The use of instruments in worship has engendered great controversy throughout the history of the church. The following article describes the most important issues at stake in these controversies, highlighting important principles that can guide our use of instruments in worship today.
The Psalms contain numerous statements urging God’s people to praise him with instruments. The classic passage of this sort is the catalogue of instruments contained in Psalm 150.
Praise him with trumpet sound;
Praise him with lute and harp!
Praise him with timbrel and dance;
Praise him with strings and pipe!
Praise him with sounding cymbals;
Praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
A person knowing this and similar passages from the Psalms but not knowing anything of the history of the church would not be surprised by what he or she observed at most worship services in Western churches today. Whether Catholic or Protestant, just about any service this visitor wandered into would include the use of musical instruments. At a minimum, he or she would hear an organ or a piano or a guitar accompanying singing. But it would not be unusual to encounter churches where large ensembles not only accompany singing but also play alone before or after or during any number of other liturgical acts. Knowing the Psalms but not church history, this visitor would likely assume that the congregation being observed was simply following a mandate given in its sacred book, doing a normal Christian act of worship.
But, of course, there is a long history between the Psalms and the church today, and through most of that history, the church has been very reticent about using instruments in worship. From the New Testament through the patristic era, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, the use of instruments in Christian worship was highly exceptional. And even after instruments found their way into worship on a more regular basis after 1600, there continued to be questions about their proper use, and always there continued to be a few voices calling for their exclusion. Even today, despite the increasingly warm welcome instruments, have received in many churches, there are still a few bodies of Christians who worship without them and others that do not go much beyond instrumental introductions to and accompaniments of congregational singing. Donald Hustad summarizes the situation as follows:
Eastern Orthodox worship for the most part continues to use only vocal music. In the Western church as well, the use of instruments has been opposed from time to time, both before and since the 16th century Reformation. Until recently, a fairly large number of evangelical groups in America (e.g., the Free Methodist Church, primitive Baptists, old Mennonites, and certain Presbyterian bodies) perpetuated the “no instrument” practice, but the antagonism is waning. At the present time, the prohibition is most conspicuously continued and defended by certain Churches of Christ, whose leaders argue that they must adhere strictly to what the New Testament authorizes. (Jubilate! Church Music in the Evangelical Tradition [Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing, 1981, 42])
Obviously, the matter is not a simple one of literally following the injunctions of the Psalms. Just as obviously, there is no universal agreement among Christians as to how, or even whether, musical instruments are appropriate in worship.
The history of the church’s various and varying attitudes towards musical instruments in worship is long and complex. But the big picture is clear. Our current situation in which there is a widespread and often unquestioning acceptance of instruments in worship is “a minority position in the church’s whole history” (Paul Westermeyer, “Instruments in Christian Worship,” Reformed Liturgy and Music 25:3 [Summer 1991]: 111). The majority position over the whole history of the church can be summed up in the words of Rev. Joseph Gelineau: “vocal praise is essential to Christian worship. Instruments are only accessory” (Joseph Gelineau, Voices and Instruments in Christian Worship: Principles, Laws, and Applications, trans. Clifford Howell, S.J. [Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1964], 155).
I cannot trace here the long and complex history of musical instruments in Christian worship. Rather, I will focus on two instances in the church’s history when instruments were not used at all. Though I am not advocating a return to that extreme position (nor, on the other hand, objecting to any who would), I think the extreme position presents the clearest view of certain principles that should be in effect when we admit instruments into our worship. The two instances I am referring to are the patristic era and the Calvinist Reformation. But before turning our attention to these, we need to look briefly at Jewish worship before and at the time of Christ to see what light it might shed on the Psalm references to instruments. For that same purpose, we will also look briefly at what the New Testament says about instruments.
Little is known about the origin and early history of the Psalms. Tradition long ascribed the Psalms to David. But although it is likely that some go back to him, it is impossible to determine with certainty which are of his making. During the centuries following David, and probably under his influence, psalms continued to be composed, edited and compiled until by the third century before Christ the 150 Psalms stood together as a canonical Jewish hymnbook.
