Music

“…addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart…”

— Ephesians 5:19 (ESV)

Music, and above all congregational singing, is one of the ordinary parts of worship God has appointed for his church: believers “addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord” (Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16). Because the acceptable way of worship is limited to what God himself has instituted rather than to what human invention devises, singing belongs among the elements Scripture actually commands, alongside prayer, the reading and preaching of the Word, and the sacraments.¹

Confessional Witness

The Reformed confessions agree that worship is not left to human invention. The Westminster Confession states that “the acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by himself, and so limited to his own revealed will, that he may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representations or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scripture.”¹ The Philadelphia Confession of Faith, the American Reformed Baptist confession built on the 1689 Second London Confession,² states the same rule in nearly identical words.³

Both confessional families likewise count singing among the ordinary parts of worship rather than a matter of personal taste. Westminster lists “singing of Psalms with grace in the heart” alongside prayer, the reading and preaching of Scripture, and the sacraments as “parts of the ordinary religious worship of God.”⁴ The Philadelphia Confession states the same commitment in the Baptist tradition’s own wording, closer to Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16: “teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in our hearts to the Lord… are all parts of religious worship of God, to be performed in obedience to him, with understanding, faith, reverence, and godly fear.”⁵

The Philadelphia Confession goes further than its Westminster and Savoy counterparts: it devotes an entire chapter to the practice, one absent from the 1689 confession itself:

“We believe that singing the praises of God, is a holy ordinance of Christ, and not a part of natural religion, or a moral duty only; but that it is brought under divine institution, it being enjoined on the churches of Christ to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs; and that the whole church in their public assemblies, as well as private Christians, ought to sing God’s praises according to the best light they have received.”⁶

That addition followed decades after Baptist churches in England had divided sharply over whether uninspired hymns, and not the Psalter alone, could lawfully be sung in worship at all.

Biblical Basis

Paul commands believers twice to sing. In Ephesians, they are to be addressing “one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart” (Eph. 5:19); in Colossians, “teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Col. 3:16). Calvin reads the two commands as complementary: the first “enjoins us to sing with the voice and the heart,” while the second “commends spiritual Songs, by which the pious mutually edify each other.”⁷ Paul draws the same connection between the outward act and the inward understanding writing to Corinth: “I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also” (1 Cor. 14:15).⁷

Singing runs through Scripture as the ordinary response to God’s own acts and character. The redeemed sing after the exodus (Ex. 15:1-2); Paul and Silas sing hymns in a Philippian jail at midnight (Acts 16:25); James commends singing as the ordinary response of a cheerful heart (James 5:13). The Psalter itself commands instruments alongside the voice: “Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe!” (Ps. 150:3-4), a command the church has not always agreed how far to carry into New Testament worship.

Historical Development

Patristic practice

Congregational singing is old, but Augustine’s own testimony shows it was not always universal. Calvin, citing Augustine’s Confessions and Retractions, reports that while the apostles themselves sang (1 Cor. 14:15; Col. 3:16), the church of Milan only began singing “in the time of Ambrose,” during the persecution of the orthodox faith by Justina, mother of the emperor Valentinian, and the practice spread to other Western churches only afterward.⁷ Calvin adds a caution of his own alongside that history: a congregation “must… carefully beware, lest our ears be more intent on the music than our minds on the spiritual meaning of the words,” and reports that this same fear once led Augustine to wish for Athanasius’s near-toneless recitation in place of singing.⁷

The instrumental music debate

Whether instruments, and not only the voice, belong in Christian worship became a live question for Reformed and Puritan divines in the seventeenth century. Edward Leigh’s 1654 Systeme of Divinity records both sides of the dispute. Some, including the Catholic apologist Bellarmine and the conformist divine Burgess, defended instrumental music as lawful on the ground that the Old Testament’s own instrumental worship “was no figure, type or ceremony, but a real thing for elevation of the soul,” a “natural help to devotion” rather than a matter of typological “signification” bound to the ceremonial law that ended with Christ.⁸ Others, including William Ames and, in Leigh’s report, Aquinas, Rivet, Zanchius, Zepperus, and Altingius, “dislike[d] of Organs and such like Musick in Churches,” judging that they generally hindered rather than aided edification.⁸ The same page of Leigh’s Systeme records a related but distinct dispute over whether congregations might sing “Songs and Psalms of our own inditing” agreeable to Scripture, and not the Psalter alone, arguing from Paul’s naming of “Psalms, Hymns and spiritual Songs” (Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16) that Scripture itself does not limit congregational singing to inspired texts.⁸ Baptist churches would divide sharply over that same question a few decades later, a controversy Hymns traces in full.

Opposing Views

Some Reformed bodies holding the regulative principle have drawn a stricter conclusion from it than Theopedia’s own confessional tradition does, extending it to the instruments and manner of singing, not only its content. On this view, since Scripture nowhere commands instrumental accompaniment in New Testament worship, introducing it adds an unwarranted element rather than merely arranging a circumstance Scripture leaves to Christian prudence; some Presbyterian and Reformed bodies holding to exclusive psalmody have historically read the regulative principle this way, following the same objection Leigh’s seventeenth-century opponents of “Organs and such like Musick” already raised.⁸ The broader Reformed Baptist and evangelical practice Theopedia follows instead treats the instruments and style of congregational singing as a circumstance of worship, governed by general rules of order and edification rather than requiring its own specific scriptural warrant, the same ground Leigh’s seventeenth-century defenders of instrumental music gave.⁸

Objections and Responses

Instrumental music belongs to the Old Testament’s ceremonial worship, which ended with the coming of Christ. Leigh records the answer given by instrumental music’s Reformed and Catholic defenders alike: the Old Testament’s own instrumental worship was not a “figure, type, or ceremony” pointing forward to something else, the way circumcision or animal sacrifice did, but “a real thing for elevation of the soul,” a natural rather than typological aid to devotion, and so it was never bound to the ceremonial law that Christ’s coming abolished.⁸

Elaborate music turns worship into an aesthetic performance rather than the spiritual worship God requires. Calvin does not dismiss this danger; he names it from within his own defense of singing. The same fear once led Augustine to wish the church would trade melody for Athanasius’s near-toneless recitation instead, and Calvin repeats the warning in his own voice: a congregation “must… carefully beware, lest our ears be more intent on the music than our minds on the spiritual meaning of the words.”⁷ His answer is not silence but manner: singing “tempered to a gravity befitting the presence of God and angels” gives worship real dignity and stirs true devotion, rather than becoming a performance for its own sake.⁷

Related Doctrines

References

Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chap. 21, “Of Religious Worship, and the Sabbath Day,” para. 1. ↩ ↩²
Samuel Eldon Waldron, Faith, Obedience, and Justification: Current Evangelical Departures from Sola Fide (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2005), 122. ↩
The Philadelphia Confession of Faith (1742), chap. 22, “Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day,” para. 1. ↩
Westminster Confession of Faith, chap. 21, para. 5. ↩
Philadelphia Confession of Faith, chap. 22, para. 5. ↩
The Philadelphia Confession of Faith (1742), chap. 23, “Of Singing of Psalms.” ↩
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846), 3.20.32. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
Edward Leigh, A Systeme or Body of Divinity (London: A. M. for William Lee, 1654), 610. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