This is a little book of only 76 pages, written by one of the world’s leading Old Testament scholars. Walter Brueggemann has taught Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Georgia since 1986, and has written commentaries on the books of Samuel, Kings, the Psalms and Jeremiah, as well as numerous monographs on Old Testament subjects. One of his recent works, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (1997) is an interesting overview of Old Testament theology based on the pattern and form of the law court.

Not all that Brueggemann says about the Old Testament could be endorsed by conservative scholars. In particular, he tends to see within the Old Testament a tension between Sinai and Zion, between the Mosaic and the Davidic traditions. Our covenant approach sees different emphases within a unified structure, with the Old Testament telling a single story in preparation for the coming of Christ. Nonetheless, much of what he has written provides important insights into the Old Testament world.

This is true not least in this little book on the psalms. Its length will make it accessible to readers in a way that some of his more lengthy academic works are not; and its content will certainly open up many avenues of thought regarding the spirituality of the psalms. Although Brueggemann acknowledges his indebtedness to critical approaches to the psalms, he wants to recover their pastoral use – “how the Psalms may function as voices of faith in the actual life of the believing community” (p viii).

To do this, Brueggemann develops an approach which roots the psalms in human experience, and their place in ‘the seasons of life’. He goes on to describe two basic movements in our experience of life: from orientation to disorientation, and from disorientation to new orientation. There are times when moods of happiness, security and wellbeing give way to periods of doubt, anxiety and depression. Conversely, there are times when the dark periods give way to new perspectives, times when the difficulties we have experienced cast new light for us on the meaning of life itself. As Brueggemann argues, sometimes God guarantees the older security; sometimes he causes the disruption by being God in ways we don’t expect; sometimes he works to make all things new.

What Brueggemann is really arguing is that the psalter never presents a God who is absent from the realities of life, good or bad. That realism is what makes the psalms so appealing. And in our postmodern world, with so much emphasis on spirituality, the psalms may provide us with ways of connecting with and presenting the gospel to our current generation.