Prayer - Lesson 18

Professor James Houston

Prayer

th732-18

Augustine's Interpretation of the Psalms (Part 1)

Lesson Transcript

Now we come to reflect on Augustine's living interpretation of the Psalms. He was going to live for 18 years just preaching every Sunday on the Psalms. And so memorised was he in the Psalter, as I've said, that on one occasion the lector read the wrong Psalm for the sermon and without any hesitation he said well, the Lord's spirit has guided us to do another Psalm than the one I've chosen to do. And so verbatim he then spoke again on this new Psalm because he lived in the Psalms. He walks in the Psalms. He runs in the Psalms. He shouts for joy in the Psalms. And so in Confessions Book IX paragraph four, this is how he expresses it. 'How loudly have I cried unto you, my God, as I read the Psalms of David, songs full of faith, outbursts of devotion with no room in them for the breath of pride!... How loudly I began to cry out to you in those Psalms, how I was inflamed by them with love for you and fired to recite them to the whole world, were I able, as a remedy against human pride!' And so you see how central this journey of faith as the journey of humility became to him and the companion for the journey was the Psalter.

Let me run through some of the ways in which he's using the Psalms. He started his priestly career in the 390s by writing notes on the first 32 Psalms. And in his introduction to this wonderful lyric, he sees how contrasted the intelligence of the Psalter is with human intelligence. He's then able to see that the Psalms make our prayers articulate and our praise robust. And so he thinks of how the Psalms - and he has favourite Psalms - are going to so transform our lives. One of his favourites was Psalm 89:15, blessed are the people that understand the reason for his joy. Psalm 47:7, sing Psalms with Him with understanding. In other words, really understand the motives that you have in your heart and in your mind for expressing yourself in the way you do. And so he's saying how the Psalms interpret all our emotions all the time and so if you ever want to be educated in knowing your own emotions, read the Psalms.

He's celebrating that their poetry is, of course, to be interpreted poetically. He's understanding that you have to sometimes appropriate liturgically and sometimes you have to read it prophetically. And sometimes you have to read it emotively or indeed obediently as we think of the Torah and the law and the signposts that we have of right-relatedness with God in the Psalter. He's also fundamentally convinced, secondly, that the Psalms are looking to the future. The Psalms are representing a prophecy of the new covenant that Christ's life and redemptive work will reveal. So he thinks of Psalm 102:18. He sees this as a key of the messianic future for another generation. He says in his comment that when this was written there was little profit to be had from these events amongst circumstances with which someone wrote. No, he says it's all fulfilled by the Psalms anticipating the New Testament. And so, as he reflects on this, he sees how often the Old Testament is recited for our understanding of the future. He sees then that the Psalmist is a prophet, who speaks to us prophetically and there we see Christ as the fulfilment of law and prophecy. Christ is hidden all the canopy of the Psalter. He's the hermeneutical key for the Psalter. He himself is the key that he's communicating.

Again, thirdly, what Augustine realises is that this actualising interpretation of the Psalms is for our benefit. As he says in De Doctrina Christiana, the key to Biblical exposition is how we are to understand these things personally and pastorally and therefore their implication is for us to digest it, to eat it, to be refreshed by it and to be rebuked by it. At the same time, he's aware that the Psalms are collective: they're reflective of the whole body of Christ. So who is saying this? Who is singing this? And the answer is it’s the whole body of Christ that is singing. It's the body of Christ that is speaking. And so the whole community is incorporated in this voice and this embodiment of the body of Christ. He also realises that there are Psalms that would strip us of the old life that we've lived in order to have a new song and to be a new person and to have a new covenant. We therefore realise that there are new songs that we're singing all the time when we’re reading the Psalter.

He also sees, fourthly, that history is itself exemplary and typological. That is to say, as we've already seen in our previous lecture on Hesychia, that we read the Old Testament not only in the light of the Israelites, but in our own experience, but also in the light of the incarnation to come. He sees this prefiguring that is so full in the life of the Psalter. And so in his exposition of a homily on Psalm 97:3, he is saying we must apply all of this to Christ if we want to keep to the path of correct understanding. 'Whatever doubts a person has in his mind on hearing God's scriptures, let him not be moved away from Christ. When in those words Christ has been revealed to him, let him understand that he has understood, but before he attains to this understanding of Christ, let him not presume to think he has understood.'