4. Dealing with a cappella’s second pillar

A summary of the argument: the claim that instrumental music cannot be found in the New Testament

The second major pillar for the instrument-abolitionist position is the claim that instrumental music is foreign to “New Testament worship.” Of course, the very demand that musical instruments must be commanded in the New Testament is a faulty hermeneutic. If we were to restrict our commandments to the New Testament alone, not only would women be excluded from the Lord’s Supper, but we would have only one guideline for the degrees of consanguinity (can’t marry your mother), we would have no prohibition of bestiality, and we would be without guidance on a host of societal, ecological, and family issues.

So even though I will be giving New Testament evidence for the use of musical instruments, I would urge the reader to restudy the first three chapters. Paul praised the Bereans because they checked out all his teaching against the Old Testament (Acts 17:11). Luke said that Paul was teaching “no other things than those which the prophets and Moses said would come” (Acts 26:22). If everything he taught was taught from the Old Testament, it means that the subject of worship can be taught from the Old Testament as well. After all, Paul said that the Old Testament Scriptures that Timothy grew up on (2 Tim. 3:14-15) are sufficient for every doctrine and issue of righteousness (v. 16), and are so sufficient that they make the man of God “complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (v. 17). This means that restricting ourselves to what the New Testament says on this subject is a non-Biblical hermeneutic.⁵⁸ My most fundamental disagreement with McCracken (and other a cappella advocates) is that they have unwittingly adopted a dispensational hermeneutic. Nevertheless, I think the reader will find it interesting that the New Testament does indeed command the use of instruments in worship.

Ephesians 5:19: Does it command the use of instruments or forbid the use of instruments?

Ephesians 5:19 commands us to be:

speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord

Many a cappella advocates have tried to demonstrate that this verse forbids the use of all instruments. The first claim is that the Greek words for psalms, hymns, and songs had a specialized meaning in the New Testament that excluded instrumentation, a claim that at least some lexicons support.⁵⁹ The second argument is that Ephesians 5:19 restricts all instrumentation to an inward disposition of the heart. For example, McCracken admits that the New Testament word “psallo” means, “to pluck the strings of an instrument,” but because of the phrase, “in your heart,” he renders it, “plucking the strings of your heart to the Lord.” ⁶⁰ So, far from being embarrassed by this verse, instrument-abolitionists have used it to teach a cappella singing.

On the other hand, Instrumentalists have argued that this verse is a positive command to use instruments in worship. They point out that the only way to exclude instrumentation from the meaning of these terms and/or to turn the terms into a mandate for a cappella singing is through circular reasoning.⁶¹ Indeed, the Bible repeatedly uses the terms “psalms,”⁶² “hymns,”⁶³ and “songs”⁶⁴ to refer to singing that was indeed accompanied by instruments. Likewise, Instrumentalists insist that the phrase that is translated as “making melody” in the NKJV is a word whose primary usage outside of the New Testament would mandate a translation of “playing instrumentally.” Danker’s lexicon (under the entry for ado) renders Ephesians 5:19 as “singing and playing (instrumentally) heartily to the Lord.” Instrumentalists therefore claim that this is a verse that gives a positive command to use instruments in the worship service. They also claim that if only a cappella singing was being called for, the voice-only interpretation would produce two awkward tautologies within one verse. It would then mean, “speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and singing psalms in your heart to the Lord.” If Paul’s purpose was to call for the singing of Psalms, he has already adequately done so in the first phrase and wouldn’t need to duplicate that admonition in the second half (“psalms…singing psalms.”). If it is objected that Paul wanted to enforce the singing (ado) of the Psalms and not merely the recitation of them, we still have a tautology: “singing and singing Psalms.” The only way to avoid tautology is to affirm two kinds of singing: “singing and singing psalms.” Since a cappella advocates are for the most part also exclusive psalmists, this poses a problem for them because it implies singing psalms and singing something in addition to psalms. Thus, the most natural interpretation of the passage is to say that it calls for singing three types of song within the worship service as well as calling for at least some instrumental accompaniment.

It is my contention that this second interpretation fits the evidence better. Modern studies of the Greek terms strongly point in the direction of instrumentation being commanded. Let us examine each term. The text says, “speaking to yourselves in psalms [psalmos] and hymns [humnos] and spiritual songs [ode], singing [ado] and making melody [psallo] in your heart to the Lord.”

