CTJ36 (2001): 12-21

The Friday Voice of Faith1

Walter Brueggemann

I am delighted to have been invited here and delighted to get to be with

you. The invitation to me was to give two lectures on the lament psalms with a
consideration of a pastoral edge. In this morning's lecture, I want to discuss five
topics. First, I want to present a short survey of the history of research on
lament psalms. Second, I want to talk about the problem of the nonuse of the
lament psalms in the life of the church. Third, the point that most interests me
is to talk about what I call a grid of interactionism. Fourth, I want to offer three
theological reflections. Finally, I want to conclude with two observations about
the importance of the lament psalms for today.
Brief Survey of the History of Research
The history of psalmic interpretation shows that scholarly research on the
lament psalms is essentially a German phenomenon. In my brief survey of the
history of this research, I will mention five German scholars who have contributed significantly to our understanding of the lament psalms.
H e r m a n n Gunkel (1862-1932)
Gunkel shaped all psalm study with his work on genre and form criticism.2
He distinguished four basic types of psalms: hymn, song of thanksgiving, individual lament, and communal lament. It seems to me that Gunkel's program,
to a degree, has run amuck. It has become somewhat scholastic in the hands of
scholars. Nevertheless, what is important about Gunkel's contribution is that he
understood that communities of speech develop scripts and habits for shaping
the world. Form criticism, therefore, is essentially the claim of the community
that "this" genre (the lament psalms in this instance) is how we talk in "this"
(lamentable) circumstance. People inside the community need instruction in

IA revised version of a lecture delivered at Calvin Theological Seminary on April 22,1993. An

adapted version of this lecture appeared earlier in Reformed Worship 30 (December 1993) : 3-5.
2

Cf. Hermann Gunkel andJoachim Beglich, Einltungin die Psalmen (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 1933). For a brief summary see Hermann Gunkel, The Psalms (Philadelphia: Fortress,
1967).

12

THE FRIDAYVOICE OF FAITH

how we talk in a given circumstance because we talk differently from other people. That is what a genre means.

Hans Schmidt (18774953)

In 1928, Hans Schmidt wrote a little book on complaint psalms3 in which he
proposed that these psalms use essentially juridical languagelanguage used
in a trial or using the trial as a metaphor. Schmidt's work is very important
because he saw that the psalms of lament are the voice of the innocentnot
the voice of the guilty. This is specifically significant for those of us who want to
talk about Christian theology in terms of justification because justification is
our way of talking about acquittal.

Claus Westermann (1909-)

More recently, Claus Westermann, the most important figure in contemporary research on the lament psalms, addressed the place and purpose of these
psalms in his programmatic work The Praise of God in Psalms.* Westermann
developed his ideas on the lament psalms while he was a prisoner of war in a
Russian camp where he had no books except the Bible. I take it as important
that he was able to see, precisely while he was in prison, that the psalms of
lament move from what he calls plea (lament or petition) to praise. The lament
psalms characteristically culminate in joy, praise, well-being, and an offering.
For Westermann, this was not a literary matter but a profoundly theological
matter in which the world of the speaker is decisively changed.
I want to make two observations about Westermann's ideas on the lament
psalms. First, the most important difficulty that has preoccupied scholarship is
the question: What happens that causes the psalm to move from trouble to resolution? Whatever literary explanation one may give, the theological point is
clearly evangelical. Second, it seems clear to me that the structure of plea
and/or praise, when taken theologically and christologically, correlates with
the Friday and Sunday of Christian faith. Therefore, it is precisely this psalmlament genre that gives Christian faith its liturgical pattern of crucifixion and
resurrection. One obvious implication is that the loss of the lament psalm in
the worship life of the church is essentially the loss of a theology of the cross.
Since 1965, there has been an explosion of scholarly attention concerning
the lament psalms. There are a number of important studies, but I want to
mention two that seem to me to be enormously important, neither of which has
yet been translated into English.

3
4

Hans Schmidt, Das Gebet der Angeklagten im Alten Testament (Giessen: Alfred Tpelmann, 1928).

Claus Westermann, The Praise ofGod in the Psalms, trans. Keith R. Crim (Richmond: John Knox,
1965). The new edition is titled Praise and Lament in the Psalms, trans. Keith R. Crim and Richard N.
Soulen (Atlanta: John Knox, 1981).

