The Book of Psalms is an incredible gift of God to the Church. Regularly singing the entire book of Psalms is the spiritual practice I commend to people most frequently. Their uniqueness lies in while most of Scripture portrays the history of Israel from either a God’s-eye or birds-eye view, the Psalm give us the inside perspective of how Israel experienced their life before God, and simultaneously invites us into the personal experience of that very Story. Praying the entire book of Psalms is the core of the Daily Office and thus should never be downplayed, omitted or shortened.

Historically, the entire office developed from this nucleus of psalmody. Even as far back as the Desert Fathers and Mothers (4th century), it was common for a monk to pray the entire book of Psalms every single day. As St. Benedict established in the sixth century, it became standard practice for the Psalms to be recited once per week. To this kernel of Psalms were added Scriptural readings, prayers and chants which eventually grew into the formal structures of the Daily Office.  When Cranmer released the Book of Common Prayer in 1549, the entire Psalter was to be prayed each month. The 1979 edition makes provision for either a 7-week or one-month cycle.

Interestingly enough, my practice of praying the Daily Office began by praying the psalms. I heard somewhere that Martin Luther had the entire book of psalms memorized from singing it through every week as a monk. I don’t really know if the story is true, but I decided that I wanted the same to be true of me in 30 years. So I began singing through the Book of Psalms on a weekly basis. I’ll tell you, that when I did it the first time, I discovered how completely unfamiliar I was with the Psalms. Many passages, I felt like I had never heard or read before.

The Psalms are rather strange in the light of contemporary Christianity. Yet their incredible richness stems from a form of spirituality that is a marked alternative to the quasi-gnostic forms of spirituality that masquerade throughout the Church as Biblical. The Psalms represent to us the most concrete and expansive expression of a truly Biblical Spirituality. In contrast to a quasi-gnostic nihilism that might say “nothing in the world matters” or that history, the life of the body, circumstances, etc. all don’t matter because of Jesus (or something akin to that), the Psalmists seem to strongly believe that their lives on earth truly matter and truly matter to God. The Spirituality of the Psalms is not an “I’ll retreat into my inner life because there nothing in the world matters” but rather a much more risky partnership with the compassionate God who draws near to His people in the earthly life so unstable, unpredictable, full of calamity yet imbibed with meaning by virtue of the God who created it and continually chooses to acknowledge its worth. God’s constant intervention into earthly life (or the groan rising from the absence of God’s intervention) persistently affirms the value of an earthly, bodily, physical, sensory, historical, full-of-feeling existence which remains under the persistent threat of a nihilism seeking to render it meaningless. This spirituality, though very much full of hope (and indeed precisely because it is), never allows us to “soar above the vale of tears” but again and again brings us into a suffering resistance to the violence, evil, injustice and death that so marks our age.

OK – I’m trying just to teach you how to pray the Psalms, but sometimes I get really excited. I am really passionate about the Psalms and their Spirituality. Eventually (since I already have 4 or 5 series after this one already planned), I’ll come back and unpack this previous overly-long paragraph.

Back to the Prayerbook.

This page should look familiar from the last time.

Immediately after the Phos Hilaron, or any opening hymn/song/canticle, follows the “Psalms Appointed.” This means the Psalms that are appointed for the day, according to whatever schedule of Psalms you happen to be following (I’ll come back to this in a second). The rubrics say that the Gloria Patri (“Glory to the Father, and to the Son…”) is said at the end of the Psalms. This could be either after each Psalm (or section of Psalm 119, or other Psalm that is split up), or after all the Psalms prayed/sung at that time. I like to sing to the Gloria Patri after every Psalm because it helps me focus (and refocus) on praying to the actual persons of the Trinity, the overflowing community of self-giving love.

We’ve skipped a few pages now to # 585. The BCP contains the entire Book of Psalms.

“First Day: Morning Prayer” is the first of many indicators included right in the text of the Psalter that divides the Psalms into a 30-day schedule. If you pray both Morning and Evening Prayer, then you would pray them as divided for Morning and Evening. If you pray only one office per day, you would pray both the Morning and Evening psalms for each given day. If you want to sing the Psalter twice a month, use Days 1 and 2 on the first day, 3 and 4 on the second day, etc.

