By Daniel Johnson
“Let me write the hymns of the church, and I care not who writes the theology.” – R.W. Dale
R.W. Dale was a 19th-century English Congregational church pastor who understood the importance of carefully selecting and curating the music sung in local gatherings of believers. The exposition of the Word is powerful, life-changing, and challenges us to become better servants of Christ as we leave our weekly worship gatherings. R.W. Dale knew, however, that the songs we sing are the things we’ll still be uttering, with varying degrees of beauty—in the shower, at work, and at play as we go through our daily lives away from our church family throughout the week. The significance of choosing congregational music that aligns with the theology our churches uphold and accurately reflects the truths we believe in cannot be overstated.
Lyrical accuracy matters, but it isn’t the only factor to consider when selecting songs for corporate worship. The Bible offers specific guidance on the types of songs we should sing. The apostle Paul, writing to the believers in Ephesus and Colossae, provided helpful admonitions:
“…speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father…” (Eph 5:19, LSB)
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with gratefulness in your hearts to God.” (Col 3:16, LSB)
Many articles have been written, opinions shared at conferences, and panel discussions at worship symposiums have debated what Paul truly meant when he wrote those admonishments. The truth is, we don’t know with absolute certainty what he was referring to with these three distinct types of congregational expressions of praise.
The simplest and most common definition given over the years is that psalms refer to songs that use the book of Psalms from the Bible as their main lyric content, hymns refer to the rich songs of the faith like those found in our classic hymnals, and spiritual songs refer to simple praise songs, such as the little ditties evangelical Christianity sometimes derisively called “Praise Choruses” in a previous generation. This view of Paul’s admonishments in these passages is too simplistic and overlooks an important tenet of Bible interpretation: What was the author referring to when he wrote it?
The way music is expressed in the modern Western world is completely different from that during the New Testament era. Everything that influences how Western music is evaluated and theorized simply did not exist when Paul was writing. This includes the nomenclature and how it is expressed on the page, the 12-tone equal-tempered scale, and the timbre that the modern audience, in general, finds aurally appealing, was not codified until around 1000-1200 AD at the earliest. Time signatures, key signatures, measures, and bar lines appeared even later. Two of the oldest songs still used by modern churches—“All Creatures of Our God and King” and “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”—had no time signature, no key signature, and no measure breaks when they were first published.
So, since Paul had no frame of reference for anything resembling the style of music that western modernity has defined as good, we have no choice but to try to understand what those words meant when they were written.
Psalms
Psalms, in these passages, most certainly refer to the book of Psalms in the Old Testament Scriptures. Churches once had, and some liturgical churches still do, a second book in the pew alongside the hymnals called The Psalter. It was simply the psalms set to music. In most contemporary churches, this songbook would seem out of place, and, in reality, most of the tunes in The Psalter are not enjoyable to sing for modern ears. However, many modern songwriters have taken the psalms and written beautiful and engaging music to sing them. Interestingly, the word for “psalm” in its original language means “to strike, pluck, or ‘twang’ the chords of a musical instrument in a pious song.” The psalms were not meant to be sung unaccompanied or without instrumentation.
Many psalms have, as a superscription, the type of instrument that the author intended for it to be played on or a reference to the musical form the psalm was intended to take.
- Psalm 4—To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments.
- Psalm 5—For the flutes.
- Psalm 8—According to the Gittith—probably a specified style, melody, or meter.
- Psalm 22—According to “The Doe of the Dawn”—probably a tune that everyone knew, and perhaps not even a temple tune. Shepherds, most likely, knew lots of songs that folks sang outside of the temple, and here David may have written new sacred lyrics to a secular tune that folks knew well.
Several of the Psalms are labeled A Maskil—again, probably referring to a specific form of music.
- Psalm 56—To the tune of Dove on Far-off Terebinths.
- Psalm 57, 58, 59, and 75—the first three are the same length in Hebrew and written by David, the fourth, written by Asaph, adds an additional stanza—all intended to be sung to the tune Do Not Destroy.
When planning corporate worship gatherings, it is important to consider incorporating the Psalms. Every well-rounded worship service should include singing or, at the very least, reading a Psalm.
Defining hymns and spiritual songs as Paul intended is a bit more complex.
(These are topics in Part 2.)
Daniel Johnson serves as Pastor of Worship and Education at South County Bible Church in St Louis, MO. He serves on the IFCA National Youth Council and is President of the Greater St Louis Region.
