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Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading
Books: Text Books: Mathematics: Item 2
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Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Readingby Eugene H. Peterson
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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful: Live this book, February 22, 2006 Reviewer:Peter Santucci (Lebanon, OR United States) - Too often we USE the Bible, but Eugene wants us to enter into and LIVE it. He presents lection divina (sacred reading) as the best way to do this. Lectio divina is a four-part way of reading Scripture: Lectio. Read. God is speaking, so I listen intently to what he says. Meditatio. Engage. God is speaking to me, so I listen personally. Oratio. Pray. God is speaking to me, so I listen personally and reply personally in prayer. Contemplatio. Live. God is speaking to me, so I listen personally and reply in prayerful living. The final section of the book is an illuminating introduction to Bible translation and ultimately with The Message (his translation) itself. He argues that literalism in translation encourages USING the Bible as a toll, in which case we're in charge, not God. But putting the Bible in the same language as our day-to-day lives encourages LIVING the Bible, in which case God's in charge, not us. The publisher is also releasing a study guide for small groups that I have written with Eugene. Once you read the book on your own, I think you'll understand why it is so important to study (and live!) together as a church. Don't just use the Bible. Eat it! Let it get inside of you and change you. Live it.
From Publishers Weekly
Peterson is a retired pastor and popular author best known for The Message, a paraphrasing of the bible into modern idiom. In this slender book, he invites Christian readers to encounter the bible anew. Drawing on language in Ezekiel and Revelation, Peterson says that we ought not read the bible the same way we read a cookbook, a textbook, or even a great novel. Rather, Christians are to absorb, imbibe, feed on and digest Scripture. Peterson recommends a type of Bible-based prayer called lectio divina, in which the person praying meditates on a short passage of Scripture and listens for God to speak through the text. Peterson's exposition of lectio divina is one of the fullest to appear in recent years. Throughout, he cautions that lectio is not a systematic way of reading, but a "developed habit of living the text in Jesus' name." The last chapter, in which Peterson ruminates on his own experience translating the Bible, will be fascinating to Peterson's devotees, but is more myopic than the rest of the book. However, this is a worthy sequel to Peterson's 2004 hit Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places.
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Book Description
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 with a nourishing entrée into the formative, life-changing art of spiritual reading.
study guide available.
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