When the Spirit Gives a Song

Why the Church Must Not Add to the Psalter

A committee within our federation¹ has proposed that Synod 2025² consider adding new songs to the back of our Psalter. These are not Psalms, but versifications of other portions of Scripture, set to music and intended to be very near, at least in proximity, if not inside the public corporate worship of God on the Lord's Day. The logic is muddled in the report, but the recommendation is crystal clear. While admitting all good intentions, this proposal is the opening of a door that other denominations have walked through before us. A door that does not bring us closer in proximity to the faithful church of all ages, and our own history, but a slow capitulation of it. We must see this for what it is: human invention into the worship of God.

The Spirit Has Already Spoken

When God desires His church to sing, He does not leave it to human initiative. The 150 Psalms were not compiled by accident. They were inspired, collected, and preserved by the Holy Spirit with a view toward the praise of the Church of God. The Psalms are, uniquely, songs. Not Scripture set to music, but Scripture as praise. They speak to God as much as they speak about Him. They form the prayer book, songbook, and devotional life of the covenant people across all ages (the Jewish Church, the Early Church, Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Church, The Reformation/Second Reformation Church, The Secession Churches, and us today in the FRCNA).

Contrast the genre of the Psalms with Paul's epistles, the visions of Daniel, or the narratives of Exodus. These are inspired, infallible, and rich in doctrine, but they were never songs. Nowhere in Scripture are we instructed to versify and sing Paul's letters. No command tells us to render Isaiah into meter and melody for the congregation. To treat all Scripture as equally singable is to erase the clear distinction and intent the Holy Spirit Himself has drawn.

The Psalms are the only portion of Scripture given explicitly by the Spirit to sing. They are songs by design, by nature, not by adaptation. When the Holy Spirit intended His people to sing in public corporate worship, He gave them 150 songs, and said, so to speak 'Here, sing these to US.” To suggest otherwise is to declare the Spirit's provision insufficient.

A Violation of the Regulative Principle

The Reformed and Presbyterian churches have long confessed the Regulative Principle of Worship (RPW): that only what God commands in public worship is permitted. This is in contrast to other Protestant traditions that assume freedom where God is silent. We assume the opposite: unless God explicitly commands it, it must not be brought into His corporate worship.

Since Moses, this RPW principle had guarded the holiness of God’s worship. Just ask Aaron. It reminds us that when we come before the Triune God collectively, we are not there to express ourselves, but to respond to His revelation to us. It was this very principle that led the Reformers and Seceders to return to the Psalms alone as the songbook of the church. Calvin, Knox, and De Cock understood that singing what the Holy Spirit took time to write for us is the highest expression of worship. Only what God has commanded is an act of worshipful submission. To add what He has not commanded, however well-meant, is pure presumption.

The Psalms are sufficient. They contain the full range of human experience under grace: repentance, forgiveness, joy, grief, confession, praise, justice, mercy, covenant, and Christ. The entire redemptive work of God is sung, always more deeply than in our most doctrinally rich hymns. They are sung Christology. They are Spirit-breathed doxology. To look outside of them is not only unnecessary, but also unfaithful.

A Path Already Taken

This is not the first time the Reformed church has faced such recommendations. The Reformed Church in America (RCA) and the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) once sang only Psalms. A reading of their histories proves that their fidelity was not lightly held. Both the RCA and CRC in their inception (or immigration) was rooted in the Synod of Dort, in the Secession of 1834 (which also reformed the Song Book to Psalms only). At the founding of the CRC (USA) in 1857, one of its chief reasons for leaving the RCA was a protest against 800 unauthorized hymns.

But slowly, under pressure of cultural accommodation and aesthetic preference, they yielded.

Let's go back.

