Per Caritatem

Reardon’s book, Christ in the Psalms is one of those books that I find myself picking up again and again, each time finding something new and worthy of my contemplation.  Commenting on Psalm 7, Reardon begins by drawing our attention to the way in which the Psalms are, like many other great literary works, distinctively human in that they engage nearly every human emotion, situation and circumstance that we encounter in our earthly lives as pilgrims; yet, as Reardon puts it, “the Psalter is human in a far deeper and more properly theological sense.  The humanism of the Psalter is a humanism rooted in the Incarnation.  The Psalter is not human because it speaks for man in general, but because it speaks for Christ.  The underlying voice of the Psalms is not simply ‘man’ but the Man” (p. 13).  When we contemplate the Psalms and enter into these prayers, we not only share in the thoughts and emotions of King David and the other writers-writers whose voices are, theologically speaking, secondary-we must also listen for the foundational voice, viz., the voice of Jesus Christ.  “The correct theological principle for praying the psalms is the Hypostatic Union, the ontological and irreversible coalescence of the human and the divine, ‘the synthesis achieved by God, which carries the name of Jesus Christ’ (Hans Urs von Balthasar)” [p. 13]. 

If it is the case that Christ’s voice is the primary voice of the Psalter, then we shouldn’t be surprised when we find some of the verses in the Psalms difficult or even impossible to pray in our own voice.   Psalm 7, for example, expresses a moral innocence that we simply cannot claim for ourselves.  It speaks of the One who was like us in every way except for sin-One whose conscience was never troubled by impure or unholy thoughts and recollections.  Psalm 7 also chronicles our Lord’s suffering at the hands of sinful people, providing a kind of “mounting drama of the Passion” (p. 14).

“Such is the proper setting for Psalm 7, as mankind’s single just Man suffers and dies to atone for the sins of the rest.  To pray this psalm properly is to enter into the mind of the Lord in the context of His redemptive Passion.  It is not to give expression to our personal feelings, but to discover something of His.  It is to taste, in some measure, the bitterness and the gall” (p. 14). 

In Job chapter 32, an interesting Melchizedek-like character appears on the scene, Elihu the Buzite.  Elihu is a mysterious fourth interlocutor who, though silent up to this point in the discourse perhaps due to his youth, now enters the conversation.  Chapter 32 opens by informing us that Job’s previous three interlocutors have been silenced, yet the text also says that at least part of the reason for their silence was due to that fact that Job considered himself “righteous in his own eyes.”  In light of the way in which that phrase is used in the book of Judges, one senses that perhaps Job is not as righteous as he has presumed.  That is, Job has no doubt been unjustly charged by his former dialogue partners because they had no category for the possibility of God’s chastening or testing his own.  Rather, they immediately concluded that Job’s suffering must be the result of his sin.  Job, then, rightly defended himself against their accusations; however, as the story unfolds and the conversational exchanges occur, Job begins to overstep his boundaries, and this is precisely what bothers Elihu and compels him to speak.  By the end of chapter 31, Job has defended himself well against his accusers; yet, as Reardon suggests, Job has gone too far. 

But has Job really demonstrated his right to hurl down a gauntlet to the Almighty?  Can anyone, in fact, rightly establish such a claim?  From a theological perspective it is imperative that Job now be challenged on this point, and it will be the responsibility of Elihu to do it.  Without the words of Elihu, the Book of Job would be a different book.  Elihu’s “summing up” prepares for the divine verdict on which the book will end (p. 84). 