If you’re not using the BCP but just want to pray the Psalms out of your Bible, click here to download a schedule for dividing the Psalter into monthly, bi-monthly or weekly schedules.

Since it is a 30-day schedule, the “First Day” means the first day of the calendar month. On months with more than 30 days you can pick any day to repeat. In February (less than 30 days), you’ll just skip the days not in the month and start back again at the beginning on March 1.

We’ve skipped pages again – now we’re at 936.

This is the first page from the Daily Office Lectionary. A lectionary is a schedule of readings according to the Church Year.

I’ll explain how to navigate the lectionary more when I discuss the “Readings” section of the Office next time, but for now, notice how next to Sunday at the very top, there are the numbers “146, 147 * 111, 112, 113.“

These are Psalms for each day according to a 7-week schedule. The Psalms left of the asterisk are for Morning Prayer and right of the asterisk are for Evening Prayer. Again, if you pray one office daily, pray both sets of Psalms.

This schedule obviously does not move sequentially through the Psalms like the 30-day schedule. However, it is preferable if you have less time available to pray the Office.

An additional option for one with limited time would be to do a 60-day cycle through the Psalms – by praying the First Day: Morning Prayer Psalms on Day 1, then First Day Evening Prayer on Day 2, and so on.

That’s it! Having completed the Opening (section 1) and the Psalms (section 2), next time I’ll discuss the third major section of the Daily Office – the Readings.

Related posts

• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 7) – Making it Easy (in fact, brainless…) (5)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 6) – The Prayers (4)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 3) – The Opening (0)
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The Biblical discussion of the concepts of “flesh” and “spirit” are highly problematic for several reasons. “Flesh” is one of the grand enemies of the Christian, along with the “world” (another problematic term) and the “devil” (yet another problematic term…). Hence the Christian must “war against the flesh.” As long as this remains theoretical, no problems will surface. Difficulties appear, however, as soon as one seeks to locate this “flesh” and fight against it. What does Paul mean by “flesh?” The simplest answer is a vague approximation between “flesh” and either materiality or bodily existence. I once had someone, when explaining what “flesh” was, dramatically pinch and pull the skin on his arm to make explicitly concrete this vile affiliation with the body. Another thorny interpretation of “flesh” is to call it the “sinful nature” (as unfortunately the NIV and alas the TNIV translate the greek word sarx, literally “flesh”). The Bible NEVER explicitly speaks of a “sinful nature” (except in the NIV…). Nature means what is inherent and essential. If sin is thus inherent or essential to human existence, that would invalidate an original state of innocence (thus excluding a concept of a “fall”) and make an existence without sin in the age to come impossible. Sin is never part of the central, inviolable identity of human beings. As long as humans live on earth the stranglehold of sin can be broken and exposed as the alien obtrusion that it is. Albiet, I understand what people mean when they say “sinful nature” and would not deny the depraved state of humanity. Nevertheless, “sinful nature” IS NOT a biblical term and I believe it is not the best way to express the brokenness of humanity. This however, is well beside the point…

The crux of the issue is that the interpretation of flesh in correlation with bodily or essential human existence opens the door for quasi-gnosticism. Gnosticism in a nut shell is the ancient (and heretical) belief that (for simplicity’s sake) matter is inherently evil (has an evil/sinful nature) and spirit is good. The good spirits of people are trapped in wicked bodies and need to be released by an enlightened spirit messenger and by the acquisition of a higher knowledge (gnosis). Gnosticism was the PRIMARY heresy that the early church combated, precisely because from the beginning of the church it was the most destructive idea to authentic apostolic Christianity. This idea subtly continues in the church when we ascribe a bad or inferior status to the material world or specifically our bodies. This belief slowly, yet thoroughly deconstructs the meaning and power of apostolic doctrine in its belief of the goodness of God’s role as creator, his creation, the value of the life of the body and the renewal of the earth (check the tags “Gnosticism” and “new creation” for more on this).

