Di5201b - Hermeneutics of Psalms (Mark Elliott)
As We Have Heard, So We Have Seen
Pulling Political Theology from the Psalms via Augustine, Thomas, & Calvin
Probably because of their place in the liturgy and contemporary reception of them as worship songs, the Psalms are not thought of as “theology” proper. The experiential value too often out weighs the intellectual work to which they can call us. Extensive interpretations of other books of the Bible exist, but modern interpreters too often gloss over the theological nuance a great number of Psalms contain because of their poetic or musical presentation. This paper will show that exegeting diverse literary forms were not neglected in earlier ecclesial eras. While this paper cannot possibly go into the detail this task calls for, it is a brief foray into the kind of work the Church could stand to resurrect.
Christian political theology is multivocal, with some theologians supportive of worldly authorities and others quite critical. Over the next several pages, I will briefly explore the political theology of three major Psalms as they relate to kings and their worldly domain. It is my hope to think through a Psalmic political theology derived particularly from the 2nd, 23rd, & 48th Psalms. The connecting points, for the purpose of this brief survey, will be the antagonistic depiction of earthly rulers, the particularly spatial nature of Israel’s capital city temple, and the phenomenon of enemies (and what to do with them). Following my own very cursory interpretation of the Psalms in question, I will explore the contributions of three interpreters over very different ages in the Church. I will work chronologically from the patristic era through the early Protestant reformation, anchoring my investigation on the contributions of Augustine, Thomas, and Calvin.
Psalm 2
A psalm written in order to make sense of why the rulers of the world despise God, beginning with an overview of the situation she sees, of political authorities that perceive God as imprisonment. Their unrequited desires are not specified, but a contemporary reader could interpret such authorities as liberal democratic societies wishing to do away with the moral imperatives of inspired Scripture and the delayed or denied self-gratification it prescribes. The psalmist goes on to depict one God, among many earthly rulers, who chuckles at futile human attempts to detach themselves from divine sovereignty. This singular God tells them of a single King set upon the holy hill of Zion, where it can be assumed he rules from Israel’s Temple. The first person “I” of verse 7 can mean either the psalmist or this King just spoken of. Either way, we learn of the Lord’s decree, which reveals this King at Zion as God’s own son, who is invited to ask for anything, even for these rulers to be made a possession to be inherited from the parent/God. The insubordinate earthly kings will be smashed into tiny pieces by the son’s iron scepter. After unveiling their fate, the psalmist's attention returns to the earthly kings, advising them to be realistic, to recognize the finitude and derivative nature of their worldly reign, lest the things they hold dear be destroyed.
Psalm 23
The second psalm I’ve selected is attributed not just to any King, but the central monarchic figure in Israel’s history, David. It will help us get a more precise picture of human reign and political theology since it is read as originating from the heart of the king himself. With so much power given to earthly authorities, David is depicted elsewhere as being after God’s own heart, of realizing more than most that he is corruptible, but never letting that get in the way of his pursuit. He paints a very different picture than the author of the second psalm; far from fleeing God, David runs toward the Lord, starting off by reminding his readers (and himself) that God is in charge, the guide and shepherd. The divide between royalty and real lives is permeable, and the picture painted by the Psalmist comforts princes as much as it does paupers, of God caring deeply and providing for human needs. Far from a glib pick-me-up, however, David keeps close at hand the reality of evil, reminding us that human experience is caught up in the dangers of death and the fear of evil. Despite this, he describes, God sustains human life, feeding enemies beside one another and giving to each more than they need. It concludes with a declaration that certainly this is what God’s house looks like, and it is everlasting.
Psalm 48
The final Psalm is the only one that prescribes singing, suggesting it was composed with communal liturgical expression in mind. The place from which God reigns is revisited, Mount Zion in the north, the city of God is worthy of being admired. The attention given to the city conveys its beauty and centrality to God’s ongoing presence among the people, a sure defense against the conspiring rulers of the world, who are drawn to its citadels. However, as soon as they hear and see it, they flee in such terror that the anonymous Psalmist compares it paradoxically as simultaneously destructive (shattering ships) and creative (like a woman in labor). The point conveyed is the fear and pain that accompanies creation and destruction. Verse 8 acts as a hinge, concluding the song’s descriptive elements, helpful as it has been for hearing and seeing the city and its fear-filled neighbors, and insisting upon a contemplative pause. The second half of the Psalm combines seemingly distinct categories of community, Temple, and God to portray the overlap between heavens and earth. The word for ‘towns’ in v.11 can also mean ‘daughters, just as God’s “house” in the 23rd Psalm also means “family.” The Temple, the House of the Lord, is paralleled with the whole family of God, expressed spatially as the very hill from which God’s glad judgments emanate. The city on Zion’s hill and the citadels of the blessed temple are to be remembered forever by its in holy inhabitants as God. City, family, and temple all participate in the divine community the ends of the (at times rebellious) earth praise.
