A Critic of Contemporary Christian Music Reviews the OPC Psalter-Hymnal

(The Presbyterian Curmudgeon is proud to present a guest post by his slightly less well-known cousin, B. Censorious.)

Now that the Committee on Christian Education has made available for public comment its proposed Psalter-Hymnal, I find I can no longer stay my pen from its consideration. However, and perhaps to the surprise of some, I shall not review the musical arrangements of the Psalms, and this because to do so would be to distract from the more foundational question which should concern any who would undertake to press a Psalter into the unsuspecting hands of a worshiping congregation. That is, are the Psalms appropriate for Christian worship?

The answer, of course, is no. The reasons for said answer are perhaps innumerable, but I shall here undertake to enumerate at least a few.

Firstly, one finds no intelligent reflection on the fullness of Trinitarian revelation made known in the New Testament in the Psalter, let alone any mention of our Savior’s name. No doubt some will protest that the Lord’s “Anointed” is mentioned in Psalm 2, but really? Why such reluctance? Why the resort to vague euphemism, and why only the one reference? Are the psalmists embarrassed by basic Christian doctrine, or are they perhaps ignorant of it? And while one hates to cast aspersions, one must wonder if something more than ignorance of orthodoxy is at work here; perhaps one finds a latter-day resurgence of Arianism in texts like Psalm 110?

No doubt the partisan adherents of this new Psalter will protest that we read error where, at worst, there is mere omission. Sadly, this is the least of the Psalms’ faults. Too many of them emphasize, if not adulate, the Law while utterly neglecting the Gospel, as exemplified right at the beginning in Psalm 1. (I shall not mention the giddy excesses of Psalm 119 in this regard.) One wonders whether the uninvited push for Psalm-singing is not intended to make  neonomian endeavors such as “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” more palatable to the reformed community.

While the occasional Psalm does make mention of the broader Church and the worshiping community, these welcome respites are buried in a virtual tide of individualism and man-centeredness. Consider the barrage of Psalms 3 through 7, in which David goes on as if the Lord of the universe were preoccupied with nothing more than petty slights to this man’s reputation. Hardly better is the schizophrenic moodiness of the “Yahweh-is-my-boyfriend” genre, exemplified by Psalms 40 and 42. Then when the needs of the community are finally considered, as in Psalm 137, the immature psalmist concludes with an unchristian call for a violent vengeance which includes infanticide. Are these songs really the best the OPC can do?

Sadly, no review of the Psalms would be complete without a consideration of their (for lack of a better term) literary merit. One thinks immediately of Psalm 136 with its droning, mantra-like repetitiveness, which has surely (if unwittingly) been influenced by Eastern religion. A less obvious, but equally troubling, repetition of theme can be found throughout the Psalter, as, for example, in Psalms 146-150. Really, do Psalms 147-150 say anything substantial which has not already been said in Psalm 146? Given the relatively small number of songs the editors could include in the Psalter, one wonders why they did not exert themselves to gather a more comprehensive range of subject matter. 

Still worse is the Psalms’ use of imagery. Take Psalm 110, in which David lurches from one image and location to another so rapidly as to induce whiplash, concluding with a metaphor unrelated to anything which has gone before and utterly inscrutable in itself. Equally confusing is Psalm 32, in which David appears to be addressing God until verse 8, at which point the reader has no way of knowing whether the speaker is still David or has become God or someone else still, let alone who is being addressed. While one does not wish to condescend, this is what one might expect when the serious work of writing sacred poetry is left to a man trained in animal husbandry and combat rather than one with a sound seminary education.

All these problems, we should note, belong to the Psalms as originally written. The Committee on Christian Education assures us the proposed Psalter-Hymnal uses only the most accurate translations and the best available musical settings, but one cannot make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. We must have songs for worship services, but surely there are better places to find them than in the Bible.