Psalms

No one (to my knowledge) disagrees with the fact that the Greek word for “psalms” (psalmos) originally referred to the action upon a stringed instrument or the sound coming from a stringed instrument.⁶⁵ Later it included the idea of both the song and the musical accompaniment, but the instrumentation was the dominant idea behind the word.⁶⁶ When the Old Testament was translated into Greek, the term psalmos could refer to either music alone,⁶⁷ a Psalm accompanied by stringed instruments,⁶⁸ a Psalm accompanied by other instruments,⁶⁹ or to anything in the Psalter. The Greek word translates the Hebrew words mizmor,⁷⁰ zamar,⁷¹ naganah,⁷² and sir⁷³, all of which had instrumental connotations. So pervasive was this connection, that K. A. Bartels argues that “It can be assumed that, at least during the OT period, the singing of the Psalms was always accompanied by musical instruments.”⁷⁴ Though the last statement will be hotly contested by the a cappella advocates based on their understanding of synagogue worship,⁷⁵ I know of none who would argue that any of the terms discussed here had an a cappella connotation in the Old Testament.

However, it is argued that by the time we get to the New Testament period, the words psalmos and psallo have lost any idea of instrumentation. What is the proof offered? Instrument-abolitionists cannot offer up any first century evidence external to the New Testament. Instead they have offered two assumptions: 1) that later Byzantine usage must have been already developed in the first century and 2) that church fathers who understood the Greek language would not have later opposed instruments in worship if those Greek terms had retained any instrumental connotations. Girardeau quotes Dr. Porteous to this effect:

From these quotations from the Greek fathers, the three first of whom flourished in the fourth century – men of great erudition, well skilled in the phraseology and language of Scripture, perfectly masters of the Greek tongue, which was then written and spoken with purity in the countries where they resided; men, too, who for conscience sake would not handle the Word of God deceitfully, it is evident that the Greek word ψαλλω signified in their time singing with the voice alone. Had they conceived otherwise, we may be assured that they had both sufficient firmness of mind and influence in the church to have induced their hearers to have used the harp and psaltery in the public worship of God.⁷⁶

In the fifth chapter of this book we will challenge two of the assumptions that are critical to his conclusion: 1) that there were no instruments in public worship in the first four centuries and 2) that the church fathers who did oppose instruments did so out of zeal for Scripture, rather than out of zeal for Greek philosophy. Lexicons have on occasion made the same faulty assumptions and have tentatively cited evidence that psalmos is a cappella from 1) later usage of the term psalmos, 2) scholars with the same faulty assumptions, and 3) reference to the very texts being contested in the New Testament.

At this juncture it is sufficient to show that psalmos and psallo were both used long after the New Testament was written with exactly the same instrumental connotations that they had in Old Testament times. Moulton and Milligan cite second century AD Koine inscriptions where technical Greek terms are distinguished, with kitharismos referring to the action of picking the harp with a quill and psalmos referring to the action of picking the harp with the fingers.⁷⁷ He also cites one second century example of it meaning a psalm or song that was “sung to a harp accompaniment.” Josephus, a contemporary of Paul, always used the term psalmos to refer to instrumental music, and consistently used humnos to refer to the Old Testament Psalms. Philo avoided using psalmos precisely because it meant an instrumental tune, and his adoption of Greek philosophy made him hostile to instrumental music.⁷⁸ The church fathers Hyppolytus⁷⁹ (d. 236AD), Didymus of Alexandria⁸⁰ (d. 394), Gregory of Nyssa⁸¹ (d. 395), and his brother Basil⁸² all support our contention that the word has an instrumental meaning.

Indeed, there is no evidence whatsoever that the word “psalms” mandates the a cappella meaning that some instrument-abolitionists have claimed for it. Though psalms obviously could be sung with no instrumentation, the idea of a cappella singing is not inherent in the meaning of the term. The evidence points in the opposite direction – especially the usage of the term by Josephus, Hippolytus, Didymus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Basil.

