The Reformation, The Regulative Principle, And The Modern Church: Examining John Calvin’s Dedication To Purity In Worship (Part 4)

by on August 20, 2025 | Comment

Calvin’s Practical Application of the Regulative Principle

I tried to imagine what John Calvin’s reaction would be if he walked into your run-of-the-mill worship service today, complete with a full band and contemporary worship songs. The image was ruined by the fact that the only facial expression I can imagine on the great theologian is what I have seen in paintings of him. His verbal reaction, however, is much easier to imagine. As we will see today in our discussion of Calvin’s application of his theology of worship, he would probably be horrified at the full band and lack of Psalm-singing, especially in ostensibly Reformed congregations. But at the end of the day, it is not Calvin’s reaction we should prioritize, but God’s. We ought to take great care when it comes to what we include and how we approach him in corporate worship.

The Primacy of Singing Psalms

John Calvin considered the manner in which God is properly worshipped to be one of two things that “comprehend under them all the other parts, and consequently the whole substance of Christianity.”1 The way we worship God is one of the most important and crucial aspects of our Christian life. With this in view, it is paramount to consider the practical application from his argument that the true worship of God consists exclusively of what he has stated in his Word. While pastor at the church in Geneva, Calvin was responsible for writing a series of articles meant to serve as a foundation for the ecclesiastical organization of the church.2 In these articles, Calvin concluded that “the singing of the Psalms should be included in the order of worship.”3 This corresponds to Paul’s exhortation to the Ephesians that they should “[address] one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Eph 5:19), and his statement in 1 Corinthians 14:15 that he will “sing praise.” By advocating for the use of Psalms in corporate worship, Calvin was following the biblical principle that worship in the church should mirror Scriptural commands.

A Farewell to Instruments

This leads to another important facet of Calvin’s application of the Regulative Principle, which also happens to be a more controversial one: his vehement objection to the inclusion of musical instruments in corporate worship. He equated the usage of instruments in the church with Judaizing, a return to the “copy and shadow” of the Old Covenant at Mount Sinai (1 Cor 14:15).

The immediate reply to a rejection of musical instruments such as Calvin’s often references the inescapable fact that the Psalms contain commands to worship the Lord through the playing of instruments. Yet this is not an argument that Calvin’s writings ignore. As a matter of fact, his commentaries on passages mentioning musical instruments and corporate worship reveal precisely what he believed the Psalms meant by these commands. Since the church is no longer under the law given to Israel at Sinai, the inclusion of instruments in worship is not applicable to the church. Commenting on Exodus 15:20, where Miriam and other women of Israel play tambourines and dance, Calvin said it is necessary to observe that the use of musical instruments belonged to “legal ceremonies” under the Mosaic law. But the church, being “under the gospel,” is to “maintain greater simplicity,” for “Christ at His coming abolished” those practices.4 In Psalm 71, the psalmist declares to God that he will praise him with the harp and sing to him with the lyre. Commenting on this psalm, Calvin argued that instrumentation “unquestionably formed a part of the training of the law,” and therefore instruments are “not now to be used in public thanksgiving.”5 Here Calvin also cites the command in 1 Corinthians 14 to praise God in a known tongue when in the public assembly of the church, and he equates the playing of musical instruments in worship with the speaking of an unknown language, since it does not belong to the “fruit of the lips” that Hebrews 13:15 prescribes. In his commentary on Psalm 149, Calvin once again denounces the inclusion of instruments in public worship and posits that those who include them “foolishly imitate a practice which was intended only for God’s ancient people.”6

Calvin explicitly denounced the Roman Catholic inclusion of instruments in worship. He writes that “the Papists have shown themselves to be very apes” by using instruments in worship, particularly the organ, and that they “ape” the practices of ancient Israel in a “senseless and absurd manner.”7 The practice was “terminated with the gospel,”8 and Calvin calls it “ridiculous and unsuitable”9 in his homily on 1 Samuel 18:1–9. The Roman Catholic Church, in the eyes of Calvin, was “seriously deceived” in her desire to worship God with “pompous” musical instrumentation, regressing to a “sort of Jewishism,” as if “they wanted to mingle the Law and the Gospel” and thus “bury our Lord Jesus Christ.”10 The same logic may be applied to any who seek to introduce instruments into worship, even if the intention is not to fall into Judaizing and the mingling of Law and the Gospel.

