# Was Calvin Psalms only?



## Weston Stoler (Apr 8, 2013)

I cannot find a direct source citing whether John Calvin was psalms only. Anyone know of a quote that might help me? For my research paper.


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## ProtestantBankie (Apr 8, 2013)

No he was not.
They sang other parts of the scripture, the Lord's Prayer and also the Apostle's Creed.

Iain Murray in his Anti-EP booklet "The Psalter: The Only Hymnal?" Banner of Truth
Malcolm Watt's response to this agrees, though it argues the EP position.

__________

However, Calvin was wrong!

______

If you give me 10 minutes I'll get a quotation from one or the other for you.


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## Weston Stoler (Apr 8, 2013)

That would be wonderful!


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## au5t1n (Apr 8, 2013)

"Now what Saint Augustine says is true, that no one is able to sing things worthy of God unless he has received them from him. Wherefore, when we have looked thoroughly everywhere and searched high and low, we shall find no better songs nor more appropriate for the purpose than the Psalms of David, which the Holy Spirit made and spoke through him. And furthermore, when we sing them, we are certain that God puts the words in our mouths, as if he himself were singing in us to exalt his glory."
-John Calvin, "Epistle to the Reader," Genevan Psalter (1542)


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## Weston Stoler (Apr 8, 2013)

au5t1n said:


> "Now what Saint Augustine says is true, that no one is able to sing things worthy of God unless he has received them from him. Wherefore, when we have looked thoroughly everywhere and searched high and low, we shall find no better songs nor more appropriate for the purpose than the Psalms of David, which the Holy Spirit made and spoke through him. And furthermore, when we sing them, we are certain that God puts the words in our mouths, as if he himself were singing in us to exalt his glory."
> -John Calvin, "Epistle to the Reader," Genevan Psalter (1542)
> 
> It might be a bit anachronistic to call him "an Exclusive Psalmodist" for various historical reasons (e.g., the lack of congregational singing at all before he translated the psalter), but he said some things that sound that way. It cannot be conclusively argued from Geneva's practice alone that Calvin was in full support.



In my paper I would state something like "Although Calvin was not an exclusive Psalmodist, he did have a high regard for the psalms and paved the way for others (like the puritans) to go that route"

(For others information I'm RPW but not exclusive psalms however this isn't an opinion paper)


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## Afterthought (Apr 8, 2013)

au5t1n said:


> It cannot be conclusively argued from Geneva's practice alone that Calvin was in full support.


One thing I've sometimes wondered is: How do we know what Geneva's practice was? Is it simply the presence of other songs in the Genevan Psalter, or is there something more conclusive?


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## au5t1n (Apr 8, 2013)

Given Geneva's practice (if he supported it) and Calvin's statements, it seems clear to me that he was _at least_ Exclusive Scripture-singing, with the Apostles' Creed perhaps being an exception due to the common belief that it was penned by the Apostles themselves.


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## ProtestantBankie (Apr 8, 2013)

Iain H Murray (2001, BofT) page 12

Louis F. Benson writes, 'Even at Geneva the fountain head of Metrical Psalmody, the addiction to psalms was not exclusive - no divine prescription was claimed for the Psalter. Calvin's Genevan Psalter included as a matter of fact such materials as the Commandments and Nunc Dimitis.' Other material to be found in the same Genevan Psalter included a hymn, which has been attributed to Calvin, Je te salue, mon certain Redempteur ('I greet thee, who my sure Redeemer art')12 Whether this fine hymn be Calvin's composition or not, it has been repeatedly attributed to the Psalter of his day. The priority he gave to psalms was by way of preference, not principle

Footnotes:

11: Louis F Benson The English Hymn: Its development and Use in Worship (New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1915) pp. 27, 55 [First appeared in Princeton Theological Review]
12: The hymn from 1560, was included in the 6th volume of the works of Calvin.


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## ProtestantBankie (Apr 8, 2013)

"In 1541, Calvin returned to Geneva...the first Genevan Psalter was published in 1542...it is true that this version had within it versions of the Ten Commandments and the Song of Simeon , as well as versions of the Lord's Prayer and the creed" - Watts, 33, 2003 

However, Watts makes a broader case against HYMNS, nothing in the Genevan Psalter can be said to merely human composition. He rejects the claim that Calvin wrote a hymn. And so on.

I would really recommend it
God's Hymnbook for the Christian Church by Malcolm H. Watts (2003) James Begg Society.