Here we should also point out that Elihu’s criticisms are directed against both Job and his three comforters.  Moreover, Elihu does not claim to offer a final word, nor does he attempt to reduce things to an either/or scenario as did Job’s accusers.  In stark contrast with the tone of Job’s former dialogue partners, Elihu does not speak condescendingly to Job, but rather “confesses himself at one with Job in their human solidarity, their descent with Adam (Job 32:6-7). Yet, Elihu speaks rather frankly with Job, charging Job with an improper pretentiousness with regard to his claims to be without transgression and his demand that God give him an explanation for his sufferings (32:9-14).  As Reardon puts it, “God is greater than man,” which is to say, “God owes man no explanations at all” (p. 85).  Elihu is also concerned that Job be made aware of God’s presence in Job’s sufferings and does not presume that suffering is always connected with punishment (32:19-30).  Then in chapter 34, Elihu presents his thesis directly, viz., “God sends afflictions not only to punish, but also to admonish,” and if received, these afflictions are restorative and salutary (p. 87).  Elihu believes that neither Job nor his comforters have adequately entertained this possibility.  In order that his argument advance,

Elihu must put to rest any notion of injustice in God.  Such an idea involves an internal contradiction, Elihu contends (verses 10, 12); the very existence of the world depends on the thesis of God’s righteousness (verses 13-15).  There is no justice higher than God (verse 17), nor is the Almighty likely to be influenced by the more powerful of His creatures (verse 19).  Truly, nothing in man’s experience is hidden from the gaze of God (verses 21-22).  The font and source of justice, God holds all human activity to the same standard and the same sanctions (verses 24-28).  What Job’s comforters should have asserted is that God, through the sufferings that He has sent to Job, had only the latter’s proper correction in mind (verses 31-32).  The insistence of his friends, however, that Job was being justly punished for his crimes simply provoked him to an improper assertion of his innocence.  It was the responsibility of these men, says Elihu, to provide Job with proper instruction.  The ineptitude of their arguments has served only to incit the sufferer into open rebellion against the Almighty (verses 35-37).  Moreover, Job’s call for a trial, in which he might argue his case against God, distorts the proper relationship between God and man. God is not man’s enemy or opponent.  God needs opponents no more than He needs powerful friends, nor does He ever act from a sense of need (p. 88). 

All citations are taken from Patrick Henry Reardon, The Trial of Job:  Orthodox Reflectiosn on the Book of Job.

In his reflections on Job 4, Reardon provides some helpful background and commentary on Eliphaz, the first of Job’s “comforters.” Eliphaz is the eldest of the three men who interact with Job, and unlike the other two interlocutors, explicitly appeals to his own religious experience in his engagement with Job (4:8, 16; 5:3). Eliphaz’s deep sense of God’s absoluteness, birthed out of his religious experience, created in him a strong conviction of God’s justice and purity. Formally speaking, what Eliphaz says about God is correct and one has difficulty finding fault with the content per se. However, as Reardon points out, “[t]his profound certainty in his soul became the lens through which Eliphaz interprets the sundry enigmas of life, notably the problem of human suffering. But this perspective is too narrow, because it does not permit Eliphaz to discern the difference between punishment and trial” (p. 25). Because Eliphaz and his fellow comforters fail to distinguish between these two categories, they automatically find fault with Job so as to vindicate the justice of God. However, we as readers are aware of the conversation between God and Satan that took place in chapter 1, and, thus, are able to sympathize with Job in a way that his interlocutors were not in light of their rigid, either/or view of suffering. God was not punishing Job, but He was testing Job’s faith, just as Abraham and thousands of other saints have been tested.
As the story progresses, Job’s dialogue partners become increasingly un-wise and particularly uncompassionate. I close with a longish quote from Reardon that is as prophetic as ever.

“Eliphaz begins the discussion by invoking his own direct spiritual experience, his ‘vision,’ his veda. As we shall see, however, the second comforter, Bildad the Shuhite, can appeal to no personal experience of his own, but only to the experience of his elders, so what was a true insight in the case of Eliphaz declines to only an inherited theory in the case of Bildad. Living mystical insight becomes merely an inherited moral belief. True vision declines into theoretical dogma.

The same line of decline progresses further in the case of Job’s third comforter, because Zophar the Naamathite, unlike Bildad, is unable to invoke even the tradition of his elders. We shall see that Zophar is familiar with neither the living experience of Eliphaz nor the inherited learning of Bildad; his is simply the voice of established prejudice. That is the line of declination: real vision, accepted teaching, blind prejudice.