If the early history of the Psalms is obscure to our view, so is their function. Were they composed originally for liturgical purposes and were the instruments mentioned involved in the liturgy? Scholarly opinion is divided. Most scholars agree, however, that whatever their original functions might have been, the Psalms, in the process of being collected and compiled, were adapted for liturgical purposes—in particular, for singing at the sacrificial rites carried out in the temple.
There is scanty information about how the Psalms were used in temple worship. The few references in the Old Testament historical and prophetic books do not go very far towards giving us ideas about what music in temple worship was like. But we can be fairly certain that, at least for the second temple, the singing of Psalms at the sacrifices was quite an elaborate affair, performed by the Levites, that is, by highly trained singers and instrumentalists.
We have a somewhat clearer picture of temple worship around the time of Jesus owing to some fairly detailed description found in the Mishnah, a redaction of the Talmud from about the year 200 A.D. Every day of the year there was a solemn sacrifice in the morning and another in the afternoon. On Sabbaths and feast days there were additional sacrifices. With regard to instruments, we learn from the Mishnah that services began with the priests blowing three blasts on silver trumpets. Later in the ritual, trumpets again gave signals as did clashing cymbals, and the singing of psalms was accompanied by stringed instruments, the nevel and the kinnor. (See James McKinnon, “The Question of Psalmody in the Ancient Synagogue,” Early Music History 6 (1986): 162–163.)
It is significant that stringed instruments accompanied the singing. These were softer instruments that could support the singing without covering the words. This is an indication of the logocentric nature of Jewish temple music, a characteristic that set it apart from the music of the sacrificial rites of the Israelites’ pagan neighbors. Pagan sacrificial music typically featured the frenzy-inducing sound of the loud, double-reed instruments and the rhythms of orgiastic dancing. Words were superfluous. Temple music differed radically in each of these characteristics of pagan music. Words were primary and governed the musical rhythms. Instrumental accompaniment was by stringed instruments that supported the monophonic vocal line, perhaps with some heterophonic embellishments, but never covering or distracting attention away from the words. Instruments were used independently only for signaling purposes. Trumpets and cymbals signaled the beginning of the psalm and the places at the end of sections where the worshipers should prostrate themselves.
Music in Jewish synagogues was very different from that in the temple. The gatherings in the synagogues were not for sacrifice and did not require the priestly and Levitical classes. Their music, therefore, was not part of elaborate liturgical ceremony and was not in the hands of specially trained musicians like the Levites. It must have been simple and it definitely did not make use of musical instruments. Like temple psalmody, it was logocentric, but unlike temple psalmody, it did not make use of any instruments, not even those that could support singing without obscuring it.
Interpretations that read Psalm references to musical instruments as referring to Jewish worship practices receive little support from what we know of Jewish temple and synagogue worship. Furthermore, they receive little support from the New Testament. References to instruments in the New Testament are few and can easily be summarized. They are mentioned “in connection with pagan customs (Matt. 9:23; 11:17; Luke 7:32; Apoc. 18:22), or explanatory comparisons (1 Cor. 14:7–8; Matt. 6:2; 1 Cor. 13:1; Apoc. 14:2), [or] in an apocalyptic context where they have a symbolic value.… ” (Gelineau, Voices, 150). There is no evidence that the earliest Christians adopted a different attitude toward instruments in worship. They certainly did not read the Psalms as giving directives to use instruments in worship.