Hymns

The next word is humnos. The central meaning of this term involves praise to God.⁸³ It has no inherent meaning related to instruments one way or the other. This noun occurs only here in Ephesians 5:19 and in Colossians 3:16, but it is used by extra-Biblical writers to refer to both canonical psalms as well as non-canonical songs of praise to God.⁸⁴ In classical Greek this was a more general term of praise that could refer to either recited poetry or to songs. In the Old Testament it had a range of meaning, including praise, prayer, song, psalm, and even a stringed instrument.⁸⁵ Though I have already mentioned that Philo may have preferred using humnos to refer to the Psalms because of an anti-instrument bias, and even though both classical and Septuagintal Greek could use the term for both a cappella and accompanied song, there is nothing about the term that would necessitate a cappella singing, as is clear from Josephus, a first century writer, who used the term humnos to refer to Psalms accompanied by music.⁸⁶

The Terms “Songs” and “Sing”

What about the words ode (song) and ado (sing)? Some instrument-abolitionists have insisted that these terms have an unmistakably a cappella meaning. Thus, even if psalmos originally included the idea of accompaniment, in our era we are to “sing” (ado) the Psalms as a “song” (ode), not play them. In other words, the claim is that the terms ado and ode constitute a command to sing the Psalms a cappella even if the psalms were once (under the temple system) sung with accompaniment. Though this particular understanding of ode and ado has a long history,⁸⁷ it has been discredited as contradicting the evidence in ancient, Biblical, Koine, or even later Greek. When Josephus can say that singers would “sing [ado] to the instruments which David had prepared,” ⁸⁸ it is clear that he was utterly unaware that the term had any concept of a cappella singing included in its meaning; and his life overlapped the life of the apostles.

This is also true in its New Testament usage. The two terms always occur together in the New Testament. Besides Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16, these two words only occur in Revelation 5:9, 14:3, and 15:2-3. In each one of those passages the song or singing is done with instruments. Interestingly, the last passage speaks of them singing with “harps given them by God.” Danny Corbitt rightly notes, “This reminds us of how those in the Old Testament praised God with ‘the Lord’s instruments’ (2 Chronicles 7:6 and 30:21).”⁸⁹ It is difficult to believe that Paul intended to command a cappella singing with the terms ado and ode when those very terms were used by his contemporary, John, to describe accompanied singing! Instrument-abolitionists will dismiss the passages from Revelation as being irrelevant since they refer to heavenly worship, not church worship, but the point I am making now concerns the meaning of terms, not the relevance of heavenly worship to earthly worship (a point that we have touched on in chapter 1 and will explore further below). It is clear that these terms do not have an inherent meaning of a cappella singing, a fact that completely nullifies the instrument-abolitionist interpretation of Ephesians 5:19.

Making Melody

The last musical term is psallo, and is rendered in the New King James Version with the ambiguous phrase “making melody” (which could refer to instrumentation or simply vocal singing). Everyone agrees that the word originally had the meaning of “to play on an instrument.”⁹⁰ There is also broad agreement that Philo (20 BC – AD 20), Josephus (AD 37-100), Plutarch (AD 46-140), Lucian (AD 125-180), and others used both psallo and psalmos to refer to playing with an instrument, making it clear that the classical meaning was maintained by both Jews and Gentiles in the century leading up to and after the writing of the New Testament.⁹¹. This instrumental meaning of the term is so pervasive that a cappella advocates have tried four different ways to get around the clear evidence that Paul is commanding the use of an instrument in church.

The first approach has been to distinguish between the Hellenistic cultures that both Philo and Josephus were writing to and the Biblical culture that the New Testament was seeking to work within. For example, Everett Ferguson says, “Hellenistic Jews writing for Gentile audiences kept to the classical meaning of psallo.”⁹² His explanation for Philo never using psallo for a cappella Psalm singing, but preferring humneo instead is quite revealing: “A plausible hypothesis would be that Philo is aware of the primarily instrumental connotation of the word to pagan readers,” and since Philo was writing to a Hellenistic audience, the use of psallo would be confusing.⁹³