In these three men, then, we watch an insight decline into a theory, and then the theory harden into a settled, unexamined opinion. Thus do the voices raised against Job throughout this book become ever less persuasive or even morally serious” (p. 26).

Notes

Patrick Henry Reardon. The Trial of Job: Orthodox Reflections on the Book of Job. Ben Lomond: Conciliar Press, 2005.

In my personal/devotional reading of Scripture, I have recently begun reading the book of Job and am using as a supplement, Patrick Henry Reardon’s, The Trial of Job: Orthodox Reflections on the Book of Job. I plan to post my reflections on Job intermittently as my reading progresses.

In the introductory chapter, Reardon explains that there are two kinds of wisdom books in the Bible. One kind reflects what Plato called prudence or practical wisdom and is paradigmatically represented by the Book of Proverbs. This kind of wisdom tends to be more traditional or conservative and focuses not on the speculative or “why” questions, but rather on the “how” questions (e.g., how should I live). As Reardon somewhat provocatively puts it, practical prudence says that when you are confronted with the various problems of life “just keep the commandments, respect the tradition handed down from your parents, work hard, be careful, don’t be a scoffer, and everything will turn out just fine” (p. 11). The second sort of wisdom literature is exemplified by the Books of Ecclesiastes and Job. These books, on the other hand, are speculative and question the traditional, inherited answers. “They make a point of addressing difficult and thorny questions about the meaning of human existence itself. They address such difficult questions as how to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with the existence of an all-good, all-wise, and almighty God” (p. 11). [And aren’t we thankful that God has chosen such books to be part of his canon. That is, God seems to allow or even invite us to wrestle with these thorny, speculative issues].

Reardon goes on to point out the irony of the fact that Job was a man who embodied the virtues found in the Book of Proverbs, yet he did not meet with good fortune but with a tremendous amount of suffering. Job, as we would expect, wants to know why–if the Proverbs promise blessings to those who follow its wisdom, then why am I experiencing what seems to be cursings?

During the course of the story, Job is met with three so-called “comforters,” yet they do nothing but increase Job’s pain with their attempts to explain without remainder Job’s current sufferings. Eliphaz, one of the three men, is an important character, who becomes the voice of the first, more traditional kind of wisdom. As the various dialogues unfold, Job finds the answers given by his interlocutors’ for the most part sorely deficient. Here the speculative character of the book shines through, as the answers given are more tentative and probed than definitive or proved. “The book ends on the note of faith in God but, like Ecclesiastes, it permits the speculative thought of the believer to explore the darker, more mysterious dimensions of that faith” (p. 13).

In closing this section, Reardon makes an insightful observation. In the final chapter of Job, God reveals Himself to Job. Repeatedly in the book, Job makes the claim that he is a righteous man. “At the end, however, God shows something of Himself to Job’s inner vision, and no longer is our questioner able with confidence to call himself a righteous man. On the contrary, he falls down in humility and self-contempt: ‘I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, / But now my eye sees You./ Therefore, I abhor myself, / And repent in dust and ashes” (42:5-6). This is the whole Bible’s definitive word, in fact, about the prospects of human righteousness: that it won’t work. One finds salvation only in faith, repentance, a healthy contempt of self, and a saving trust in God’s fidelity to His promises. One observes this same attitude repeatedly throughout the epistles of Paul the Apostle” (p. 13).

The Protestant Reformed tradition, would of course, wholly agree with Reardon’s comments on the “prospects of human righteousness.” On this point, given Reardon’s take on Job’s righteousness, I wonder whether Reardon (an Orthodox priest) would be in agreement with St. Augustine’s claim that our righteous deeds (apart from Christ) are simply polished sins (or something to that effect)? Also, I find Job’s answer above (42:5-6) incredibly interesting given the postmodern criticism of vision metaphors over hearing metaphors. Job seems to contrast his “hearing” of God with his “seeing” God and privileges the latter. Any thoughts?

