Eugene Peterson and The Message, Revisited

The Message:  Remix 2017

          Now that Eugene Peterson has advocated gay marriage – not just as a legal right, but as something that the body of Christ ought to bless – he should be regarded as one who has fallen away from the faith handed down to the saints.  I believe that this is how each and every one of Christ’s commissioned apostles would respond, prayerfully hoping and praying for him to repent.  [Update - July 13, 4:15 pm:  Peterson has retracted his earlier endorsement of gay marriage as a church rite.  Prayers answered, and quickly!]  

            With that in mind, I implore my fellow preachers, and anyone who has been treating Peterson’s “translation of tone,” The Message, as if it is a Bible translation, to stop using The Message in any ministry-context that would give people the impression that it is a Bible.  In February of 2015, I demonstrated that The Message is too inaccurate to qualify as a Bible translation.  Using Matthew 10 as a sample-passage, I showed that it is badly contaminated with additions, deletions, and alterations of various kinds which render it useless as a representation of the message conveyed by the original text of the Bible. 

            Why should Peterson’s affirmation that he would officiate at a same-sex marriage if he were asked to do so mean that Christians should not use The Message?  Perhaps for the same reason that when the author of How To Safely Drive a Car drives his car headlong into a wall at 100 miles an hour, it raises doubts about the wisdom of using his book to teach students how to drive.  Common sense ought to suggest that when someone openly defies the teachings of Scripture, his presentation of the meaning of Scripture might not be trustworthy. 

            But let’s not commit the genetic fallacy, right?  [Update, July 13, 4:15 pm:  whatever position Peterson holds - and earlier today, he affirmed that he subscribes to a Biblical view of marriage, one man to one woman - the flaws in The Message are still there.]  A close look at the contents of The Message reveals plenty of reasons to avoid using it.  Let’s examine specifically part of The Message that seems to have been adulterated because of the view which Peterson just now affirmed:  First Corinthians 6.

            For the first several verses of this chapter, Peterson’s paraphrase conveys the gist of the meaning of the original text; it is embellished but not obscured – until verse 6.  Where the text should mention that one brother take another brother to court (ἀδελφὸς μετὰ ἀδελφου), Peterson’s rendering loses the gender, stating only that “you are taking each other to court.”  But this is minor compared to what follows:  Peterson inserted a full sentence into end of verse 6:  “How can they render justice if they don’t believe in the God of justice?” 

            In First Corinthians 6:6, the Greek text is ἀλλα ἀδελφὸς μετὰ ἀδελφου κρίνεται, καί τουτο ἐπὶ ἀπίστων – but brother takes brother to judgment, and that before unbelievers.  This is adequately represented in The Message by the first part of verse 6:  “And here you are taking each other to court before people who don’t even believe in God!”  The rest of verse 6 in The Message – “How can they render justice if they don’t believe in the God of justice?” – has no foundation in the Greek text.  It comes from Eugene Peterson, not from Paul. 

            Perhaps one could overlook that in a “translation of tone,” regarding the insertion as completely unauthorized but rather benign.  Let’s move along to verses 9-10.  First, here are these two verses from the English Standard Version:

            “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?  Do not be deceived:  neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”

Here is how the Christian Standard Bible renders the passage:

            “Don’t you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God’s kingdom?  Do not be deceived:  No sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, or males who have sex with males, no thieves, greedy people, drunkards, verbally abusive people, or swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” 

And here’s verses 9-10 as they appear in the New International Version (2011 revision):  

            “Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God?  Do not be deceived:  Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”

You may notice that all three of these versions have something in common between the reference to adulterers and the reference to thieves, where the Greek text reads οὕτε ἀρσενοκοιται:
            ESV:  nor men who practice homosexuality

            CSB:  or males who have sex with males

            NIV:  nor men who have sex with men.

Yet in The Message this is what we find: 

            “Don’t you realize that this is not the way to live?  Unjust people who don’t care about God will not be joining in his kingdom.  Those who use and abuse each other, use and abuse sex, use and abuse the earth and everything in it, don’t qualify as citizens in God’s kingdom.”

            A more blatant case of watering down the meaning of Scripture would be hard to find.  Peterson butchered the text of First Corinthians 6:9-10 by removing Paul’s specific references to idolaters, adulterers, men who practice homosexuality, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, slanderers, and swindlers, with generalizations – and, as if this was not enough, he added something brand new – “use and abuse the earth and everything in it” (which has no foundation in the Greek text).  Peterson thus erased Paul’s warning against committing homosexual acts (and other acts), and put words in Paul’s mouth as if Paul wrote something here against littering and pollution.  Both of these things are irresponsible – and some of those who have approved or recommended such butchery, committed under the cover of paraphrase, were also irresponsible.  (Looking at you, Darrell Bock of Dallas Theological Seminary.  You too, Michael Card and Max Lucado.) 

            Via this swindle of words, Peterson not only obscured the inspired apostle’s condemnation of fornication, adultery, sodomy, thievery, and so forth, but he also obscured the next verse’s statement that salvation is freely offered for those who repent of those acts.  A real Bible would inform its readers in First Corinthians 6:11 that among the Christians at Corinth, there were some individuals who had committed the specific acts that Paul warns against in verses 9-10 – and that they had been forgiven of those sins, as the New American Standard Bible puts it:  “Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” 

 

NavPress, something is wrong
with your product.

          The original text of First Corinthians 6:9-11 makes it clear that sodomy is classified as a sin, along with adultery and thievery; it also clearly states that those sins can be forgiven and that the guilty person who repents of those sins can be restored and become a child of God.  The Message does neither of those things in First Corinthians 6:9-11, because it is a counterfeit, not a real Bible.  It shouldn’t be called a Bible, and NavPress should never have marketed it as a Bible. 

            When The Message began to be deceitfully marketed as if it is the Word of God, I should have protested more vocally than we did.  I can’t go back in time and state my protests more forcefully.  I wish I could.  But I can say this:  I have no use for The Message as a paraphrase, and it is not very good as a commentary, either.  There is no good reason to preach or teach from The Message as if it is a Bible.  I advise everyone who has access to the KJV or NKJV or WEB or NIV or ESV or CSB or NASB to do to their copy of The Message what Eugene Peterson did to the meaning of the original text of First Corinthians 6:9-11:  tear it up and throw it away. 

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Quotations from The Message are . . . oops; the copyright page is torn apart.  Let's see here . . . . 

The Message is Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson.

Quotations from the ESV have been taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

Quotations from the NIV have been taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.®  Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked CSB have been taken from the Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers.  Used by permission.  Christian Standard Bible® and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.