Martial Challenge PDF

Martial Challenge To the choir director. A Maskil of David, when Doeg the Edomite came and tol.d Saul: "David has come to the house of Ahimelech." 1. Why do you boast of wickedness, mighty man? The mercy of God (persists) every day. 2. Your tongue devises slander, like a sharp razor working deceit....

Martial Challenge To the choir director. A Maskil of David, when Doeg the Edomite came and tol.d Saul: "David has come to the house of Ahimelech." 1. Why do you boast of wickedness, mighty man? The mercy of God (persists) every day. 2. Your tongue devises slander, like a sharp razor working deceit. 3. You love evil more than good, lying than telling the truth. Selah. 4. You love all devouring words, deceitful tongue. 5. God will also demolish you utterly. He will snatch and tear you from your tent, and shall uproot you from the land of the living. Selah. 6. But the righteous see, fear and laugh at him: 7. "Behold the man that would not make God his defense, but trusted in abundance of riches and sought defense in his selfwill." 8. But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. 9. I· will praise You forever, because You accomplished it, and I will hope in Your name, for it is good in the sight of Your holy ones. PSALM 52.cc::::::====::xKkJC===::::>tK====:::::x- 136 MARTIAL CHALLENGE 13 7 The previous discussion concluded with commendation and resolute support of authority, but this psalm begins with an incrimination and implied resistance. Scriptural metaphors further suggest militancy, the experience of the godly illustrates it, and Christ makes it explicit: "Do not think tha,t I have come to bring peace on earth. I have not come to bring peace, but the sword" (Matt. 10 :34). God does not allow evil to go unchallenged, either directly or indirectly through his followers. The Christian is enlisted in a conflict of universal proportion. CHRIST AND CULTURE The arena of Christian combat is culture, the total process· of human activity, the secondary environment superimposed upon the natural world. It involves at least ideology, language, custom, social structure, composite inheritance, and technical skill. Man is responsible for turning material things to divine ends. He is both aided and hindered in his task by the manner in which culture has been realized. Christ as Telos (Fulfillment) of Culture It is not surprising that radically different views concerning Christ and culture should have evolved. Some have tended to overlook the tension between the two, and to make Christ the hero of human history, the cultural triumph of the ages. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century rationalism is a case in point. John Locke asserted that the teachings of Christ might be according to or above reason, but never contrary to it. Christ, he said, draws together the fragmented insights of man into the full revdation of God. In Him "morality has a sure standard, that revelation vouches, and reason cannot gainsay, nor question; but both together witness to come from God the great law-maker. An such an one as this, out of the New Testament, I think the world never had, nor can any one say, is any-where else to be found." 1 The revelation of Christ goes beyond reason, but the reasonable man can hardly reject His claims. 1.John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity, p. 231. 138 PSYCHOLOGY IN THE PSALMS The so-called "Social Gospel movement" had a similar tendency to eliminate the tension between Christ and culture. The social gospel was a creation of American Protestantism in its effort to resolve problems arising from the industrial and social revolution of the nineteenth century. Washington Gladden in his Lyman Beecher Lectures described God's role in social ferment: "In all this industrial struggle he is present in every part of it, working according to the counsel of his perfect will. In the gleams of light which sometimes break forth from the darkness of the conflict we discern his inspiration; in the stirrings of good-will which temper the wasing strife we behold the evidence of his presence; in the sufferings and lo:>ses and degradations which wait upon every violation of his law of love we witness the retribution with which that law goes armed. " 2 Social crusade having become roughly synonymous with Christianity, Christ was installed as its high priest. The efforts to seek an unconditioned peace between Christ and culture have generally been rejected both by the world and by the people of the Way. The reasonableness of Christianity did not commend itself any more to the "age of reason" than did Christian social rationale to the masses caught in revolutionary change. The Church likewise was suspect by those who minimized the importance of theology, stressed by law over grace, and seemed to distort the nature of historic Christianity. Christ as Critic of Culture Separation is the opposite pole from uncritical participation, and has been given a more persistent hearing in the Church. Regardless of the achievement recognized in man's societal attainment, he is required to choose between Christ and culture. Tertullian naturally comes to mind as soon as this position is mentioned. An articulate speaker of the setond century, Tertullian was eventually led by the direction of his logic and the strength of his zeal away from the mainstream of Christianity into the moral perfectionism and apocalyptic speculations of Montanism. Washington Gladden, Social Salvation, p. 26. 