I wanted to share a few thoughts from Reardon’s reflections on Psalm 103. Reardon points out that this psalm illustrates what St. John Cassian called the “third sense” of Scripture—a kind of “interiorization of sacred history” in which we engage when we pray. According to Cassian, the “second sense” of Scripture is “its relationship to Christ, in whom the Bible is ‘fulfilled.’ He is the exegetical key. He is the Lamb who opens up the seven seals of its mysteries (Rev 5). Any reading of Holy Scripture, then, that attempts to bypass its fulfillment in Christ will attain to the letter that kills, not the Spirit that gives life” (p. 203).

Because of our union with Christ, we Christians read the Bible as our own book, our history. “The lengthy story of God’s dealings with His people is the history of our own souls” (p. 203). Directing us to a quote by St. Jerome who said, “When you pray, you speak to the Bridegroom; when you read the Bible, He speaks to you,” Reardon then adds that “the reading of Holy Scripture is thus a privileged locus of the Christian’s dialogue with the Lord. For the soul in Christ, the Bible is preeminently the book of the heart, where we study our own history and come to know our own identities in Christ. This ‘third sense’ of Scripture corresponds to what Bernard of Clairvaux meant when he called the Bible ‘the book of experience.’ It means that we do not correctly interpret the Bible except in permitting the Bible to interpret us” (p. 203).

Turning to Psalm 103, we see the Psalmist attempting to do just that—to take into his heart the merciful acts of God in history. “Bless the Lord, O my Soul, and forget not all his benefits” (vs. 2) … “He made known his ways to Moses his acts to the people of Israel” (vs. 7) … “He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him” (vs. 10-13). So with the psalmist we are invited to remember God’s mercy—his covenant with us—to “interiorize” the command, “Forget not all His benefits, He forgives all your iniquities” (p. 204).

Father, help me with the psalmist to “interiorize” and contemplate your great mercy toward me, your forgiveness of my sins and the depth of your love shown to me in the giving of your Son. For your mercy indeed is not a “hazy benevolence. It has a definite history that climaxes in specific acts of salvation” … “By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us” (1 John 3:16) [p. 204].

I’ve been reading through the Psalms for several months now and have been using as a devotional commentary, Patrick Henry Reardon’s, Christ in the Psalms. Commenting on verse 5, “How magnified are Your works, O Lord, how exceedingly deep Your thoughts,” Reardon writes:

“Once again, these praises of God bear specific reference to the things of our redemption. The ‘works’ of God have to do with the sending of His Son (cf. John 3:17; 6:29), the giving of His Son (3:16), the handing over of His Son (Rom. 8:32), ‘the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand’ (Eph. 1:19, 20). The exceedingly deep thoughts of God, likewise, have to do with the mystery of Christ, the profound counsel of our redemption, ‘the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew’ (1 Cor. 2:7,8). It is in the blood of Jesus that these exceedingly deep thoughts of God are made manifest to our minds, for ‘in Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will’ (Eph. 1:7-9). God’s exceedingly deep thoughts, of which our psalm speaks, have to do with the ‘mystery [of Christ]…which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit’ (3:3-5)” [Patrick Henry Reardon, Christ in the Psalms, pp. 180-81].

Thank you Father for sending Your Son for the likes of me–to die in my place for the forgiveness of my sins and for adopting me as your very own.

To rest, confide, entrust—
O faith sublime,
in Christ.

Whose glorious Gospel captivates, subdues, confounds.
This mystery I have come to know and yet shall ne’er outgrow,
The Cross of my Lord by whose blood I am owned.

Tis bliss, tis safe –
The vain seeking of the prodigal has ceased.My Father has found me,
freeing me through crushing Him.I, adopted – He, forsaken,
a divine mystery indeed.

New life, new hope, new eyes—
all gifts divine, bestowed in love by Him who lives
and more who reigns.

To rest, be still, embrace—
Your faith sublime,
O Christ.