Man Discovers Jesus’ Hymnal

Psalms_scrollWhat if I told you that it’s possible to sing the very songs that Jesus sang in worship? What if I told you that a man recently discovered those very songs? It’s true. Joe Holland, Pastor of Christ Covenant Presbyterian Church (PCA) tells the story at 9Marks (HT: Aquila Report). Like a lot of other evangelicals, Joe came to seminary without much awareness of the Psalms. He knew hymns and contemporary worship songs but not the Psalter. His Greek prof, however, required him to pick up a copy of the Trinity Psalter for class. Joe was puzzled. What hath the Trinity Psalter to do with New Testament Greek? Much in every way! As part of class they began with a psalm (a capital idea!) That was his introduction to the Psalms, Jesus’ songbook/hymnal. Our Lord used no other songbook.

Joe spent some time in the Peruvian mountains where he came into contact with a Presbyterian pastor, who explained to him why Reformed folk sing God’s Word in worship. He reports:

We had a long conversation about why this was their practice, but one reason stood out to me. He was fighting heresy in the churches he pastored. False teaching slipped into his churches through folk songs adjusted for worship. Psalm singing was his attempt to guard his people from heresy sung to a familiar tune. Psalms served that growing community of churches as a biblical bulwark against encroaching syncretism. Reflecting on that conversation, I realized that I had become a psalm singer through missions.

Joe lists six benefits of singing from Jesus’ songbook:

  1. When you sing psalms you literally sing the Bible.
  2. When you sing the psalms you interact with a wealth of theology.
  3. When you sing the psalms you are memorizing Scripture.
  4. When you sing the psalms you guard against heresy.
  5. When you sing the psalms you sing with the full range of human emotion.
  6. When you sing the psalms you praise the person and work of Jesus Christ.

He also gives four steps toward recovering Jesus’ songbook:

  1. Find a Psalter you can sing (he gives some good options)
  2. Know your Bible.
  3. To sing the psalms well you must understand how the psalms direct us to the person and work of Jesus Christ.
  4. The fourth thing you and your congregation will need is the willingness to try something new.

You will want to read the whole article for yourself. It’s a great and encouraging story of discovery, Reformation, and recovering the Reformed confession. It’s also a terrific counter-point to a quite disappointing essay that recently appeared in the pages of New Horizons, the magazine of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, in which a minister attempted to make a case not only against the biblical and historic Reformed practice of singing the entire Psalter in worship but even of collecting the psalms together for singing.

In case the gentle reader thinks that I exaggerate, read it for yourself:

Rather than embracing the “total psalmody” view of a Psalter-Hymnal, I’m convinced we ought to continue our venerable practice of using carefully selected metrical psalms, psalm versions, and paraphrases for sung praise and prayer in our corporate worship, along with scripturally faithful hymns.

Why? Briefly—and maybe too bluntly—not all the psalms as originally written are suitable for corporate Christian praise and prayer. Let me explain. We need to recognize that the Psalms flow out of and reflect the “old,” that is, the Mosaic, covenant understanding and expression of biblical faith. Now, the old covenant reveals much that remains forever true: the existence and power of the Lord God, who is worthy of all praise and thanksgiving; God’s mighty works of creation, providence, and redemption, which deserve our admiration and gratitude; the sin and desperate guilt of fallen humanity; the way of salvation by divine grace through faith in a redeemer; the reality of answered prayer and the forgiveness of sins; and so on.

You should probably read this essay too. Why?

1. It illuminates the way some, perhaps many, read Scripture. Rather than allowing the New Testament not only to interpret Scripture for us and rather than allow the NT to teach us how to read the Hebrew Scriptures, this essay knows a a priori that at least some of the Psalms are unsuitable for Christians. Remarkably, the Christian church didn’t get this memo until the 18th century.

2. It illustrates the deep hold the modern (post-eighteenth-century) approach to worship has upon the imaginations and affections of Reformed folk. Again, had this piece not appeared in the pages of the New Horizon we might have thought that it had appeared in a mainline Presbyterian publication from the 1940s.

3. It demonstrates one tremendous obstacle to the Reformation of worship: love of the familiar, the status quo. As a historical matter, as I argued in Recovering the Reformed Confession, the form of the original (blue) Trinity Hymnal was quite remarkable when viewed in light of the history of Reformed worship. Judged by the history of Reformed and Presbyterian worship, one might not have known it was a Presbyterian songbook. Mr Murray battled valiantly to recover the historic Reformed practice of worship but was outvoted by the committee. Mr Murray’s theological legacy is venerated in the OPC but apparently his psalmody is not venerated quite as much.

