Brock, on Augustine, on the Psalms

Brian Brock's readings of the Psalms are really doing it for me:

...the love of earthly goods without the love of their giver turns into a fear of losing them. And fear of losing them develops into a social rationality - an ethos. Augustine asks, Do all those who trust in technology live better lives? Do all those with comprehensive insurance coverage avoid disaster? Does ever-increasing investment in medicine stop untimely death? Augustine saw clearly that whole societies are structured around the avoidance of pain, embodying the escape from their primal fears.... 'Singing the Ethos of God' p. 161-2

I am sure Augustine didn't know about comprehensive insurance, but still, the point is made: security is never quite secured as we hope it will be.

Brock goes on...
Augustine shows how this vision of the blessed life shapes the Christian understanding of the church, which is conceived not as a safe haven from the world but as the focal point of a praising people caught up in Christ's service to the world.
This is the pilgrim church, we might say: secure, yes, but also exposed and vulnerable. Liable to get persecuted; but secure in hope.

'There is no such thing as a 'reader' '

Brian Brock examines in detail Augustine's exegesis of the Psalms, and Hannah's Song. As he concludes:

...Hannah's Song is paradigmatic for Augustine for understanding the Psalms because it is a text that, because of its narrative location, tells us something essential about biblical Psalms - that they cannot be 'read'. Therefore, there is no such thing as a 'reader' for Augustine, unless this describes the activity of those who make this song an 'objective' text devoid of any personal claim because they see human strength as determining of world events. This distancing stands in contrast to those who affirm Hannah's praise of God by singing with her...the form of Scripture that is called a psalm, and the interpretive ontological claims Augustine brings to this form, work together to question a basic commitment of contemporary hermeneutics: that we can describe a general hermeneutical strategy that is appropriately applied to the biblical texts. Because this is not simply a text, but Scripture, to read the Psalms as a text is to consolidate our self-emasculation in deciding in advance that they point only to human activities. The psalm form is thus correctly understood only when it appears as an invitation to the community of faith to sing God's praises.

That is: you can't just read the Bible. You must sing it (well the Psalms, anyhow).

Further on Biblical Studies and the Bible: Brian Brock

I mentioned my surprise at the chasm between Biblical Studies and Doctrine/Ethics in terms of use of the Bible. Brian Brock in his fascinating new book writes:

No academic discpline can be posited as privileged or primary in its relationship to Scripture, including biblical studies. The only solidity to which the Christian faith can cling in its exploration of the Bible is Christ as body, head, and Word. Any concept or academic discipline that makes itself the arbiter between rival interpretations would have to be established as another axiomatic truth. p. 266

Brock opposes the development of some academic superstructure that operates like a bureaucracy through which the Bible must pass if it is to be made available for theological/ethical reflection. Actually, sometimes I feel like this: a theologian wants to use a passage of the Bible in his work. Has he filled out the right forms, and applied to the New Testament department for permission to use the passage? If so, he must wait, and only then use the passage within carefully defined parameters, subject to and with reference to the most important commentaries on the subject... Then, he must develop a sophisticated hermeneutic which meets with all our criteria.

Sigh!

Reviewing: Brock, Wells, Thompson

I have taken three books to review for Anvil (a UK-based evangelical journal). Just some brief notes on my first impressions.

The first of these is Mark D Thompson's A Clear and Present Word. This is a no bull polemical call to return to and recapture the Reformation doctrine of the clarity of scripture. I have to say I heard the lecture version of these and it looks as if they have really been given a full revision for publication. Mark has a real gift for summarising other points of view - surveying the terrain quickly AND thoroughly, so that an immense amount of ground is covered in no time at all. Mark tries to clear away the philosophical and theoretical tangle and ask what Scripture's own attestation to itself is. Of course, like many Reformation doctrines, this one suffers from bad press based on a great deal of misinformation and caricature, so necessarily the book does a job of clarifying clarity. In a nutshell, Thommo is convinced that God is very good at saying what he wants to say. (Exiled Preacher, I think you would enjoy this book!)

Secondly, I have been reading Aberdeen ethics lecture Brian Brock's new work Singing the Ethos of God - On the Place of Christian Ethics in Scripture. I haven't got far, but as my own supervisor says of it: 'Beyond Hermeneutics would have been an apt subtitle for this groundbreaking study'. Essentially, Brock enlists the help of Luther and Augustine to engage in a reading of the Psalms as texts to pray and sing. Too often, ethics has come to the Scripture with its own agendas and theories rather than starting with the ancient practice of praying and praising with the text. As Brock writes:

Praise takes us inside God's works. It reveals God's daily care in providing the food that sustains living creatures, and the time, space, and emodiment in which all creation exists. He makes human sociality possible by providing, reneing and reclaiming language. He sustains this social space by setting up political authorities and maintaining peace. At the heart of human political life is the church, a community that learns from Scripture how to praise, with all creation, the divine inexhaustibility. In the church, the twisted sociality that expresses the ethos of self-interest, fear, and tribalism is remade into a political order whose telos is the discovery of the divine ethos of diversity in mutuality [is this really the divine ethos? MJ]. It is a renewal sustained by the divine gift of Scripture, thourgh which God invites and facilitates human praise. In praise the communion of saints continually rediscovers that God uses our faltering collaboration to bring humanity in tune with himself. p. 363.

Thirdly, I have God's Companions by Sam Wells, co-editor with Hauerwas of the gratingly cheesy Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics (every chapter opens with a tear-jearking anecdote about 'what happens in my church', in an attempt to ground the thing in the practices of church life). From my first impressions (and I hope to be corrected), this book shares the Companion's laudable emphasis on the local church, but also its 'we do it this way and it is so beautiful' anecdotalism and sentimentality. Hmm...