This problem stems from a common approach to interpreting Paul, and the gospel in general, to first outline the “problem” for only then can the solution be understood. Rudolf Bultmann epitomized this view when he said, “after man-under-the-Law has been made to see his situation under it as that of the ‘miserable wretch’ groaning for deliverance from the ‘body of death’, he can then see the salvation-occurrence as salvation-bringing.”  Thus we look first at the problem – the problem is the flesh – and then discern the solution – opposing, eliminating or escaping the flesh.

E.P. Sanders has suggested that for Paul, the dilemma is not self-evident, but the solution provided in the Gospel illuminates the dilemma.  This line of thought can be fruitful for understanding the flesh-Spirit conflict. “Flesh” is not primarily seen as negative in itself. It is only in light of the solution provided in the gospel that “flesh” is then seen as negative.

Flesh in the Old Testament speaks of corporate humanity in their weakness and fragility. This was not seen as evil, but was understood as an inevitable reality of existence. All living beings came from the dust and to the dust they will return (Gen. 18:27; Ps 103:14; Eccles 12:7; cf. 1 Cor. 15:47). However, in the NT, particularly in Paul, “flesh” takes on an unprecedented and unequivocal negative meaning. Here it is not because of any kind of inherent evil nature of literal flesh, but rather because of a dramatic alteration in the situation previously described. Whereas formerly “flesh” described the negative but inevitable weakness that characterized human solidarity, the resurrection of Jesus has introduced a radical newness. The “inevitability” of the corruption and death of flesh is no longer such. Its overcoming has not only been envisaged but has in fact been actualized in and through the resurrection of Jesus. As resurrection and the Spirit functioned as synecdoches (a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa) for God’s entire eschatological restoration program, so “flesh” becomes a synecdoche for all that God is renewing, restoring and replacing. “Flesh” is the dangling vestage of all that is contrary to God’s future for the world. Thus, the “mindset of the flesh” is not an “attachment to earthly-things.” How could one not be attached to earthly things? Humans are quite literally “earthlings” (the word for human in Hebrew is derived from the word for earth/ground). The mindset-of-the-flesh is rather that motivational force which seeks to maintain the status quo of sin, death, disorder, estrangement, alienation, suffering, injustice and unrighteousness over and against God’s work of new creation.

It is common to discuss the contrast of flesh and Spirit in terms of anthropology.  However, this is not possible. First of all, “Spirit,” in the fullest Pauline sense, is not a fundamental component of human being, if it can be called a component of human being at all. Rather it is a person of the Godhead. To speak of Spirit in human anthropology would be to dangerously blur the distinction between God and humans. Furthermore, “flesh,” in Pauline terminology, cannot even be called a fundamental constituent of human nature either. Though often equated with the physical body, Paul’s discussion of the flesh shows us that this cannot be the case. In Romans 8:9 he tells the believers “you are not in the flesh if the Spirit of God dwells in you.” What could this sentence possibly mean if the word “flesh” means the body or even “the body with regard to its sinfulness?” To push the physicality of “flesh” renders Paul as ludicrous in this statement. Rather, “flesh” is a sphere that individuals can be “in” or “out” of, and thus cannot be part of the “nature” of humans. Nature refers to the essential characteristics of an entity. If humans can be outside the realm of “flesh,” then flesh cannot be essential to them. Hence it is not part of their nature.

Altogether, neither “flesh” nor “spirit” can be used to discuss human nature in a fundamental way. This illuminates that for Paul these terms do not function primarily anthropologically, but rather eschatologically. It is recognized by many biblical scholars today, that a fully Biblical understanding of the Spirit cannot be gained apart from the larger context of eschatology. A neat scholastic schematic that would appropriate “flesh” to the doctrine of anthropology, the Spirit as a component of soteriology and eschatology to a theological appendix (if not appendage) will never grasp the symphonic nature of Pauline thought concerning these terms. Passages like Isaiah 11:2; 42:1; 61:1 show how Jewish Messianic concepts were strongly linked to the concept of the Spirit. Passages like Isaiah 4; 32:15; 44:3; Joel 2:28ff and Ezekiel 36-37 link the Spirit to the eschatological restoration of the people of God and God’s world. The Spirit who played a critical role in creation (Gen. 1:2; Job 33:4; Ps. 33:6; 104:29) will be mightily operative to recreate God’s precious yet disfigured world.

