The Standard Objections

I often encounter specific objections from Christians when discussing exclusive psalmody. They say:

• Christians need songs that use the name of Christ.
• Christians need New Covenant songs.
• Christians need songs that reflect their unique Christian experience.
• I don’t see a sentence in the New Testament that says we must only sing psalms without instruments.
• It is legalistic and joyless.

These arguments reveal an attitude that stretches all the way back to the Garden of Eden. Remember how quickly Adam and Eve doubted God, and how easily the serpent convinced them that God was withholding something good from them? That same attitude—the belief that God’s commands are not enough—underlies these objections.

No Christian doubts that the Psalms are inspired by God. No Christian doubts that God could have provided a New Testament book of songs if He had so chosen—but He did not. No Christian denies that Psalms like 22 give us an intimate, first-person account of the mind of Christ, more personal than anything recorded in the Gospels. No Christian denies the need to be taught by God how to live the Christian life, rather than assuming our intuitive, fleshly experiences are already sanctified.

And yet, even so, many Christians resist singing the Psalms. They argue and fight against them, preferring worship forms that return to the outward ceremonial practices of the Old Covenant. This resistance should be a call to repentance, to recover the fear of God. When Cain offered false worship, God corrected him, but Cain grew angry and refused to learn. Will Christians today respond differently?

Options:

1. Only inspired inerrant Word in the worship service 2. We can use uninspired fallible compositions of man in the worship service

Sometimes, in the name of #1, a Reformed person will say that a hymn is based on a Psalm. We can look and see if this is a translation of a Psalm, or a paraphrase of a Psalm, or merely mentioning a Psalm. Unfortunately, it is often merely mentioned or at best loosely paraphrasing. What we want in Psalm singing is the same connection to the text as we want in a correct English translation.

What about the tunes?

Which tunes will we use? Sometimes you will encounter this as an objection. The idea is that some of the Psalms name the tune, but we don’t have this tune any more therefore . . . It isn’t clear what follows from this. God did not provide inspired tunes and that alone indicates that no specific tune is divinely inspired for us to use. This is the same as God’s ability to provide a New Testament inspired inerrant book of Psalms if he had so desired—yet he did not which tells us to continue with the Psalms rather than to import uninspired and fallible compositions.

To sing the Psalms we need to use a tune. They were sung rather than chanted in the Old Testament and in the Synagogues. Chanting (Gregorian) was borrowed by Medieval Christians from the way that pagans worshiped in their temples. The pagans used chanting and droning to produce a form of hypnosis and invoke what they considered to be a susceptible religious consciousness. This is not pleasing to God who asks us to worship in understanding as we glorify him in all of his works.

What is important is that the tune matches the content. This requires someone with knowledge of music to organize the Psalms into a Psalter. The tunes should be sober and respectful, not distracting from the content but instead making it easy for the congregation to sing together with understanding.

The way this was first done in the early Reformation was to use a metrical Psalter where the Psalms were organized so that they fit into common meter songs. There were many well-known tunes in common meter so this meant any Psalm could be sung using one of those tunes. The idea for tunes is that notes cannot be too busy so as to district from the content nor can they be so similar that no distinctions are made in the flow of thought. The goal is to teach the worshiper to sing with understanding. God wants to be worshiped in Spirit and in Truth.

Today there are several good Psalters available for use in worship. This is an embarrassment of riches and all the more highlights the neglect of the Psalms in corporate worship by Christians who have access to so much but who use so little. Christians who had to hide their Psalters from Roman Catholic persecutors should be an example to us of the freedoms we now have and the shame in neglecting such a rich heritage.

Instruments and a Choir

A well-intended Christian brother once told me, “I like when there is a piano playing while we sing because it helps drown out the bad singing of the congregation.” I believe this is a common sentiment. In other words, the focus is on the music and not on the words. The congregation can always learn to sing better. But God does not command us to wait to sing until we are better at it. He asks us to raise our voices from whatever condition we find ourselves in.

There is beauty in the very idea of a congregation of untrained persons singing together because of the joy of the Lord in their hearts. For this brother, the goal was to hear the notes, and for that, a piano is very useful. But for the Psalmist, the goal is to understand the content.

I have heard similar remarks about why a choir is enjoyable to listen to. They are trained, and it is good to just sit and enjoy the performance. None of that is objectionable outside of the Lord’s Day. But on the Lord’s Day, it makes the same mistake we have seen throughout—removing the congregation from singing the inspired songs of God and instead focusing on how a performance makes me feel. The Christian is to actively praise God rather than passively listen. The church service is the unique time each week set aside for just this act of worship—do not lose that blessing or give it away so that you can merely listen.

Does the end of the Temple mean that now anyone can use musical instruments in public worship since there are no longer Levites? Just the opposite is the case. The Levites were commanded to use instruments, their function ceased, and no command was given to take up instruments by any other person or the congregation as a whole. Now we sing God’s inspired songs a cappella, together as a congregation without instruments and with understanding.

To “sing acapella” is from an Italian word for “as in chapel.” It was the recognized format that singing in chapel was without instruments. This means that when someone says with surprise, “your church sings acapella without instruments?” they are surprised that you are singing the way it was done in chapel for centuries. Singing without instruments in any setting today is called “acapella,” making a comparison to the main place people understood singing without instruments to happen, in church.