I would object with a counter argument: would not Paul have been writing to Greek Gentiles when he wrote Ephesians? Would they not have understood the term in its normal Greek usage? If he intended a cappella singing, would not his use of psallo have been equally confusing? Ferguson would counter that Paul was writing to Greek Gentiles who had been incorporated into the church and that as members of the church they would be accustomed to Paul’s “Jewish religious language,”⁹⁴ but this begs the question of what the “Jewish religious language” really is. Lexicons can be found that will tentatively say that non-instrumental music may be included in the meaning, but the concept of “Jewish religious language” mandating an a cappella meaning is circular reasoning. Did the Jewish translation of the Old Testament use an a cappella meaning for the term? We have already seen that it did not. Therefore, the so-called “Jewish religious language” did not originate in the Septuagint. Did Josephus use the term to convey a cappella singing? Clearly not. Yet he was a religious Jew (a Pharisee). Did Philo understand the term psallo to have an a cappella meaning? Obviously not. Then what Jewish sources would Ferguson have us consult to find the meaning of “Jewish religious language”? He appears to mean the language of the New Testament, but that is the very point in contention. Why would it not be more natural to say that the language of the New Testament should be read the way the Jewish translators of the Septuagint understood it, or the way the Jewish writers Philo and Josephus understood it? This is more reasonable than assuming a unique definition of the term psallo that cannot be found in the Old Testament Bible (the bulk of Paul’s Bible) and cannot be found in contemporary secular or religious literature. Ferguson’s argument is circular reasoning on steroids. I see no convincing evidence that the New Testament has changed the meaning of the term psallo to a new a cappella meaning.

The second way that a cappella advocates have used to prove their point has been a bit more convincing: it is to let the other passages in the New Testament define the term in Ephesians 5:19. While this cannot be determinative (since scholars agree that various authors can use terms in different ways), it is still an approach that should not be lightly dismissed. The term psallo occurs in four New Testament verses. The first one that is often cited is James 5:13:

Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him psallo.

Girardeau argues that James must mean “let him sing psalms,” since

1. the noun form clearly means “psalm” in the New Testament
2. the other two occurrences could not have the older meaning of “play instruments”
3. since not everyone could obey the command to play instruments (not all being musical).

His last argument is based upon the fact that the command is addressed to “anyone,” and since not everyone is a harpist not everyone can fulfill the command to play music.⁹⁵

The third argument of individuality is not as strong as it may at first appear. Immediate context indicates that James is making these commands in the context of the body (“anyone among you… anyone among you” – vv. 13-14) just as Ephesians 5:19 is in the context of the church. If the church was in mind, consistency does not necessitate that every member must use an instrument or that a church had to use it in every worship service, since any of the three modes of singing in Ephesians 5:19 are acceptable to God. Commenting on Ephesians 5:19, J. B. Lightfoot said,

In other words, while the leading idea of ψαλμός is a musical accompaniment and that of ὔμνος praise to God, ᾠδή is the general word for a song, whether accompanied or unaccompanied, whether of praise or on any other subject. Thus it was quite possible for the same song to be at once ψαλμός, ὔμνος, and ᾠδή.⁹⁶

It would go beyond even Old Testament usage⁹⁷ to mandate that each singer also be playing the instrument by which such psalms are normally accompanied. I know of no Instrument-abolitionist who believes that every Israelite had a timbrel and harp when God commanded,

Let Israel rejoice in their Maker; let the children of Zion be joyful in their King… Let them sing praises to Him with the timbrel and harp.” (Ps. 149:2-3)

Obviously such a command was given to the community as a whole, and the individuals fulfill the mandate by being in the community. Likewise, when “all the earth” is commanded to “sing with … the harp… with trumpets, and the sound of the horn” (Ps. 98:4-6) it is obvious that not each musician was playing all three instruments and singing at the same time. The individual fulfills the command by being connected with the congregation where both singing and instrumental accompaniment can be found.

We have already dealt with the first argument, noting that the noun form does not exclude instruments, and therefore, even if we translate the term as “sing psalms,” it is not thereby mandating an a cappella singing of those psalms. Indeed, with the overwhelming evidence for the first century instrumental meaning of psallo, the burden of proof is really on the instrument-abolitionist to conclude that it mandates an a cappella meaning.

Even if an a cappella meaning were concluded for James, would it not be just as easy to use Ferguson’s argument against him and to say that when Jews wrote to Hellenists and Gentiles (like Paul did in Ephesians) that psallo means “play instruments” and when Jews wrote to Jews (like James did in James 5) that psallo can mean either to “play instruments” or it can mean to “sing Psalms (with or without accompaniment)”? The point of this exercise is not to disagree with the translation “let him sing psalms” but to demonstrate that there has been no evidence given that it must mean “let him sing psalms” or (if such a translation is preferred) that the singing of such psalms must be done in an a cappella fashion.