The indifference of the New Testament toward musical instruments does not, however, extend to song. Song, one can say, frames the New Testament. The birth of Jesus brought about an outburst of four songs recorded in the first two chapters of Luke. The second outburst occurs in Revelation when the song to the Lamb is picked up by ever-widening circles until the whole cosmos has joined (Rev. 4). In between Luke and Revelation, the New Testament says little about music. What it does say, however, unquestionably has a positive ring, as in the following familiar passages:
- Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as you teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. (Col. 3:16)
- Is any one among you suffering? Let him pray. Is any cheerful? Let him sing praise. (James 5:13)
But it is song, not “pure” music, that the New Testament speaks of so warmly. From its inception, the church, like its Jewish forebears, eschewed music separated from word. Without word, music is too vague, too mystifying. As P. Lasserre put it: Music expresses the sentiments but is not capable of defining them, and without the commentary of words, which are absent from instrumental music, the hearer always remains somewhat vague about the nature of the object of the sentiment by which the musician is inspired. (Quoted in Gelineau, Voices, 148)
For that reason, Christian musical thought has always insisted on the importance of logos for keeping music from drifting into vague and undefined spiritual territory. As Fr. Gelineau has put it, only singing, “because of its connection to the revealed word,” combines “explicit confession of faith in Christ with musical expression” (“Music and Singing in the Liturgy,” in The Study of Liturgy, ed. Cheslyn Jones, et al. [New York: Oxford University Press, 1978], 443). Word, he says elsewhere, “demystifies by naming.” Gelineau adds that “when word intervenes … the object of the lament is designated; the praise names its intended recipient” (“Path of Music,” Music and the Experience of God, ed. Mary Collins, et al. [Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, Ltd., 1989], 137-138). Christian musical thought has always been at odds with the Romantic notion of a “pure” music “which is all the purer the less it is dragged down into the region of vulgar meaning by words (which are always laden with connotations)” (Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 1801; from Dahlhaus, Esthetics of Music, trans. William Austin [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982],27).
Against this background, the negative attitude of the early church toward musical instruments makes sense. In fact, as James McKinnon pointed out, the non-use of instruments in early Christian worship was not because instruments were banished. Rather, because they were irrelevant to the logocentric musical thought and practice the Christians inherited from the Jews, they simply did not enter the picture (see “The Meaning of the Patristic Polemic Against Musical Instruments,” Current Musicology 1(1965): 78).
Logocentric music need not, of course, totally exclude instruments. Instruments that could support singing were used in the temple and most contemporary Christians would likely attest from experience that instruments can indeed lend support to singing without obscuring or engulfing the words. But that danger and others connected with the use of instruments are always lurking, so throughout much of the church’s history leaders have thought the dangers outweighed the potential benefits.
The fathers of the first centuries of the Christian era and John Calvin in the sixteenth century are perhaps the best known of those who decided not to risk the dangers. So they rejected all use of instruments in worship. Involved in both rejections was the principle just discussed: Christian music, like its Jewish ancestor, is logocentric. One indication of how thoroughly logocentric was the early church fathers’ thought on music is their vocabulary. McKinnon points out that they rarely used the term music; instead, their normal terms were psalms and hymns (“Patristic Polemic,” 79).
Central to both the fathers’ and Calvin’s logocentric ideas on music, and hence to their rejection of instruments, was the importance they placed on understanding in worship. The apostle Paul stated the principle simply and directly: “I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the mind also” (1 Cor. 14:15). So, following Paul, St. Basil urged worshipers, “While your tongue sings, let your mind search out the meaning of the words, so that you might sing in spirit and sing also in understanding” (McKinnon, Music in the Early Christian Literature [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987], 66). Centuries later Calvin was particularly explicit in relating the need for understanding in worship to Paul’s instructions to the Corinthian Christians.