In 1789, the RCA added hymns to its Psalter. By 1869, its hymnal contained over a thousand hymns and the Psalms were nearly lost. In the CRC, the Psalter of 1912 marked a recovery of psalm-singing, but only for about half a generation. In 1934, hymns were added. In 1959, more still. By 1987, the "Psalter Hymnal" included 491 hymns, and in 2013, Lift Up Your Hearts presented a veritable buffet of global songs, contemporary choruses, and a scattering of Psalms.

This is the path we are being asked to walk.

Let us be clear: those who walked it before us never intended to forsake the Psalms. Each addition was presented to each synod as modest, controlled, safe. But the Psalms were displaced, not preserved. Once one small principle is surrendered, the outcome becomes inevitable.

The PCA, OPC, and CRC all bear the same scars. What begins with supplemental verses ends with doctrinal drift. The Psalms give way to man's desire. If we add one, why not nineteen? If nineteen, why not one hundred? Then theology follows. As Abraham Kuyper warned, "In the struggle between hymn and psalm, all nominal members favored the hymns; the truly pious were drawn to the psalms." De Cock is much stronger in his language, "Hymns were never introduced into the church, except to cause degeneration and contempt for the welfare of the church." "Where, therefore, were the hymns, or other whorish songs ever used in the days of the apostles in the congregations of the Lord?" In case you are wondering where he said this, it's in his pamphlet, "The So-Called Evangelical Hymns the Darling of the Enraptured and Misled Multitude in the Synodical Reformed Church and even by some of God's children from blindness, because they are drunk with the wine of her fornication, further tested, weighed and found wanting, Yes, in conflict with all our Forms of Unity and the Word of God."³

Why We Must Not Follow

It is also important to examine some of the very songs now being proposed or defended as Recommendations. Many of these selections, such as As Moses Raised the Serpent Up (John 3), Comfort, Comfort Now My People (Isaiah 40), If I Speak in Foreign Tongues (1 Corinthians 13), In the Beginning (John 1), O My People Turn to Me (a paraphrase likely rooted in the prophets?), Seek Ye First (Matthew 6), The Beatitudes (Matthew 5), and The Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5), are taken from narratives, gospel instruction, or prophetic preaching. None of these genres are songs. They are not identified as such by the Spirit, nor are they framed in a poetic or musical form suitable for corporate praise.

Even the so-called Songs of Mary, Simeon, and Zechariah are misnamed. The Greek text of Luke explicitly states that Mary said (εἶπεν), not sang, the Magnificat (Luke 1:46); likewise, Simeon said (εἶπεν) his words upon seeing Christ (Luke 2:28–29). The same goes for the Angels of Christ's birth. No song there at all. These are records of speech, not prescriptions of song. There is no biblical warrant to treat these as anything to sing. Ask yourself, "What did Paul mean when he used the word hymn?" (Eph. 5; Col. 3) What did Jesus and the disciples sing on the night he was betrayed? καὶ ὑμνήσαντες ἐξῆλθον "and having sung [a hymn] they went out…" The verb ὑμνέω (hymneō) simply means to sing praise; it does not imply versified songs as we think of it today. What did the Hebrew church, and thus our Lord sing exclusively ? The term refers to Psalm-singing in both the Septuagint and Jewish usage of the time. So, to elevate man-made versifications to be sung in corporate worship is to treat as prescriptive what Scripture has presented as descriptive, which is a violation of the Regulative Principle.

In other words, each of these recommendations comes from a portion of Scripture that is undeniably inspired, but never intended by the Spirit for corporate singing. None bear the form, function, or Spirit-indicated use that the Psalms alone possess. To versify and sing them in worship is to treat all genres of Scripture as equal in liturgical function, which is a confusion of the Holy Spirit's design. The Psalms alone were given as Israel's, Christ's, and the Church's songbook.

It is also important to examine some of the very songs now being proposed or defended as "Scripture songs." Consider the following examples:

• Song of Hannah (1 Samuel 2) – a prophetic utterance tied to a historical narrative.

• Song of Moses and Miriam (Exodus 15) – a historical celebration following a redemptive event.

