Reading the Psalms: Thomas Merton, C.S. Lewis and Bede Griffiths
I
Thomas Merton (1915-1968), C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) and Bede Griffiths (1906-1993) are, probably, three of the most significant Christian writers of the 20th century. Lewis held Merton in high regard and Lewis- Griffiths had a decades long friendship. Merton thought Lewis was a superb writer and many were his affinities with Griffiths. Each of these men have their loyal followers and, sadly so, some of the disciples know little of how each of the men respected one another. Lewis was a lay Anglican, but he would have read the Psalms once a month as a result of living through Anglican Morning and Evening Prayers, whereas Griffiths and Merton were monks, hence each would have read the Psalms once a week in the Divine Offices. This means that each of the men was thoroughly acquainted with the Psalms and the dilemmas raised by their confessional nature.
The fact that Lewis, Griffiths and Merton meditatively internalized the Psalms meant that they had to, in their faith journey, ponder how to read the Psalter, some psalms being quite uplifting in their vision and description of the inner journey, others being quite graphic in their vindictive attitudes, some being quite noble in their political vision, others being quite warrior like and tribal. It was, therefore, in the reading of the Psalms, in a regular way, that Lewis, Griffiths and Merton, as they attempted to interpret and make sense of their faith journey, struggled with how to read the Psalms. It was in this inner pondering of faith experience of the various writers of the Psalms and Lewis’, Griffiths’ and Merton’s understanding of their Christian journey that, inevitably so, nudged each of the men to write a book on the Psalms.
Merton was the first to write a book on the Psalms, dedicated to Jean Danielou (who he considered a spiritual father of sorts). Bread in the Wilderness was published in 1953, and although Merton, wrongly so, I think, thought it one of his “fair” books (it should, perhaps, be in the category of “good” or “better”), the missive reflects the younger Merton engaging the Psalms in a nuanced manner. Lewis published Reflections on the Psalms in 1961, and it is dedicated to one of the finest 20th century Anglican theologians, Austin Farrer, and his wife, Katharine Farrer. Roland Ropers edited for Griffiths his more controversial Psalms for Christian Prayer that was published after Griffiths’ death in 1995, although there is a fine “Introduction” by Griffiths written, obviously, before his death in 1993.
Lewis, Griffiths and Merton each approached and read the Psalms in different ways, and the purpose of this short essay is to examine how their approach is different and the difference it makes.
II
Merton and the Psalms
Merton was younger than Lewis and Griffiths, but his commitment to the Cistercian journey in 1941 and the fact his initial Abbot encouraged him to write meant that Merton threaded together, throughout all his monastic life, the external structure of the monastic journey (which meant reading the Psalms once a week), his internal appropriation of the Psalms and his attempt to articulate the relationship between the Psalms, personal experience and contemplation. The sheer success of Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain in 1948 made it abundantly clear that Merton had writing gifts that needed to be encouraged (both for Merton’s sake and the monastery). Merton had lived the Divine Office for almost ten years before he wrote Bread in the Wilderness. The book was ready to go to print in 1950, but because of contractual conflicts, it did not leave the publishing tarmac until 1953. But, Bread in the Wilderness reflects and embodies significant aspects of the monastic and contemplative approach to reading the Psalms. The book does have its limitations and weak points, but, for the most part, there is much substance and depth in it that is worth the heeding. There is a regrettable tendency, amongst some Merton scholars, of the more liberal left bent, to see the Merton of the 1960s as the real and mature Merton—this approach tends to negate the fact that Merton had significant commitments to the traditional monastic way of seeing and being, and his read of the Psalms in Bread in the Wilderness has something quite perennial about it (at the core). Merton lived with many a tension, and one of the tensions was between the classical and modern, and he had the judicious wisdom to say sic et non to both.