For our Lord did not institute the order which we must observe when we gather together in His name merely that the world might be amused by seeing and looking upon it, but wished rather that therefrom should come profit to all His people. Thus witnesseth Saint Paul, commanding that all which is done in the church be directed unto the common edifying of all … For to say that we can have devotion, either at prayers or at ceremonies, without understanding anything of them, is a great mockery.… And indeed, if one could be edified by things which one sees without knowing what they mean, Saint Paul would not so rigorously forbid speaking in an unknown tongue. … (Foreword to the Geneva Psalter, in Source Readings in Music History, trans. Oliver Strunk [New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1950], 345-346)
In his commentary on Psalm 33, Calvin connected instrumental music and speaking in tongues: The name of God, no doubt, can, properly speaking, be celebrated only by the articulate voice; but it is not without reason that David adds to this those aids by which believers were wont to stimulate themselves the more to this exercise; especially considering that he was speaking to God’s ancient people. There is a distinction, however, to be observed here, that we may not indiscriminately consider as applicable to ourselves, everything which was formerly enjoined upon the Jews. I have no doubt that playing upon cymbals, touching the harp and the viol, and all that kind of music, which is so frequently mentioned in the Psalms, was a part of the education; that is to say, the puerile instruction of the law.… For even now, if believers choose to cheer themselves with musical instruments, they should, I think, make it their object not to dissever their cheerfulness from the praises of God. But when they frequent their sacred assemblies, 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.… 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. Paul allows us to bless God in the public assembly of the saints only in a known tongue. (Commentary on the Book of Psalms, vol. 1, trans. James Anderson [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948], 538-539)
Calvin’s implication is clear: instruments speak in an unknown tongue.
Moreover, in this passage, in addition to expressing the ideal of logocentric music, Calvin gave an explanation of why God allowed instruments to his Old Testament people: it was a concession to their spiritual immaturity; it was “puerile instruction” that, after the coming of Christ, became as unnecessary as the other “shadows of the law.” Calvin’s thought here is precisely in line with that of the church fathers. St. John Chrysostom put it as follows: … in ancient times, they were thus led by these instruments due to the slowness of their understanding and were gradually drawn away from idolatry. Accordingly, just as he allowed sacrifices, so too did he permit instruments, making concessions to their weakness. (McKinnon, Music, 83)
The primacy of understanding through words, then, was fundamental in causing the early church to continue to practice a logocentric music like that which it inherited from its Jewish forebears; it was also fundamental to Calvin’s rejection of instruments in worship. But for both there was another reason almost as powerful. It is incapsulated in the phrase una voces dicentes, “singing with one voice.”
In his letter to the Romans, Paul wrote, “May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Jesus Christ, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (15:5–6). Although “with one mouth” does not here refer exclusively to singing, there can be no doubt that it articulated a principle that the early church took very seriously for its singing. The importance of singing “with one voice” is a frequent refrain among the early Christian writers. Listen to some of its variations over the first few centuries of the Christian era.
Let us consider the entire multitude of his angels, how standing by you they minister to his will. For the Scripture says: “Ten thousand times ten thousand stood by him and a thousand times a thousand ministered to him and cried out, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Sabaoth, the whole creation is full of his glory” (Isa. 6:3). Let us, therefore, gathered together in concord by conscience, cry out earnestly to him as if with one voice, so that we might come to share in his great and glorious promises. (Clement of Rome; trans. McKinnon, Music, 18)
And so more sweetly pleasing to God than any musical instrument would be the symphony of the people of God, by which, in every church of God, with kindred spirit and single disposition, with one mind and unanimity of faith and piety, we raise melody in unison in our psalmody. (Eusebius of Caesarea; trans. McKinnon, Music, 98)
[A psalm is] a pledge of peace and harmony, which produces one song from various and sundry voices in the manner of a cithara.… A psalm joins those with differences, unites those at odds, and reconciles those who have been offended, for who will not concede to him with whom one sings to God in one voice? It is after all a great bond of unity for the full number of people to join in one chorus. (Ambrose; trans. McKinnon, Music, 126–127)
Unity was an important matter to the early Christians and almost from the beginning, as these quotations show, singing “with one voice” became an expression of, a metaphor of, and even a means toward unity.
Calvin’s return to unison, unaccompanied, congregational singing was also spurred in part by his recognition of singing as an expression of the communal dimension of worship.