4. Christian freedom. One of the first things the Reformed churches did in Geneva, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and the British Isles was to begin to translate and compile a Psalter for use in public worship. Calvin worked diligently on a Psalter from the very beginning of the Genevan Reformation. It took decades but, by the grace of God, they were able to set all the Psalms to tunes, in French, so that the congregation could sing them in public worship. Now, finally, after centuries of bondage and darkness, God’s people were free to respond to his Word read, preached, and made visible with his very own Word, the songs that our Lord Jesus took to his holy lips, with which he praised his heavenly Father, which pointed to him and which he fulfilled in his actively suffering obedience. Now, finally, God’s people were worshipping our Triune God with the words that the holy catholic church had used for centuries, before the corruption of worship—even so, the Psalter remained the songbook of the church through the middle ages and the Reformation.

5. We live in the most psalm-free period of Christian history. This essay illustrates how we got here. It is our practice for faculty to lead devotions once each semester. When it’s my turn we always sing a psalm a cappella (usually Psalm 23 or 100). It is not unusual to hear from incoming students that not only have they never sung a cappella but that they have never before sung a Psalm. Ever. Think about that. The current versions of the Trinity Hymnal have so successfully hidden the psalms that there circulates a sort of underground list of singable psalms in the Trinity Hymnal (see below).

Do the Psalms present hermeneutical challenges for the Christian? Yes but they are not insurmountable. They were not too great for the disciples and the early church. Has the church confronted and addressed them? Yes. Certainly ministers should explain to congregations how to understand a psalm as we sing it but the Psalms are God’s holy Word and they were given to us to use in public worship, not to be scattered, hidden among hymns or, God forbid, omitted altogether. Bryan Estelle and I recently discussed this very question here. At the time of our discussion I was not aware of the existence of this essay but I was aware of the sentiment it represents.

The essay by Holland is a source of great encouragement. I trust that it represents a renewed enthusiasm among young people (readers of 9Marks) and others to recover the biblical and historic practice of singing God’s Word in public worship. The New Horizons essay is a bracing reminder of our far Reformed worship has drifted from historic practice even within the NAPARC world and how difficult it will be to recover the Reformed confession and practice of worship even within the walls of the Reformed world.

NOTES

I don’t know the original source of this document. —rsc

Trinity Hymnal – Psalms with tunes widely known.

1 – Psalm 100 – well known
6* – Psalm 103 – well known
9 – Psalm 22 – well known
11 – Psalm 72 – singable
12 – Psalm 135 – well known
16* – Psalm 98 – well known
35* – Psalm 113 – Singable
40* – Psalm 46 – well known
51 – Psalm 5 – Well known
57* – Psalm 146 – well known
59 – Psalm 119 – well known
62* – Psalm 96 – well known
64 – Psalm 93 – well known
79 – Psalm 22 – singable
87*– Psalm 23 – well known
99* – Psalm 89 – well known
110* – Psalm 148 – well known (Better in BPW)
126 – Psalm 104 – singable
148 – Psalm 119:9-16 – singable
169* – Psalm 45 – well known
316* – Psalm 50 – well known
349* – Psalm 80 – well known
360* – Psalm 126 – well known
364 – Psalm 78 – well known
366 – Psalm 78 – well known
368 – Psalm 22 – well known
400 – Psalm 134 – well known
437 – Psalm 67 – well known
438 – Psalm 66 – well known
439 – Psalm 72 – well known
486 – Psalm 51 – well known
551 – Psalm 32 – well known
552 – Psalm 130 – well known
614 – Psalm 124 – well known
626* – Psalm 30 – well known
635 – Psalm 92 – well known
657 – Psalm 73 – well known
671* – Psalm 37 – well known
717 – Psalm 128 – well known

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19 comments

  1. I have always assumed they were still singing psalms in Geneva when Robert Haldane arrived. Am I wrong on this? If I am, what WERE they singing? If I am right, “When you sing the psalms you guard against heresy” doesn’t seem to have worked back there!