The disparaging way Paul speaks of “flesh” is not remotely Gnostic. It does not make a gradation of “spiritual” over “natural” or “soul” over “body.” Rather the flesh is that which corresponds to the age of Adam and participates in its death-drives. It is that which is in allegiance with everything contrary to God’s kingdom, God’s future for the world, where there will be no more death, no more mourning, no more cry and no more pain. Wars will cease to the ends of the earth. The broken-heart will be bound up, the captive will be set free, the afflicted will be comforted. The entire created order will be renewed as righteousness, peace, joy and love flood the earth in the knowledge of God. To war against the flesh is to oppose, live in contradiction with and confront everything that seeks perpetuate that which God’s kingdom eradicates. It means to embody by the power of the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead, first in our own lives and relationships, that which will be true universally in the age of come. It means to appropriate now the “already” of the Kingdom and to refuse accommodation to the “not yet,” despite its persistence. Though sin reigned in death, grace now reigns through righteousness leading to eternal life in the Messiah Jesus. We have been united with Him in his death and resurrection and even now the life force of the spring-time of all creation lies resident within us. To war against the flesh is not to despise our bodily, physical, emotional, relational, and exceedingly conflicted existence. Rather in the midst of the great conflict between a dying world which is passing away and a new world which is coming to birth in the midst of it, we are called to wholeheartedly embrace and love life as agents of new creation, to be the sphere in which the power of regeneration is made operative – for through us God will send forth his spirit and renew the face of the earth (Ps 104:31).

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Discussion of the doctrine of creation in Christian theology often centers around a few loci. In fundamentalist circles, it at times revolves around the creation-evolution or the young-earth/old-earth debates. Others, having reconciled with Darwin, explain the contributions of evolutionary thought to the understanding of God and the world. In much contemporary theology, the doctrine of creation centers on providing a justification for ecological and environmental initiatives, responding to critiques that the biblical command to “subdue the earth and have dominion over it” is at the root of the current ecological crisis. For others it centers on discussions of the plausibility and implications of creatio ex nihilo.

The author has been greatly interested in the doctrine of creation as it provides a counter-affirmation to Gnostic “schizoid spiritualities.” In the present day the primary heresy the faithful routinely gird themselves for is a denial of either the deity of Jesus, the mere existence of God or the reliability of the Bible. However, in the early church, no false teaching “was as dangerous, nor as close to victory” as Gnosticism. This Gnosticism was not eradicated then but has continued in the church both implicitly and explicitly. In our day Gnosticism is seeing a revival and is being touted as an alternate version of Christianity that was marginalized and suppressed in the early centuries of the church. This is especially so with the discovery of the Nag Hammadi corpus, the promotion of the Gospel of Thomas by the Jesus Seminar and recent discussions of the Gospel of Judas. Gnosticism’s basic premise is that matter is inherently bad or evil. In its Christian versions, the Jewish god Yahweh who created the world is not the true highest God, but a foolish lower god who attempted to make something on its own and the resulting mess, or “abortion,” was the world. Salvation is of profound importance for Gnostics, which they understand as when the divine sparks imprisoned in bodies are liberated by knowledge (gnosis) from an enlightened spiritual messenger.

While some teachers are actively or subversively propagating these concepts, the basic dualism between the material and spiritual, material and immaterial is common in many circles in the body of believers. While creation may not be accounted to the abortion of a foolish lower god, it is remains mystifying what the purpose of the material order may be. The “flesh” commonly seems to get in the way of “spiritual” progress. Specific verses in the New Testament are not helpful in this regard, even beyond the plethora of “flesh/spirit” tension passages. 1 John 2.15 says, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world.” James 4.4 declares, “Adulterers! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.” The gospel of Luke (14.26) records the words of Jesus himself saying, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” If we follow the admonitions of these passages where does that leave us in relation to the “world,” the “earth,” or the material world? Many Christians respond with a variant of what the author terms “schizoid spiritualites.” These spiritualities introduce a split (dualism) between the believer and those things which are foundational to our lives: the earth, our emotions, our bodies, and our relationships. In this dualism the spiritual is at a more important level than the physical. This gradation often intensifies to the point where the “spiritual” is of extreme importance and the “physical” is of little or no importance, if not of negative value.

