Paul Krause on the Psalms

I just posted a link on my other blog to an article by Paul Krause, Hebraic Exceptionalism and Western Exceptionalism. After the fourth asterisk, he takes up the biblical Psalms, comparing them with Augustine's Confessions. 

The Psalms were—and remain—the great book of praise, introspection, and prophecy. The Book of Psalms was the most read and commented book of all Scripture in the early Church. Augustine devoted himself to countless hours meditating on the Psalms since meditation of the Psalms is “the meditation of [the] heart understanding,” as Psalm 48 says.

What makes the Psalms so moving and powerful is that it is a window into the agony and hope of a man, a mortal man like the rest of us, a man whose glory is well-known but whose failures and sins are also well-known. This is why Augustine’s Confessions remain, after one and a half millennia, an enduring testament of Western and Christian literature. Confessions is a window into a broken but ambitious sinner-turned-saint. Augustine’s Confessions, like David’s Psalms, penetrates the depth of the human psyche like no other ancient work of literature and gives a grand display of the self in its earliest formation . . . .

The Psalms are special because the Psalms narrate a spiritual journey, a spiritual flight, the ascent of David (in particular) to be with his God. They are far more influential on Augustine than Plotinus’s unemotional elaborations on the Soul’s desire to reunite with the One. The movement of the inward soul to the seat of Divinity planted in the heart of man is revealed in Scripture and not Greek philosophy. Following Scripture, not Plotinus, Augustine’s Confessions narrates a spiritual and physical pilgrimage.

There can be little doubt that the Psalter is, as Calvin put it, a mirror of the soul. Many of the psalms are profoundly introspective, confessing sin to God (e.g., Psalm 51) and agonizing over personal affliction (e.g., Psalm 88). Nevertheless, if we see in the Psalms primarily "a spiritual journey, a spiritual flight, the ascent of David . . . to be with his God," we are missing something much more important. The church has always understood that the Psalms point to Jesus Christ. Many of the Psalms are messianic psalms, including numbers 2, 22, 72, and 110. But even those Psalms not obviously of a messianic character nevertheless are caught in the tension between the promise of salvation yet to be fulfilled and the predicaments of the people of Israel on the ground. The Psalms of lament are more than just complaints about how bad things are. The authors continually call on God to be faithful to his promise, anticipating the coming of a better moment.

During this Advent season, we are liturgically between the times, eagerly expecting the joy of Christ's birth yet living through the uncertainties of the present age, especially during this COVID pandemic. As we read and sing the Psalms during this season, let us remember that they point us to the gospel and to the arrival of God incarnate to save his people from their sins.