The next passage that has psallo is Romans 15:9:

and that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy, as it is written: “For this reason I will confess to You among the Gentiles, and psallo to Your name.”

The primary arguments used by Instrument-abolitionists that this verse refers to a cappella singing of the psalms are 1) that confession can only be done by words, and since an instrument is not “rational,” the kind of confessing and psallo-ing must be with words, and 2) secondly, that it is not conceivable that Jesus would sing accompanied by instruments.⁹⁸

As to the first argument, I fail to see how rational confession is excluded if singing is accompanied by instruments and not replaced by instruments. Note the word “and,” which implies something in addition to confession: there is confessing and psallo-ing. The “and” strongly favors the idea that the author is not merely reciting/confessing the Psalms, but confessing them through instrumentation.

As to the second argument, it is purely prejudice that would say that Jesus would not use accompaniment. With Christ’s daily ministry in the temple (Matt. 26:55; Luke 19:47) it is inconceivable that He could have missed the instrumentation in worship. Revelation certainly presents the glorified Jesus as surrounded by praises accompanied by instruments (Rev. 5:8; 14:2; 15:2-3). Thus, far from proving Girardeau’s point, Romans 15:9 shows that Jesus continues to offer up instrumental praise “among the Gentiles.” This is similar to the promise in Hebrews 2:12 where Jesus promises to sing praise “in the midst of the assembly.” How does He do that? By His union with the church that sings praise to God. So both praise (Heb. 2:12) and instrumental music accompanying that praise (Rom. 15:9) are promised to be characteristic of the Messianic age.

This interpretation of the anti-type (Jesus) is reinforced by the actions of the type (David). Given the source of the quote found in Romans 15:9, it is amazing to me that anyone could argue that this is a reference to a cappella singing. Everyone agrees that Romans 15:9 is quoting 2 Samuel 22:50 and Psalm 18:49, and Schreiner demonstrates that 2 Samuel 22:50 is especially in mind.⁹⁹ David (as a type of Christ) is the one who was confessing God among the Gentiles and psallo-ing to God’s name, and it is quite clear that David did so by means of instrumental accompaniment. Even the Hebrew word, zamar, which is translated with psallo in the Septuagint, argues strongly for instrumental accompaniment.¹⁰⁰ So this verse does not make Girardeau’s point.

The last verse that is cited by Girardeau as proving that psallo must have an a cappella meaning in the New Testament is 1 Corinthians 14:15.

What is the conclusion then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will also pray with the understanding. I will psallo with the spirit, and I will also psallo with the understanding.

The argument against instruments is that instruments are “without life” (v. 7) and therefore without rationality. The claim is that it is impossible to play instruments “with the understanding.” Thus, the command is simply to engage in the aspect of psallo that includes understanding, namely, to sing Psalms.¹⁰¹

That takes Paul’s argument completely out of context. The purpose of Paul’s argument in verse 7 is to say that instruments aren’t useful unless they “make a distinction of sounds” and unless it can be clearly “known what is piped or played.” In the same way, tongues aren’t useful unless the tongues are distinct words that are understood. Consider the “without life” quote in its context:

But now, brethren, if I come to you speaking with tongues, what shall I profit you unless I speak to you either by revelation, by knowledge, by prophesying, or by teaching?

Even things without life, whether flute or harp, when they make a sound, unless they make a distinction in the sounds, how will it be known what is piped or played?

For if the trumpet makes an uncertain sound, who will prepare for battle?

So likewise you, unless you utter by the tongue words easy to understand, how will it be known what is spoken? For you will be speaking into the air. (1 Corinthians 14:6-9)

Since the untranslated tongues is being compared to an instrument that is poorly played, translated tongues would correspond to an instrument that is well played. Thus, Paul is in no way disparaging instruments. On the contrary, he is assuming that they should be played well. Second, Thiselton has shown that the terms “distinction,” “known,” and “uncertain” all speak of playing instrumental music with understanding and rationality.¹⁰² Thus it is quite possible to play with the spirit and to play with the understanding. Third, since these verses assume that Paul and his hearers are quite familiar with the need to play instruments with understanding, the most natural rendering of psallo in 1 Corinthians 14:15 would be its normal meaning, “to play music.” Even if one preferred the rendering, “sing psalms,” the instrument-abolitionist has not in any way proved that it has an a cappella meaning. On the contrary, the context indicates the opposite. Thus, this second way of avoiding the implications of the ordinary meaning of psallo has not been successful in overthrowing our interpretation of Ephesians 5:19.