In our day, when little is heard in the pulpits about the dangers of Gnosticism nor the doctrine of creation beyond the few points mentioned earlier, it almost seems preposterous that it could be a called a, if not the primary danger to the Christian faith. When the doctrine of creation withers it is not soon before a gnostic or quasi-gnostic spirituality takes its place. As this happens many of the other doctrines of Christianity begin to wither: Anthropology loses its celebration of embodiment and sexuality forged in the image of God. Incarnation is no longer the untold union of God with humanity and the ultimate “hallowing of human flesh” (to borrow a phrase from George MacDonald), but rather Jesus only appearing as human (at least in the docetic version of gnosticism). In the cruxifixion, God neither joins with the suffering of humanity nor atones for the sins of the world as the human either was only an appearance (docetism), was vacated of the divine before suffering, or was the pathway to freedom from the body (as in the Gospel of Judas). Jesus’ resurrection is certainly not of the body and is not the inauguration of God’s renewal of the earth. Pneumatology no longer envisages the revivification of life that has been lost, imbibing us now with the joy of the Kingdom and passion for life, but instead offers the proleptic escape of an unsalvageable world. Ecclesiology loses its mission of renewing the earth but merely with aiding souls in eluding their doomed fate, if they are in fact ones with the divine “spark” within them.

Thomas Aquinas once said that, “any error about creation also lead to an error about God.” Wrong ideas about creation systematically deconstruct the true Christian meaning of almost every doctrine. For that reason it is critical to have a biblical understanding of the cosmos. However, as we have previously mentioned, of the common approaches to creation theology, almost none of these issues were concerns in the minds of the authors of the Hebrew Scriptures as they either formed underlying assumptions (embodiment, the good of creation) or were irrelevant (creationism debates, ecological crises). Less studies focus on how the concept of creation actually functions in the Biblical text and to what ends authors employ it. This will involve unearthing some of the underlying assumptions that emerge from the text in our far distant reading of these ancient documents.

The goal of the present study will be to begin with the biblical text, rather than an ideological goal, although the author has no delusions that he is without them. Our method will be primarily to observe how the concept of creation functions specifically within Isaiah 40-55 and then to conclude by drawing together the common streams of thought that emerge. We will seek to answer the question of how the text of Isaiah employs the concept of creation, which will in turn provide insight into how it was understood by the inspired author of the text.

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In the first part of this series I discussed my desire to take some time in this Pentecost season to give extended reflection to the person and work of the Holy Spirit. In this post, I would like to back track a little and simply give some general thoughts on the path I would like to follow as well as some of my reasons for desiring to do so.

Our goal here is to establish some lines of thought developing a spirituality, an understanding of the life of faith, that corresponds to the central event of Christian faith: the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

Some spiritualities begin with the cross. This is not a problem in itself. It can be however when this focus on the cross makes the center of the spirituality the “mortification of the flesh” or of “desire” and takes a morbid and masochistic downward spiral. Some spiritualities focus on the position of enmity between the believer and the world. This can lead to the “do not taste,” “do not touch” mentalities where being “spiritual” was equated with not going to movies, not playing cards, not dancing, not smoking and not drinking. For others, the center of spirituality is the “spirit realm” in contrast to the “natural realm.” Here “spirituality” means participating in a prescribed set of activities (prayer, fasting, reading the Bible, etc.) with the goal of transporting one into the “spiritual” realm and detaching one from the “natural realm.”

