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!