The Reformed Presbyterian practice of singing the Psalms exclusively and without instrumental accompaniment can seem strange to modern Christians. Psalm 150 itself appears to present an immediate challenge: “Praise him with the sound of the trumpet. Praise him with the lute and harp. Praise him with timbrel and dance. Praise him with stringed instruments and flutes. Praise him with loud cymbals.” How can a church read those words and yet worship by singing Psalms a cappella?
The answer begins with the second commandment. The first commandment concerns worshiping the true God; the second concerns worshiping the true God truly. The Westminster Larger Catechism teaches that the second commandment requires “the receiving, observing, and keeping pure and entire, all such religious worship and ordinances as God hath instituted in his Word.” Likewise, the Westminster Confession states that “the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will” that God may not be worshiped according to human imagination.
Our starting point, therefore, is that God determines how he is to be worshiped. The practice of worship belongs to him.
Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs
Colossians 3:16 instructs Christians to teach and admonish one another “in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” Ephesians 5:19 uses similar language. If Scripture commands “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,” how can we conclude that the church should sing only the biblical Psalms?
We should first notice that the Psalter itself uses these categories. The superscriptions identify Psalm 13 as “a Psalm of David,” Psalm 92 as “a Psalm, a Song for the Sabbath day,” and Psalm 145 as “David’s Psalm of praise.” Within the biblical Psalter itself, then, we encounter psalms, hymns or praises, and songs.
The grammatical construction also supports understanding these terms as closely related descriptions. “Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” is a threefold expression of one unified idea. In grammar that’s called a hendriatris. Scripture employs similar constructions elsewhere. Exodus 34:7 speaks of God forgiving “iniquity and transgression and sin.” Deuteronomy 6:1 refers to “the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments.” Although distinctions can be drawn between the individual terms, the three together emphasize a unified category.
There is also significance in the word spiritual. In the New Testament, “spiritual” ordinarily refers to something produced by the Holy Spirit. Thus “spiritual songs” are not merely religious songs or songs about spiritual subjects. They are songs produced by the Spirit of God. The inspired Psalter clearly meets that description.
Professor John Murray, in his defense of exclusive psalmody, argued that there is no warrant for assuming that “spiritual songs” refers to uninspired compositions, while there is warrant for identifying the psalms, hymns, and songs with the inspired material contained in the Psalter. Thus Colossians 3:16 and Ephesians 5:19 are entirely consistent with the church singing the Book of Psalms.
The Historical Practice of Psalm Singing
Psalm singing also has been consistently practiced in Christian history. The first book printed in British North America was the Bay Psalm Book, published in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1640. It was a metrical Psalter with all 150 Psalms. Eleven copies are known to survive, and one sold at auction in 2013 for $14.2 million.
More importantly, psalmody characterized much of the church’s history. In the early centuries there was significant concern about uninspired hymns because hymns were sometimes used to spread theological error. Arius employed songs to popularize his teaching that Christ was a created being rather than co-eternal with the Father. The Donatists also used hymns to advance their views.
At the Reformation, Psalm singing became especially prominent. John Calvin promoted Psalm singing in Geneva, although there was also some allowance for singing the Ten Commandments or the Lord’s Prayer. The Westminster Assembly likewise produced a Psalter as part of its reformation of worship, eventually contributing to the Scottish Metrical Psalter of 1650. English, Scottish, Dutch, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and Anglican settlers all brought psalmody as a practice to the New World.
There are, of course, biblical songs outside the Psalter. Israel sang songs associated with national events and military victories. But Israel possessed both a national and an ecclesiastical life. The existence of songs outside public worship does not establish their use within public worship. Christians likewise may sing many kinds of songs outside the church without concluding that all belong in the church’s worship.
Even the hymns sung by Christ and his disciples after the Passover does not present a problem. The traditional Passover hymns were the Egyptian Hallel, Psalms 113–118. The New Testament therefore calls something a hymn that we know consisted of biblical Psalms.
Nor should every poetic New Testament passage automatically be treated as an early Christian hymn. Passages such as Colossians 1 are sometimes called “hymnic fragments,” but their poetic character does not prove that they were sung. Beautiful or elevated prose is not necessarily a hymn.
This does not mean that hymns have no place in Christian life. They can be beautiful, edifying, and doctrinally sound. J. Gresham Machen, himself a hymn-singing Presbyterian, nevertheless criticized “Nearer, My God, to Thee” because he believed people mistakenly associated its reference to the “cross” with the gospel when the hymn was actually speaking about human suffering drawing a person nearer to God! Hymns must therefore be evaluated. As one of my seminary professors put it, we must “exegete the hymnal.”
The Psalms require no such evaluation. They are already the Word of God.
Christ in the Psalms
Psalm singing is also Christologically defensible. In Luke 24:44, Jesus says that the things written concerning him “in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms” had to be fulfilled. Christ himself teaches us to read the Psalms Christologically.
Jesus is everywhere in the Psalter. To say we need hymns as a way of singing about our savior is a mischaracterization of the psalms. His kingship appears in Psalms 2, 45, 72, and 110. His agony is presented in Psalm 22; his betrayal in Psalms 35 and 41; his rejection in Psalm 118; and his crucifixion in Psalms 22 and 69. Psalm 16 anticipates his resurrection, Psalm 47 his ascension, and Psalm 50 his coming in judgment.
