November 24, 2009

Eugene Peterson on Bono, The Message, and the Importance of Good Fiction

[EDITOR'S NOTE: This is an interview done with Eugene Peterson by Dean Nelson in 2007. In one of the more rare public interviews, Eugene talks about the power of story-telling and the sweeping story of Scripture; the influence of good fiction on his approach to pastoral ministry; his journey in translating The Message; and his "connection" with Bono.]

Nov 24, 2009 9:23:10 AM | Bible, Bono, church, faith, Fiction, God, Religion, worship

The comments to this entry are closed.

NEXT POST
Theology Is An Aquarium... Last night I taught at our Sunday Night Campus on the subject of Justification. It was a great opportunity to clearly present the theological distinctions between justification, sanctification, and glorification, and to explain why the New Testament talks about salvation in past, present, and future verb tenses. The joy, the confidence that comes from knowing that our justification is a one-time declaration from God...and that it's all God's work through Christ...is amazing. To believe that while our sanctification is on-going and involves our cooperation, setbacks in our sanctification process will not undo our justification. Thanks be to God! But along the way, while immersing myself again in Erickson's "Christian Theology" and Grudem's "Systematic Theology", and re-reading Paul's words to the Romans, it occurred to me that our theological categories can be problematic. Paul is not as clear in delineating these three phases of our salvation. And to complicate things further, there are other New Testament-inspired theological words like regeneration, redemption, atonement, reconciliation, and more. Then, as a parishioner pointed out to me earlier in the week, there is Matthew 25, in which Jesus seems to indicate that there is a certain kind of behavior that demonstrates what we have done with Christ (The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats) that determines our reward or punishment. How do all these things fit together? And why is the Gospel's first and best theologian-- Paul-- not as systematic as we'd like? I suggest, as many others have, it's because Jesus wants more for us than information and understanding; He wants participation and firsthand, relationship-based knowledge. (Paul's favorite word for the kind of "knowledge" we are to have of Christ is the kind of intimate knowledge that you could only gain through experiencing Him.) In a way, then, theology is like an aquarium--...
PREVIOUS POST
The Herod in You [EDITOR'S NOTE: This was a talk I gave at New Life on 11/29, the first Sunday of Advent. Why did a man who read all the signs correctly and had wealth and power at his disposal miss the greatest event of history? Explore the story of Herod the Great and discover how we, like Herod, try to leverage a higher power to our own advantage...and in doing so miss God's arrival on the scenes of our lives. Last year, I wrote a blog on the same subject. You can read it HERE.] Absent at Advent from Glenn Packiam on Vimeo.

Glenn Packiam

Lead Pastor, new life DOWNTOWN, New Life Church, Colorado Springs, CO. Author and songwriter.

The Typepad Team

Search

My Other Accounts

Recent Comments