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## JP Wallace (Apr 8, 2013)

One thing about this discission that must be noted is this, just because certain items were included in the Genevan Psalter does not mean they were items to be sung. The Trinity Hymnal has opening sentences, confession of faith and 10 commandments but no church I know sings them. Could it not be that for a people who had and could afford only a very few books that the consistory decided to include these important elements within the psalm book for convenience?

What other evidence is there of the Geneven Practice?


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## au5t1n (Apr 8, 2013)

I have wondered that, too. I'm not sure.


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## MW (Apr 8, 2013)

The mere presence of other material is no argument that it was used in a specific way. Note the inclusion of the Apocrypha in earlier Protestant Bibles. There is clear evidence that earlier Psalters were being constructed for private as well as public use, so materials may have served a pedagogical function. Besides, although Calvin was a significant man, he was but one among equals. He would have been the first to repudiate any idea that he was the bishop or pope of Geneva. As far as I am aware, Calvin is not on record as stating an opinion on the matter further than saying that the Psalms are the most appropriate to sing. It is fair not to attribute any more or less to him.


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## Backwoods Presbyterian (Apr 8, 2013)

Good points Rev.'s Wallace and Winzer. I had never even considered that before, but now it seems so obvious.


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## NaphtaliPress (Apr 8, 2013)

This was also at the center of the critique David Hay Fleming made of Bonar's defense of early Scottish Hymnity (not!) based sole on the fact that early Scottish printers included a lot more stuff in their printings of the psalms for singing than just psalms. Basically DHF's contention was that the printers determined content; that alone cannot determine the position of the church at that time.


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## Tyrese (Apr 8, 2013)

JP Wallace said:


> One thing about this discission that must be noted is this, just because certain items were included in the Genevan Psalter does not mean they were items to be sung. The Trinity Hymnal has opening sentences, confession of faith and 10 commandments but no church I know sings them. Could it not be that for a people who had and could afford only a very few books that the consistory decided to include these important elements within the psalm book for convenience?
> 
> What other evidence is there of the Geneven Practice?



Out of curiosity, did Calvin sing I greet thee, who my sure redeemer art?


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## Backwoods Presbyterian (Apr 8, 2013)

Our former Puritan Board librarian has an excellent blog post on the sketchy attribution of that hymn to John Calvin.

Virginia is for Huguenots: Credit Where Credit Is Due


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## R Harris (Apr 9, 2013)

It is simply amazing how many myths, half-truths, and even outright lies have been propagated about the life and person of John Calvin.

If one reads carefully and thinks about the words in Calvin's preface to the 1542 Genevan Psalter, I think the answer as to whether he practiced exclusive psalmody is pretty clear.

Read the brief quote taken from the 1542 preface from the above post. If Calvin, after having _thoroughly_ looked far and wide, and could find nothing better than the Psalms to sing, why we people then assume that he did after all go ahead and sing things inferior to the Psalms? That makes absolutely no sense. ANY statement that he did so is purely speculative and cannot be based upon hard, firm evidence. And, as stated above, the very spurious and dubious claim that Calvin did write one or more hymns is again purely speculative without any hard, objective evidence.

As Chris Coldwell stated long ago about Calvin bowling on the Sabbath, it gets very tiring dealing with all of the urban legends surrounding Calvin which have no solid basis in fact.


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## Tyrese (Apr 9, 2013)

R Harris said:


> It is simply amazing how many myths, half-truths, and even outright lies have been propagated about the life and person of John Calvin.
> 
> If one reads carefully and thinks about the words in Calvin's preface to the 1542 Genevan Psalter, I think the answer as to whether he practiced exclusive psalmody is pretty clear.
> 
> ...



Being that we hear so many different things about Calvin, wouldn't it be equally as speculative to assert that he only sung the psalms? Lets be fair here. Just because it doesn't make sense to you that he also sung hymns alongside the psalms doesn't mean he didn't do it. I also think the psalms are superior to hymns but I also believe I can sing hymns. Now I know I'm no one special but I also realize Calvin was not a perfect person. If no one really knows what Calvin actually sung it shouldn't be a big deal what someone's opinion is as to what he actually did do.


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## JP Wallace (Apr 10, 2013)

Tyrese based on evidence it is not as speculative (though admittedly a little so) to suggest he only sang psalms than to suggest he sang hymns. The evidence is clear that the he certainly sang psalms, strongly preferred psalms to anything else, used a song book almost totally comprised of psalms, and a song book that contained outside the psalms on a handful of scriptural and creedal items which could very well be used in another way, I highly doubt any creed was sung.