A third way of getting around the clear meaning of the term psallo is to make certain assumptions about how Paul would have reacted against Pharisaism and the mystery cults. In their Lexicon, Bauer, Danker, Arndt, and Gingrich can cite no evidence that the meaning of psallo had changed by New Testament times. Instead, they offer an assumption:

Although the NT does not voice opposition to instrumental music, in view of Christian resistance to mystery cults, as well as Pharisaic aversion to musical instruments in worship … it is likely that some such sense as make melody is best understood in this Eph pass.¹⁰³

There are several obvious objections to this line of reasoning: First, Josephus was a Pharisee,¹⁰⁴ yet he used the term psallo to refer to “playing on a musical instrument” in worship over and over again. Second, Josephus would have had just as much objection to mystery cults as Paul would have had, yet he had no problem describing the use of instruments with this word psallo. Third, it still begs the question of why Paul would use a term that the Greek Ephesians would immediately understand as instrumental if his goal was to communicate simply “singing Psalms”? He could have used humneo just as Philo did. After all, Paul was writing to Greeks, not to Hebrews, but Paul shows no such prejudice against the term. Fourth, it is a liberal notion to think that the Bible bases its practice and theology on avoiding what pagans do. This is akin to saying, “We shouldn’t stand for prayer, because Greek pagans did.” Fifth, this assumption is actually the reverse of what happened with the Pharisees and the church fathers. When we get to the views of the church fathers on musical instruments, we will deal with the real source of antipathy to musical instruments by Philo and some church fathers – the influence of Greek ascetic philosophy. We will demonstrate that the later church fathers avoided musical instruments not because they are unbiblical, but because they had adopted Greek asceticism hook, line, and sinker.

The fact of the matter is that no evidence has been advanced to discredit the straightforward interpretation of Ephesians 5:19 as a command to sing accompanied with instruments. Every command to sing a “psalm” is a command to sing something accompanied by an instrument, and when psallo is added to psalmos, the conclusion of instrumentation is unavoidable. Even McCracken admits that “making melody” should properly be translated as “to pluck the strings of an instrument.” Thus Beck’s translation renders the two commands as, “sing and play music to the Lord.” The Amplified Bible translates it as “offering praise with voices and instruments.” Other translations bring out the difference between the voice and the instrument by translating it as “sing and make music” (NIV, NET, HCSB, NLT) or “singing and playing to the Lord” (NAB). There is clearly more than the voice involved in Ephesians 5:19.

Even John Calvin agrees with this exegesis. Commenting on Ephesians 5:19 Calvin says,

…under these three terms [songs, hymns, spiritual songs] he includes all kinds of songs. They are commonly distinguished in this way – that a psalm is that, in the singing of which some musical instrument besides the tongue is made use of; a hymn is properly a song of praise, whether it be sung simply with the voice or otherwise; while an ode contains not merely praises, but exhortations and other matters. He would have the songs of Christians, however, to be spiritual, not made up of frivolities and worthless trifles.” (emphasis mine).

Calvin clearly sees the proper meaning of the term. (On Calvin’s possible changes in view, see more below.)

Instrument-abolitionists use one more argument to get around this conclusion. With McCracken, many of them say that the phrase “in the heart” refers to playing an instrument inaudibly:

Also, we are to “make music in [our] hearts” (Eph. 5:19). The Greek word for “make music” is psallo, which means originally “to pluck the strings of an instrument.” This gives a beautiful picture of what true and acceptable praise of God really is. Since the word psallo cannot be separated from the word “heart,” it literally means “plucking the strings of your heart to the Lord.” When the music of the heart is expressed through lips that confess the Lord’s name, there is no need for supporting instruments.¹⁰⁵

While clever, this interpretation proves too much: if playing instruments from the heart means that the musical instrument is inaudible, logic forces us to say that singing from the heart makes singing inaudible as well. After all, the text says literally “singing and plucking the strings of an instrument from the heart.” The grammar makes clear that the singing must be in or from the heart just as much as the plucking of the instrument.¹⁰⁶ William Hendriksen says,

