and “truths” that we can use to live better? Or do we read it in order to listen to God and respond in prayer and obedience?

The second part of Peterson’s momentous five-volume work on spiritual theology, Eat This Book challenges us to read the Scriptures on their own terms, as God’s revelation, and to live them as we read them. With warmth and wisdom Peterson offers greatly needed, down-to-earth counsel on spiritual reading. In these pages he draws readers into a fascinating conversation on the nature of language, the ancient practice of lectio divina, and the role of Scripture translations; included here is the “inside story” behind Peterson’s own popular Bible translation, The Message.

Countering the widespread practice of using the Bible for self-serving purposes, Peterson here serves readers a nourishing entree into the formative, life-changing art of spiritual reading.

Deep, stirring, luminous, even profound—if you are going to read one book about reading Scripture, it should be this one.

—Lauren F. Winner

Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ

• Author: Eugene Peterson
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Publication Date: 2013
• Pages: 302

Winner of Christianity Today Book Award for best book in spirituality.

In Practice Resurrection Eugene Peterson brings the voice of Scripture—especially Paul’s letter to the Ephesians—and the voice of the contemporary Christian congregation together to unpack the crucial truth of what it means to fully grow up to the “stature of Christ.”

Though bringing people to new birth in Christ through evangelism is essential, he says, isn’t growth in Christ equally essential? Yet the American church by and large does not treat Christian maturity and character formation with much urgency. We are generally uneasy with the quiet, obscure conditions in which growth takes place, and building maturity in Christ too often gets relegated to footnote status in the text of our lives.

Peterson’s robust discussion will move readers to restore transformed Christian character to the center of their lives.

It is filled with many gems. . . . Practice Resurrection has plenty of depths to be mined for the pastor and layperson alike. . . . Within its pages there is much that is well worth reading and digesting.

—Themelios

Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers

• Author: Eugene Peterson
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Publication Date: 2012
• Pages: 297

Just as God used words both to create the world and to give us commandments, we too use words for many different purposes. In fact, we use the same language to talk to each other and to talk to God. Can our everyday speech, then, be just as important as the words and prayers we hear from the pulpit? Eugene Peterson unequivocally says “Yes!”

Peterson’s Tell It Slant explores how Jesus used language, particularly in his parables and prayers. His was not a direct language of information or instruction but an indirect, oblique language requiring a participating imagination—“slant” language. Tell It Slant beautifully points to Jesus’ engaging, relational way of speaking as a model for us today.

Peterson, a master with language himself, looks at Jesus’ use of language. . . . Preachers especially will find themselves returning to Peterson’s imaginative expositions of Jesus’ words and encounters.

—Christian Century

The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways That Jesus Is the Way

• Author: Eugene Peterson
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Publication Date: 2011
• Pages: 304

A way of sacrifice. A way of failure. A way on the margins. A way of holiness. All of these ways prepared the “way of the Lord" that became incarnate and complete in Jesus. But somewhere along the line, have we lost the way? In The Jesus Way Eugene Peterson continues his stimulating conversation in spiritual theology, considering all the ways that Jesus is the Way compared to the distorted ways the American church today has chosen to follow.

Arguing that the way Jesus leads and the way we follow are symbiotic, Peterson begins with a study of how the ways of those who came before Christ—Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, Isaiah of Jerusalem, and Isaiah of the Exile—revealed and prepared the “way of the Lord" that became complete in Jesus. He then challenges the ways of the contemporary American church, showing in stark relief how what we have chosen to focus on—consumerism, celebrity, charisma, and so forth—obliterates what is unique in the Jesus way.

Profound scholarship and spiritual wisdom. . . Soak yourself in The Jesus Way.

—Dallas Willard