AUGUSTINE of HIPPO
Augustine interprets the psalms with a strong Christological lens, with very little about Israel. Those who “plot in vain” “against the Lord and his anointed,” in the opening of Psalm 2, according to Augustine, want to destroy Christ and thereby free themselves of “the Christian religion.” An historical perspective is not his prerogative, and he does not seem to care that the kings the Psalmist writes of had no category through which to think of Christianity, as Christ had not inaugurated the church. Throughout his interpretation, Augustine privileges a Christological frame, often to the detriment of Israel. Particularly Jewish imagery is modified for Christian readers that probably had little context with which to understand Judaic foundations, and Augustine seems not to challenge this lack.
The hill of Zion, which appears in Psalms 2 and 48, is filtered through Christian theology rather strenuously, removing any and all Judaic imagery. “Zion, my holy hill” becomes the Church, according to Augustine, because it is “where daily is the desire raised of beholding the bright glory of God.” Psalm 2 presents Mount Zion as the center of daily worship. For Augustine, the center for doxological expression is the Christi’s church, so the hill becomes “His holy Church, which its eminence and stability He calls a mountain.” In the 48th Psalm, Zion appears three times more often. In verse 2, Augustine interprets it alongside the cornerstone that the (Jewish) builders have rejected. Augustine draws upon this seemingly supersessionist imagery again in verse 11 where we find Mount Zion rejoicing. The daughters of Judah follow suit, but Augustine cautions his reader to “think not that the ‘daughters of Judah’ are Jews. Judah is confession.” Leveraging Romans 2, in which Paul insists real Jewishness is internal, Augustine washes away any distinctively Jewish geography of the holy, saying true circumcision and Jewishness is inward. He does allow particularities of place remain in his interpretation of verse 12, encouraging Christians to “embrace her. Not with scandals, but with love,” but this reads as too little too late. Whereas my impression is that the Psalmist wants to stack evocations of Temple, family, and God upon each other, Augustine regards the line “this is God” incarnationally, as focusing on Jesus, who “is our God for ever and ever, and He shall rule us for ever.”
Beyond just looking at his re-imagining of Mount Zion as Church, there is some political theology to be had. The contrariness of the rulers in Psalm 2 and 48 and language of “enemies” in 23 is interesting. Those rulers wishing to “burst their bonds [to God] asunder,” deserve heavenly ridicule because “those men meditate a vain thing.” Whether that “vain thing” is ruling generally or departing from God specifically Augustine leaves open ended. Politics is not, despite modern anarchic instincts, a fool’s errand, at least not for Augustine. His asks, “Are not all [people] citizens” of “the city of our God,” are we not all “members of the King”? It is not that Christ frees us from all political allegiances and bonds, despite the wishes of the kings and rulers of the earth, but that our loyalty is redirected. The animosity this creates is, to Augustine, “a vain thing,” in part because humanity cannot divorce itself from God. The problem of enemies, and its poignant expression in Psalm 23, does not merit overt attention for Augustine. His Latin version of the Psalm brings “enemies” to us as rather flat and inexpressive phrase “them that trouble me.” Rather than reflecting on the odd exchange the David depicts (ambiguous as it is about whether the enemies watch hungry from the sidelines or are fed alongside the narrator), Augustine weaves 1 Corinthians 3:2 into his interpretation and its implications about eating solid food rather than a mother’s milk.
THOMAS AQUINAS
The 12th century had a little more in the way of theological nuance and Thomas appears to have retained much of Augustine’s lens, but did more work to reconcile Christian interpretation with its Jewish origins. This comes out most strongly in his reflections on Mount Zion in the 2nd and 48th Psalms. He insists on the particularity of Israel and their geographic ties to the land, referring to “Syon” in Jerusalem and its political significance as the capital city. Thomas’ interpretation retains the important overlap of holiness and geography, even going so far as to claim Zion “is called the holy mountain, because it receives the first rays of the sun.” The spatial significance he gives is repeated by drawing allusions aligning the people Israel and the place Jerusalem, “whose summit is [Zion].” Expanding his theology in his interpretation of Psalm 48, Thomas reminds his students that “this city is made up of Jews and Gentiles,” taking advantage of this claim to move toward saying Christ’s rule is similarly over the whole world. Like Augustine, he parallels the holy mountain with Christ, whose rule brings joy “to all lands, because all are aware of the joy of [Zion’s] foundation” which is God. The “splendid fruit” of the city is Christ, “and this is joy for the whole world.” Careful to preserve the Jewish roots of Christianity, he later places another layer upon his interpretation, adding, “it can be said that Mount [Zion] signifies the whole of Jerusalem.”
