A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original review appears below. J.H. (Hans) Kouwenberg is editor of Channels.
Answering God. Eugene H. Peterson. New York: Harper and Row, 1989, 151 pp.
This is a book that took me longer to read than its 150 pages initially suggested. I wanted to take time to savour both the thought and the language Peterson chose to describe and display “the Psalms as Tools for Prayer” (subtitle of the book). And I think I was rewarded. I “think” because I’m not sure I’ve fathomed as much as I might have or may later. The chapter headings are deceptively simple: text, way, language, story, rhythm, metaphor, liturgy, enemies, memory and end. But they lead on into deeper wells than one might first imagine. But that is, after all, Peterson’s purpose as he states it: “redigging the wells the Philistines filled” (p. 6). I feel this book is like Peterson’s other one I read last February: Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination (1988). I am to have rekindled in me an intelligent and imaginative reading of the Word of God. And in this case it is of the Psalms. And I feel the process has begun.
I enjoy Peterson’s use of Scriptural and epigraph quotes to lead me into contemplation of what he will say to me in each chapter. It is indicative of his allusive, analogical method.
I don’t think this is a “how to pray the Psalms” book; that would be a contradiction of Peterson’s purposes. It is one man’s journey through the Psalms with a deliberate attempt to see what might resonate and echo, “deep unto deep,” soul unto soul, person unto God. On the surface Peterson appears to be dealing with linguistic and literary concerns: note the chapter headings. But he goes beyond this to the “soil and weather” (p. 13) of the Psalms. And I live in certain “soil and weather” too, don’t I? 1 find that Peterson does not just give me information about the Psalms and the Psalter — although he does give me some of that; he is aware of their provenance and purpose. Rather, Peterson is trying to help me see that they are, when all is said and done, prayers of the people of God. They are prayers that can stimulate and stir my prayers. For me this isn’t a logical book — although it has some of that — it is a stimulating book. It is an unusual book looking at the Psalms now from this point of view, and now from that.
What the book did (and does when I look at parts of it again) is to slow me down to “stop and look and listen” at what the words and pictures in the Psalms or in a particular psalm might actually be saying. Peterson’s reflections on the “transplanted tree” of Psalm 1, for example, did/does that (pp. 26-28). And yet when I read a psalm by myself this lingering and insight doesn’t always or immediately come to me. Even I, brought up on the study of English language and literature, need help to recover imaginative reading and reflection! I need to avoid “speed reading” and recover imaginative reading. “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Peterson is helping me. True, on one occasion I felt Peterson overstated his point. Although it is true that “God’s word is surging and rich. Hundreds of years of words are in it — told in stories, preached in sermons, preserved in genealogies, interpreted in histories,” I don’t think that Peterson is correct when he states that “Every syllable is a gem” (pp. 31-32)! But this is a quibble. I agree with Peterson that “Somehow or other, all those quick, and personal words must be heard and answered. Not a nuance must be lost” (p. 32).
I found Peterson’s comments on recovering the primal, childlike language of personal intimacy and relationship (“Language I”) from among later learned ascendant languages of information (“Language II”) and of motivation (“Language III”) helpful. Particularly as he declared that “Language I is the language of the Psalms and the language of prayer” (p. 39). It reminded me of H.H. Farmer’s presentations on the recovery of the original, Scriptural “I- Thou” dimensions in preaching (The Servant of the Word). Helpful, too, was Peterson’s statement that “Prayer is language used to respond to the most that has been said to us, with the potential for saying all that is in us. Prayer is the development of speech into maturity… Prayer is not a narrow use of language for special occasions, but language catholic, embracing the totality of everything and everyone everywhere. This conversation is both bold and devout — the utterly inferior responding to the utterly superior. In this exchange we become persons” (p. 54). So too, I feel, spirituality is not the language of abstract piety but of earthy particularity as it impinges on the human-divine relationship. I liked the section on “Rhythm,” dealing with the rhythm of prayer, of sleeping and waking (pp. 60-67), including the excellent prose-poem on sleep in the footnotes (pp. 146-147). As an evening person I appreciate that Jewish prayer begins in the evening! Peterson helped me to understand and give a reason for why I prefer meditative prayer that focuses on something (“kataphatic” prayer) as opposed to (“anaphatic”) prayer that focuses on nothing (pp. 107-117). The last chapter on “Memory” deserves rereading, especially as an added, new aspect to so much contemporary “right and “left” brain talk and emphasis (pp. 107-117). The last chapter on “End” set up a number of reverberations in me: C.S. Lewis’ story about The Last Battle and the ending of that book, the eschatological emphasis or lack of it in my preaching, the end of my life, the end of the world, the end of Peterson’s book…! Just reviewing my reading has been a blessing!