The original publication by New Directions publishing in 1953 of Bread in the Wilderness had, on the front cover, the graphic and not to be forgotten head of “this terrible masterpiece” of the Le Devot Christ that hangs in the chapel beside the Cathedral of Perpignan in Southern France. It is a gruesome carving of the suffering Christ still on the cross, and each section of Bread in the Wilderness highlights different parts of the crucifix. The 1954 edition of Bread in the Wilderness (London: Hollis & Carter) has a more benign front cover with seeds in the soil rising to mature form, but Le Devot Christ is included in the main content of the book. Merton had, obviously, wanted to make it clear that the Psalms were not meant to be merely literature, but, as his introductory passage from Mark 8:4 indicates, “bread in the wilderness”---Le Devot Christ is the Christ ever on the cross, then and now, the cross and the wilderness being at one. It was then, for Merton, the intimate connection between the daily readings of the Psalms, Le Devot Christ, various notions of wilderness in soul and society from which the Psalms as bread in the wilderness had to be set and seen. In short, wilderness and a being still on the cross are the context within which the Psalms could be best read.
Bread in the Wilderness is divided into five main sections with a “Prologue” and “Epilogue” acting as bookends to the substance of the text. There is a sense in which Merton is offering the reader a literary and literate way to read the Psalms that nourishes the soul and society in the wilderness of time. The five sections clarify, in an incisive manner, how to read the Psalms from within a classical monastic context that also has a perennial and non-monastic appeal to it. Each of the five sections walk the attentive read deeper into ways and means of, in a more mature manner, internalizing the Psalms: 1) Psalms and Contemplation, 2) Poetry, Symbolism and Typology, 3) Sacramenta Scripturarum, 4) The Perfect Law of Liberty and 5) The Shadow of Thy Wings. Each of these five main sections are then broken down into smaller areas worth the pondering. Merton does not flinch from facing into the difficult psalms and offering interpretations of them, but he is equally committed to understand how to read them in a meditative and contemplative manner, given the fact monks recite the full Psalter once a week. Needless to say, such a formal approach within the monastic tradition can, if not careful, become merely formality and the existential meaning of the Psalms can be missed. Bread in the Wilderness is, in its unique and uncanny way, a contemplative exegetical, philosophical, theological, ecclesial and public hermeneutical portal into the Psalms beginning with tragedy and suffering as a given in the all too human journey. Needless to say, such an approach, when rightly understood, avoids the pitfalls of a sort of thin devotionalism and deadening formalism. The task of knowing how to read religious literature is, probably, more important than, simply, just reading it. Bread in the Wilderness offers a wise and discerning “how”, hence, in some ways, the reason this packed missive is more than a “Fair” book in Merton’s ranking of his published writings.
Bread in the Wilderness, as I mentioned above, is, in some senses, Merton’s layered summing up of his nuanced approach, drawn from the classical Christian and monastic ethos, of how to read the Psalms, now almost ten years being a monk and living what he is writing about.
There can be no doubt that the themes of wilderness, the crucified and suffering Christ, the Christ who is still, in some ways, still on the cross will remain with Merton throughout the 1950s until his death in 1968. There is, then, the obvious sense that Merton reads the Psalms in a Christocentric manner that is immersed in the most painful aspects of the human journey but in which hope and healing, transformation and liberty are essential to such a pilgrimage.
If Merton embraced and accepted all the Psalms and offered a nuanced way to read them, how was Lewis’ approach similar yet different?
