Resource: The Psalms as the Mystical Prayer of the Church

Fr Thomas Joseph White, O.P., is a Dominican friar, priest, and theologian hailing from the USA. I recently came across a recording of a talk of his on the Psalms, which also touches on more general questions of prayer. 

I found it very interesting and inspiring in places. Fr White brings not only his typical scholarly erudition, but his experience of spiritual direction, to the topic of how we should pray. It also complements Aquinas' own introduction to the Psalms without simply repeating or explaining what he says (as I have done!)

The talk can be found on various platforms linked here. I recommend Fr White's work more generally, especially his introduction to Catholic belief titled The Light of Christ, and his theological commentary on the book of Exodus.

Aquinas on the Psalms: Typology and the Structure of the Psalter

After reviewing the four causes of the Psalms, Aquinas has a couple of closing comments on how to read the Psalms.

Jesus in the Psalms

The first is a response to a question already raised, implicitly, in the last post: how can the Psalms be about Jesus Christ, when they were written centuries before His birth?

Aquinas is concerned to say that the Psalms really do speak of Christ, though they do so obscurely, as a kind of shadow and sign of what is to come. This way of reading the Old Testament is called typology: seeing people and events as "types" or images of Christ and his saving work. It was especially popular in the medieval period, but is rooted in the New Testament itself, and continues to be taught by the Church.

This is expressed well in Vatican II's Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, 15-16:

The principal purpose to which the plan of the old covenant was directed was to prepare for the coming of Christ, the redeemer of all and of the messianic kingdom, to announce this coming by prophecy (see Luke 24:44; John 5:39; 1 Peter 1:10), and to indicate its meaning through various types (see 1 Cor. 10:12)...

God, the inspirer and author of both Testaments, wisely arranged that the New Testament be hidden in the Old and the Old be made manifest in the New. For, though Christ established the new covenant in His blood (see Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25), still the books of the Old Testament with all their parts, caught up into the proclamation of the Gospel, acquire and show forth their full meaning in the New Testament (see Matt. 5:17; Luke 24:27; Rom. 16:25-26; 2 Cor. 14:16) and in turn shed light on it and explain it.

Even in Aquinas' own time, there were people who suggested this was just reading into the Old Testament what wasn't really there - or, at best, seeing certain passages of the Old Testament as applicable to Christ, but not truly or intrinsically about Christ. St Thomas makes clear that he will have no truck with such arguments. For him, the fact that Christ is the fulfillment of revelation is an article of faith, and so all of revelation must in some way be ordered to Him.

We need not think, though, that the human authors consciously had Jesus of Nazareth in mind as they wrote, or even intended to write about "the Messiah to come" in some broader way. St Thomas reminds us again that the Holy Spirit is the principal author of Scripture, and it is because of this divine authorship that these passages of the Old Testament can be really about, not just applied to, Jesus. As he writes: "...the Holy Spirit ordained that when such things [i.e. events in the mind of the human writer] are said, certain elements exceeding that event itself are inserted to lift the soul up to what is prefigured."

Division of the Psalms

Unfortunately, some of the following section is Aquinas at his least plausible. While typology remains vital to Christian theological reading of Scripture, numerology has not remained so popular. Aquinas presents three possible ways of dividing up the 150 Psalms:

1. Split into 2, as 150 = 70 + 80. 70 represents the time of this world, as there are 7 days in a week. 80 represents the breaking open of eternity (e.g. the day of resurrection as the 8th day) So we get a division into present life / future glory, or between mysteries of the Old Testament and the New Testament. This is my top contender for "most deranged argument" in the commentary so far.
2. 5 groups reached by breaking whenever we read "amen, amen". Aquinas himself seems unconvinced by this theory, presenting the argument against it without further comment.
3. Three groups of 50, each group representing one of the states of faithful life. The first represent the state of penitence, the second the state of justice, and the third the state of praising God.

