The idea of a psalter hymnal is something we often take for granted. But why have the Christian Reformed Church and the United Reformed Churches in North America (URCNA) insisted on calling their books of liturgical praise “Psalter Hymnals” for almost a century? There are plenty of modern psalters available, like the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America’s Book of Psalms for Worship. There are also countless hymnals, as databases like Hymnary.org attest. Many of those songbooks intersperse hymns with songs based on psalms and other passages of Scripture. Yet no other Christian tradition uses the designation “Psalter Hymnal” so consistently. When the United Reformed Churches and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church released their collaborative songbook in 2018, it was not as an updated edition of the Trinity Hymnal, but as a new creation: a Trinity Psalter Hymnal. Why this persistent choice?
The title “Psalter Hymnal” is a marker of our denominational history.1 Specifically, it marks the contested relationship between psalms and hymns which has characterized Reformed theology over the centuries. Today, there are some Reformed and Presbyterian denominations that continue to sing psalms exclusively and others in which psalm singing is basically nonexistent.2 The URCNA holds an interestingly moderate position, singing both psalms and hymns in worship yet continuing to assert a distinction between the two: “The 150 Psalms shall have the principal place in the singing of the churches. Hymns which faithfully and fully reflect the teaching of the Scripture as expressed in the Three Forms of Unity may be sung, provided they are approved by the Consistory.”3 Although this statement from the Church Order does not reject the use of hymns in worship, it adopts a noticeably more cautious stance toward hymns than some other Reformed and Presbyterian denominations. Our nuanced musical legacy is worth a closer look.
Hymns in Public Worship: Caution and Complexity
The Christian Reformed Church began to sanction the use of hymns in worship around the year 1930, a surprisingly recent date. Before that, the denomination’s official position followed the Synod of Dort, which allowed the singing of psalms—plus a few interesting exceptions. That synod had declared:
In the churches only the 150 Psalms of David, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, the Twelve Articles of Faith, and the Songs of Mary, Zacharias and Simeon shall be sung. Whether or not to use the hymn, “O God, who art our Father,” etc., is left to the freedom of the churches. All other hymns shall be kept out of the churches, and where some have already been introduced, they shall be discontinued by the most appropriate means.4
At first glance, this position on worship music seems muddled at best. The synod could have adhered to a position like John Calvin’s, which would permit the singing of anything derived directly from Scripture passages, or it could have adopted a strict exclusive psalmody position like that of John Knox.5 Instead, it admitted a collection of extrabiblical music that seems somewhat arbitrary. What place do the Apostles’ Creed (the “Twelve Articles of Faith”) and the non-scriptural hymn “O God, Who Art Our Father” have in this list? And if they are included, on what basis should all other hymns be kept out?6
To add to the confusion, when the Christian Reformed Church sought to justify the inclusion of hymns in 1930, it leveraged this same decision by the Synod of Dort to argue that Reformed churches had always affirmed hymn singing in principle:
[T]he introduction of Hymns for use in Public Worship was sanctioned already by our Reformed Fathers of the 16th century. For they have provided the Churches with the still existing small collection which is found in our Dutch Psalters, bearing the title “Eenige Gezangen,” and from this it follows that the Hymn question cannot be a question of introducing Hymns, but only of an increase of the number that has been in use already for centuries.7
The 1930 decision to include hymns met significant resistance in the Christian Reformed Church. The Eenige Gezangen offer a window into the complexity of hymn singing within the Dutch Reformed tradition.
The basis for Reformed church music in the Netherlands was the Genevan Psalter, which David Koyzis has written about elsewhere in this issue. The texts of Calvin’s French edition were translated into Dutch in 1566 by Peter Datheen. Typically, editions of Datheen’s Psalter included a varying number of canticles and hymns in the back, a collection that gradually took on the name Eenige Gezangen (literally, “some songs”). When the psalter was revised in 1773, the Eenige Gezangen consisted of the following:
The Ten Commandments
The Song of Mary
The Song of Zechariah
The Song of Simeon
The Lord’s Prayer
The Twelve Articles of Faith (Apostles’ Creed), in two different versions
Prayer before the Sermon (This is the hymn “O God, Who Art Our Father,” referenced in first column to left.)
Morning Song
Prayer before Meals
Thanksgiving after Meals
Evening Song
Interestingly, while today we usually refer to hymns by their refrains or first lines (“It Is Well,” “Great Is Thy Faithfulness”), the Dutch Psalter named these songs based on their liturgical function. And this offers a significant clue to the decision of the Synod of Dort. Of these eleven songs, the first five are based directly on Scripture, and the others are intended to serve specific roles of confession, praise, and prayer in worship.