III
C.S. Lewis: Reading the Psalms
There has been a historic tendency to ignore Lewis’ admiration for Merton and Merton’s respect for Lewis. I have touched on their mutual honouring of one another in my article, “C.S. Lewis and Thomas Merton: Soul Friends” (Crux: A Quarterly Journal of Christian Thought and Opinion published by Regent College: Summer 2014, Vol. 50, No. 2)—if only the followers of Lewis and Merton were as gracious and generous as their teachers. Lewis was a catholic Anglican who, true to the Prayer Book, would have traversed the Psalms once a month in Morning and Evening Prayers. This means, in Lewis’ many reads of the Psalms (12 times a years) he would have had to make sense of both the appeal of the finest and most contemplative psalms and some of the most vindictive, violent and war like psalms Were all of the psalms to be read and inwardly digested with equal authority or was there a more complex way of reading the psalms? Obviously, Merton and Lewis leaned towards the latter approach, both being literary men with contemplative bents and leanings (Merton more focussed in such a path and vocation than Lewis) yet their method in making sense of the Psalms somewhat different. The turn and publication by Lewis in his read of the Psalms emerges in Reflections on the Psalms, published in 1961 (reflecting, in some ways, Lewis’ decades long ponderings on how to read the Psalms. The fact Reflections on the Psalms is dedicated to Austin and Katharine Farrer (Austin being a significant Anglican Divine and theologian who only in the last few years is being given his rightful due) speaks much about the Lewis-Farrer relationship that delved deep and deeper into exegesis, theology, philosophy, ecclesiology and public life. Needless to say, Farrer held Lewis in high regard as a theologian and exegete (something that is often ignored in Lewis studies).
Reflections on the Psalms is divided in twelve short chapters with Appendix I-- Selected Psalms and Appendix II—Psalms discussed or mentioned as a finale of sorts. Each chapter tends to be more discursive than Merton’s approach, but the major theses are reflected upon is suggestive detail. There is a sense in which each chapter needs to be read a few times and meditatively reflected upon at various levels. The chapter headings speak for themselves: 1) Introduction, 2) “Judgement” in the Psalms, 3) The Cursings, 4) Death in the Psalms, 5) “The Fair Beauty of the Lord”, 6) “Sweeter than Honey”, 7) Connivance, 8) Nature, 9) A Word about Praising, 10) Second Meanings, 11) Scripture, 12) Second Meanings in the Psalms.
Lewis, like Merton, and unlike Griffiths, accepted the fullness of the Psalter. This meant Lewis and Merton had to deal with many of the vindictive, enemy, battle cry, nationalist psalms which seemed so contrary to the teachings of Christ in the New Testament. Merton tended to look into some psalms but, true to form (which I will discuss later) gave them a Christological, allegorical or typological interpretation (rather than a merely literal). Lewis, being a Medieval-Renaissance scholar, acknowledged these reads, but he was also interested on understanding the literal, historic and root experiences of such psalms. “Judgment” in the Psalms (II) and “The Cursings” (III) probes the reasons why such psalms are in Scripture. What were the varied historic experiences of the Jewish writers that would legitimate some of the ethnic and nationalist, vindictive and judgmental psalms that are included in the Psalms? It is these questions raised by Lewis (not, of course, legitimating such attitudes or actions) that makes Lewis’ more layered historic literalism worth many a read: II-III are must reads in Reflections on the Psalms on an approach to the problematic psalms that both embraces all the psalms and does so without, initially, going down the allegorical, typological or Christological route. This does not mean, though, that Lewis ignores this approach. But, in II-III, he ponders, ways of why some psalmists had such a dualistic worldview (something which Griffiths engages in quite a different way).