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Erhard S. Gerstenberger (1932-)

First is the work of Erhard S. Gerstenberger, Westermann's student. He
titled his 1970 postdoctoral dissertation Der bittende Mensch (The Petitioning
Man) 5 and followed this in 1971 with a brief article titled "Der klagende
Mensch" (The Complaining Man) .6
Gerstenberger argues that on the horizon of ancient Israel the practice of
petition and complaint belongs by definition not only to Israel's faith but also
to what it means to be human. The second point that is important in
Gerstenberger's thesis is the claim that the individual laments do not take place
in the temple but rather in small communities of lay elders who gather in something like house churches to conduct rituals of rehabilitation. In other words,
the village was equipped to help people through their trouble and their rage.
I see this as an anticipation of our pastoral-care movement. When you read
Gerstenberger, your reaction is: How could we have missed this? Third,
Gerstenberger says that the complaints are not acts of unfaith but acts of profound hope. The psalmists insist that in the world where God governs, something specific is not right, cannot persist, and must be changed. It will be
changed if God can be mobilized.
Rainer Albertz (1943-)
Second is the work of Rainer Albertz, Gerstenberger's close colleague, and
Westermann's student. In 1978, he wrote an important book about personal
piety and official religion.7 He argues that all over the Ancient Near East there
were really two kinds of religion: a formal, establishment temple religion and a
family-based religion that counted heavily on the intimacy of God.
Albertz goes on to argue that it was peculiarly in ancient Israel in the whole
of the Fertile Crescent that these two religions were brought together into one
synthetic whole. The lament psalms and the songs of thanksgiving, however,
represent a dimension of trust and intimacy. The lament psalms, then, are
indeed a conversation between friends.
The reason I believe that the history of scholarship is so important is that this
history shows us how research questions arise, and I believe that the explosion

5
Erhard S. Gerstenberger, Der bittende Mensch; Bittrtual und Klagelied des Einzelnen im Alten
Testament Habilitationsschrift (Heidelberg: University of Heidelberg, 1970). This habilitationsschrift was published under the same tide, Der bittende Mensch: Bittrtual und Klagelied des Einzelnen im
Alten Testament, Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament, vol. 51
(Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1980).
6

Erhard S. Gerstenberger, "Der klagende Mensch," in Probleme biblische Theologie, ed. Hans
Walter Wolff (Mnchen: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1971), 64-72.
7
Rainer Albertz, Persnliche Frmmigkeit und offizielle Religion, Calwer Theologische Monographien, vol. 9 (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1978). See also his dissertation, Weltschpfung und Menschenschpfung, Calwer Theologische Monographien, vol. 3 (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1974).

14

THE FRIDAYVOICE OF FAITH

of scholarship on the lament psalms since 1965, or thereabouts, is one indication that Western society is increasingly in profound trouble. To respond to
that trouble, we need different modes of faith. Therefore, I believe that
research questions really do arise out of the world in which scholars have to do
their work and are a kind of comment about the place in which God has put
them and in which they must be faithful.
When Lament Psalms Are Ignored
In spite of their poignancy and availability, the lament psalms are not much
used. If you look in the back of the hymnals of most major Protestant denominations, you will find perhaps Psalm 1, then skip to 8,19, and then 22 because
Jesus used it. Even when lament psalms are included, they are not sung much.
In Roman Catholic and liberal Protestant usage, most of the lament psalms
simply do not exist.
By not using these psalms, we have communicated two messages to people:
either you must not feel that way (angry with God, for example) or, if you feel
thatway, you must do something about it somewhere elsebut not here.
Anglicans use the lament psalms but set them to such wonderful music that
you do not notice what is being said! My impression at Columbia Theological
Seminary, where I now teach and which has a Scottish Calvinist background, is
that the way the lament psalms tend to be handled is that it all seems like that,
but it really is not so. In this manner, the lament psalms get turned around to
orthodoxy.
I suggest three practical realities that follow from our not using lament
psalms. First, an Enlightenment consciousness exists that does not want to
acknowledge the deep irrationality of the human process, that does not want to
think that human need and anger are as persistent and profound as they actually are. Therefore, churches that prefer modernity, liberal or conservative,
characteristically eliminate such speech by turning expressions of rage and
pain into guilt. By transposing anger into guilt, we know what to do with it. I
want to insist, however, that overall, lament psalms do not host guilt.
Secondand this is the "rub point"I believe that such a romantic view of
human reality fits nicely with a kind of theological scholasticism that does not
want to speak or think of God as a party at risk. If God is completely above the
fray, then the poems of anger and rage must be transposed into prayers of
respectful petition. This isfinallya question of how 'Jewish" our Christian faith
is. I will say more about this later.
Third, Westermann has suggested thatJewish spirituality is essentially a practice of vigorous protest, whereas Christian spirituality is marked by submissive
humility and docility. Such docility assumes that God is always in the right, an
assumption that the lament psalms do not easily accept.
There are acute theological problems in this contrast of protest and submissiveness. Aside from the theological issues, however, our culture now ree-