• Song of Mary (Luke 1), Song of Zachariah (Luke 1), Song of Simeon (Luke 2) – all narrative-embedded praise, recorded within redemptive history, not given as liturgical material.

• As Moses Raised the Serpent Up (John 3), The Beatitudes (Matthew 5), The Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5), If I Speak in Foreign Tongues (1 Corinthians 13) are didactic or instructional texts, not written in or for musical form.

• The Ten Commandments, The Lord's Prayer – moral and devotional instruction, not divine songs.

Some reasons are old. But others, perhaps, we have not yet seen clearly:

• The Psalms are already sufficient to instruct the church in doctrine, worship, and experience. We are not impoverished. (2 Peter 1:3)

• Other genres of Scripture were not intended for musical setting. The didactic epistles, histories, apocalyptic visions, and gospel narratives are not liturgical texts. To versify and sing them corporately is to treat all Scripture as functionally the same. This denies the Spirit's clear intent in giving a distinct songbook to His Church.

• When we sing uninspired words in God's worship, we teach without inspiration. In preaching, the minister is constrained by the text. In song, the people themselves proclaim theology at their discression. Should not that theology be God's?

• The church is shaped as much by what she sings as by what she hears. Versifications of Scripture set to music, however carefully selected, in the 21st Century, are often as formative as sermons. To introduce new songs is to introduce a new catechesis. What are we teaching our children? What boundary will they push, if we push this one?

• God gave His people a canon of praise. To add to it is to say His provision is incomplete. That is a weighty theological statement, one we dare not make.

• We are not wiser than De Cock, or Dort, or the Reformers. One hundred percent of Reformed history demonstrates that the addition of Scripture songs to the 150 Psalms is a historical regression. Unwittingly, our Dort fathers opened that door. Or rather did not close it tightly. Now we are being asking to walk through it.

• The Holy Spirit preserved the Psalms across dispensations. Christ sang them. The apostles sang them. The early church sang them. The Reformation/nader reformatie sang them, the Puritans, etc. We have no authority to lay beside them another set of so-called scriptural song.

Hold the Line!

If we are truly ready to make a change at Synod 2025, then let us reform ourselves. If Article 69⁴ of the Church Order is to be revisited, and indeed, rewritten, let it not be to loosen its guardrails, but repair them, and complete the work of reformation. Let us then remove all remaining doxologies and Scripture songs not found in the Psalms. Let us remove from our worship of all that the Spirit has not commanded. Let us finally and fully align our practice with the original intent of Dort: to sing only the songs the Holy Spirit has written and placed right smack in the middle of His Word. Anything less is regression.

This committee's proposal and recommendations open a door. A door that the RCA, CRC, OPC, PCA, PCUSA, RCUS and a myriad of denominations that no longer exist have already walked through. It asks us to sing what the Spirit never commanded. It asks us to unlearn the lessons of Dort, of De Cock, of the Secession. It is, in theological terms, the beginning of decline.

We do not need new songs. We need to love The Psalter more deeply. The Psalms are not stale. They are life. They are not insufficient. They are inexhaustible. And they are the only songs God Himself has given His church to sing.

May Synod 2025 not only reject this proposal. Let it bear witness, with our forefathers, that the Psalms are enough.

1. Doxologies and Spiritual Songs Committee

2. See, Acts of Synod 2024, p.258.

3. In J.A. Wanliss and W.L. Bredenhof, “Rev. DeCock’s Case Against Hymns,” translation from the Dutch by authors. Dutch version, https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/cock011zoog01_01/cock011zoog01_01_0001.php

4. Article 69 of the Church Order of Dort (1619) originally read:

“In the churches only the 150 Psalms of David shall be sung. The hymns of Mary, Zacharias, and Simeon shall be left to the freedom of the churches, as also the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, and the Song of Thanksgiving after meals. All other hymns are to be excluded from the churches, and where some have already been introduced, they are to be removed by the most suitable means.”