The idea of some that in the two parts of this one verse the apostle has reference to two kinds of singing: a. audible (“speaking”) and b. inaudible (“in the stillness of the heart”), must be dismissed. If that had been his intention he would have inserted the conjunction and or and also between the two parts. The two are clearly parallel. The second explains and completes the first.¹⁰⁷

Nor is this a straw man argument. Many of those who were hostile to instrumentation ended up being forced by logic to bar all singing from the church.¹⁰⁸ Interestingly, when dealing with the Old Testament, these song-abolitionists used exactly the same argument as the instrument-abolitionists – that singing had an exclusively Levitical function and passed away with the ceremonial law.¹⁰⁹ When instrument-abolitionists appealed to Ephesians 5:19 for New Testament warrant for singing, song-abolitionists like Isaac Marlow pressed the logic by saying that this text either teaches singing and instrumentation or it teaches silence of both, but one cannot have it both ways. It was a forceful argument against the a cappella proponents.

The simplest understanding is that Paul was doing nothing other than what the Old Testament Scriptures commanded the saints to do when they sang and played their instruments.¹¹⁰ The Old Testament said that they should do so with the whole heart (Ps. 138:1), with a steadfast heart (Ps. 57:7; 108:1), with joy of heart (Isa. 65:14) and with all your heart (Zeph. 3:14). God rejected the songs and stringed instruments of the church of the Old Testament when the heart was not right (Amos 5:23-24). It doesn’t matter that the singers have “a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument” if “their hearts pursue their own gain” and “they hear your words but do not do them” (Ezek. 33:31-33). All our worship must be done from the heart. That does not mean that our worship is not expressed (as in Quakerism). It means that our worship must be sincere.

Therefore, far from doing away with the use of musical instruments, the New Testament clearly commands us to “play music to the Lord”¹¹¹ and to sing songs accompanied by a musical instrument (the Greek meaning of the word “psalm” used in Eph. 5:19, Col. 3:16 and James 5:13).

Other New Testament evidence

In my response to Girardeau on Ephesians 5:19, I have already given the evidence for instrumentation from 1 Corinthians 14, Romans 15, and James 5. However, the book of Revelation also illustrates the use of instruments in worship (Rev. 5:8-9; 14:2-3; 15:2-3). Some might object that the worship in Revelation is “before the throne of God,” and that this heavenly worship cannot regulate our worship. However, it needs to be remembered that every time the church on earth worships it has “come boldly to the throne of grace” (Heb. 4:16) and it has “come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant” (Heb. 12:22-24). If our worship is real worship, it is united (by means of the Spirit of Christ) to the worship in heaven.

If instruments are appropriate in the heavenly Zion to which we come each Sunday, and we are commanded to join in what they do, this too argues that we should not just sing, but sing accompanied with instruments. The heavenly is the pattern for the earthly worship. This was true of Old Covenant worship (Heb. 8:1-6) as well as of New Covenant worship (Heb. 12:18-29). Even the passages on instrumental worship in Revelation demonstrate this. For example, the worship before God’s throne in Revelation 5 includes the prayers of saints on earth (v. 8) and the singing of saints on earth (v. 13) since all who come before the throne of mercy are united in worship (Rev. 5:8-13). The same can be seen in Revelation 8 where the prayers of corporate worship on earth ascend (vv. 3-4) and are mingled with the heavenly work of angels (vv. 1-3,5-6) and the heavenly prayers of Jesus (vv. 3-4). The heavenly worship with instruments in 15:1-3 is a call for “all nations” to “come and worship before You” (vv. 3-4). The worship of Revelation is the pattern for our worship on earth. Indeed, it is one and the same worship service. There should be no surprise that the instruments of earth (Eph. 5:19) and the instruments of heaven (Revelation) continue into the New Testament period since we have already seen in chapter 3 that musical instruments were never restricted to the Levites. Indeed, that chapter demonstrates how the most consistent prototype of New Covenant worship was the Booth of David (Acts 15:15-17 with Amos 9:11-12), a center of worship that clearly had instrumental music. Nor does the New Testament ever explicitly say that instruments are ceremonial or that they cease. This means that the second pillar falls to the ground.