CALVIN THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL

ognizes that excessive submissiveness is unhealthy. It is my impression that in

many congregations a kind of dominant piety continues in the sanctuary while,
in the basement, somebody is doing pastoral carebut these two functions do
not connect. That is a problem we must address.
Accordingly, if we are to recover the practical use of the lament psalms, we
will first have to think more carefully about honoring the deep irrationality and
vitality that refuse excessive guilt. Second, we will also have to entertain the daring procedure of putting God at riskthat is, entertain the notion that God is
culpable for the circumstances we face in this world. Finally, to recover these
psalms, we will have to entertain a spirituality of vigorous protest that is prepared to break through passive conventional piety and, so to speak, go on the
attack. Coming out of my own pietistic tradition, I have found that these are
enormously difficult things to try to get my head around, let alone my body.
Interacting with God
Third, I want to talk about faith in the lament psalms as the practice of interactionism. In his book, Real Presences, George Steiner,8 an extraordinary Jewish
literary critic, says it is in Hebraic intuition that God is capable of all speech acts
except monologue. After the book ofJob, Steiner asserts, "if man was to bear
his being," there had to be the means of dialogue with God that are spelled out
in our poetry, music, and art. Steiner makes a case for the arts as acts of
response to God. Before this, however, Steiner states that Hebraic intuition is
incapable of monologueit must use conversation, dialogue, and relational
communication in which God is fully invested.
This claim that dialogue is essential in Old Testament faith cannot be overstated. The core claim of the lament psalms, I suggest, is that in these poems,
Israel holds up its side of the conversation, which is necessary if God is to be
known by the Israelites.
T h e I-Thou Relationship
In connection with this topic, I want to report to you on an explosion of
studies on what I am calling interactionism. In his book, Theo-Drama, Hans Urs
von Balthasar, the great Roman Catholic theologian, has observed that in 1918
there occurred "one of the strangest phenomena of'acausal contemporaneity'
in the history of intellect. . . . "* Four scholars, he says, without consultation
with each other, all wrote on the dialogical principle of reality (my interactionism) . They were Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel, Franz Rosenzweig, an associate
of Buber, and Ferdinand Ebner. As Europe collapsed, all these men started

8
9

George Steiner, Real Presences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory I: Prolegomena, trans. Graham
Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), 626.

16

THE FRIDAY VOICE OF FAITH

writing about the I-Thou relationship. All four argued that the human person
is not an isolated /, but is always a person in relationship.
It is easy enough, after reading Buber, to affirm that we depend on the
Thou-ness of God for our I-ness. That is beyond dispute. It seems to me, however, that this principle of interactionism (that is the term I use for I-Thou)
involves some very profound evangelical questions. First, how must the "I" be
positioned in front of the 'Thou" in order to be a full self? (So much for selffulfillment and self-actualization.) Second, is it thinkable, in Israelite scripting
of reality, that Israel becomes a Thou upon whom the I-ness of God depends
and from whom God's I-ness is derived?
I do not really want to say things like that, but the lament psalms seem to do
this. One might argue that when the lament psalms talk that way they are using
regressive speech, not responsible theological speech. The point of Gunkel's
analysis, however, is that this community has a stylized way in which to say such
regressive things.
The issue, of course, is whether to push the notion of commensurateness in
the dialogical principle so far that it violates our conventional categories. One
of the enduring questions of the lament psalms is this: How seriously should we
take their daring affirmation that God somehow depends upon Israel for God's
God-ness? My impression is that Israel pushes this symmetry very far. It is that
pushing that makes the lament psalms so poignant and so problematic and
that evokes in Israel a very different sense of faith and a very different notion
of what it means to be a healthy self.
A Psychological Analogue
Recognizing the limitation of such arguments, I am still going to pursue an
analogue as a way of talking about Object Relations Theory. Arising out of the
thought of Sigmund Freud, who is profoundly Jewish, this personality theory
says that what goes on in people's heads or guts, in fact, goes on also "out there"
with a real objective other.
Donald Woods Winnicott, an important British pediatrician, watched many
babies with their mothers. His programmatic thesis is that a baby needs a goodenough mother, not a perfect mother.10 A good-enough mother is the one who
can get her mind off herself so as to give herself over to the baby. Most mothers
do that intuitively. They adore every smile and every. . . everything. Every
mother (and father) acts as if no one has ever had a baby before.