The Primacy of Singing Psalms

It is abundantly clear that Calvin severely disapproved of the usage of instruments in corporate worship, but his emphasis on singing the Psalms must also be addressed to the fullest. It is evident that today’s Protestant church rarely sings the Psalms. The idea of singing psalms is as foreign to contemporary Christians as the notion of not singing psalms would have been to the Reformers and the early Reformed Christians. One only needs to glance briefly at the CCLI’s Top 100 List to note this.11

During Calvin’s ministry, the Genevan church sang Psalms set to meter, along with other portions of Scripture.12 Concerning the Psalter, he said the following: “There is no other book in which we are more perfectly taught the right manner of praising God, or in which we are more powerfully stirred up to the performance of this religious exercise.”13 For Calvin, there was no other source capable of better guidance in worship than the Psalter. The 1578 Synod of Dort upheld the primacy of the Psalms in worship as Calvin did, going as far as to say that the “Psalms of David” were to be sung in worship, “excluding the hymns which are not found in the Bible.”14 In fact, the Reformed largely sang only Psalms up until around the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.15 It was not until 1934 that the Dutch Reformed churches (Christian Reformed Church) in America included non-Scriptural hymns in their hymnal.

The decision made by the 1578 Synod and the common practice of confessional Reformed churches up until the last couple of centuries is well in line with Calvin’s description of the Psalms as being an “infallible rule for directing us with respect to the right manner of offering to God the sacrifice of praise.” If the church is to worship God only according to the way he has commanded, what more obvious way to do so than to sing the songs that have been provided within the canon of his holy Word?16 When we sing the Psalms, we can be “certain that God puts the words in our mouths, as if he himself were singing in us to exalt his glory,” reflected Calvin in the Preface to the 1543 Genevan Psalter.17 If the church is striving to offer God the pure worship he deserves, it follows that the best way to do so is to sing that which belongs to his Word. Indeed, it is as though he puts the very words in our mouth by which we are to worship him, and thus he exalts himself through us. In the preface to his commentary on the Psalms, Calvin, designating “calling upon God” as “one of the principal means of securing our safety,” says that there exists no “better and more unerring rule” to “[guide] us in this exercise.”18

Conclusion

It is uncomfortable to consider that the worship we tend to be comfortable with in churches today may be conducted contrary to God’s commands. It is necessary, however. How we worship God is of the utmost importance, and we should be concerned, as Calvin was, with offering God pure worship—even if that means leaving behind the comfort of praise bands and modern worship songs. Even if it seems radical at first glance, the idea merits consideration, in light of both Scripture and historical precedent. In the final installment of this series, we will discuss what Calvin’s advice for the church today might be.

Notes

  1. John Calvin, “The Necessity of Reforming the Church,” in Calvin’s Tracts and Treatises, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958), 126.
  2. François Wendel, Calvin: The Origins and Development of His Religious Thought, trans. Philip Mairet (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 51.
  3. Wendel, Calvin, 52.
  4. John Calvin, Commentary on the Harmony of the Law, vol. 1, trans. James Anderson, Calvin’s Commentaries vol. 2, 259.
  5. John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, 5 vols, trans. James Anderson, Calvin’s Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 3.98.
  6. Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, 4.312.
  7. Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, 4.495.
  8. Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, 4.495.
  9. John Calvin. Homilia in I Librum Samuelis et Conciones in Librum Iobi. (1617), 370: “Quare fuit in Papatu ridiculanimis & inepta imitatio, quum templa exornare, Deíque cultum reddere celebriorem exiftimarunt, ſi organa & alia iſtiuſmodi multa ludicra adhiberent: quibus maximè Dei verbum & cultus profanata ſunt, populo externis iſtis ritibus addicto potiùs quàm verbi diuini intelligentiæ.” See Porteous and Ritchie, The Organ Question (1856), 45 for a full English translation of this passage.
  10. Calvin, Sermons on 2 Samuel, 241–42.
  11. “CCLI Top 100®,” SongSelect by CCLI, Christian Copyright Licensing International, accessed May 29, 2024,
  12. Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church: Modern Christianity, The Swiss Reformation (Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2005), 330–31.
  13. Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, vol. 1.
  14. National Synod of the Netherlands, German and Walloon Churches…Held at Dordrecht…1578 in The Church Orders of the 16th-Century Reformed Churches of the Netherlands Together with their Social, Political, and Ecclesiastical Context, trans. Richard R. Ridder, Rev. Peter H. Jonker, and Rev. Leonard Verduin (Grand Rapids: Calvin Theological Seminary, 1987), 220.
  15. R. Scott Clark, “Principal Place: A Pragmatic Plea For Psalmody.”
  16. Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, vol. 1.
  17. John Calvin, “Preface to the Genevan Psalter,” in Eclectic Ethereal Encyclopedia at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.
  18. John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, vol. 1.©Juliette Colunga. All Rights Reserved.You can find this whole series here.

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    Post authored by:

  • Juliette Colunga
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    Juliette is a graduate of The Master’s University (BS, Biological Sciences) and a member of a church belonging to the URCNA. Despite her not being raised Reformed and a background in the sciences, she has grown a deep appreciation for the historic Reformed confessions and is pursuing a MA in Historical Theology at Westminster Seminary California.

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