1. A Strange Phenomenon
Rev K M Watkins
It has become increasingly difficult to find churches that exclude musical instruments from their worship. In more traditional churches, it will be a single organ or piano; in more ornate churches, other classical instruments might be added; in modern churches it could be drums, guitars and whole rock bands. Apart from the Eastern Orthodox tradition, which never accepted instruments, rare nowadays are the churches of any kind which sing God’s praise a cappella1 – with the voice only, without the accompaniment of any
1A cappella is an Italian musical notation, meaning “according to the way of the chapel”. This shows the degree to which unaccompanied singing was historically associated with the Church’s way of singing.
mechanical device. The use of instruments in Christian worship has grown into an epidemic of international proportions.
This is strange, very strange. It is strange because singing without musical accompaniment was the almost-universal practice of all Christendom for the greater part of the first millennium of its existence. From Justin Martyr in the second century, the uniform voice of the Church fathers was against the use of instruments. Even Aquinas in the first half of the thirteenth was against them. G I Williamson summarises the indisputable history: in worship, “the first recorded instance of the use of such [musical instruments] was in the eighth century, but they did not become common until the thirteenth”.2
John Girardeau, in his classic work on the subject, traces it further: “The organ, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, steadily made its way towards universal triumph in the Romish Church”.3 John Price, in a recent book on the subject, shows the position before the Reformation: “By the early 1500s, an organ was found in almost every important church of Europe, and its use became one of the distinguishing traits of the Roman Catholic liturgy”.4 The plethora of musical instruments today among Protestants as well as Romanists, is indeed a strange phenomenon.
If it is strange to find instrumental music in almost all worship calling itself Christian, it is stranger still to find it so prevalent in the majority of churches claiming to be reformed. For the purest stream of the Reformation cast them out along with other trappings of Popery.
In Calvin’s Geneva, Psalms were sung without musical instruments. He comments on Psalm 71:22: “To sing the praise of God upon the harp and psaltery unquestionably formed a part of the training of the law, and of the service of God under that dispensation of shadows and figures; but they are not now to be used in public thanksgiving.”5 On Psalm 33:2, he wrote:
2G I Williamson, Instrumental Music in Worship: Commanded or Not Commanded?, downloaded on 29 January 2016 from http://www.westminsterconfession.org/worship/instrumental-music-in-worship-commanded-or-not-commanded.php.
3John Girardeau, Instrumental Music in the Public Worship of the Church, Richmond VA, 1888, p 162.
4John Price, Old Light on New Worship, Simpson Publishing Company, 2005, p 86. Price is a Reformed Baptist, and provides a thorough and helpful review of the history of instrumental music in Christian worship. His work is marred, not only by the use of modern versions of the Bible, but also by a futile attempt to claim unity between those who exclude instruments altogether and those who use only one instrument to “aid the pitch and meter in singing” (p 15), arguing that they “share the same theological convictions and a high regard for the regulative principle of worship” (p 16). According to Price, it seems that the only real problem is to have more than one instrument. Rather, the Second Commandment is broken by using even one.
5Calvin’s Commentary, Baker Book House, 1984, vol 5, p 98.
“Musical instruments in celebrating the praises of God would be no more suitable than the burning of incense, the lighting up of lamps, and the restoration of the other shadows of the law. The Papists, therefore, have foolishly borrowed this, as well as many other things, from the Jews. Men who are fond of outward pomp may delight in that noise; but the simplicity which God recommends to us by the apostle is far more pleasing to Him.”6
In Knox’s Scotland, musical instruments were cast out from the beginning. His views are clear. Urging people to attend the public means of grace regularly, he wrote: “I mean not to hear piping, singing, or playing, nor to patter upon beads or books whereof they have no understanding. . . . For with such will I neither join myself in common prayer, nor in receiving external sacraments; for in so doing I should affirm their superstition and abominable idolatry.”7 Knox was a great advocate of congregational singing; it was the passive “hearing” of others “singing” to the congregation that he was condemning, along with the playing of musical instruments, pipes and all.