10
Donald Woods Winnicott, Playing and Reality (New\brk: Tavistock Publications, 1982), 10. Cf.
Donald Woods Winnicott, The Family and Individual Development (London: Social Science
Paperbacks in association with Tavistock, 1968); idem, Deprivation and Delinquency, ed. Clare
Winnicott, Ray Shepherd, and Madeleine Davis (London: Tavistock, 1984); idem, Thinking about
Children, ed. JenniferJohns, Ray Shepherd, and Helen Taylor Robinson (Reading: Addison Wesley,
1996).

CALVIN THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL

This transaction with mother during the first two weeks of a baby's life, says
Winnicott, is, for the baby, an experience of omnipotence. The baby's lis in
charge, and the mother lets the baby experience being in charge. Winnicott
hypothesizes that if a baby does not have such a primal experience of omnipotence, it will figure out very soonwithin a monththat it has to fake it with
mother to get what it wants. It has to pretend it is happy when it is not and smile
to please mother when it does not feel like smiling. Within about three months,
the baby becomes "a false self." The baby's real inclinations are kept hidden
from the mother, and very soon, hidden from the baby itself.
I take that analogue to say that a maturing self must be free to assert itself
and to expect a friendly response from the real objective other. I propose,
mutatis mutandis, that the lament psalm is the assertion of a self that expects a
friendly response from God, so that the speaker in the lament psalm has a
momentary experience of omnipotence. You can readily see why that does not
work in a spirituality that is concerned with docility, humility, and deference.
I hypothesize that theologically, with the loss of the lament psalm, the
church has not permitted people to have this experience of omnipotence. It
follows that without this theological, liturgical experience, the church is peopled, largely, with false selves. This, in turn, produces the terrifying moralism
that is now driving North American society.
That is a lot to add. I do this, however, to make the case that the health of our
society, in great measure, depends upon what the church does in its worship
whether, in worship, we are evangelically required to have some voice over
against God. The message of the lament psalms is that God is inclined to participate in such a transaction.
I propose, therefore, that recovering the lament psalms is important pastorally so that false selves, who were early blocked by not-good-enough mothers
or fathers, can be reparented into authentic selves. That is a kind of psychological analogue. Psychology, in this case, is simply our way of trying to talk
about what is, in fact, a liturgical enterprise. Good pastoral care, one-on-one
therapy, is essentially a liturgical transaction.
I want to mention one other book that I have found extraordinarily helpful.
Roy Schfer, a personality theorist, wrote a book called Retelling a Life.11 For
Schafer, a whole person is one who actsin other words, one who is an agent.
A whole person acts knowingly without profound reservation about the fact of
acting and so acts with presence and personal authority and without anxiously
introducing serious disclaimers.
In a relationship, there cannot be only one whole person. To guarantee the
personal wholeness of the other, each individual must allow the other individual to act. A whole person allows for reversibility in a relatively conflict-free fashion. Accordingly, in a healthy sexual relationship, an individual has to be an
n

18

Roy Schfer, Retelling a Life: Narration and Dialogue (New York: Basic Books, 1992).