Moreover, since the glory of God ought, in a measure, to shine in the several parts of our bodies, it is especially fitting that the tongue has been assigned and destined for this task, both through singing and through speaking. For it was peculiarly created to tell and proclaim the praise of God. But the chief use of the tongue is in public prayers, which are offered in the assembly of believers, by which it comes about that with one common voice, and as it were, with the same mouth, we all glorify God together, worshiping him with one spirit and the same faith. (Institutes [III, xx, 31], 894-895)
The twin concerns for keeping the church’s music anchored in the Word (and hence in words) and for maintaining a liturgical activity that “touches on the essential mystery of the church as koinonia” (Gelineau, “Music,” 441) are the primary roots of the early church’s and Calvin’s avoidance of instruments. For the early church fathers, there was a third concern, a concern that had to do with association or context.
James McKinnon began his article on the church fathers’ attitude towards musical instruments with this striking observation: “The antagonism which the Fathers of the early church displayed toward instruments has two outstanding characteristics: vehemence and uniformity” (McKinnon, “Meaning,” 69). One need not read far to notice the vehemence, and no matter how far one reads, he will not encounter a significantly different view on the subject. It is hard to understand this vehemence and uniformity simply on the basis of the two concerns we have already discussed. After all, Calvin held those concerns as strongly as the early fathers did, but he does not display their vehemence. He objected to instruments in communal worship but his objection did not go beyond that. In his commentary on Psalm 33, he merely remarked that “if believers choose to cheer themselves with musical instruments, they should, I think, make it their object not to dissever their cheerfulness from the praises of God.” That is a long way removed, for example, from the fourth-century Alexandrian canon, which legislated: “When a reader learns to play the cithara, he shall be taught to confess it. If he does not return to it, he will endure his punishment for seven weeks. If he persists in it, he must be discharged and excluded from the church” (McKinnon, Music, 120).
Such legislation is likely to strike us as unimaginably harsh. Perhaps it was. But as one reads the fathers more broadly and begins to understand something of the context within which they wrote, their vehement and uniform denunciations of musical instruments become more understandable. The early church, we must remember, had music that was sufficient for its needs and for which instruments were superfluous. We must also remember that she found herself surrounded by a decadent pagan culture and, after Constantine, filled with people only recently turned from that culture. The music in that culture made prominent use of instruments, both in the sacrificial rites of pagan religions and in many morally degenerate activities common in the late Roman Empire. Invariably it is with specific reference to the religious or social context that the church fathers made their denunciations of musical instruments. Specifically, the church fathers’ statements about musical instruments come in the context of pagan cultic practices, the theater (often closely related to the cultic practices), pagan banquets, weddings, or, more generally, drunken carousing and sexual immorality. The following quotations are typical:
- You will not honor these things, but rather despise them … and those castrations which the Phrygians perform, bewitched at first by the aulos.… (Gregory of Nazianzus; trans. McKinnon, Music, 71)
- As the tragic actor loudly declaims, will one reflect upon the exclamations of a prophet, and as the effeminate tibicinist plays, will one call to mind a psalm? … (Tertullian; trans. McKinnon, Music, 44)
- The irregular movements of auloi, psalteries, choruses, dances, Egyptian clappers, and other such playthings become altogether indecent and uncouth, especially when joined by beating cymbals and tympana and accompanied by the noisy instruments of deception. Such a symposium, it seems to me, becomes nothing but a theatre of drunkenness. (Clement of Alexandria; trans. McKinnon, Music, 32)
- It is not the marriage of which I speak—one would hope not—but what accompanies it. Nature indulges in Bacchic frenzy then, those present become brutes rather than men; they neigh like horses and kick like asses. There is much dissipation, much dissolution, but nothing earnest, nothing high-minded; there is much pomp of the devil here—cymbals, auloi, and songs full of fornication and adultery. (John Chrysostom; McKinnon, Music, 85)
- Therefore not without justification [does Isaiah say] woe unto them who require the drink of intoxication in the morning, who ought to render praise to God, to rise before dawn and meet in prayer the sun of justice, who visits his own and rises before us, if we rise for Christ rather than for wine and strong drink. Hymns are sung, and you grasp the cithara? Psalms are sung, and you take up the psaltery and tympanum? Woe indeed, because you disregard salvation and choose death. (Ambrose; McKinnon, Music, 128–129)
Similar quotations could be multiplied several times over. What they all point to are religiously repugnant and morally degenerate activities in which instruments were an inextricable part. The early Christians hardly knew any other use of instruments than in the music associated with objectionable pagan religious and social activities. Such close identification of instrument, music, and activity is what made the church fathers so uniformly and vehemently opposed to instruments, not only in worship but in all of Christian life.