This third division is the one Aquinas decides to base his treatment on, and it seems to have been a common way of breaking up medieval Psalters in the west. While I am far from convinced that this division is really in the text, it reminds me somewhat of the three stages of spiritual perfection in the Carmelite tradition - the purgative, illuminative, and unitive ways. Ironically, the second mode of division, seemingly dismissed by Aquinas, is the consensus today.

The first 50

As St Thomas is now ready to dive in, he begins by breaking down the first set of 50 more thoroughly. The state of penitence corresponds especially to trials and tribulations. He sees these in the Psalms as referring especially to the persecutions suffered by David, but typologically to the persecutions of Christ and the Church. He divides up this first 50 into sets of 10:

Attacks on the individual righteous man [1-40]

Attacks by those persecuting him in temporal affairs [1-30]

 Attacks by individuals [1-20]

By Absalom (signifying those of one's own household) [1-10]

By Saul (signifying those outside the household) [11-20]

Attacks by "the whole people" [21-30]

Attacks by those living unjustly (I'm guessing this is a kind of "spiritual persecution", though I'm not sure yet what to make of it) [31-40]

Attacks on the whole people of God [41-50]

Next time: Psalm 1!

Aquinas on the Psalms: The Four Causes

St Thomas Aquinas opens his commentary on the Psalms with the question: how are we to understand them? He approaches his answer by refering to the famous "four causes" of Aristotle, four basic ways to understand a thing, which are:

• Material cause (what a thing is made of)
• Formal cause (the nature of the thing; what it is)
• Final cause (what the thing is for, or what it aims at)
• Efficient cause (what produces the thing)

In the case of a written text, Aquinas understands these more specifically to refer to:

• The subject matter (i.e. what is communicated),
• The mode by which that matter is communicated,
• The purpose of communicating it, and
• The author of the text, who is communicating with the reader

He takes as his guide a text from the book of Sirach, where the author imagines the biblical King David composing the Psalms (historically David was believed to be the author of all the Psalms, though modern scholarship does not support this). Aquinas uses the Latin Vulgate, which influences much of his interpretation, but in the RSV it reads:

In all that he did he gave thanks
    to the Holy One, the Most High, with ascriptions of glory;
he sang praise with all his heart,
    and he loved his Maker.

Sirach 47:8

Subject matter

Aquinas makes the surprising claim that the subject matter of the Psalms is universal - the Psalms speak of everything, or more exactly "all the works of the Lord". He divides these works of God into four categories, giving examples of where he sees them spoken of in the Psalms:

1. Creation - e.g. Ps. 8:3
2. Governance (especially of His people Israel) - e.g. Ps. 77:11-20
3. Restoration (of humanity in Christ, and the effects of grace in the members of Christ's body) - e.g. Ps. 3:5
4. Glorification (the new creation in its fullness, the world to come) - e.g. Ps. 149:5

It is common enough to say that the Psalms contain all of human experience - misery, joy, despair, hope, anger, peace, hatred, and love are all found in them. On St Thomas' view, that human universality, while real, is only part of a more total universality. The Psalms are not only a mirror which shows us ourselves, but a window opening onto the whole world, which both comes from and journeys towards the hidden glory of God.

In telling of "all the works of the Lord", the Psalms are a microcosm of Scripture as a whole, and Aquinas believes that this is partly why the Church so often turns to the Psalms in worship. Catholics pray one of the Psalms every Sunday at Mass (notably the only part of the Scripture readings where the congregation "joins in") and many pray the Psalms throughout the day in the Liturgy of Hours. Aquinas suggests we do this not only for their intrinsic beauty and insight, but for their sympathetic resonance with the whole of Scripture and of Christian life.

Mode of communication

If the Psalms speak to us of all God's works, how do they speak to us? This is fairly simple: by way of prayer and praise. If you have read any of the Psalms this hardly needs to be argued for, but Aquinas has a good go at it anyway. Without going into the details of his case, I want to dwell on one point that stuck out at me here.