THE FRIDAY VOICE OF FAITH

agent and be free to take initiatives, but the same individual must also be the
receiver and let the other person be free to take initiatives. Schfer is talking
about commensurate relationships.
Mutatis mutandis, I propose that in the believer's relationship to Yahweh, as
expressed in the hymns of ancient Israel, Yahweh is the agent. With great celebrative exuberance, Israel is glad to have Yahweh be the agent. The amazing
thing in the lament psalms, however, is that the relationship is reversedthe
human speaker becomes the agent and is willing to take initiative and authority without anxiously introducing serious disclaimers.
I am suggesting that, in the worship of ancient Israel, liturgical speech does
allow for reversibility of roles. My sense about the church is that we are a whole
lot better about hymns than we are about complaints; however, if one always does
hymns and never laments, in my view, one does not have any serious interaction.
Three Theological Reflections
Pain or Guilt?
First, there is a terrible temptation to change pain into guilt. The classic
practice of the church is to turn pain into guilt. In deference to the God who is
perfect, we have assumed that if something is wrong, it must be our fault. Of
course, sometimes it is our fault; that cannot be denied and must be confessed.
The seven penitential psalms (Psalm 6, 32, 38,51,102,130, and 143) that link
pain to guilt are both well known and enormously important. Psalm 51 is best
known, but Psalm 32 seems to me to be the most extraordinarily insightful.
The psalmist's statement in verse 3, 'While I kept silence [about my transgression], my body wasted away," shows an understanding of the psychosomatic
effect of guilt. 'Then I acknowledged my sin to you and I did not hide my iniquity. . . and you forgave the guilt of my sins" (v. 5). That is terribly powerful.12
I want to insist, however, that the penitential psalms are only a small subset
of the lament psalms, the majority of which refuse the reduction of pain to
guilt. I believe that the church has to think about that.
T h e Forsaken O n e
Second, it is obvious that the psalms have been interpreted christologically.
In his Theobgy of the Psalms, Hansjoachim Kraus has identified five psalms that
are much used in New Testament proclamation, namely Psalms 2, 22, 69,110,
and 118.13 Two of these, Psalm 22 and Psalm 69, are lament psalms. Kraus takes

12
Cf. Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms: A Theofogical Commentary, Augsburg Old
Testament Studies (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984), 95-98.
13

180.

Hans-Joachim Kraus, Theology of the Psalms, trans. Keith Crim (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986),

CALVIN THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL

these New Testament quotes of the psalms not as theological ploys or as

imposed, artificial proofs, but rather, in the case of Psalm 22, as "unforgettable
remembrances" 14 of genuine utterances that give 'Voice to the terrifying
lament of one who has been forsaken by God."15 In other words, the use of the
lament psalms is serious business in the New Testament. That means, in turn,
that, unlike most contemporary Christians, the gospel writers could entertain
the necessity of an assault upon God for absence and infidelity.
In The Crucified God, Jrgen Moltmann says that Psalm 22 is the voice of the
God-forsakenness of the Son, and that the Fatherlessness of the Son is matched
by the Sonlessness of the Father.16 So, christologically, Kraus and Moltmann
and many othersare making the case that you cannot have a serious theology
of the cross without a serious practice of the lament psalms. The church that
finds the lament psalms awkward will be engaged willy-nilly in a theology of
glory.
H u m a n Rights
Third, beyond turning pain into guilt and beyond Christological affirmation, I argue that the lament psalms also show, as a normative faith practice, the
readiness of the believing community and believing selves to assert their rightful claimeven in the face of Godto insist upon the legitimacy ofjust relations and to entertain the thought that the failure of justice may be God's
failure. This is a voice of legitimate self-concern that dares to challenge the adequacy of God's God-ness and speaks without deference or self-diminishment.
I want to leave that, adding simply that there is something veryJewish in the
lament psalms that the church has to recover. Paul Ricoeur says that the Jewish
way of speaking faith understands that reality is dialogical. In that dialogical situation, Israel cries out, threatens, orders, groans, and exults not only as an act
of sinsometimes it isbut also as an act of fidelity.
Why Today's Church Needs the Lament Psalms
I believe that we are now thinking about the lament psalm because two
things are happening among us. First, many people feel that their world is collapsing because male hegemony is finished. Both conservatives and liberals are
scared. It is precisely in such a situation, in which the traditional, classical, conventional world is falling apart, that the lament psalms are the right speech.
(Maybe there was a long Constantinian time when the church did not need
these poems, but it is no longer so.)

14

Ibid., 188.

15

Ibid., 189.

lf

Jurgen Moltmann, The Crudfied God: The Cross of Christ as theFoundation and Criticism of Christian
Theology, trans. R. A. Wilson and John Bowden (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 145-53.

THE FRIDAY VOICE OF FAITH

The other reason the lament psalms are so important now is that many
heretofore-silenced people are finding their voices. When that happens, these
silenced people tend to speak in troublesome ways. I am haunted by the
remembrance of God's speech to Job, "Tell your three friends to clam up
because they are so boring I am not going to listen to them anymore. But to
you, Job, if you speak for them, I will listen, because you're my kind of guy"
(Job 42:7-8, par.).
I believe the lament psalms are the Friday voice of our faith. Everybody
knows that the important stuff happened on Friday, and we are at a moment
when the Friday voice of faith is again having its say.

21

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