Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles

 

Eugene H. Peterson, Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity (Eerdmans, 1987)

 

I’ve long been aware of Eugene Peterson’s book for pastors, but I’ve only read it in the last few days. Sometimes the American evangelical scene of 1987 seemed rather distant from my context. And you may not find everything in this book totally convincing. But I think there’s lots worth reflecting on here.

 

Peterson is surely right to highlight his three “angles” of prayer, scripture and spiritual direction as core to the pastoral calling, and easily neglected for the sake of managing the church, catering to people’s expectations or chasing the latest fad. In particular, the pastor must resist “religious shopkeeping” (p2). As Flannery O’Connor once put it, there is a temptation to become one part minister and three part masseuse (p11, citing The Habit of Being, p81). The pastor must guard against a thinning out whereby his ministry becomes mostly impersonation (p15) and performance. Much that is most essential to ministry is unseen and it may be easy enough to put on a decent show much of the time whilst neglecting what really matters.

 

The metaphor of working these three angles (of prayer, Bible and pastoral conversation) is that these three things will give the ministerial life its shape. They are respectively acts of attention to the soul, God’s revelation and another person. The visible lines of preaching, teaching and administration may be of different lengths and proportions but they flow from the angles of prayer, Scripture and spiritual direction. The hard, unglamourous work of faithfulness in ministry requires a life-long persistence to the correct technology or means: “trained attentiveness to God in the soul, in Israel and the church, and in the neighbour” (p17).

 

A neglected way of thinking of the pastoral vocation is as preparing people for a good death. An awareness of mortality “teaches wisdom: how to live as a human, not as a god” (p31). We must learn to number our days (Psalm 90:12). As Luther cried out, “Lord! That we all might be such skilled arithmeticians!” (p31, citing Luther, Works, 13:128).

 

Peterson focuses on prayer as “answering speech” in response to God’s word (p47). In particular he draws on the Psalms, which Calvin called an “anatomy of all the parts of the soul.” (p56f, citing Calvin, Commentary on Psalms). Ambrose said the Psalms are “a sort of gymnasium for the use of all souls, a sort of stadium of virtue, where different sorts of exercise are set out before him, from which he can choose the best suited to train him to win his crown.” (p58, citing Ambrose, Discourses on the Psalms).

 

Peterson also stresses the importance of sabbath for pastors for praying and playing.

 

He advocates “contemplative exegesis” particularly urging the hearing rather than the reading of the Word, remembering its original spoken nature, its orality, and its character as personal address rather than merely something to be analysed. The story of Dr Cuticle’s surgery from Melville’s White Jacket serves as a warning to the exegete and preacher: Cuticle so delighted in the operation and in commenting on it that he failed to notice his patient had died (p107).