Soundings in the Theology of Psalms

Perspectives And Methods In Contemporary Scholarship

Rolf Jacobson

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780800697396
• eBook ISBN: 9781451417647
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

CHAPTER 1

The Psalms and the Life of Faith: A Suggested Typology of Function

Walter Brueggemann

What has been the function and intention of the Psalms as they were shaped, transmitted, and repeatedly used?¹ That is, what was the purpose of “doing them,” albeit in highly stylized fashion?

What was being done when the Psalms were “done”? Such questions move in a constructive direction, in contrast to the more analytic questions of form and setting. To ask about the function of the Psalms means to move away from direct textual evidence and to engage in some tentative reconstructions. Our consideration of function must of course be based on the best judgments we have about form and setting in life.² The present discussion assumes and fully values both the methods and the gains of form-critical study. I am proposing neither a criticism nor a displacement of form-critical work. Rather, I explore the possibility of a move beyond form criticism that necessarily is concerned with hermeneutical issues.

The main questions and conclusions about form in the Psalms have largely been laid down by Hermann Gunkel. As the reviews of Ronald Clements and Erhard Gerstenberger make clear, we have not moved very far from Gunkel’s fivefold classification, even though there is still room for refinement regarding those psalms that do not fall into Gunkel’s major categories.³ Claus Westermann has attempted some consolidation of Gunkel’s classification, and we will have more to say about his way of putting the matter.⁴

Questions of setting in life for the Psalms are much more unsettled.⁵ Concerning the hymns, there has been some uneasiness with the festival hypothesis of Sigmund Mowinckel, perhaps because it has been judged too comprehensive, explaining too much in too singular a way.⁶ On the other hand, Westermann has largely dissolved the question of setting in life, so that it is meaningless. Thus he says of the hymn, “The life setting is the experience of God’s intervention in history,”⁷ a judgment that has no interest in the sociology or social function of the hymn. So, concerning the hymn, we are still left mainly with some form of the festival hypothesis.⁸ Concerning the setting in life of the lament, and especially the individual lament, the judgment of Hans Schmidt (made already in 1928) has led to a major strand of interpretation that sets the lament in the temple, in a juridical context of the innocently accused who seek vindication and plead for acquittal.⁹ Schmidt’s general understanding has been refined by Walter Beyerlin and Lienhard Delekat, but not greatly advanced.¹⁰ An alternative hypothesis by Gerstenberger breaks the linkage with the temple and with the juridical frame.¹¹ He proposes that we have in the individual lament reflections of a domestic ritual of rehabilitation conducted by the legitimate and recognized, though lay, leaders in the community. They deal with those whose lives, for whatever reason, have disintegrated.

Gerstenberger removes the ritual and the Psalms from the temple and thinks they may have been used in the home. On the question of setting in life (and derivatively of function), Gerstenberger is more helpful than Westermann, for even with his acute analysis of form and structure, Westermann is not in fact interested in the institutional setting. By contrast, Gerstenberger suggests a cogent sociological situation.¹²

I

While form-critical work, especially with reference to setting, is not dormant, we may regard the present consensus as fairly stable. It is in any case firm enough to provide a basis from which to consider the question of function. One can of course answer the question of function by saying that the function was to lament and to praise. But in addition to being simply a tautology, such an answer stays in the realm of religion, where interpretation has stayed too long. However, to ask about function permits us to approach the matter from other, more pragmatic perspectives. We may consider the issue of the social usefulness of the Psalms that influence the character and quality of social existence. Two purposes may be served by asking the question this way. First, it may advance our understanding of Israel’s intention in transmitting the Psalms. Second, it may help contemporary users to identify more clearly what resources are available in the use of the Psalms and what may be “done” in this “doing” of them. I suggest a convergence of a contemporary pastoral agenda with a more historical exegetical interest. Thus the question of function is put as a hermeneutical issue.

The question concerns both the use in ancient Israel, which admits of some scholarly analysis of the Psalms, and the contemporary religious use of the Psalms by practitioners of faith.¹³ The hold that the Psalms have on the contemporary practice of faith and piety is a legitimate part of our concern. That hold is evident liturgically, with regular and sustained use of the Psalms in the daily office generation after generation. It is also evident devotionally, in those free church traditions that are not so keen on liturgic use but nurture persons in their own prayer life to draw guidance and strength from the Psalms.

And finally, contemporary use is evident pastorally, for many pastors find in the Psalms remarkable and reliable resources for many situations, the hospital call being paradigmatic. Thus, liturgical, devotional, and pastoral uses are dimensions of the contemporary function of the Psalms.

