Redemptive History of the Psalter
James Doerfel
From: "James Doerfel" <james.doerfel@t...>
Date: Thu Dec 16, 1999 4:40 pm
Subject: [btd] Redemptive History of the Psalter
Message 1840 of btdisc@eGroups.com
For our present purposes we can identify four redemptive historical stages of the Psalter. 1) The Psalms belong to the Psalmist, an expression of his own personal reflection on the mighty acts of God in history and his relation to God through them. This is Vos's emphasis in "Songs from the Soul" and "The Eschatology of the Psalter."
2) The Psalms belong to Israel. Something happens to the Psalms, a transformation, when the Psalter becomes Scripture (is arranged and contextualized) and becomes a canon of Israel's cultic-festal worship. On the lips of the congregation of Israel the Psalms take on new significance.
3) The Psalms belong to Christ, who is the true Israel, the eschatos Worshipper, in whom all the Israel of God, past and future, is constituted. On the lips of Christ the Psalms are again transformed and take on their new and final meaning. We cannot read the Psalms the same way since Jesus came, His coming and ministry marking the absolute end of the world-age and the beginning of the new. In Him the Psalms were fulfilled. The Psalmist's prayers for deliverance or revival become Christ's prayers to the Father for resurrection. The Psalmist's cry for vindication becomes Christ's prayer for the parousia-judgment. The Psalmist's imprecations (types of the eschatological curse which Christ Himself became) become Christ's condemnation of the world. The Psalmist's appeals to his own integrity become Christ's pleading His perfect satisfaction before God. From one angle Christ revealed what was already latent in the Psalms themselves, but from the other Christ mightily filled [up] the Psalms. The Psalter was bound up in Christ's flesh, was crucified and raised with Him—which brings us to . . . .
4). The Psalms belong to the church in Christ. This transition mirrors the transition from the Psalmist to Israel and the transformed Psalter becomes a canon for the new congregation's new worship. As the Psalmist stood as representative of the old covenant people of God, sanctifying their worship before them, whose worship became Israel's by the word of God; Christ, the eschatos Worshipper, represents the new covenant people of God, in whose heavenly worship we now enter, and His worship becomes ours by the same word of God. Unlike the temple-centered worship of the old covenant people of God, our worship is heaven-centered—that which the temple represented. Our worship is not, like the Psalmists, a praiseful reflection on / participation in the old covenant mighty acts of God [[directly]], but [[indirectly (mediately) through]] their fulfillment in the mighty acts of God in Christ, the omega and alpha of the ages.
It is important to preserve each of these four redemptive historical "epochs" (to use the Vosian expression) as we approach the Psalms. While Rev. Lotzer is correct that we, in our particular RH, semi-eschatological, environment cannot interpret (or own) the Psalms except "in Christ," a prescriptive hermeneutical precedent established by the apostles. We cannot read the Psalms like the modern Jews who reject Christ (as many Reformed and Evangelical expositors have done). But a RH approach to the Psalms preserves and illustrates the eschatological movement of salvation and provides us with a continuity-discontinuity framework in which to understand the theology of the Psalter. While the God-ward orientation of religion does not change (eschatology as the covenant possession of God), worship (praise) is not a stasis, being a responsive reflection on / participation in the mighty acts of God in history. This fact is illustrated in the movement from the songs of heaven in Rev 4 to Rev 5. Religion progresses organically, being organically and directly related to God's progressive self-revelation in history, until religion is perfected when the pure in heart are given the desire of their heart--are blessed to see God. This is relgionsgeschichte in the true sense, the TRUE religion as it develops through history, not by some inherent evolutionary impetus, but by the intrusive divine interpositions of redemption in time. The four-sphere framework for Psalter (being the pre-eminently religious treatise in the Christian canon) interpretation provides us a model for tracing the history of true religion.
Within this history the major tenets of the Reformed faith are established from federal headship and covenantal solidarity to the continuity-discontinuity of the old/new to the eschatological (heavenly) environment of worship to the centrality of God and His mighty acts in history. Though the Christological interpretation is central, its redemptive historical dynamic makes the transition of the ages the mark of discontinuity which it must be, distancing us, NT saints, from the piety of the Psalter, in order to give it to us anew through the resurrection/ascension of Christ. The Psalter, a fruit of the OT coming of the kingdom (see authors' ubiquitous association with the royal office, and court offices), is transformed by the NT coming of the kingdom which it foreshadowed. A comparison of the NT psalms, particularly associated with Jesus' birth, are new songs indeed, responding to the intrusion of a new thing under the sun, and show close formal and linguistic dependence on the canonical Psalms. And the Apostle Paul's doxologies show particular affinity to the religious spirit of the glory-Psalms. Still, a comparison of the NT prayers to the prayers contained in the Psalter clearly illustrates that the people of God have truly entered a new day of prayer and praise, a day in which the complaints so often found in the OT are conspicuously absent (resolved), and in which unparalleled thanksgiving for one another (absent in the Psalter) abounds (from Charles Dennison).
To the movement of worship from Psalmist to Israel, Israel to Christ, Christ to His church, we may add the Spiritual man (resurrected-glorified) to complete the chiasm:
A Inspired Psalmist
B Israel-qahal
C Christ as eschatos Worshipper / true Israel
C' Christ as proto-Spirit / Head of the church
B' Church-ekklesia
A' Spiritual man
The movement within the chiasm is toward the resurrection and the consummate and uninterrupted worship of glory (the final state). At the turn of each redemptive historical epoch the Psalter undergoes a transformation such that it cannot be read in the same way again. The function of the Psalms, as worship / worship-canon, in each of these stages is crucial in God's ultimate purpose, and thus belongs in any BT investigation of the theology of Psalms. As biblical theologians (a la Vos), our task is to recognize the Psalmist's contribution to revelation. As systematic theologians (a la Clowney), our task is to recognize the fulfillment of the worship of the Psalms on Christ's lips and the fulfillment of the theology of the Psalms in Christ's person and work. As practical theologians, our task is, submitting to the Psalter in Christ, to sing to the LORD a new song; for He has done marvelous things!
