Eugene H. Peterson

American minister

Date of Birth	:	06 Nov, 1932
Date of Death	:	22 Oct, 2018
Place of Birth	:	Stanwood, Washington, United States
Profession	:	American Minister
Nationality	:	American

Eugene Hoiland Peterson was an American Presbyterian minister, scholar, theologian, author, and poet. He has written more than 30 books, including the Gold Medallion Book Award-winning The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language (NavPress Publishing Group, 2002),translating the Bible into modern American English using an idiomatic paraphrasing commentary and a dynamic simile. Translation method

Background

Peterson was born on November 6, 1932 in East Stanwood, Washington and raised in Kalispell, Montana. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy from Seattle Pacific University, his Bachelor of Sacred Theology degree from New York Theological Seminary, and his Master's degree in Semitic languages from Johns Hopkins University. He also holds several honorary doctorate degrees.

In 1958, Peterson married Jan Stubbs. They had three children.

Working life

In 1962, Peterson was the founding pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) in Bel Air, Maryland, where he served for 29 years before retiring in 1991. He emphasized that the message of Jesus was communal rather than individual in nature. He was the James M. Houston Professor of Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia from 1992 to 1998.

The message

Peterson is perhaps best known for The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language. The stated goal of The Message was to make the original meaning more understandable and accessible to the modern reader. Peterson says:

When Paul of Tarsus wrote a letter, the people who received it immediately understood it, when the prophet Isaiah preached a sermon, I can't imagine that people went to the library to find it. That was the basic premise under which I worked. I began with the New Testament in Greek - a rough and jagged language, not grammatically clear. I just typed up a page of what I thought it would sound like to the Galatians.

Peterson worked on The Message throughout the 1990s, translating the original Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic texts and paraphrasing them into contemporary American English slang. The translation was published in 2002 and by 2018 had sold over 15 million copies.

The same-sex marriage debate

In 2017, a Religion News Service interviewer asked Peterson about same-sex marriage, which is sanctioned by his denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA). Peterson has spoken positively about homosexuals and gay Christians over the past twenty years, and he has described homosexuality as "neither a right thing nor a wrong thing". Asked if he would be willing to perform a same-sex wedding ceremony, he replied, "Yes." LifeWay Christian Books has announced plans to stop selling Peterson's work. The next day, however, Peterson released a statement affirming "a biblical view of marriage: one man to one woman" and retracted his affirmative answer to same-sex marriage. "I am sorry for the confusion and bombast that this interview has encouraged. It was not my intention to participate in such abstract, speculative comments and the unlit heat that generates conversation."

Peterson died the following year. In his 2021 authorized biography, A Burning in My Bones, Winn Collier reported that Peterson's retraction statement was actually written by Peterson's editor and publisher and published after Peterson reviewed it. Peterson's son, Eric, expressed doubt that the statement accurately reflected his father's beliefs.

Death

Peterson suffered from dementia in his later years. He was hospitalized on October 8, 2018, after his health took a sudden and dramatic turn. was caused by an infection," his son Eric Peterson said in an email. Peterson retired from public life in 2017 after the publication of his final book, As Kingfishers Catch Fire. This was around the same time that the gay controversy arose around him. Collier, Peterson's biographer, shared the family's poignant memories from the days after Peterson's death: "In his last days, it was clear that he was navigating the thin and sacred space between earth and heaven. We heard him talking to people. We can only guess. May he be welcoming him to Paradise." The family also commented that "here may have been a time or two when he accessed his Pentecostal roots and spoke in tongues at the same time." Peterson was "happy and cheerful" in his final days.

Peterson died at the age of 85 at his home in Lakeside, Montana, on October 22, 2018, a week after entering hospice care for complications related to congestive heart failure.