Two principles—the primacy of words and the importance of community—led the early church Fathers and John Calvin to renounce the use of musical instruments in worship. A third principle—the need to keep free from inappropriate associations—reinforced the fathers’ position. Although conditions change from time to time and from place to place, the three principles that undergirded the fathers’ and Calvin’s renunciation of instruments in worship are relevant at all times and places. But none of the principles, nor all taken together, necessarily leads to a total renunciation of instruments in worship.
The principle of avoiding unwanted associations is, of course, the one whose application is going to be the most fluid. Suffice it to say here that in late twentieth-century Western culture the church should be wary of instruments, or at least the styles of playing them, that are inextricably involved in popular culture. The moral degeneracy of so much in that culture should make Christians today as wary as the church fathers were in the late Roman Empire.
With regard to the principle of “with one voice,” it should be obvious that the principle is most clearly practiced in unison singing and that it becomes successively less clear as part-singing, traditional instruments, and finally, electronic instruments are introduced.
From the moment human beings started to “train” their voices … there was the potential for driving a wedge between the song of the trained singer and the song of the rest of humanity. That potential took a large leap when instruments were introduced because now sounds were made by mechanisms different from that of the voice. The potential took a quantum leap, however, with the advent of electricity. Instruments severed sounds from the voice, but they still were forced to restrict themselves to acoustic boundaries. Amplification by electricity took away the acoustic boundaries and created sounds even further removed from the voice. (Westermeyer, “Instruments in Worship,” 114)
To this, I would add that the use of prerecorded music totally violates this principle. It is not the voice of any one of the gathered worshipers.
Finally, even the primacy of words need not necessarily negate the use of instruments. Although they can easily become distractions and overwhelm or obliterate words, if care is exercised, instruments can support and enhance singing in many ways. But even if this is granted, the question remains whether this principle negates the use of purely instrumental music. Again, not necessarily. Even the early church left an opening for wordless music. St. Augustine gave the classic description of the jubilus, the outpouring of joy beyond words.
One who jubilates (iubilat) does not speak words, but it is rather a sort of sound of joy without words since it is the voice of a soul poured out in joy and expressing, as best it can, the feeling, though not grasping the sense. A man delighting in his joy, from some words which cannot be spoken or understood, bursts forth in a certain voice of exultation without words, so that it seems he does indeed rejoice with his own voice, but as if, because filled with too much joy, he cannot explain in words what it is in which he delights. (Trans. McKinnon, Music, 361)
However, Augustine does add that proper jubilation ought to be “in justification” and “in confession,” which I take to mean in a specific context. In any case, it is worth noting that the closest music came to being wordless in the medieval liturgy was in the highly melismatic chants like the Graduals and Alleluias and even more so in the organa of Leonin and Perotin. But this music always had as its context the words of the liturgy. In fact, its context was not just words but the Word; it was always sung in the context of the Scripture lessons. If, as Augustine and medieval practice require, wordless music is kept in touch with words and the Word, instrumental music can have a place in Christian worship. But it must never be allowed to suggest that its beauty has some kind of spiritual efficacy. The ease with which Romantic thought about “pure” music slipped into a religion of music should serve to warn us about music’s seductive power. We must remember, as Fr. Gelineau’s memorable formulation puts it, that its beauty, indeed any perceptible beauty, “can be a sign of grace, but never the source of grace” (Voices, 26).