'We Lost a Holy Hero, a Prophet': 6 Christian Pastors, Authors React to Eugene Peterson's Death
5. Jonathan Martin
Christian pastor and author Jonathan Martin, behind the "Son of a Preacher Man" podcast, admitted that he didn't really know Peterson personally.
"Yet the news of his passing hits me hard today, in the way that would seem to be only reserved for losing a grandparent. I'm one of the many who have been discipled by Peterson from afar. I've loved all of his books & sermons," Martin posted on Twitter.
"What little I know about being a pastor(& it is little), I learned from him. What he did w/The Message was not one of many attempts to make Scripture more accessible by putting it in contemporary vernacular — rather, it's a work of towering, singular, monumental genius," he added.
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"Anybody who has ever studied a text in depth from it knows that, page after page and turn after turn, he didn't just make Scripture more readable — he got at things, actually in the text, that no other English translation got right," he continued.
Martin suggested that the world may never witness another figure with such scholarly precision, a poet's soul, and command of different languages.
"Yet ultimately what seemed to set Peterson apart was not his brilliance, but this other quality...you snap your fingers & try to remember; there's surely a word for it but not one you use often — what is that thing, exactly? Oh, yes...HOLINESS," he wrote.
"He was a holy man, very much of the earth, but not from around here. That otherworldly tenderness seemed to infuse everything he ever said or wrote. But in his profound gentleness — there was a wildness, too."
"I think that's why I always loved his work on the prophets more than anything else in The Message — it was clear that he didn't just translate their words, but was the sort of man who went to the far places that prophets went to, in order to get the word."
Martin added that the world needs "men and women with prophetic tenderness, that softness of spirit, who also have that fierceness, that fire in their eyes."
"Today, there are only tears in my own. We lost a prophet," he concluded.