Nowhere was the Reformed principle of worshipping God only as He has appointed in His Word implemented more thoroughly than in Scotland. Unaccompanied singing has distinguished conservative Presbyterianism in Scotland and elsewhere ever since, and has been most strenuously contended for as an essential part of the crown rights of Christ. He alone, speaking in Scripture, has the right to put musical instruments into His Church’s worship.
The history of the Netherlands, where so much of the Reformed faith has been preserved, is especially significant, given that for more than three centuries the organ has regrettably been prominent in the Reformed churches of Holland. In what is now Belgium, at the Reformation, many organs were removed from the churches, but in the northern parts of the Low Countries, the large church organs had assumed a major role in Renaissance society as well as in Romanist worship, and they were largely preserved. This was to prove too great a temptation. The civil magistrate felt that they could not lie unused. At first, he required that recitals be played before and after worship, even on the Sabbath. From there it could be easily foreseen, given the fascination with these instruments, that they would find their way back into worship.
The Church made some attempts to swim against the tide. In 1574, the Synod of Dordrecht required that “the playing of the organ in the church
6Calvin’s Commentary, vol 4, p 539.
7The Works of John Knox, ed David Laing, Edinburgh, 1895, vol 3, p 103, English updated.
… must be entirely abolished”.8 However, four years later the same Synod had to plead that “the organs, which have been tolerated for a time, must by all means be removed from the church”.9 The 1581 National Synod of Middleburg and the 1594 Synod of Holland and Zeeland resolved “to obtain of the magistrate the laying aside of organs, and the singing with them in the churches, even out of the time of worship, either before or after sermons: so far are those Synods from bearing with them in the worship itself”.10 Clearly the state was usurping a role in church worship never given to it by Scripture, and the Church was acquiescing in this. No wonder it was a losing battle. A minister at Arnhem, having preached against the organ, “was brought before the magistrate … and informed that he had gone too far”.11
During the opening decades of the seventeenth century, the controversy raged within the Church between those for and those against, until in 1638 the Synod of Delft “took the middle road and decided to leave the decision up to each individual congregation” by stating that “organ playing is held to be a neutral subject (not a matter of principle) and as such is left to the freedom of the churches”.12 This dishonourable compromise was opposed by a few, but by the middle of the seventeenth century, “organised resistance to the organ in the worship service now collapsed”.13
The contrast between Scottish zeal for purity of worship and Dutch practice can be seen clearly in the testimony of Scottish Covenanter and martyr James Renwick, who said: “I testify and bear witness against the vast and sinful toleration of all error and sectaries in the Belgian Church [he means those adhering to the Belgic Confession] … and also against all their superstitious customs, such as, their observing of holy feast days, as they call them, the organs in their churches, and the like; all which they have as the relics of idolatry”.14
It is not so strange that churches in the Lutheran and Anglican stream of the Reformation should have preserved musical instruments. Their view of worship was never as Reformed as their doctrine. They asserted that, provided an element of worship had not been expressly forbidden in Scripture, it was
8Henry Bruinsma, The Organ Controversy in the Netherlands Reformation to 1640, in The Journal of the American Musicological Society, vol 7, no 3 (Autumn 1954), p 207.
9Bruinsma, p 208.
10Hickman, Apolog. pro Ejecitis in Anglia Ministis, quoted in editor’s note, Thomas Ridgley, A Body of Divinity, Philadelphia, 1815, vol 4, p 87.
11Bruinsma, p 209.
12Bruinsma, p 210.
13Bruinsma, p 212.
14A Choice Collection of Very Valuable Prefaces, Lectures, and Sermons by Rev James Renwick, Glasgow, 1804, p 641, English updated.
allowable if the Church thought it expedient. Under the wings of that unscriptural principle, a multitude of innovations can enter into worship. But it is strange indeed, that Churches of Presbyterian or Dutch Reformed heritage should fall prey to the use of musical instruments. These Churches claim to believe in the regulative principle: that only what Scripture positively requires should be brought into worship.