2 MARTIAL CHALLENGE 139 His attitude toward culture is reflected in his attack on pagan entenainment: "Grant that you have there things that are pleasant, things both agreeable and innocent in themselves; even some things that are excellent. Nobody dilutes poison with gall and hellebore: the accursed thing is put into condiments well seasoned and of sweetest taste. So, too, the devil puts into the deadly draught which he prepares, things of God most pleasant and most acceptable." 3 Tenullian goes on to liken the edifying aspects of entenainment to honey dropped on a poisoned cake. The Christian must preclude its pleasures because of the evil distraction involved. Isolation is implied in separation, and it has left the Church with an W1easy conscience while soliciting the criticism of the world for its apparent indifference. In fact, the radical divorcement of Christianity from culture always seems to reflect some pagan influence such as the stoicism in T enullian. Grace is extracted from love; the monastic is saved while the world is allowed to go unchecked toward oblivion. Even if it were thought the right thing to do, isolation from culture is impossible. The very words used to preach separation are themselves facets of culture. Christ can no more be divorced from culture than He can be merged with it. A PERSISTING ISSUE There are, to be sure, mediating solutions which have been offered. One of these is the attitude assumed by Martin Luther as a result of criticism against his hard policy on the peasants' revolt. He responded: "God's kingdom is a kingdom of grace and mercy, not of wrath and punishment. In it there is only forgiveness, consideration for one another, love, service, the doing of good, peace, joy, etc. But the kingdom of the world is a kingdom of wrath and severity."4 Two sets of demands were made upon the Christian, those of the heavenly and the earthly kingdoms. These reflected two moralities, necessarily accommodated to the 3Terrullian, The Shows, ch. 27. Martin Luther, "An Open Letter Concerning the Hard Book Against the Peasants," U'orks' of.Martin Lutber, IV, p. 265. 140 PSYCHOLOGY IN THE PSALMS events of life but still in tension. While Luther distinguished the two kingdoms, he did not divide them. The ideal was to make the best of the popular situation, to endure by God's grace the contradiction of experience. Thomas Aquinas attempted a closer harmony, lessening the tension by subsuming all things under a divine overview.5 This position provided a theoretical solution, but tended toward a practical compromise with culture. Augustine illustrates the conversionist approach to culture, seeing Christianity primarily as a catalyst, a means of accelerating the divine purpose for mankind. He reasons: "In the universe, even that which is called evil, when it is regulated and put in its own place, only enhances our admiration of the good; for we enjoy and value the good more when we compare it with the evil. For the Almighty God, who, as even the heathen acknowledge, has supreme power over all things, being Himself supremely good, would never permit the existence of anything evil among His works, if He were not so omnipotent and good that He can bring good even out of evil."6 Conversion occurs in, rather than apart from, the tension between Christ and culture, and is part of the process of resolution. Such a position naturally breeds an optimism which is only in a qualified sense supported by the facts of the case. H. Richard Niebuhr, having examined the typical answers to the Christ and culture issue in much more detail, admits that the problem is unconcluded and inconclusive. However, he does suggest that a viable option must be relative and responsible: "Our decisions are individual, that is true; they are not individualisticas though we made them for ourselves and by ourselves as well as in ourselves." 7 Decision reflects concern for the will of God and respect for the community of faith. It is at this place, where Niebuhr locates the issue, that the psalmist takes his point of departure. 5Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 11/1, Question 91, Third Anicle. 6 Augustine, Enchiridion, ch. 11. 7 H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture, p. 243. MARTIAL CHALLENGE 141 ANALYSIS The body of the text may be outlined as perspective on an enemy (vss. 1-4), prophecy of his destruction (vss. 5-7), and the happy prospect of those who trust in God (vss. 8-9). Its preface suggests the setting of the psalm, and the first division describes the experience of the psalmist. Setting of the Psalm David, in flight from Saul, was welcomed by the priest Ahimelech, who provided him with holy bread for sustenance and Goliath's sword for protection. Doeg the Edomite, having observed what transpired, slipped off to bring repon of it to Saul. Ahimelech was charged with conspiracy. Rejecting his pleas of innocence, the king demanded that the priests and their families be put to death, a sentence subsequently carried out by Doeg (I Sam. 22). The inhumanity of this spiteful act provided the burden of the psalm. The abuse of justice by arrogant magistrates remained a persisting problem for Israel, and called fonh repe:1ted warnings from the prophets. While the original offender may have been Saul, or Doeg as his emissary, "the wicked man... is apparently a type or generalization of a class rather than a specific individual, and the fate of such a man is compared with that of the godly man." 8 The original setting became an archetype for succeeding injustices. Experience of the Psalmist What was violated by this carnage (vs. 1)? It is both the humanistic dream and the divine revelation: "The humanist contends for the dignity of the human soul, refusing any dependence even upon God; the orthodox contends for the majesty of God, refusing any virtue which is not in God and wholly dependent upon him. The New Testament knows neither