Eugene Peterson

Life

Peterson was born on November 6, 1932, in Stanwood, Washington, and grew up in Kalispell, Montana. He studied philosophy at Seattle Pacific University, went on to New York Theological Seminary, and then earned a master's degree in Semitic languages (Hebrew and other ancient languages of Western Asia) from Johns Hopkins University. He was a minister of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), or PC(USA), an American Presbyterian denomination, and also taught as an assistant professor at New York Theological Seminary. In 1958 he married Janice Stubbs, with whom he had three children.

In 1962 he planted Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, Maryland. He served as its senior pastor for the next twenty-nine years, retiring in 1991. He then taught at Regent College in Vancouver, Canada, as Professor of Spiritual Theology (James M. Houston Professor) from 1993 to 1998 and later became professor emeritus. After publishing his final book, As Kingfishers Catch Fire, in 2017, he withdrew from public life. He died on October 22, 2018, in Lakeside, Montana, at the age of eighty-five. His family reported that he died on a Monday, the day he had always kept as his day of rest during his years in pastoral ministry.

Ministry and Achievements

His best-known work is The Message, a rendering of the Bible in contemporary everyday English. Rather than a word-for-word translation, it is a paraphrase that recasts the meaning of the original text in the idiom of modern readers. It was published in installments between 1993 and 2002 and is reported to have sold more than sixteen million copies worldwide.

In addition to The Message, he wrote more than thirty books, many of them on biblical spirituality and pastoral theology, including A Long Obedience in the Same Direction and his memoir, The Pastor. His writing, which explored faith less through theological theory than through the daily life of a pastor serving a single congregation, deeply influenced ministers. For this reason he became known in American church circles as a "pastor to pastors."

Influence on the Korean Church

The Korean edition of The Message was published by Bokinneun Saram. It is available in several forms, including a complete translation of all sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, a bilingual English–Korean edition with the English original printed alongside the Korean text, and The Message Devotional Bible, which adds the author's meditations and sermon manuscripts. The publisher presents the book as "the Bible beside the Bible," meaning that it is intended not to replace the Bible translations used in churches, such as the New Korean Revised Version or the New Korean Standard Version, but to be kept alongside them and read together with them.

Several of his other devotional books have also been translated into Korean, including A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, Leap Over a Wall (on the spirituality of David), As Kingfishers Catch Fire, and the "Eugene Peterson Pastoral Mentoring Series." News of his death in 2018 was also reported in the Korean Christian press.

Assessment

The Message is credited with making the Bible more accessible to many people. Because it is a paraphrase, however, every sentence reflects the translator's interpretation. In this respect it differs in character from translations that render the original text more closely.

In a July 2017 interview with the American outlet Religion News Service (RNS), he indicated that he would officiate at the wedding of a same-sex couple of sincere faith if asked, which sparked controversy over homosexuality. As criticism mounted, he retracted the remark and stated that he affirms the biblical view of marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman. At the same time, he added that there had always been gay and lesbian people in the churches and communities he served, and that as a pastor it had been his work to visit them, care for them, and pray with them.