  2. It is very rare that I have the privilege of singing the Metrical Psalms in church! While I accept that you can have orthodox manmade hymns–and I’d never exclude something like the Song of Zacharias or the Magnificat–I get very tired of subjectivistic 19th and early 20th century hymnody that passes for “traditional” (and is sometimes heretical) and the substitute-“Jesus, Jesus”-for-“baby, baby” genre.

    Further, the Psalms, as Scripture, give us the depths of devotional emotion–apart from being 100% orthodox.

    This being said, I will admit to being partial to a lot of the older Lutheran hymnody.

  3. Scott,

    I appreciate your courage in putting this up. While we normally don’t agree on much of anything, I am certainly happy to commend you in this, including pointing out the piece in NH.

    When we sing, in praise of God and his Salvation in Christ, what spirit do we want to be filled with? By breathing in and out as we sing the songs breathed out by God the Holy Spirit we will be filled with the Spirit of Christ and His word will well richly in us.

    Man made songs are neither the Word of Christ nor breathed out by His Spirit, and thus cannot make the Word of Christ dwell richly in us, nor fill us with His Holy Spirit. The songs of Christ’s own hymnal the 150 Psalms can and do.

  4. While reading the “four steps toward recovering Jesus’ songbook” I began to wonder if step #2 (which is heavily linked to step #3) isn’t mainly due laziness on the part of most evangelicals. There is great emphasis in many churches to “read” the Bible, of course, but just doing so does not mean that one “knows” the Bible, that is, how the various parts tie together to form the whole of redemptive history. To do so requires work and study and the use of sound commentaries.

    I’ve met people with fantastic memories who can quote unbelievable portions of scripture, but when confronted with the question of what it means in relationship to the rest, they falter. And, of course, they want nothing to do with creeds, catechisms, or any kind of systematic theology; just “give them the Bible,” they say.

  5. Scott,

    As someone who does agree with Rev. Poundstone’s concerns expressed in the article, I have some questions about your critique of it:

    1. “this essay knows a a priori that at least some of the Psalms are unsuitable for Christians.”

    What do you mean here? Do you mean unsuitable for singing in worship, or unsuitable in general? I am assuming you mean the former, as did Poundstone, but that wasn’t clear in your paragraph. That there are portions of the OT that would not be suitable for singing in worship is a given (think of Leviticus), so how is suggesting this for certain Psalms an a priori assumption?

    3. “It demonstrates one tremendous obstacle to the Reformation of worship: love of the familiar, the status quo.”

    How does being against a 50 psalm psalter reveal a love of the status quo? All I read is the reasons he was against the new psalter.

    “Mr Murray’s theological legacy is venerated in the OPC but apparently his psalmody is not venerated quite as much.”

    But Murray’s EP position was rejected by the OPC GA in 1946 – which is why it was the minority report, which is why your criticism above comes across as odd, unless you mean this has always been the case in the OPC.

    5. “We live in the most psalm-free period of Christian history. This essay illustrates how we got here.”

    What connection are you trying to make here? I’m sure the author enjoys singing the Psalms he deems appropriate for worship, as do most of us who do not hold your position on singing. How is his essay endemic of those who completely ignore the Psalms today?

    Thanks for considering these questions

    • Murray also petitioned: that for the sake of those within the church (OPC) who were conscience-bound to sing the Psalter (and ALL the Psalter)–perhaps not even exclusively–that they not be essentially *denied* their right to sing the Word of God imparted to the church for that purpose, by including all the Psalms in the service book, eventually published in 1961. His petition was *denied.*

      And indeed, for all practical purposes if the TH is the one option present for congregational singing, then well over 2/3 of the Psalter is not available for singing. Furthermore, as a pastor I long ago lost count of how many times I wanted particular Psalms or portions thereof to sing, and those passages are simply NOT THERE to sing. It truly is staggering how that a committee from 60yrs ago, and another from 30yrs, have truncated my liberty.

      And no, it is not reasonable to say that someone who wants the other 2/3 to sing can just go find himself (and his congregation) some other book. In fact, while he’s at it he can go find himself another denomination where he “fits in” better (which is actually what happened in the case of Founding Father Murray).

      Actually, what’s most amazing of all is how furious they seem who are unhappy about the OPC’s creation of a Psalter/Hymnal. Why? Will it negatively affect them, if some in the OPC who would like the whole Psalter to sing are accommodated? How? Is this “rolling back the clock?” Explain please, and to what? Other than preferring that the money be spent in other ways, what is the objection? Is it that there won’t be ONE service book throughout the whole church? There already are TWO! The old TH and the THrev. are BOTH used. And the exclusive Psalmodists in our midst use other books.