The difficulty with all of these spiritualities is that they introduce a split (dualism) between the believer and those things which are foundational to our lives: the earth, our emotions, our bodies, and our relationships. Without these dimensions, we would not have possessed existence at all, yet it seems alluring to us that there is a superior mode of existence without them. These spiritualites also create a further split between those who are in “full-time Christian ministry” and are able to devote themselves to these “spiritual” activities and those who are not. Hence the overwhelming majority of what the overwhelming majority of Christians do day-to-day is condemned as patently “unspiritual.”

Unfortunately, much of Christian spirituality throughout history and to the present day has reflected a Gnostic disembodied spirituality rather than the full-blooded earthiness belonging to the Jewish roots of our faith. The splits described earlier are largely related to the influence of what is called Gnosticism. Gnosticism has been the primary heresy that Christianity has had to battle throughout its entire history, though you will almost never hear about it today. Yet do not be lulled to sleep! Gnosticism is make an aggressive comeback in its explicit forms and its implicit forms have never really been eradicated from the Church. It’s basic teaching is that the material world is evil and that the spiritual world is good. The Gnostics sought to arrive at a place of enlightened knowledge which enabled them to escape from this world and the evils of the body. Hence the Scriptures repeatedly need to assert not simply Christ’s divinity, but his humanity (1 John 4) and not the existence of an after-life, but an embodied eternal life (1 Cor. 15).

Only in its Gnostic transmutations is Christianity an “other-worldly” religion. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the Holy Spirit is the power that brings forth all created things (Genesis 1; Psalm 104.29). In the New Testament, the Spirit is the Spirit of the resurrection (Romans 8.11) and thus is the power that brings permanent life and vitality to the created order.

The spirituality of the Bible has its feet firmly planted on the ground and does not seek to escape this world for a superior one. The Christian hope has ever and always been the resurrection of the body and the new creation of all things. In such we are not awaited to slip off into the bliss of a disembodied heaven, free from the entanglements of physicality. Rather, we long for the power of heaven to come to earth and renew its life.

Frank Lake, in his massive work Clinical Theology confirms this while describing the problem of the schizoid condition. The schizoid condition is not the same as schizophrenia but refers to an individual “characterized by (1) an enduring and maladjusted pattern of behavior manifesting avoidance of close relations with others, (2) inability to express hostility and aggressive feelings directly, (3) thinking unduly directed towards oneself and the inner personal view of the situation, at the expense of the information actually available from the external world, (4) a shut-in, seclusive, withdrawn, introverted personality. Many of these traits can seem to parallel an introspective condition.

Concerning the schizoid condition, he says: “When schizoid theologians write theology largely by introspection, they distort it in a Gnostic direction…He has no primitive memory of a secure cosmos centered in a source-person who comes in answer to his need…His spirit truly exists at depth in a godless chaos. Natural mysticism and religion can offer him no credible external objects, and his dread of trusting the ‘out there’ makes him very suspicious and a little contemptuous of those who naturally think of God in these terms. He can only hope to sink down into a sub-personal ground of being below the chaos.”

The spirituality of the Bible, the spirituality of creation and new creation, the spirituality of resurrection, does not split life in two, thus quenching its vitality. It does not force a believer to split off from the earth, the body, emotions, relationships or affairs in the external world. Indeed, as Jesus is the resurrected one, his lordship is unrestricted and extends into all areas of life. Hence the spirituality of the resurrection can be found in politics, ecology, economics, human services, manual labor, education, medicine, the arts and every area of culture, civilization and society.

Rather than confirming a schizoid position of fear, the Holy Spirit fosters a courageous openness to the world, a graceful acceptance of the body, an honest expression of emotion and an active engagement in relationship. It forms in us the vitality and hope necessary to arise out of our apathy in which we had grown so accustomed to what was unmistakably “unspiritual” – in that it promoted and enforced death, destruction, division, hatred and injustice.

The spirituality of the resurrection does not remove us from this uncomfortable position of awakened conflict with the death-drives of our age but is itself the unrest that is in motion towards the new creation of all things. This spirituality is itself the awakened groan which fills the entire creation, until it is “set free from its bondage to decay into the freedom of the glory of the children of God…And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved.” (Romans 8.22-24)

Related posts

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