St Thomas notes that praise of God comes from a kind of spontaneous exaltation of the soul rejoicing in God, that joy spilling over into song. Prayer, on the other hand, he describes as a kind of soliloquy, the deeply personal speech of the one who is "alone with God". Though Aquinas does not explore this, there may be a fruitful tension here between the aspects of prayer that are public - as the love of God finds expression in song, implicitly inviting others to join us - and those that are private - the unique manner in which God can be so intimately present to the soul that we can truly be "alone" and yet "with God". If Aquinas is right, we should expect to find both these elements present in the Psalms.

What have the Psalms ever done for us?

St Thomas turns to the final end or purpose of the Psalms, the good at which the Psalms are aimed. This is whatever answers the question: "Why read the Psalms? What good does it do us?"

As the Psalms teach us by way of prayer, it seems reasonable to say that their goal is the goal of prayer. And so St Thomas draws on an ancient Christian definition of the goal of prayer as "lifting up the mind to God". He elaborates this simple but somewhat vague formula by meditating on the two names of God in the passage from Sirach quoted above: the Holy One, and the Most High. Each of these divine names is paired with two ways in which the mind can be said to rise to God, and each of these ways is paired with the virtue by which we do so.

Lifting up our minds to the Most High, the one who exceeds all we could ever say of him, we first admire God's power by the virtue of faith. We might be uncomfortable with the idea of admiring God for his power, perhaps reminded of those who stroke the ego of powerful politicians in the hope of recieving special treatment. But our knowledge of God's power through faith is the knowledge of what God's power has done, and will do, in creation and salvation. It is a recognition that God's power is not limited as finite, creaturely power is, that God can and has "overcome the world", and that ultimately God will triumph over evil. This admiration, then, is not for the sake of God's ego - God's happiness will not be increased one iota by our praise - but for our sake, to prevent us from despairing of God's saving help.

The second way in which we are lifted to God as the Most High is by our hope to share in the divine beatitude. Beatitude is more than just feeling cheerful, but indicates a happiness found in perfect fulfilment, in being who we are meant to be. The Most High lives in perfect happiness in (for Christians) the eternal communion of the Trinity, and it is to a share in this Triune life that Christ calls us. We don't often think about God's happiness, but I think perhaps we should. It could help to correct a common tendency to see God as a cosmic killjoy, when he is in fact the one who invites us to share a joy greater than any we can know in this life.

We are lifted up to God as the Holy One in two ways. For St Thomas, this name first directs us to God's perfect goodness. Having touched on faith and hope, we will not be surprised to find that Aquinas thinks our minds are raised to God's goodness by charity, the love of God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. More unexpectedly, after this home run of theological (God-centric) virtues, Aquinas suggests that we are finally lifted up to God's perfect justice by imitating it, practicing justice in our own actions. This breaks us out of what might otherwise seem to be a self-enclosed "personal relationship with God", as prayer spills over into working for our neighbour. This is relevant to the whole Church today, which must respond to all kinds of injustice, but especially to the laity who are most integrated into the ordinary life of society, and so are called in a special way to pursue social justice.

"The goal [of the Psalms] is, therefore, that the soul may be joined to God as the Holy One [by justice and love] and the Most High [by faith and hope]."

The author of the Psalms

St Thomas (unlike modern biblical scholarship) takes it for granted that King David was the human author of the entire Psalter. But this is not, for him, the right answer to "who is the author of the Psalms?" If the Psalms spoke only of a truth gained "through human reason", as Aquinas says, then it would be right to label David, or whoever the composers of the Psalms might be, as the principal author(s). But more important to St Thomas, and to us as Christians, is that the Scriptures communicate truth "through the impulse of divine inspiration".