The evidence however that he sang hymns seems to be actually pretty much zero. The evidence that he sang some other items is scant. The evidence he wrote a hymn is far from conclusive and who is to say that even if he did write this piece of poetry that it was not just that, which someone else put to music and sang in Strasbourg. There is no evidence it was ever sung in Geneva.

So there is lack of evidence on both sides, but most speculation is certainly on the side of those who suggest he was not exclusive-psalmody.


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## Poimen (Apr 10, 2013)

A few things to keep in mind: 

1) at that time, the Psalms were not readily available to be sung in French. Calvin had to commission Marot (and later Goudimel) to write out the Psalms in meter which took a great deal of time and money to do. So initially the Genevan song book was a cobbling together of various psalms and other songs. 

2) if you trace the production of the Genevan Psalter you will find less hymns being included to the point that nothing more than the Song of Simeon and the Ten Commandments accompanied the 150 Psalms in the final edition (1562). And it is not as if no hymns were available at the time: 

“The Constance Hymn Book of 1540, called by Hughes Old ‘one of the most important monuments in the history of Reformed liturgy,’ included hymns by Zwingli, Leo Jud, Luther, Wolfgang Capito, and Wolfgang Musculus, among others.” Terry Johnson, The History of Psalm Singing in the Christian Church 

In fact the Reformed churches quickly distinguished themselves from the Lutherans in their liberal use of the Psalms in worship. 

3) Calvin 'negotiated' the singing of psalms in his return to Geneva. He states in his proposed Church Order:

“The other part concerns the psalms, which we desire to be sung in the church, after the example of the ancient Church, and according to St. Paul’s testimony, who said that it was a good thing to sing in the assembly with mouth and heart.” (an obvious reference to Ephesians 5:19) Cited from Louis Fitzgerald Benson, John Calvin and the Psalmody of the Reformed Churches 

4) the following quotation, lifted from Calvin’s commentary on the Psalms (the last commentary he wrote before he died) indicates not only a preference for the Psalms but its superiority over all other songs:

“Wherefore, when we have sought on every side, searching here and there, we shall find no songs better and more suitable for our purpose than the Psalms of David, dictated to him and made for him by the Holy Spirit. But singing them ourselves we feel as certain that God put the words into our mouths as if He Himself were singing within us to exalt His glory.”

5) Calvin’s successors in France, the Huguenots, were well known as Psalm singers: 

“To the early French Protestants the Psalm book was a unit—the Word of God in the personal possession of the humblest, the symbol as well as the vehicle of their new privilege of personal communion with God. To know the Psalms became a primary duty; and the singing of Psalms became _the Reformed cultus, the characteristic note distinguishing its worship from that of the Roman Catholic Church_… It is not possible to conceive of the history of the Reformation in France in such a way that Psalm singing should not have a great place in it” (emphasis mine). Louis Fitzgerald Benson, John Calvin and the Psalmody of the Reformed Churches

6) Under (or perhaps after) Calvin’s influence, most if not all Reformed and Presbyterian churches became exclusive psalmodists or at least refused to sing songs of mere, human composition. The staying power of these psalms (to crowd out other songs) is indicated in that hymns did not become widely sung until the late 18th and early 19th century as worldly influences began to sway the old convictions held by the Reformed churches.

So if Calvin wasn’t an exclusive psalmodist, then I think it is fair to conclude that he was well on his way to becoming one. But I believe, based on the evidence above, that the EP position was something of a 'matured' conviction that he had come to over his lifetime.


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## NaphtaliPress (Apr 10, 2013)

The Confessional Presbyterian journal ran a translation of the introductory preface to the Constance Hymnbook two years back I think. What was interesting is the prefacer in his argument sounded more Lutheran in his worship principle than reformed in justifying hymns (and also the book was intended for use by Lutherans, Anabaptists as well as Reformed), and, at the same time, it is clear that there were folks who believed only psalms should be sung. So it is not as if exclusive psalmody were a foreign notion in 1540. 


Poimen said:


> “The Constance Hymn Book of 1540, called by Hughes Old ‘one of the most important monuments in the history of Reformed liturgy,’ included hymns by Zwingli, Leo Jud, Luther, Wolfgang Capito, and Wolfgang Musculus, among others.” Terry Johnson, The History of Psalm Singing in the Christian Church


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