7 November, 2024
We are deeply honoured to welcome Revd Dr Jason Byassee, Author of Reading the Psalms with Augustine, to lead the Psalms in Interfaith Contexts Reading Group session.
Here are more details of this fascinating event.
Topic: The Seven Penitential Psalms in the Allegorist’s Hands (Pss: 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143)
Abstract: St. Augustine’s approach to the psalms is the most thoroughly and rigorously Christological hermeneutic we have from the early church. Other Christian interpreters apply such a hermeneutic occasionally, most often to “rescue” a psalm from theological trouble. Augustine always sees the psalm through the lens of the totus Christus, the whole Christ, head and members. In some psalms, Christ speaks in his “own” voice—especially in psalms that offer praise and adoration. In others he speaks in “ours,” especially those that confess sins. The hermeneutic can have a dramatic impact—as when he reads imprecatory psalms as prayers to turn enemies into friends.
What does he do with the psalms that would become the church’s seven great psalms of penitence? These should read simply enough as expressions of “our” distance from God and need for forgiveness, and suit his latter-career polemic against the Donatists and Pelagians quite well. But the literal, for Augustine, is not simply the literal as we or other ages in interpretive history would have it. The letter often refers, without allegorical embellishment, to Christ. What then does he make of a letter that needs no hard correction?
Speaker’s biography: Revd Dr Jason Byassee is the senior pastor at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church in Toronto, Canada. He previously taught preaching at the Vancouver School of Theology in British Columbia, where he held the Butler Chair in Homiletics and Biblical Hermeneutics. His primary vocation is to reinvigorate today’s church with the best of ancient and contemporary wisdom for creatively faithful living. He is a contributing editor at Christian Century magazine, and has written widely on church and culture in such places as Sojourners, Christianity Today, and the Vancouver Sun. He is a native of North Carolina, where he pastored Boone United Methodist Church during a period of growth from 2011-2015. His recent books have engaged questions of church revitalization in specific geographies (Northern Lights: Resurrecting Church in the North of England and with Ross Lockhart, Better Than Brunch: Missional Churches in Cascadia), reading the bible for preaching and life (Surprised by Jesus Again and Psalms 101-150), and technology and ministry (Following: Embodied Discipleship in a Digital Age, with Andria Irwin). He and his wife Jaylynn are ordained elders in the United Methodist Church, and have served in ministry together in BC at Tenth Church, a multi-site megachurch, and at First Baptist Church in Vancouver. He was recently a visiting fellow at St. John’s College at Durham University in the UK. He was also preacher to the English-speaking congregation at Vancouver Chinese Presbyterian Church, from which his work on Christianity: An Asian Religion in Vancouver (with Albert Chu and Ross Lockhart) emerged.
More information is available on Revd Dr Jasob Byassee’s website at www.jasonbyassee.com.
Chair: Professor AJ Berkovitz, Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, USA
Time: 18:00-19:00 GMT | 19:00-20:00 CET | 10:00-11:00 PT | 13:00-14:00 ET
Venue: Online
If you would like to join the Psalms in Interfaith Contexts Reading Group, please sign up here.
Revd Dr Jason Byassee’s Publications:
Related Sessions
- Was Genesis 1 Dependent on Psalm 104?
- The Seven Penitential Psalms in the Allegorist’s Hands
- Beyond Exegesis: The Psalm Cultures of Ancient Jews and Early Christians
- Psalm 40 and Messiness of Prayer
- Psalm 109: The Prayer No One Wants
- Psalmody as an Alternative to Theodicy
- Psalm 44 and the Book of Job: God on Trial
- Exile and Restoration in the Psalms
- ‘Deep cries unto deep’: Julian of Norwich and Psalm 42
- Ancient Versions of Psalms in Dialogue: Psalms 49 and 104
- Awake, My Soul! Psalms: 44; 57; 133; 143
- Psalm 106: Fall of Jerusalem and Lamentations Ch. 3
- Psalm 37:25, Innocent Suffering, and Divine Recompense
- Spurring Colonialism and Slavery: Protestants and Catholics United in their Use of Psalm 132
- Midrash Tehillim on Psalm 24
- Psalm 19: Muslim Reflections on Creation
- Psalm 46: Singing in Hope and Defiance
- When Music Meets Psalms: Psalm 130
- Psalm 131: How I Weaned Myself from the Breast of God
- Psalm 132: A Song of Ascents
- Psalm 88: ‘Fists Flailing at the Gates of Heaven’
- Psalm 82: Demanding Justice
- Psalm 51: Contemporary Multifaith Interpretations
- Comparative Reading of Psalms and Abrahams’ Prayers in the Quran
- Psalm 33: Mystical Reading
- Psalm 139
- Psalm 1: Inaugural Session by Revd Dr John Goldingay