Tuesday, September 1, 2009

The Role of Experience in Interpretation

The emphasis on Baalism was on psychological relatedness and subjective experience…The transcendence of the deity was overcome in the ecstasy of feeling…Baalism is worship reduced to the spiritual stature of the worshiper. Its canons are that it should be interesting, relevant, and exciting…Yahwism established a form of worship which was centered in the proclamation of the word of the covenant God. The appeal was made to the will. Man’s rational intelligence was roused to attention as he was called upon to respond as a person to the will of God. In Yahwism something was said—words which called men to serve, love, obey, act responsibly, decide…The distinction between the worship of Baal and the worship of Yahweh is a distinction between approaching the will of the covenant God which could be understood and known and obeyed, and the blind life-force in nature which could only be felt, absorbed, and imitated.

Eugene Peterson, “Baalism and Yahwism Updated,” Theology for Today (July 1972), 139-141.

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