Singing Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs: One or Three Issues?

Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs: One or Three Issues?

Strange as it may sound this is an issue.  An issue that existed far before 2016 and our church worship wars (sad to use worship and war in the same sentence).  Are these three distinct categories or are they synonymous? Does history have a voice?  Where do commentators stand on this issue?  Do these words occur elsewhere in scripture?  What should we sing in our churches today?

First a quick scriptural overview. The underlying Greek term for the English gloss "Psalms" occurs seven times in the New Testament.  Every time it occurs outside of both Ephesians and Colossians it directly refers to the book of Psalms in the Old Testament canon.  One of those five references is used to create a three-fold division for the OT, "in the Law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms" (Acts 1).  One of these references strongly supports the continued singing of the psalms in local churches, "when ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm" (1 Cor 14:26).

So should we take the remaining two references to the same Greek term to have any other meaning?  Seems obvious that the meaning has not changed, especially since one of those other five references is by Paul himself (writer of both Ephesians and Colossians).

Well that was rather easy and painless.  Now the harder part.   What do hymns and spiritual songs represent?  Restatement of the Psalms or distinct categories?  First, the underlying term for hymns occurs two times.  Guess where?  Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3.  No help there. How about spiritual songs?  Is there any help here identifying these three categories or whether they all refer to the same thing?  The term for songs occurs five times in the NT. Two occur in our common texts (Eph 5 and Col 3). The other three occurrences appear in the book of Revelation (5:9, 14:3, and 15:3).  Eighty three times(LXX) it occurs in the OT, many of which are references found within the book of Psalms.

Singing is also done by Jesus and his disciples in the gospels.  Consider Mt 26:30, "And when they had sung an hymn."  I wonder what they sang?  Is it one of our three terms from Ephesians or Colossians?  Wonder what the content was?  Did it have a tune?

This time the word under focus is a verb.  It occurs four times in the New Testament (Mt 26:30, Mk 14:26, Acts 16:25, and Heb 2:12) and 97 times in the Septuagint (LXX).  It is related to one of the three terms used in both Ephesians and Colossians.  It is the second term "hymns."  Acts and Hebrews translate the concept as "singing praise."  This is very similar to the Hebrew title for the book of Psalms, "Book of Praises."  Our English title "Psalms" comes from the Septuagint not necessarily from the Hebrew text.

So regardless of where you come down on this issue there is at least enough evidence to show that all three categories, directly or imply a source in the book of Psalms.  So lets look at it from both sides by way of application.  Yes, there are multiple commentaries that come down on both sides of this issue.

If all three categories refer to the Psalms, what does your local church do on Sunday Morning or evening?  Okay, for the sake of argument, that they are three separate categories, then at least is your church one-third obedient?  Are they at least following this pattern at all?  If not, why not?  Hymnal too old-fashioned?  Not cool, trendy, and relevant enough?

I praise the Lord for churches in our history who sang from a Psalter.  The church we used to attend in South Carolina explicitly used a hymnal that contained many of the Psalms put to music, both carefully and reverently. Our family still sings from this same hymnal.  I'm thankful our children can learn to sing the Psalms from it too.  There appears to be a strong precedent for taking a detailed look at the psalms for our music and worship concerns within a local church. 

Hope this helps some.  Comments encouraged.