Indeed, the Psalms give us something of the emotional experience of Christ that the Gospel narratives do not always express explicitly. They are a compendium of the person, ministry, suffering, victory, and reign of Jesus Christ. The objection that exclusive psalmody prevents Christians from singing about their Savior therefore fails. The Psalter is filled with him.
Psalm singing is also experientially defensible. Because the Psalms are the Word of God, they speak to the heart in a way that no merely human composition can. Saying this is no more an attack upon good hymns than saying that Scripture is superior to Calvin’s Institutes is an attack upon Calvin. The issue is the unique power and authority of God’s Word.
The Psalms give the worshiper words with which to wrestle with God, commune with God, grieve, rejoice, repent, hope, and praise. Exclusive psalmody should therefore be held not merely as a Presbyterian tradition but as a biblical practice intended for Christian worship and growth.
Why A Cappella?
But another question remains. Why sing these Psalms without instruments?
Second Chronicles 29 provides an important picture of instrumental worship in the Old Testament. During Hezekiah’s reformation, the Levites stood in the temple with cymbals, stringed instruments, and harps “according to the commandment of David, of Gad the king’s seer, and of Nathan the prophet.” When the burnt offering began, the instruments began. They continued until the burnt offering was finished.
This tells us something important about Old Testament instrumentation. Instruments were not simply added because worshipers found them helpful or beautiful. Their use was divinely commanded, connected to the Levitical priesthood, and associated with sacrifice.
Instrumental worship also developed within the Old Testament. Numbers 10 describes trumpets associated with tabernacle worship. Later, under David, worship changed in preparation for the temple. David gave Solomon the divinely revealed pattern for temple worship, and instruments were assigned to particular Levitical families. Hezekiah later restored this Davidic pattern.
Not just anyone could bring an instrument into the temple. A gifted musician could not simply volunteer his or her talents. The musicians belonged to appointed Levitical families, just as other Levites were assigned to sacrifices, singing, or serving as doorkeepers. Instrumental music belonged to that divinely ordered Levitical system.
Hebrews teaches us how to understand that system. Hebrews 9 describes the tabernacle, priesthood, sacrifices, washings, and other ordinances as symbolic and imposed “until the time of reformation.” These ceremonies pointed beyond themselves to realities fulfilled in Christ.
The sacrifice pointed to Christ’s sacrifice. Incense represents the prayers of the saints. The lamps signify the work of the Holy Spirit. In the same way, the instruments accompanying the bloody sacrifices expressed something beautiful amid the horror of sacrifice. They pointed to grace in the heart, the grace by which the death of Christ becomes precious to the believer.
That helps explain the language of New Testament worship. Christians are commanded to sing and make melody in the heart. The instrument has, in that sense, been internalized. Hebrews 13:15 similarly commands, “Let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.” The praise once associated with Levitical sacrifice and instrumentation now comes from the heart through the lips of God’s people.
The New Testament repeatedly commands singing, but it does not command the continuation of temple instrumentation. If instruments belonged particularly to the temple and Levitical priesthood, their disappearance is no stranger than the disappearance of incense, sacrifices, showbread, and the other ceremonies fulfilled in Christ.
The Practice of the Church
This understanding also explains the long history of a cappella Christian worship. The synagogue, unlike the temple, worshiped without instruments, and early Christian worship followed this simpler pattern. Clement, Origen, Chrysostom, Justin Martyr, Eusebius, Augustine, and Tertullian all stand within the early history of non-instrumental Christian worship.
Centuries later, Thomas Aquinas argued that the church did not employ musical instruments because doing so would be a form of Judaizing. At the Reformation, a cappella worship again became prominent among Protestants. It was practiced among Presbyterians, the Dutch Reformed, Puritans, and others. Even John Wesley objected to instrumental worship, once saying that he had no objection to an organ provided it was “neither seen nor heard.” Charles Spurgeon argued that it was better to hear the voices of Christian men and women than sounds produced by machines.
The question of a cappella worship, of course, is an application of the regulative principle of worship. If God determines how he is worshiped, then the instruments commanded for Old Testament worship must either continue according to divine institution—including their connection with the Levitical ministry and sacrifice—or they must be understood as belonging to a sacrificial system fulfilled in Christ.
The biblical evidence points to instruments belonging to the Levites.
Hezekiah commanded the instruments to sound over the sacrifice until the sacrifice was finished. At Calvary, our Lord Jesus Christ offered the final and sufficient sacrifice and declared, “It is finished.” His words announce not only the accomplishment of our redemption but the fulfillment of the ceremonial system that pointed forward to him.
The Reformed Presbyterian Church therefore worships with the fruit of our lips and with grace in our hearts. We sing the songs given by the Holy Spirit, centered upon Jesus Christ, with the instrument God has now emphasized—the redeemed human heart expressing itself through the voices of his people.
Exclusive a cappella psalmody may seem foreign in an age of constant innovation in worship. Yet its purpose is an attempt to remain as close as possible to the worship God has given in his Word. God has placed a book of praise in the center of our Bibles. He has given his church songs to sing. And in rich, close, and sweet communion with him, the church takes those words upon her lips and sings in a cappella praise.
Written by Dr. Nathan Eshelman