The human author, in this view, is "like the pen of a ready scribe" (Ps. 45:1), an instrument through whom the Holy Spirit speaks to us. That is not to treat Scripture as simply a piece of divine dictation, and so to reject any interest in the historical context and condition of the human author. The Church reminds us that, as a real instrument of the Spirit, the human author is integral to the way God speaks to us in Scripture, and the Psalms are therefore marked by their authors' distinctive human strengths, limitations, and foibles. 

Despite this, Christians do not believe that the limitations of the instrument prevent the Holy Spirit from communicating saving truth; and it is the Holy Spirit, not the human author, whose voice we listen out for when we read the Scriptures as God's word. To read the Psalms in this way, as distinct from treating it as a (mere) human product in its historical context, is what makes the difference between a theological reading and a historical reading. While both are valuable, St Thomas is engaged firmly in the former, and so he names the Holy Spirit as the author of the Psalms.

Aquinas on the Psalms: An Occasional Series

Like many in the Dominican Family, I have a special fondness for the writings of St Thomas Aquinas. Arguably the greatest theologian of the 13th century, he is best known for writing his magisterial, but famously unfinished, Summa Theologiae, a textbook of theology supposedly for beginners but far from "beginner-friendly" to us today. It is an architechtonic work of theology that seeks to leave no stone unturned in a systematic treatment of the truths revealed by God in the Scriptures, and chewed over through the centuries by the mind(s) of the Church.

He is less well-known for his commentaries on the Bible, but it is these which I suspect reflect most of his day-to-day preaching and teaching. St Thomas spent much of his career in the Order of Preachers as a Master of Theology lecturing on the Scriptures. His great Summa represents a bold attempt to systematise our understanding of God's Word, but just as a material scientists's understanding of the properties of a particular material is rooted in the experience of many individual experiments, this systematic treatment of revelation is surely rooted in Aquinas' contemplation of the various Biblical texts.

I believe it is worth attending to his Scriptural commentaries, then, for two principal reasons:

First, they show us the mind of Aquinas in motion, plumbing the depths of God's Word. We see more clearly how his final insights, expressed in his more systematic works, originate in his reading and (no less important) teaching of the Scriptures. This can help us to avoid a sense that Aquinas' theology "floats free" of Scripture, as a beautiful castle in the clouds, which would ultimately be only an idle curiosity for Christians concerned to know God in his self-revelation.

Second, they show us a way of engaging with Scripture that is likely to be very different from our own. Often, contemporary Christian engagement with Scripture falls into one of two extremes.

We may take a thoroughgoing historical-critical approach, reading the latest scholars in order to understand what was in the mind of the (human) Biblical author. We evaluate (or, usually, read others who evaluate) manuscripts, archeological evidence, and whatever else might help us to know, historically, what the authors said and in what context. While not excluding the notion that these texts are inspired, such a method will not by itself enable us to see what God is revealing of Himself (and ourselves) in these human words.

On the other hand, we may treat the Scriptures simply as "material" for prayer. Practices such as Lectio Divina encourage us to reflect on what the Holy Spirit might be saying to us as we read a Biblical passage. This need not, however, have much to do with the text in itself - we may "fly off" into contemplation of a truth suggested by the words we read, but which is not present there. Such prayerful practices do not lend themselves to systematic treatment of God's Word, being ordered more to the correction of our hearts than of our understanding.

Neither of these ways of reading Scripture are to be discouraged - both are recommended to us by the Church. An appreciation of the historical character of the text reminds us of the real human authorship of the Scriptures, and prevents us from seeing Scripture as an ahistorical "divine dictation". And prayer, while not a replacement for a systematic attempt to understand God's Word, is more necessary to the Christian life, and never to be despised.

But they are limited, and limiting if we restrict ourselves to them. And so we might broaden our horizons by looking at how a great saint and teacher reads the Bible. St Thomas' approach to scripture may strike us as far too systematic by half - as we shall see - but it is a sincere attempt to grasp the texts as a divinely-inspired unity, with a depth of meaning not only in the content of individual passages, but in the structure of the whole. While not agreeing with everything he might say - St Thomas, unlike the Scriptures, is not an instrument of divine revelation but a fellow traveller on the way to truth - attending to his method and conclusions may be useful for enriching our own approach to the Scriptures.