Bread in the Wilderness is, in many ways, committed to understanding the relationship between the contemplative, poetry, symbolism, typology and the sacramenta scripturarum. Such an approach to reading the Psalms is, obviously, quite different from a literal, grammatical, historic and linguistic approach. The final section of Reflections on the Psalms has many an affinity with Merton. Lewis and Merton were both immersed in the classical catholic vision. Lewis calls his approach, “Second Meanings” (X), “Scripture” (XI) and “Second Meanings in the Psalms” (XII). Needless to say, Lewis, like Merton, attempted to avoid the reductionism of, on the one hand, the reading of the Psalms, to the literal and historical, and, on the other hand, an irresponsible allegorizing of the Psalms. This more nuanced and refined via media of sorts, recognized the Psalms could be read at a variety of levels, and the second meanings could illuminate the journey of the soul in a way the first order meanings could not (which did not mean the literal-historic approach should be denied at a certain level). Lewis delves into more depth and detail in chapters X-XII on how and why second meanings are more significant than does Merton, although both, from different angles, reach some similar conclusions (Merton somewhat more, obviously, monastic and Roman Catholic than Lewis might be). But, both men, drawing from a Classical and Medieval approach to Scripture (Lewis more grounded the Renaissance tradition than Merton) hold high the integration and priorizing of the literal, allegorical, typological and Christological read of the Psalms, Lewis, perhaps, more willing to engage some of the higher-lower criticism and historic reasons for the nationalist and battle cry psalms. It was this ongoing tension that needed to be held together for a more appropriate reading of the Psalms that Lewis and Merton, from different approaches, agreed upon. It is in this sense that Bread in the Wilderness and Reflections on the Psalms need to be read together, the former more contemplative and monastic in focus, the latter more discursive and analytical in tendency, although both books share much in common. It should be noted that chapters in X-XII in Reflections on the Psalms reveals, in many ways, Lewis’ broader Biblical and exegetical hermeneutic.
Bede Griffiths’ had a more controversial approach to reading the Psalms (more selective than comprehensive) that separates his approach from Merton and Lewis.
IV
Bede Griffiths: Reading the Psalms
Griffiths, like Merton and Lewis, was acutely aware of the various ways of reading the Psalms. There was, of course, the literal and historic level, then, in ascending order, the allegorical culminating in the Christological. But, Griffiths was enough of a modern person to linger at the literal and historic level of the Psalms, and he was taken by the beauty and suggestive wisdom of some psalms and appalled by many other psalms. How were the 150 psalms to be read through a Christocentric lens, given the fact Christ could be generous to the other, called for forgiveness, a loving of the enemy, chose to suffer violence than inflict it and he certainly leaned in a more dovish than hawkish direction, whereas many psalms which were about war, violence, a destroying of the enemy, God blessing the slaughter of other nations and the Jews being God’s chosen and elect people? Griffiths approach to dealing with these obvious disparities was quite different from that of Merton and Lewis.
Griffiths in the “Introduction” to Psalms for Christian Prayer suggested there were two at odds traditions within the Jewish heritage. There was the “dualist” heritage in which the Jews were a special and holy people (set apart by a holy God) and anything which threatened to undermine such a unique position was seen as the opponent, enemy and had to be destroyed. In short, there was a right-wrong mentality and some of the Jewish psalmist saw themselves, their nation and God as in the right and those who differed with them as in the wrong. Such a simplistic “dualism” played quite nicely into the aggressive and violent psalms that led, in practice, to a tragic treatment of the other. But, within the Biblical tradition, there was the “universalist” tendency. Such a pathway led to justice, peacemaking, reconciliation, forgiveness and grace towards the other. There are, of course, many psalms that embody and reflect this more “universalist” and, in many ways, prophetic and Christological approach.
Merton and Lewis accepted the 150 Psalms as a canonical and integrated whole, whereas Griffiths, in a way that set him at odds with others, argued that the psalms that reflected a more “dualistic” worldview were dated---psalms that legitimated war and violence were not worth the reading or meditating upon. This meant a sort of purging had to take place within the Psalms that would, when complete, reflect the more “universalist” ethos of both Jewish prophetic thought and a more Christological read. Psalms for Christian Prayer, to the chagrin of many, deletes 55 psalms and presents to the reader the more perennial psalms that are, obviously, of a more “universalist” bent.
