Scripture as Real Presence: Sacramental Exegesis in the Early Church by Hans Boersma

Author:Hans Boersma [Boersma, Hans]
Language: eng
Format: azw
Tags: REL067080, REL067000, REL006400
ISBN: 9781493406654
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2017-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

Gregory of Nyssa on the Order of the Psalms111

Gregory of Nyssa, like Augustine and Athanasius, was deeply concerned with the healing of the soul in his interpretation of the psalms. As he unfolds the meaning of the psalms, Nyssen takes the structure of the entire Psalter as his guide for the spiritual life of virtue. Here, as in many of his other works, Saint Gregory was interested in the purpose (skopos) of the Psalter, as well as in the order (taxis) or sequence (akolouthia) of its various sections.112 By taking these elements seriously, Gregory believed that he not only could perceive the genuine purpose and structure of the book of Psalms but also was able to discern the purpose and structure of the journey of the soul. As we will see, these two—interpretation and the soul’s ascent—were for Gregory two sides of the same coin.

Gregory begins his Treatise on the Inscriptions of the Psalms by identifying the harmonious aim of the Psalter. He does this through a procedure borrowed from the early fourth-century Neoplatonic philosopher Iamblichus. Nyssen insists that to understand the book “one must understand the aim (skopon) to which this writing looks. Next, one must pay attention to the progressive arrangements of the concepts in the book under discussion. These are indicated both by the order (taxis) of the psalms, which has been well arranged in relation to knowledge of the aim (skopou), and by the sections of the whole book, which are defined by certain distinctive conclusions.”113 Gregory, like Iamblichus before him, takes the aim (skopos) and the order (taxis) of the work as the starting point and guide of the interpretive process.114

Nyssen identifies the aim of the Psalter by turning to the beginning of Psalm 1 (“Blessed is the man”). Since he regards this “blessedness” or “happiness” as the “goal” (telos) of the virtuous life, Gregory takes the Psalter as a whole to be a means of attaining this eschatological blessedness. The Psalter, he insists, points the way to blessedness “through a skilful and natural sequence (akolouthia) in teaching which is simple in its appearance and lacking in artifice by setting forth systematically in various and diverse forms the method for acquiring the blessing.”115 Nyssen recognizes the common division of the Psalter into five sections as providing the sequence, since these five parts all “conclude in a similar manner with certain ascriptions of praise to God.”116 Thus, Gregory outlines in the first part of his commentary the “systematic order”117 or the “orderly sequence” of the five books.118 Gregory is remarkably interested in the compositional structure of the book, which he believes will help him understand its meaning.

Since the book of Psalms leads one to the “blessedness” first mentioned in Psalm 1 and victoriously celebrated in Psalm 150, Nyssen takes each section as a stage in what he calls the “ascent” (anabasis) to the blessedness of perfect harmony, when humanity will imitate perfectly “the harmony of the universe in the variety and diversity of the virtues, having become an instrument for God in rhythmical music.

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