He delights, he simply fulminates with joy, in the crash and pomp of the whole raucous festival.
Solution: The Psalmist loves temple worship and loves the Lord, and the modern distinction between the two would have been unthinkable to him.
Lewisophiles should read Reflections on the Psalms for the same reason mountaineers simply must climb Everest: “because it’s there.”Ĭasual readers may be a bit confused at the abundance of literary references.
The only theological essays published later than this one are Letters to Malcom, which, again, are “about” prayer but move comfortably through a range of other topics. Readers enjoy Lewis’ most mature theological reflections in this book, reflections which blessedly don’t restrict themselves only to the Psalms but rove around the Old and New Testaments and also outside Scripture. One can also hear echoes of Till We Have Faces in chapter XII on the pain of “graduating” from a lower station to a higher station whether on the natural level (as when a young girl marries a powerful monarch) or the supernatural level (as when a human being becomes adopted by God). In style, it perhaps resembles most Studies in Words. In content, it most resembles Letters to Malcom ( Reflections is addressed humbly to the reader “as one amateur to another” and not a fictional friend). He completed the Reflections just after Till We Have Faces and just before Studies in Words. How, Lewis asks, can we draw spiritual nourishment from the Psalms? What do we need to know to overcome obstacles to such nourishment? He addresses the most difficult puzzles that might confront a modern Christian reader: the cursing in the Psalms, the self-righteousness, the fawning over God’s laws. It is a collection of short essays revolving around single themes arising from the Psalms. Lewis’ Reflections on the Psalms (1958) is one of his last theological works. A Summary of One of CS Lewis’ Less Read Books on the Psalms