In this discussion, we hazard the provisional presupposition that modern and ancient uses of the Psalms share a common intent and function, even though other matters such as setting and institution may be different.¹⁴ We may anticipate a commonality of function even when other matters diverge. That commonality, I suggest, is probable because the psalms (and especially the most poignant of them) present human persons in situations of regression: when they are most vulnerable in hurt, most ecstatic in naive joy, most sensitized to life, driven to the extremities of life and faith, when all the “covers” of modern rationality or ancient convention have disappeared or become dysfunctional. The hermeneutical possibility of moving back and forth between ancient function and contemporary intentionality exists because the use of the Psalms in every age is for times when the most elemental and raw human issues are in play.¹⁵ The intended function and resilient practice of the Psalms reflect their peculiar capacity to be present to those elemental and raw human issues.

In what follows, I make special appeal to the work of Paul Ricoeur.¹⁶ He has for some time studied the role of language in the life of faith. Out of the juxtaposition of the Psalms and the work of Ricoeur come fresh suggestions concerning the function of the Psalms.

II

Ricoeur understands the dynamic of life as a movement, dialectic but not regular or patterned, of disorientation and reorientation.¹⁷ The human organism struggles to maintain some kind of equilibrium in his or her life. That sense of holistic orientation, of being “at home,” is a gift that is given and not forced, yet we struggle to it, fight for it, resist losing it, and regularly deny its loss when it is gone. Two movements in human life are important: (1) deep reluctance to let loose of a world that has passed away, and (2) capacity to embrace a new world being given. These themes in Ricoeur’s study will be important to interpretation of the Psalms suggested here. Human experience includes those dangerous and difficult times of dislocation and disorientation when the sky does fall and the world does indeed come to an end. The figure of disorientation may be taken psychologically and sociologically. It includes all facets of our common life and experience. The times of disorientation are those when persons are driven to the extremities of emotion, of integrating capacity, and of language. In the company of Isaiah, we are “undone” (Isa 6:5). There is no speech, and there is no safe reality about which to speak. The loss of an orderly life is linked to a loss of language, or at least to a discovery of the inadequacy of conventional language.¹⁸

Human persons are not meant for situations of disorientation. They will struggle against such situations with all their energies. Insofar as persons are hopeful and healthy, they may grow and work through to a new orientation. But as Freud has seen, human persons are mostly inclined to look back, to grasp for old equilibria, to wish for them, and to deny that they are gone. Ricoeur, in his study of Freud, is clear that it is situations of dislocation that evoke the dangerous language of extremity, which may express hope but more likely resistance.

The countermovement of reorientation comes, says Ricoeur, through a representation of reality that is genuinely new and has the mark of gift.¹⁹ The reorientation has both continuities with and discontinuities from what has been. But the accent is on the new. It is a surprise. In our resistance, we do not expect to be surprised. The new situation is not an achievement or a working out of the dislocation but a newness that comes to us. Equally, it is not a “passage,” as though it were automatic or inevitable.²⁰ It comes as miracle wrought from outside the situation. And it is only when that newness meets the human person or community convincingly that an abandonment of old orientation may be fully affirmed.

I propose that the sequence of orientation-disorientation-reorientation is a helpful way to understand the use and function of the Psalms. Very likely, the overview suggested here has been intentional in the practice of many believing people, even though they have not recognized or articulated it in this way.

1. The Psalms of Orientation. The psalms we include here are not the most interesting, for there is in them no great movement, no tension to resolve. Indeed, what mainly characterizes them is the absence of tension. The mindset and worldview of those who enjoy a serene location of their lives are characterized by a sense of the orderliness, goodness, and reliability of life. Thus, they might be especially represented in creation psalms that reflect the coherence of life:

These all look to you,

to give them their food in due season.

When you give to them, they gather it up;

when you open your hand,

they are filled with good things. (Ps 104:27–28)

Or reference may be made to the psalms that teach clear, reliable retribution, in which evil is punished and good is rewarded (e.g., Psalms 1 and 119). Reference to creation and retribution suggests that psalms of orientation especially relate to sapiential tradition, which, as Robert Gordis and Brian Kovacs have suggested, reflects a class orientation of those who enjoy and appreciate much of life’s material goodness.²¹

We might better seek examples in the book of Proverbs, which largely reflects life in its coh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Contributors
• Chapter 1: The Psalms and the Life of Faith: A Suggested Typology of Function
• Chapter 2: God at Work in the Word: A Theology of Divine-Human Encounter in the Psalms
• Chapter 3: The Destiny of the Righteous and the Theology of the Psalms
• Chapter 4: The Single Most Important Text in the Entire Bible: Toward a Theology of the Psalms
• Chapter 5: The Theology of the Imprecatory Psalms
• Chapter 6: Saying Amen to Violent Psalms: Patterns of Prayer, Belief, and Action in the Psalter
• Chapter 7: “The Faithfulness of the Lord Endures Forever”: The Theological Witness of the Psalter
• Chapter 8: Rethinking the Enterprise: What must be Considered in Formulating a Theology of the Psalms
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Author Index
• Biblical Index