In my former days, I was far more cantankerous than I am today. I often enjoyed stirring the theological pot quite a bit, especially during my time in undergrad. I am not sure why this was the case, but it was. I went to a small denominationally run Bible college and would often challenge the hallowed distinctives of the school as well as the denomination, but the many details of these challenges may be better saved for future posts.
However the following is an earnest question that I struggled with during my Bible college days, I remember asking out loud, “why don’t Christians curse?”, and never getting a satisfactory response. I remember a professor saying that, “because we were under grace, we return grace for grace against those who persecute us. Remember the modeling of Christ on the cross. He could have cursed those who crucified him (his physical enemies), but instead he prayed that they experience forgiveness. This should be our practice”, so he explained. On one level this response made sense, but still it seemed to ignore a common practice from the largest book in the Bible, the Psalms. Also I no longer allow a bifurcation of the Canon into two dispensations (grace and law); meaning I believe that the people of the 1st Testament are clearly portrayed as individuals who are thoroughly under the grace of God, just as those portrayed in the 2nd Testament. “The grace for grace” comment doesn’t’ hold much sway over me.
John Calvin once wrote of the Psalms, “In a word, whatever may serve to encourage us when we are about to pray to God, is taught us in this book”. It seems that the Psalmists were often encouraged by the notion of God giving the “enemy” their just desserts. These poets wanted divine retribution, and their prayers expressed such intent. Is this not a biblical lesson? Why are Christians hesitant to pray for God’s condemnation on their enemies?
Tremper Longman III notes a fundamental difference between the 1st and 2nd Testament and that is that the people of God enjoy a different relationship with those who are outside of the community of God. The people of God are no longer defined by ethnic lines as Paul notes in Galatians 3:28-29. In the 1st Testament, the enemy was seeking to destroy the theocracy established by God (thus by extension, the enemies mentioned in the Psalms, that are being cursed, are really the enemies of God and His anointed ones), while in the 2nd Testament there is no longer a theocracy in place governing over Israel. Longman then appropriates the conflict (and then I would assume the prayer) into a supernatural realm as the 2nd Testament’s contextual basis for praying these imprecatory Psalms. The enemy that we pray against is the “evil one”, according to Longman. While I am more comfortable with this approach (because there is no arbitrary distinctions drawn between the Covenants in regards to Law vs. Grace), this view seems like a convenient cop out, that limits the application of these texts in a way that seems to violate the original sitz em liben, which was written out of a desire to see God’s just vindication fall.
Roland Murphy takes another perspective when he treats the enemy as the “personification of evil. This is not to deny that enemies can refer in some cases to actual human beings. But the characterizations are driven by a greater reality: evil is at work, and the suffering psalmist is beleaguered and driven to the broad and bold representations found in the laments. These are types that gradually became stylized in the language of the lament”. This exegetical approach is very interesting, because it resists tying the enemy to any particular evil, but evil at large. This approach then makes praying these psalms accessible to the church, because we witness evil everyday. To be honest, I need to chew on Murphy’s approach more. I am not certain that the presence of enemies is the result of stylized language, but I do appreciate his whole-Psalter approach for the life and vitality of the church.
John Hobbins (whose post served as the inspiration for this post) seems to think it is appropriate for Christians to curse, and in fact strings several relevant biblical quotations to make his point. Hobbins states the following, “If Christianity amounts to nothing more than knowing that I am a turd no less than the next guy, and therefore I cannot call God’s judgment down upon the one who seeks to harm me, or seeks to harm another, something, I think, has gone horribly wrong. The psalmists call judgment down upon those who harm the contextually innocent, including themselves, knowing full well that they would be judged by the same standard. Context, of course, is important. In the process, they knowingly expose themselves to great risk even as they sought salvation from God’s hand. It is also the practice of the psalmists to engage in auto-imprecation: “May God do so-and-so to me, if I am lying.”
Hobbins may be on to something (I need to chew on his perspective for a bit as well), but my questions are: who and what is the enemy? Is the enemy any transgressor of God? And how exactly does the call for grace fit into the problem of the enemy? Would it be better to pray for God’s deliverance of my enemy?
My earnest questions still remain as I attempt to take a whole-Psalter approach to prayer.