That leads us to the strangest aspect of all. Although today almost all churches professing to believe in the finished work of Christ use musical instruments, Scripture shows that they were part of the elaborate ceremonial of Old Testament worship, and never to be part of the gospel simplicity of New Testament worship. The types and symbols of the old economy ended when Christ fulfilled them in His coming 2000 years ago. From that point, the types were to vanish from worship. Properly understood, and it is in a future article that this will be demonstrated, musical instruments have no more right to a place in Christian worship than animal sacrifices and altars, Aaronic priests and their garments, and thrice-yearly visits to a temple in Jerusalem. There is not the slightest hint in the Bible that musical instruments were to continue into Christian worship. What a strange phenomenon it is that their presence should have become almost universal!
In order to interpret the Scriptural evidence about musical instruments rightly, we have first to establish the basis upon which that evidence is to be assessed. Contrary to the loose approach to worship manifest in churches of Lutheran and Anglican descent and many modern churches, whereby anything may be admitted into worship provided it is not expressly forbidden, Scripture teaches that the only things to be done in worship are those which God requires in His Word. This regulative principle of worship, as it is called, is rooted in the Second Commandment. The Shorter Catechism asserts that we are forbidden to worship God, not only by physical graven images, but also “in any other way not appointed in His Word” (Ans 51).
The Westminster Assembly was following Scripture’s own exposition of the Second Commandment. Abel’s sacrifice was “more excellent” than Cain’s, not only because blood-shedding spoke of Christ’s death, but also because it was offered “by faith” (Heb 11:4) – that is, in accordance with what God had appointed, for faith can lean only on what God has revealed. Nadab and Abihu’s worship was rejected as “strange fire before the Lord” because it was that “which He commanded them not” (Lev 10:1). Uzzah was slain because the ark of the covenant was not brought to Jerusalem “after the due order” (1 Chr 15:13). Jeroboam received the infamous epitaph that he caused the children of Israel to sin, not only because he set up literal graven images (the golden calves), but also because he ordained a feast of his own
without God’s appointment, “in the month which he had devised of his own heart” (1 Ki 12:33).
In the New Testament, the regulative principle still applies. Only what God has appointed is to be done in worship. Christ condemned the Pharisees for adding their own traditions to worship, such as ceremonial hand-washing. As a result, He said, “In vain do they worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men” (Mk 7:7). When commissioning His Church to make disciples of all nations, Christ prescribed clear limits: “teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Mt 28:20). The Church is not to teach or observe worship that He has not appointed. Paul was afraid that his gospel labours in Galatia had been in vain, not only because they were requiring circumcision but also because they were observing “days, and months, and times, and years” (Gal 4:10) which had been appointed by God only for ceremonial worship under the Mosaic economy of the Old Testament, but never for Christian worship. Likewise in Colosse, to follow “the doctrines and commandments of men” is condemned as “will worship” (Col 2:22-23) – that is, worship according to man’s will, not God’s will.
The Regulative Principle must be applied to the question of musical instruments in Christian worship. No element of worship, whether instrumental music or any other, is the “neutral” matter the Dutch approach declares it to be or the open matter the Lutheran/Anglican approach thinks it is. Either it is to be used, if God’s Word says so; or it is not to be used, if God’s Word gives no warrant for it. God willing, the next article will demonstrate that instrumental music was part of the ceremonial and typical system of the Old Testament. When that temporary system was abrogated in the coming of Christ, its typical rituals were abrogated too, so instrumental music no longer has God’s sanction for inclusion in His worship. It is extraordinarily strange that the vast majority of those claiming to follow Scripture refuse to follow Scripture when it comes to instrumental music, which they intrude on Christ’s house without any sanction from the Word.
Contentment is not carelessness or prodigality. . . . It is a disposition of mind in which we rest satisfied with the will of God respecting our temporal affairs, without hard thoughts or hard speeches concerning His allotments, and without any sinful desire for a change. It submissively receives what is given. It thankfully enjoys present mercies. It leaves the future in the hand of unerring wisdom.
God has . . . wondrously expressed approbation of Christ’s mediation by making the preaching of Christ crucified the power of God unto salvation – the salvation of millions, many of whom were sunk in almost unparalleled guilt and shame and ignorance and misery, till they heard and believed the gospel. W S Plumer