      It’s part of the church’s teaching office to help singers “sing with the understanding,” and not just to delegate that duty to Mr.Watts. As for the cost of the production, a particular legacy left to the denomination came with conditions that the P-H project fit quite well. GA agreed, and then later on it agreed again; and so far the voices of the opposition have not made their case that there are strong, principled, economic, theological or historical reasons to resist the P-H project.

      The esteemed fathers of this church deserve our highest honor, without undue veneration. Count me among them who consider the decision to *deny* Mr. Murray and others a commonly accessible and complete Psalter one of their occasional errors, which in our time we have a window of opportunity to rectify.

      • Bruce and Todd,

        I agree with Bruce’s reply. It’s substantially what I tried to say in RRC.

        1. Yes, I mean that the author is arguing that some Psalms are unsuitable for use in public worship but I think we should disagree. I understand that some Psalms present challenges but I wonder whether on the principles given in the article whether we could sing Ps 110. It has potentially objectionable language:

        A Psalm of David.

        The LORD says to my Lord:
        “Sit at my right hand,
        until I make your enemies your footstool.”

        The LORD sends forth from Zion
        your mighty scepter.
        Rule in the midst of your enemies!
        Your people will offer themselves freely
        on the day of your power,
        in holy garments;
        from the womb of the morning,
        the dew of your youth will be yours.
        The LORD has sworn
        and will not change his mind,
        “You are a priest forever
        after the order of Melchizedek.”

        The Lord is at your right hand;
        he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath.
        He will execute judgment among the nations,
        filling them with corpses;
        he will shatter chiefs
        over the wide earth.
        He will drink from the brook by the way;
        therefore he will lift up his head.
        (Psalm 110 ESV)

        This language,

        He will execute judgment among the nations,
        filling them with corpses;
        he will shatter chiefs
        over the wide earth.

        Is the same sort of language to which people object as inappropriate and yet Ps 110 is among the most often quoted OT passages in the NT.

        There may be passages of Scripture that wisdom says we might not want to sing in public worship. I want to be very careful, however, about setting up a moral test that OT passages must meet before they can be used.

        3. The limited number of psalms included in the TH is the status quo in a lot of places. I’m with Bruce on this. I cannot understand how anyone can say that we cannot include all the Psalms for singing. Why would someone deny believers even the opportunity to sing the Psalms? If someone has scruples about singing certain psalms, that’s one thing but effectively deny others the opportunity to do what Christians did from the 2nd century through the mid 19th century?

        5. It’s just an observation. The churches today are more psalm-free than at any time in the history of the church. That should give us pause.

  6. Scott,

    Just a couple of points – thanks for responding.

    As for denying believers the Psalms, are you and Bruce suggesting that unless a denomination publishes a full psalter for singing that the people are being denied? Cannot any individual church sing whatever it wants? They may need to do some work in finding the music, but I’m not sure what you mean by Christians being denied the psalms.

    As for the larger point, while some may not like the psalms that speak of God’s judgment, that is not the concern for the writer of that NH article, nor myself. There are plenty of hymns that also speak of God’s judgment, we sing those, as well as some psalms that speak of the same.

    The issue has to do with the typological elements in the Psalms and our place in redemptive history. Two obvious examples would be hating and cursing our enemies, and expecting deliverance based on our own righteousness. Both are forbidden in the new covenant, unless one understands the anti-types of final judgment and the active obedience of Christ. I understand that you could train a congregation to see the psalms in their new covenant fulfillment, but what about visitors? I have not been in a EP church, but it seems the minister would need to show due diligence and explain each time what the people are really singing in light of typology so as not to cause them to sing something that is inappropriate in the new covenant.

    • I hope I’m invited to reply. Otherwise, ignore.

      The historic question is: what is this church’s (OPC’s) official policy regarding what it *provides* to the people. If the corporate church doesn’t create a service-book for its constituent members, but leaves it to the individual congregation to find its own song-pattern, then technically there isn’t any denominational commitment to such provision. Only the constitutional documents offer any guidance, along with any discipline by the church courts.

