How should we pray? Do we believe God answers our prayers? Is it acceptable to complain to God? Should we bargain with him to receive the response we desire? Why do we praise God? Does our praise make him any more "God"? John Calvin argued basically that the purpose of prayer is to realign the petitioner's feelings and beliefs with God's. Many today seem to have adopted this idea. One says, "Why pray at all. God knows everything so my prayers cannot change his mind. I must pray to discover God's will for my life. I must realign my will with God's will for my life." In contrast, the psalmists assumed a reciprocal process. They believed they could bring pressures on God to answer their requests. They would bargain with God and promise him certain things if he would only grant their petitions. Indeed, this was part of the process. They would obligate themselves to praise God if he would grant their desires. Such bargaining was the foundation of their prayers. Comparisons of Calvin's views with the psalmists' allows the reader to investigate the nature of his or her prayer life and make improvements where necessary.

In Praying Psalms Ian Stackhouse offers daily reflections on all 150 psalms. In so doing, he seeks to alert the reader to the sheer emotional range of the Psalter in the hope that this will give courage to pray bold, honest prayers. Indeed, Praying Psalms is best used not as a commentary but a basic primer for anyone wanting to encounter the psalms in all their rawness and vitality. Whether in small groups settings or private prayer, and whether in sequence or in random selection, Praying Psalms is a confident reassertion of the central place of the Psalter in Christian spirituality.

The Bible was the essence of virtually every aspect of the life of the early churches. The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation explores a wide array of themes related to the reception, canonization, interpretation, uses, and legacies of the Bible in early Christianity. Each section contains overviews and cutting-edge scholarship that expands understanding of the field. Part One examines the material text transmitted, translated, and invested with authority, and the very conceptualization of sacred Scripture as God's word for the church. Part Two looks at the culture and disciplines or science of interpretation in representative exegetical traditions. Part Three addresses the diverse literary and non-literary modes of interpretation, while Part Four canvasses the communal background and foreground of early Christian interpretation, where the Bible was paramount in shaping normative Christian identity. Part Five assesses the determinative role of the Bible in major developments and theological controversies in the life of the churches. Part Six returns to interpretation proper and samples how certain abiding motifs from within scriptural revelation were treated by major Christian expositors. The overall history of biblical interpretation has itself now become the subject of a growing scholarship and the final part skilfully examines how early Christian exegesis was retrieved and critically evaluated in later periods of church history. Taken together, the chapters provide nuanced paths of introduction for students and scholars from a wide spectrum of academic fields, including classics, biblical studies, the general history of interpretation, the social and cultural history of late ancient and early medieval Christianity, historical theology, and systematic and contextual theology. Readers will be oriented to the major resources for, and issues in, the critical study of early Christian biblical interpretation.

The Psalms are wonderful. They have been read, repeated, chanted, sung, studied, wept over, rejoiced in, expounded, loved and praised by God's people for thousands of years. The most ancient of these productions is now [1866] three thousand three hundred and twenty-six years old. The least ancient of them is two thousand four hundred and fifty-three years old. The difference in date between the most ancient and the most modern of them is eight hundred and seventy-three years. They were all written in Asia, so that we in this Western world can have no national pride respecting them. Yet pious people here and all over the earth have found and can find no compositions more suitable for delineating their devout emotions, and for expressing their pious sensibilities than those of inspired Psalmists. If to any man these songs are unsavory, the reason is found in the blindness and depravity of the human heart. Hengstenberg: "The Psalms are expressions of holy feeling, which can be understood by those only, who have become alive to such feeling." Other things being equal, he who has the most heavenly mind, will be the most successful student of the Psalms. - Introduction

How should we pray? Do we believe God answers our prayers? Is it acceptable to complain to God? Should we bargain with him to receive the response we desire? Why do we praise God? Does our praise make him any more “God”? John Calvin argued basically that the purpose of prayer is to realign the petitioner’s feelings and beliefs with God’s. Many today seem to have adopted this idea. One says, “Why pray at all. God knows everything so my prayers cannot change his mind. I must pray to discover God’s will for my life. I must realign my will with God’s will for my life.” In contrast, the psalmists assumed a reciprocal process. They believed they could bring pressures on God to answer their requests. They would bargain with God and promise him certain things if he would only grant their petitions. Indeed, this was part of the process. They would obligate themselves to praise God if he would grant their desires. Such bargaining was the foundation of their prayers. Comparisons of Calvin’s views with the psalmists’ allows the reader to investigate the nature of his or her prayer life and make improvements where necessary.