by Eugene Peterson. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005. ISBN 0-8028-2875-2, 368 pp., $ 25.
Eugene Peterson’s writings are well known to many if not most Outlook readers. No doubt there are dog-eared copies of Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work, Under the Unpredictable Plant, and now The Message on many a Presbyterian pastor’s bookshelf. I am confident that Peterson’s latest book, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology, will also find its place among these rich resources. Just make sure to leave room: Christ Plays is the foundational book in a planned five-volume series on spiritual theology. This means we have much to look forward to from this vigorous writer who is both pastor and professor.
One might begin by asking just what spiritual theology is. According to Peterson, the words belong together. “Theology” is the attention we give to God, to knowing God as revealed in the Scriptures and in Jesus Christ. “Spiritual” is the insistence that everything that God reveals is capable of being lived by ordinary people. “Spiritual” keeps theology from degenerating into thinking and talking about God from a distance. “Theology” keeps spiritual from being just about our own thoughts and feelings about God. These two words should be yoked if our study of God is to have anything to do with how we live and if the way we live is to have anything to do with the God who is revealed in Jesus Christ. For Peterson, spiritual theology is the attention we give to the details of living life in the way of Christ.
And living — living because of God, living in and with God, living to the glory of God — is what this book is all about. Peterson writes: “The end of all Christian belief and obedience, witness and teaching, marriage and family, leisure and work life, preaching and pastoral work is the living of everything we know about God.” Spiritual theology is the attention we give to the details of Christ’s way. It is, above all else, “lived theology.”
Peterson takes the book’s title and underlying metaphor from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” which ends with these words:
For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.1
Peterson is convinced that Christ, the God-revealing Christ, is always “playing” in all of life. With spontaneity and exuberance and freedom, Christ plays in creation, Christ plays in history, and Christ plays in the continuing community of the Spirit. And it is with keen insight and even “playfulness” that Peterson fills these pages with reflections on Christ’s playfulness and our Lord’s desire for you and me and everything around us to get in on it. He is passionate in his hope that we will get in on Christ’s playfulness through the total surrendering of our lives as worship before God.
Peterson first seeks to clear the playing field of muddled contemporary spirituality so that the conversation can begin on common ground. While affirming that the heightened “spiritual hunger” we hear so much about these days is a positive thing, he offers insightful analysis of the many (often fruitless) ways people seek to feed that hunger. He then sets out to show a more fruitful way; one that is biblically, theologically and pastorally grounded. This takes him, as Peterson says, in the “country of the Trinity.” “Trinity maps the country in which we know and receive and obey God.” Early on, the church realized that its lived theology gets its shape and form from God the Father and gift of creation, God the Son and the costly work of redemption in history, and God the Holy Spirit and the continuing presence of Christ in the community of his followers.
Christ Plays is not systematic theology, but it is deeply, thoroughly theological. It is not a biblical commentary, but its exegesis of key biblical passages reflects the fact that this pastor-scholar has recently translated the entire biblical witness for today’s reader. It is not a daily devotional aid, but I wouldn’t be surprised if paragraphs from this book find their way into one. And for the many preachers among us, Christ Plays is not a collection of Peterson’s sermons, but I found myself saying again and again, “This will preach!”
In Christ Plays, Peterson has given the church a great gift. For in this book we find a spirituality that is deeply rooted in Scripture, Trinitarian theology, and real life. I, for one, am very grateful for this gift.
Whit Malone is pastor of the Springdale Church in Louisville, Ky.