      But when the church in its corporate capacity undertakes to *provide* an authorized service book, it is reasonable to presume that its content expresses a minimum or a maximum expectation. Minimally, the OPC in the last century felt no *duty* to provide (in line with historic Presbyterian practice) a full complement of Psalms to be sung in its churches.

      Regardless of what one thinks of singing uninspired hymns (I’m not against it), this decision was a significant departure from the Reformed tradition, which had recognized not only the divine provision for song, but the inherent value–yea, superiority–of the divine provision in its entirety. And since the Psalms as a whole are commended by the NT for song, simply as such and without exceptions, it is rather astonishing to find so much of the Psalter then unavailable through the church’s official publication. This amounts to a practical denial of the missing material to the church; and moreover there is no expectation officially from the church that this material should be taught in the church, and taken up on our lips. There is a presumed deficiency in great swathes of the Psalter.

      Or else, one must presume a great deficiency in the provision. I can see no middle-ground here. Here’s a quick question: where is Psalm 88 in either TH or THrev.? It isn’t there. Why? Is this a Psalm about curses on Christ’s and his church’s enemies? No. It is a Psalm of lament, of grief. There is no more sustained sorrow in all the Psalms; it’s almost unrelieved, apart from the first line of faith expression.

      So… is the message from the OPC that Christians shouldn’t need this divinely approved expression of feeling? That it’s sub-Christian? They should know better? Is this our pastoral message to those wounded more than most? Humans haven’t evolved out of their suffering estate in the last three millennia. The missing Psalms of lament generally from out our mouths is more an effect of the giddiness of the Roaring-Twentieth-Century, and the climate of Optimism that banished them; than an effect of a substantively changed spiritual outlook since the Cross.

      If the day should come (perhaps sooner…) when considerably more grief is our lot than we know today in the West, what song (if any) will the church sing then? We should have been practicing these songs already, if only to enter-in thereby to the sufferings of our brothers and sisters “under the cross” in places like Eritrea, Pakistan, and North Korea.

      Songbooks cost money. It costs money to make photocopies. It costs money to make overheads. It costs money to find out if some song is presently under a copyright, or to obtain permission to use a song that is. So, a lot of the OPC has only access to a TH–because that’s “our” songbook. And for over 50yrs, we’ve been implicitly teaching two generations that *most* of the Psalter is not suitable for Christians, a view I’m sure the apostles would have found inexplicable.

      No one should have had to go outside the church’s provision in order to obtain Psalm-materials to sing. If any era of the church’s ministry (not simply the minister who is anxious about the issue) does not arrange the liturgy so that the church is constantly singing the majority, if not all, the Psalms–that IS *denial.* It is denying the people the Psalter in toto.

      To say otherwise, simply because the pastor is ignorant of his people’s right to sing it, is like saying the people of the Middle Ages were not denied the Word of God, simply because their pastors were too ignorant to preach to them. If you don’t know what you’re missing, when it’s your right to have it, you’re still being *denied* your right, because those who should be giving you what’s yours are not.

      Regarding the “due diligence” of the minister: would you say the same responsibility applies to the singing of modern songs such as “Jesus Loves Me,” which the careless or ignorant singer might easily misconstrue as perverting the doctrine of the Atonement? If you think so, then this issue really isn’t much of an objection to singing those Psalms.

      I have more of a problem with the claims that the Psalms teach God’s deliverance based on personal-righteousness; and that calling down of divine retribution is presently prohibited (and that once upon a time it wasn’t).

      To the first claim, my reply–after astonishment at what sounds like a dispensationalist assertion–is that it is impossible to preach the Psalmist’s claims of righteousness apart from 1) the forgiveness of sins that was part of the OT religious system; and 2) the position of the mediatorial king as the typological righteous man, or the ordinary Israelite’s connection to his (Davidic) covenant head.

      The “righteous man” of the Old Covenant was the one who knew he was also inescapably the “forgiven man.” And the head of the people (when he was a religious man) knew he was personally imperfect, but was a stand-in for the Righteous One who was to come.

      As for the second claim, when one appreciates the fact that the NT injunctions to do good to one’s enemies had their origin in the OT (Ex.23:4-5; Prv.25:21; cf. 2Ki.6:20-23), and that nowhere does the OT sanction human hatred and contempt (not even Ps.139:21-22, which associates the mind of the king perfectly with that of God) as if those sentiments could ever be correct in the mind of God’s people; it becomes clear that the religion of the OT and the NT are not fundamentally distinct, though the circumstances are vastly different.

