Reflections on the Psalms

I did not see that it is in the process of being worshipped that God communicates His presence to men. It is not indeed the only way. But for many people at many times the "fair beauty of the Lord " is revealed chiefly or only while Worship Him together, Even in Judaism the essence of the sacrifice was not really that men gave bulls and goats to God, but that by their so doing God gave Himself to men;

The human qualities of the raw materials show through. Naivety, error, contradiction, even (as in the cursing Psalms) wickedness are not removed. The total result is not " the Word of God " in the sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable science or history. It carries the Word of God; and we (under grace, with attention to tradition and to interpreters wiser than ourselves, and with the use of such intelligence and learning as we may have) receive that word from it not by using it as an encyclopædia or an encyclical but by steeping ourselves in its tone or temper and so learning it’s overall message.