Was this the best way to deal with the layered and complex nature of the Psalms? Obviously, this was not the path taken by Merton and Lewis, although both men shared Griffiths’ concerns about the more “dualistic” psalms. Lewis attempted to explain why such a way of thinking emerged and occurred in the psalms, critiqued such a way of doing confessional poetry but retained the 150 Psalms. Merton did not go to the same lengths as Lewis in dissecting and differing with the “dualistic” psalms, but Bread in the Wilderness would certainly have many an affinity with Lewis and Griffiths. The question, then, became how to interpret and what should be done with the Zeus, Odin and Jupiter like psalms? There could be no doubt that each of the psalms were not to be held with the same reverence and dignity. And, many did not reflect a more enlightened notion of God, the faith journey and nationhood. Were all psalms, in a sense, equally inspired, or were many psalms included as a way of seeing how the faith journey could go askew and others aright? Such an approach, necessarily, even at the literal and historic level, raises needful questions about higher and lower texts and higher and lower ways of reading such poetry.
The fact Griffiths in Psalms for Christian Prayer chose to delete what he thought “dualistic” psalms and create a psalter of “universalist” psalms has its boosters and knockers. Was this sanitizing of the text the best and most appropriate path to take or was the Merton-Lewis approach the more mature? I suspect, in time, Griffiths’ well intentioned approach will wane while the more comprehensive read of Merton and Lewis will wax well and survive the test of the decades. Needless to say, the sensitive reader need not embrace the “dualistic” psalms but in the reading of them insights can be offered on how many interpret their faith journey with God and in community. The nationalist and dualist attitude does ever linger and such psalms do reflect a way of seeing faith. The more prophetic Jewish way and Christian Christocentric approach, though, does take the reader through a different world and into a starkly different ethos of faith, community and politics. There is a sense in the Psalms that two different types of faith can take hold and root, and depending on the seeds planted, a different tree and fruit will appear. This is, perhaps, the genius of the Psalms---we are offered two paths----dualism or universalism---both paths take the committed to different destinations and graphically different consequences. Each must choose and, in the end, each must live with the consequences of such choices.
V
Reading the Psalms: Merton, Lewis and Griffiths
Bede Griffiths, drawing from St. Benedict, in his “Introduction” to Psalms for Christian Prayer, stated that although Benedict arranged for the Psalms to be meditatively chanted in a week, he felt this was a compromise----the “holy fathers were wont to recite in a single day what we tepid monks may only sing in a week”. There can be no doubt, within the monastic and Anglican Prayer Book, the Psalms were read more often and consistently than any other book in the Bible. The question then became, in such frequent reading, given the diverse nature of the Psalms, was this: how are the Psalms to be read? Should the more vindictive, enemy oriented, war like psalms be included in the Psalter? If so, what did this say about the nature of God and the spirituality of the Jews (as the chosen people)? Should many of the more graphic and raw psalms be viewed in a more descriptive rather than prescriptive manner, hence more a reflection of the varied seasons of the faith journey? Merton recognized that the literal approach had some merit, but he was quick to read the psalms in a more literary, typological, allegorical and Christological manner. Lewis probed the literal read deeper and further than Merton, but in his chapters in “Second Meanings”, he has much affinity with Merton. Merton and Lewis did, though, accept the 150 Psalms as the confessional tradition that they faithfully used, although their exegetical approach was layered and nuanced. Griffiths, Merton and Lewis all agreed there were troubling psalms, but their approach was different. Griffiths lingered longer at the literal level (he was, obviously, aware of the allegorical sense), but he thought the more descriptive and “dualist” psalms did not reflect a mature and healthy spirituality, hence they needed to be weeded from the Psalms---only 95 of the 150 Psalms remained after Griffith’s pruning.
Which approach to reading the Psalms is the best? Merton, Lewis and Griffiths equally agreed that there were many ennobling and laudatory psalms. They equally agreed there were troubling psalms. The question then was what was to be done with the troubling psalms? Griffiths took the more extreme approach, Lewis and Merton the more moderate pathway. How would Griffiths, if he had entered into dialogue with Merton and Lewis on this issue have engaged them? Why would Lewis and Merton differ with Griffiths’ approach and would Griffiths’ have heeded, heard them and changed his mind? There can be no doubt, though, knowing how to read the Psalms is, probably, more important than merely reading the Psalms.
Ron Dart
Comments