      This is only confirmed when the NT appropriates occasional OT curses, as Paul does in Rom.11:9-10, quoting Ps.69:22-23. The NT writers are not “re-purposing” OT texts; they are pointing us to the true original and proper use of them. But again, the TH and THrev., while they do offer singers 10vv (out of 36vv) of Ps.69, they do not give us the NT quoted vv22-23. Those specific vv are left out, as are v4 (qu. Jn.15:25), v9 (qu. Jn.2:17 & Rom.15:3), v21 (ref. in all 4 Gospels), v25 (Mt23:38 &Act.1:20), v28 (cf. Rev.3:5).

      Jesus sang these words. He sang them with a perfect spirit, and he gives me his Spirit so that I might sing them in his way. Why should anyone miss these connections out of Ps.69, or lose the full expression of true humanity that the Psalter exists to give us?

    • Todd,

      I think one of the most basic questions/problems here is hermeneutics. How should we interpret the imprecatory Psalms? In their own setting they were an expression of the typological, theocratic, Israelite national covenant, which included the conquest of the nations. That holy war was, however, typological of the final judgment and consummation.

      That judgment entered history again or was expressed again at the cross. Thus, historically, one way Christians have sung those words is with reference to sin, the flesh, and the devil. As Bryan Estelle said in our discussion of this issue, we can sing those words with reference to that to which they had original (typological) reference, the final judgment. Both of these solutions, the proximate (sin etc) and the remote (the judgment) give us ways of singing those words.

      Those are appropriate Christian sentiments and a Christian hermeneutic instructed by the NT use of the Psalms and other typological texts. I think that historically the Reformed have thought about Ps 68 in these ways when we sang it.

      To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. A Song.

      God shall arise, his enemies shall be scattered;
      and those who hate him shall flee before him!
      As smoke is driven away, so you shall drive them away;
      as wax melts before fire,
      so the wicked shall perish before God!
      But the righteous shall be glad;
      they shall exult before God;
      they shall be jubilant with joy!

      (Psalm 68:1–3 ESV)

      The French Reformed suffered greatly under persecution and Calvin’s comments reflect the way they applied the imprecatory sections of the Psalm:

      There is much comfort to be derived from the circumstance, that those who persecute the Church are here spoken of as God’s enemies. When he undertakes our defense, he looks upon the injuries done to us as dishonors cast upon his Divine Majesty. The Psalmist adds a striking figure to illustrate how easily God can overthrow the machinations of our enemies….

      …The sense of the words is, That we ought to comfort ourselves under the worst afflictions, by reflecting that we are in God’s hand, who can mitigate all our griefs and remove all our burdens. The wicked, on the other hand, may congratulate themselves for a time upon their prosperity, but eventually it will fare ill with them.

      They sang this Psalm on the way to the stake with the understanding that, though they were now a church “under the cross,” there will come a moment when the Lord will exact justice and believers rightly anticipate that day in the knowledge that God has exacted justice for all his elect at the cross and with the hope that he will redeem his elect even from the midst of those (Saul!) who now persecute his church.

  7. Scott

    I agree with you as to how those Psalms are fulfilled in the new covenant. I am wondering if this is explained each time they are sung?

    • Todd,

      That would be a matter of pastoral wisdom: what is the congregation’s background? Who is present? How well instructed are they? Is there a brief bulletin insert?

      Given that most of us are relatively uninformed about the psalms it would seem wise to give a brief explanation whenever there is potential for misunderstanding.

  8. If you understand verse 1 as referring to “the salvation I am providing” or, perhaps, even if you don’t (bearing in mind Hebrews 5:7), Psalm 88 is as Messianic as any other.

  9. When I was a new minister in the OPC I was disappointed that the NTH was not going to include all 150 Psalms.

    No, I do not hold to exclusive Psalmody, but I was disappointed in the NTH for the same reason that I’m thrilled with the new Psalter-Hymnal: those among us who do hold to exclusive Psalmody will not have the product of their church inhibiting their worship. And those of us who do use Psalms (but not exclusively) will have access to all the Psalms for worship, as well as the best hymns (I hope) in the history of the church (thus far.)

    Finally, I’m still open to being shown that only Scripture may be sung in worship. I’ve yet to be convinced from Scripture, but if that happens, and if the session I serve with concurs with that conclusion, it would be nice to not have to buy yet another new song book.

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