From this, I conclude that the synod allowed hymns in public worship only as musical portions of the Reformed liturgy. Neither the Apostles’ Creed nor the prayer before the sermon is a hymn in the sense that we use that word today. Rather, they are preexisting parts of weekly worship, just set to music rather than recited. Instead of speaking the Apostles’ Creed, the church would sing it. Rather than hearing a prayer before the sermon, the church would sing it. Thus, the Eenige Gezangen served not as carte blanche for hymnody but rather as a reflection of particular roles that music could play in worship.
Besides these liturgical aspects of hymnody, the Synod of Dort, like many Reformed church bodies before and after it, viewed musical compositions other than the Psalms with hesitancy in worship. Even much later theological figures like Abraham Kuyper (a supporter of hymns in worship) cautioned that the use of extrabiblical songs tended to crowd out the proper place of the psalter.8 Consistent with this heritage, the Christian Reformed Church’s decision to produce the first Psalter Hymnal in 1934 manifested both an openness to hymns and a tenacious commitment to the centrality of psalm singing—a commitment that persists in the Church Order of the URCNA.
Hymns and Private Worship: Practices of Piety
At the same time, hymns serve more functions than merely singing in corporate worship. The last four selections in the Eenige Gezangen were presumably designed for use in the home and in private devotions. Imagine if a Christian household in the twenty-first century committed to framing the beginning and the end of the day with singing following this pattern!
I have provided a translation and harmonization of the “Thanksgiving after Meals” on the following page as a sampling of the rich piety that the Enige Gezagen convey. These hymns reveal a deep Calvinistic faith and express childlike trust in a heavenly Father who provides all good gifts.
Hymns, as Rev. Jonathan Landry Cruse’s recent project reminds us, are expressions of devotion.9 They bear aloft the core of Christian piety in memorable language set to beautiful tunes that weave their way into the singer’s soul. In the coming issues of The Outlook, I hope to provide context for some historic and previously untranslated hymns from the Dutch Reformed tradition. These are noble exemplars of the “spiritual songs” commended in the Scriptures (Eph. 5:18; Col. 3:16). Along with the Psalms, which should always form the backbone of Christian worship, such hymns enrich believers’ daily walk with the Savior.
1 This article adapts information from a series of articles on URC psalmody in 2015 entitled “Behind the Psalter Hymnal.” See https:// urcpsalmody.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/ behind-the-psalter-hymnal-part-6/.
2 A handy introduction to the spectrum of practices in Reformed and Presbyterian denominations is given in “We Used to Sing Only Psalms—What Happened?” Reformed Worship 3 (March 1987), https://www.reformedworship.org/article/march-1987/weused-sing-only-psalms-what-happened.
3 Church Order of the United Reformed Churches in North America, Article 39.
4 Post-Acta of the National Synod of Dordrecht, 1619, Session 162, in P. Biesterveld and H. H. Kuyper, Ecclesiastical manual, including the decisions of the Netherlands synods and other significant matters relating to the government of the churches, ed. and trans. R. A. de Ridder (Grand Rapids: Calvin Theological Seminary, 1982), 183.
5 For a survey of Reformed perspectives on psalm singing, see Sing a New Song: Recovering Psalm Singing for the Twenty-First Century, edited by Joel R. Beeke and Anthony T. Selvaggio (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2010).
6 Note also that earlier regional and national synods in 1568, 1574, 1578, and 1581 had consistently upheld exclusive or almost-exclusive psalmody. See Biesterveld and Kuyper, Ecclesiastical manual.
7 “Report on the Hymn Question and the Text of Approved Hymns to be presented to the Synod of 1930 of the Christian Reformed Church,” 8, http://www.calvin.edu/library/ database/crcnasynod/1930agendahymns.pdf.
8 Abraham Kuyper, Our Worship, ed. Harry Boonstra, trans. Harry Boonstra, Henry Baron, Gerrit Sheeres, and Leonard Sweetman (1911; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 41–42.
9 See Hymns of Devotion, https://www. hymnsofdevotion.com/.
Michael R. Kearney is a graduate student and research assistant in the Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. He is a member of Covenant Fellowship Reformed Presbyterian Church (RPCNA) in Wilkinsburg, PA.
