A Model for the Christian Life: Hilary of Poitiers’s Commentary on the Psalms by Paul C. Burns (review)

Since little has been written about Hilary’s Tractatus super Psalmos in English, this study of that treatise is something of an introduction—a very good one—to its content and to its place in the development of Latin commentaries on the Psalms in the fourth century.

In the first chapter, Burns provides an overview of recent scholarship and identifies several emphases that he will treat in this work. He wants to show, first of all, that Hilary used the triadic structure of the book of Psalms to highlight three stages in Christian life, that is, a model of Christian progress through baptismum, resurrectio, and demutatio—or, more accurately—to emphasize the “two major transformations within the model” (100) that Christians live within this three-stage process. While the work of P. Wild identified these stages, he concluded that this model was never truly implemented. Burns, however, has shown that “each cluster of fifty Psalms is devoted to one of those stages” (86)—a claim that Burns sets out to demonstrate by showing the interconnected quality of each stage with the others rather than presuming that each stage had its own distinct development (173).

Burns also discusses Hilary’s audience, his sources (both classical and Christian, whether in Latin or Greek), and his place within existing theological and exegetical traditions. The book is organized in five chapters, treating the questions of audience, sources, and exegetical principles in the first two. The topics are discussed with consistent thoroughness, beginning with an overview of the objectives of these preparatory chapters, namely to examine Hilary’s three-stage model of Christian life and his motivation (17 and 57–58), and a discussion of the text, the audience, and the recent scholarship. Hilary’s model of Christian conversion is seen as progressive (43–50) and as related to the three Psalm clusters in interlocking ways. The pages on the use of the Psalms in the ascetical tradition, in daily prayer, and in communal prayer (53–54) could also have asked whether that represents an increase because of the changed social status of Christians in the fourth century. His discussion of Hilary’s exegetical principles includes both specific and more general observations on how he reads and uses the Psalms in a selective way—leading to a methodological statement about the meaning of Christian progress where “an earlier stage anticipates later developments” (100) and about the thrust of the next three chapters. In these first two chapters, the rather frequent references to what will be discussed in later chapters makes it possible to be distracted from the particular point being made.

The next three chapters then develop the specific aspects of Christian growth, from the initial transformation through baptism (baptismum) through to final transformation (demutatio). Both the first and last transformations depend upon incorporation into the body of Christ (135 and 173). That means that the foundation for transformation is Christ (chapter four: “Christological Foundation for Transformation”). Even though it can be seen as normal to use the word “christological” in the title of this chapter, I have often wondered whether the impact of the theological structure that such a usage implies may subtly influence expectations and explanations. Since the use of “body of Christ” is the real focus of this chapter—and of Hilary’s way of thinking—the chapter title may not reflect that content as accurately as it could have. The rich emphases of this chapter show how fourth-century controversy not only led Hilary to defend Christ’s divinity but also to see belonging to the body of Christ as crucial to Christian growth. Chapter five then places the focus on Phil 3.21 where conformity to the glorified body of Christ is the goal (174). This final transformation was addressed throughout the Tractatus in a manner that deals with Christ and with salvation in an...