Psalms In The West Chapter 1 Summary

Next, chapter ten, “The Psalms for Christians: In the West until the Reformation, and in the East,” traces the Christian community and their use of the Psalms. During this period, we begin to see formal liturgies develop in the early centuries as a part of worship, which included the use of psalms in these liturgies (p.166). It is clear that the Psalms remain an important part of worship, for both the Jew, as seen in the previous chapter, and for the Christian (p.167). Furthermore, chapter ten provides an example of how the Psalter was perceived to be the property of lay Christians in a way other scripture was not (p.178). “. . . the Psalter became the textbook though which the young clerk-to-be learned his letters; the Psalms were central
Furthermore, the changing society and new developments began to shift people’s access to the Bible, as well as their perspective of it. “One result of those new developments was the growing awareness of lay people of their place in the economy of God, and the growing awareness of Christians of the source book of the faith, namely, the Bible” (p.192). Martin Luther (p.192) and John Calvin (p.196) both used the Psalms extensively and wrote commentaries on the Psalms. This use of the Psalms would go on to form and shape the perspective of the proper use of Psalms in the Reformation churches that developed from the Reformation
The first insight comes from the author’s discussion regarding the Psalms in the Mass. Excerpts from the Psalter were heavily used in the Mass through multiple brief sentences used as transitions throughout the service (p.219). This insight is important because it depicts expectance that the Catholic Church had for their listeners/congregation to be well-versed in their knowledge of scripture in order to pick up on short excerpts of passages that might not be recognizable to someone lacking in knowledge of scripture. Secondly, the author notes that during this time period “. . . there was little that brought fresh understanding of the Psalms” (p.225).However, the author still maintains that “. . . it must not be forgotten that the Psalms continued to nourish Christians in many ways” (p.225). Therefore, this remains important because even though the church had not developed new or fresh ways to understand the Psalms, the Psalms were still entirely capable of nourishing Christians who not only experienced hardships and trials, but also in their everyday