As for kings and their hostility toward God, Thomas speculates about whether the character of their rule contributed to their distance from God. Whereas God’s rule produces joy across the whole world, “the enemy subjugated… by the guidance of harsh justice” Rule by subjugation is the way of enmity, explaining why the kings of the world fled when they saw the holy city in Psalm 48, moved as they were by a “disturbance on account of sins.” Interestingly, he names these wayward kings while being clear it was not just their great number that merits our attention, but indeed their “great dignity.” He takes care to use their example not to demonize kingship per se, but to be clear that rulers, like David, can in fact also “[strengthen] the Church in its privileges” and not only be objects of God’s antagonism. From Constantine to Justinian (the Apostate), and Charlemagne too, kings are capable of both fleeing God as well as reflecting Him. Drawing a sacerdotal analogy, Thomas interprets the table at which David eats in the presence of those who afflict him as “holy scriptures” by which “we drive away temptations;” temptations of over simplifying earthly rule, or of reducing politics to a false either/or dichotomy.
JEAN CALVIN
Like Augustine, Calvin seems to use a bit too much force at times in filtering the Psalms through Christology, insisting at one point that God “undertook the cause of the Church” well before it was born at Pentecost. Perhaps he has read Augustine’s reflections and anticipated similar objections, as he affirms his pre-ecclesial interpretation acknowledging, “In the time of the prophet, the knowledge of the Gospel, it is true, had not yet reached foreign nations.” Although Calvin is quite capable of incorporating historical context, proposing that the kings assembled outside Jerusalem in Psalm 48 could have been “Ahaz… Hezekiah or Asa,” he insists their “invincible power” is aimed not to belittle Israel, but “to destroy the Church.”
The Reformation exegete does, however, have the most developed interrelation between place, people, and politics of the three. The only one to attribute the 2nd Psalm to David, Calvin recognizes that the mingling of holiness with geography and power is meant to signify that proper human “reign is holy and inseparably connected with the temple of God.” If Calvin is right, modern readers might worry about the danger of theocracy, of aligning human rule with divine authority, but for the Psalms, this is not at all uncommon. Calvin clearly has a wide lens on Scripture, as it consistently emphasizes David’s virtues without hiding his vices, a critical difference with modern Western politics. Far from distilling Zion into merely the throne for David, Calvin recognizes holiness was “conferred upon [the land] to render sacred the whole city, where God had chosen his seat, that he might rule over all people.” The mortal David, at best, is only a transient symbol meant to signify God’s just and joyful rule over not just Israel, but also the whole world, a dynasty fulfilled by Godself in Jesus. Indeed, Calvin traces the holy heritage to Christ, who “appeared with his Gospel out of Zion, to fill the whole world with true joy.”He is sure to articulate that sovereignty adheres more properly to Christ, whose kingdom is foreshadowed by David, and is “both spiritual and joined to the priesthood, and this is the principal part of the worship of God.” It could be that Calvin’s sympathy for the Jews might influence (or be influenced by) his focus on David, the foremost monarch in all of Israel’s history.
The political import of Calvin’s Psalms commentary is less illuminating than others. In the reference to enemies in Psalm 23, Calvin’s translation is “persecutors,” and the entire oddity of feasting beside ones enemies is ignored in his commentary on that psalm entirely. As for the kings and rulers who stand against God in Psalms 2 and 48, Calvin gives more attention to “enemies” than do his exegetical predecessors, even using the word to describe the authorities referred to by the former. Calvin sees in the 2nd Psalm, which he claims is by David’s hand, a prime specimen of God’s “unconquerable power in war” in the human king, who is contrasted here with Christ, who “move not a finger, yet by his speaking he thunders awfully enough against his enemies, and destroys them by the rod of his mouth alone.” Calvin has the Christ of Revelation in mind here, as in a similar passage from the 48th Psalm, “a nod alone on the part of God is sufficient to deliver us”
Conclusion(s)
Certainly I have brought many a post-modern lens to the readings, hoping as I have that exegetes of Church past might help illuminate assumptions and context that was not theirs. The one particular question I had, of member’s of God’s house eating with/beside enemies, is clearly not a question these formidable interpreters had in mind. Rather than explaining it away, it might suffice to acknowledge our disparate questions and context and draw from their commentaries what value we can. It seems clear that time slowly allowed for theologians to think through the centrality of Israel to Christian identity, with Calvin acting as a bit of a corrective to subtle supersessionism in Thomas and Augustine’s interpretations. The synonymity of geography, holiness, and hierarchy that I have had in mind to look for ebbed and flowed across the centuries, though each interpreter in their own way seemed to allude to the importance of keeping them in tension.
The liturgical importance of the Psalms is unquestioned, but too often the extra-logical rhetoric of music and poetry are not mined for the riches they can provide. Though it is but a start, I hope the muscles I have exercised here display the important theological fruit the Psalms might bear and the timeless wisdom they offer us. In our own age, of technological savvy and nearly uninterrupted media saturation, the modern Church would do well to think through the theologies presented to them across a wide array of genres, from sacred and secular sources alike. Thought it might begin with the Psalms, given their prolific distribution, maybe it can continue with hymnody and other means of particularly hearing and seeing the Gospel of Christ. Looking at the Psalms with systematics in mind, maybe we can see and hear more of God’s message to us, his embodied City (as Augustine’s seminal work referred to the Church), surrounded as we are on all sides by powers at odds with his reign.