There are many books one could start with. We have St Thomas' commentaries on the gospels of Matthew and John, on the prophet Isaiah, on the letters of St Paul, and more. I have chosen to take up his commentary on the Psalms. Principally this is because, as a lay Dominican, I am called to pray the psalms at Lauds and Vespers. As such, they form an important part (some days, the only part) of my prayer-life: which is to say, the part of my life spent attending to God, with God. It will be useful, then, to attempt to understand these "songs of praise", and what God might be saying in them.

Over the next few months - or years, or however long it takes - I will be reading this commentary and periodically posting my thoughts on what I think Aquinas is saying, and whether I find it enlightening, improbable, opaque, or some combination of these. My hope is that this will enrich my understanding of the Psalms, and my approach to Scripture more generally, and I would invite anyone to join me in this.

I will be using the Latin-English text (primarily the English, as my Latin is atrocious) published by The Aquinas Institute. This translation can be found online, for free, here.

A reflection on St Anthony of Padua

The reflection below was written after praying the Office of Readings for the memorial of St Anthony of Padua. The second reading can be found here, (though I quote from the translation in my copy of the Divine Office, so there are some differences) and provides the context.

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St Anthony of Padua has some hard words for the one who would preach the Gospel.

Some of what he says is all but expected from a Franciscan saint: "the preacher... should practice what he preaches" is almost a cliché. "Enough of talking; let action speak. We are bloated with words and empty of works." These are real challenges the preacher must face, to be sure, but still nothing surprising in a rebuke to those who preach unworthily.

But this is not the extent, or even the core, of what St Anthony has to say. The core is that the preacher must speak "under the influence of the Holy Spirit and not as his human spirit suggests" and this has some deeper implications for the work of preaching.

When we think of a false prophet, so often condemned in Scripture, we might think of "those who prophesy lying dreams" in an obvious sense. That is, those who say what God has not said, and attribute their own words to the Lord. But St Anthony (and, in the passage taken from Jeremiah, the Lord Himself) is concerned about more than this. "I am against the prophets who steal my words from one another... who use their tongues and say 'says the Lord'". The false prophets are stealing the Lord's words: that is, it seems, they really are saying (by repeating from other sources) what God has said.

So what makes these prophets false? Not that they use their own words, but they "use their tongues and say 'says the Lord'", that they prophesy although the Lord "did not send them or charge them". That is, they may speak words that, in some way, do come from God - but their speaking does not come from God, and so "they do not profit this people at all".

It is so easy for us to fall into this trap. To unwittingly "pilfer the words of others and pass them off as [our] own, taking the credit". Not by deliberate plagiarism (we may cite our sources with great pleasure, to draw attention to our learnedness) but by thinking that our knowledge of the Scriptures - or the Fathers, or the Catechism, or St Thomas Aquinas - grants us the authority to speak on behalf of God whenever we see an opportunity to rattle off what we have learned. But to speak "from [our] own spirit" is to steal the Lord's words, to use our tongues and say "says the Lord". I am as guilty of this as anyone, and probably more so.

"Let us speak then as the Holy Spirit gives us utterance", and not be too quick to speak on God's behalf simply because we know the words of Scripture or the dogmas of the Church. When and where, how and to whom we speak, is just as vital as what we say, and must be directed by the Lord.

As St Anthony advises us, all the would-be preacher can do is pray that the Holy Spirit will "bestow his grace on us, so that we may fulfil the day of Pentecost". Not only by "fiery tongues" but by speaking the "several languages" of the Spirit which are "the various ways of witnessing to Christ... with which we speak when we practice them towards our neighbour". Then, in charity and humility, our language "comes alive", and the fig tree bears nourishing fruit, not just leaves.