The Case for the Psalms: Why They Are Essential by NT Wright

by

The Case for the Psalms by NT Wright

Takeaway: The Psalms are an important part of historic worship and the modern church needs to work to keep them apart of our current worship.

Five years ago, if you had asked me what my least favorite part of the bible is, I would have probably said the Psalms.  I might have said the lists genealogies or Numbers, but most likely I would have said Psalms.

However, The Case for the Psalms is the third book on the Psalms I have read this year and I am moving toward a greater appreciation of the role of the Psalms, not only as illustrations of the range of biblical expression but as important centers for Christian worship and theology.

I grew up low church, I remain low church, but I appreciate more all the time the liturgical parts of the Christian church and the role of the Book of Common Prayer and various other expressions of historic worship.  Not because I have an emotional attachment to them, but because I see how the role of liturgy shapes the life of the Christian.

I have not completely bought into James Smith’s liturgical project (see my review of Imagining the Kingdom), but I continue to struggle with how to think about transforming the overtly evangelistic worship of my megachurch to include more historic elements of Christian liturgical worship. (Not that I am a decision maker or in anyway involved in worship planning at my church.)

And this where NT Wright comes in again.  As a consistent voice calling for the church to maintain the importance of scripture (see my review of Scripture and the Authority of God) Wright has helped me see that a church that is not shaped by scripture is not doing the work of the church.  No Evangelical churches are explicitly rejecting scripture, but there are many that, while verbally upholding the importance of scripture, do not actually spend much time reading it publicly or using it as part of worship.

I am all for modern worship music.  And I fully admit that modern worship music does not have the full theological richness of some historic hymns. However, that is a false comparison, it is comparing the best of history of the wide swath of current music.  But even the historic best of Christian hymns did not spend a lot of time including the Psalms. Prayer books and liturgical orders of service always included the Psalms and historically most church worship has had a mixture of scripture, current musical expression, historic worship and some amount of teaching.

The Case for the Psalms is not a commentary on Psalms, but an exploration of the themes of Psalms and the reason why Psalms are indispensable for Christian worship.  Wright commonly moves into hyperbole in many of his books, but this is one case where I think he has made his case without overstating the case too strongly.

The Psalms keep our worship grounded.  They show a wide range of human emotion toward God and keep us from minimizing our humanness as created by God.  The Psalms center our focus on worship using temple, heavenly, nature and other metaphors for bringing wonder to the fore.

The Psalms give the church a common worship language, which may be even more important as the church, even in a small geography, has lost a lot of its common cultural language.

The Psalms also are historic, the same Psalms that we use in worship were used by the early church, by Jesus, by Israel in Exile, by the Reformers, by 5th Century Monks and by 21st Century believers around the world.

The Case for the Psalms ends with a personal appendix from Wright about how he personally uses the Psalms for worship and how he has been transformed by them.  This is a good illustration of why I think he is such an important figure in modern Evangelical scholarship.  Because even in the midst of the densest of his academic writing, there are glimmers of his pastoral experience and pastoral heart.  The Case for the Psalms is overt in his pastoral focus.  This still has an academic tint, but it is more a pastoral call than an academic treatise.

The Case for the Psalms Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook

Related Bookwi.se Book Reviews

0 thoughts on “The Case for the Psalms: Why They Are Essential by NT Wright”

  1. Thanks for the review. If you are still into reading more books on the Psalms, you may be interested in The Psalter Reclaimed, by Gordon Wenham. I just finished it (it, too, was recently a Kindle deal) and found it very insightful. I haven’t read Wright’s, but I suspect Wenham’s spends a greater amount of time on interpretive questions and Wright more on pastoral ones. That said, Wenham has a great chapter on the imprecatory psalms. Perhaps most helpful to me was his canonical perspective on interpreting the Psalms, including their messianic elements. Blessings!
    http://www.amazon.com/The-Psalter-Reclaimed-Gordon-Wenham-ebook/dp/B00BFW3ETQ/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t

    Reply

Leave a Comment