SPEAKING WITH TONGUES.
Basal New-Testament Passages (§ 1). Manifestations in the Early Church (§ 2). Old-Testament and Ethnic Parallels (5 3). The New- Testament Phenomena (§ 4). Meaning of Glossa (§5).
Of the early Christian phenomenon called " speaking with tongues " (Gk. glossolalia) I Cor. xii.-xiv. gives a fairly comprehensible picture. It is represented as an activity of the Spirit of God coming upon man and constraining him to external expressions directed to God but not understood by others (xii. 10-11, xiv. 2), during which the soul life is passive and the understanding in
i. Basal abeyance (xiv. 14-15); the condition
New- is that of Ecstasy (q.v.), the utterances
Testament are words or sounds of prayer or praise,
Passages, but are not clear in meaning (xiv. 5, 13-16), and give the impression to the hearer of being mysteries or insane expressions (xiv. 2, 23), and need, at any rate, to be interpreted, though an unbeliever might see in the phenomenon a divine sign (xiv. 21-22) . Three sets of illustrations used by Paul serve to make this clear: in the use of pipe and harp distinct and separate notes are necessary to give meaning, a definite set of sounds of the trumpet is required to give the signal to battle, and knowledge of a strange tongue is needed in order to interpret it (xiv. 7-11). This phenomenon seems to include sighs, groanings, shoutings, cries, and utterances either of disconnected words (such as Abba, hosanna, hallelujah, maranatha) or of connected speech of a jubilating sort which impresses the observer as ecstatic prayer or psalmodic praise. Other passages in the New Testament refer to the practise. So the ungenuine Mark xvi. 17, as well as Acts x. 46, xix. 6, refers to something like that in I Cor. xii.-xiv. But Acts ii. 1-13, referring to the events at Pentecost, needs to be distinguished, though the phenomena mentioned in verses 4 and 13 range themselves with those of I Cor. xiv. 21, 23. But the intention of the writer in Acts is not to describe ecstatic speech, it is rather to describe a miracle of tongues. The noise resulting, happening at the festival of weeks, drew a large concourse,
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Speaking: with Tongues
and in verses 9-11 are named nations representatives of which each heard in his own tongue the disciples make known the wonders of God. While only four varieties of speech are necessarily involved, the implication is that these Galileans were enabled to speak the Gospel in the languages of the world. But the problem here presented is difficult. How could men of different nationality hear, each of them, all the disciples speaking his mother tongue? and it is not suggested that certain disciples addressed groups. Indeed, this appears to be within the region of legend. Moreover, it would not be strange for the Jew of verse 9 to hear a Galilean speak his mother tongue; the conjectures of Tertullian, Jerome, and of modern men that some other word is to be read for " Judea " does not help in view of the text, and the conclusion is that the story of the miracle is a late intrusion. The speech of Peter in verses 17-18 implies a prophetic inspiration, but says nothing of strange tongues. The enlargement which is to be seen here can be traced to Judaistic sources, as in the belief that the law of Sinai was not to be restricted to the Hebrews but to be given to the nations in a miracle like that of Pentecost (cf . Philo, De septenario, and De decalogo, §§ 9, 11). Such a conception as this, embodied in the work of the Alexandrian Jew, could easily become the basis of an insertion like that in Acts ii. This conception is the more easily understood in that the character of Luke's representation is to make Christianity universalistic. Related phenomena appear elsewhere. In I Cor. xii. 1-3 Paul evidently means by the pneumatikoi especially those in ecstasy; in verses 4-11 he shows that the working of the Spirit is varied, and in xiv. 37-39 the pneumatikoi may be those who speak with tongues. He also places here the prophets who were endowed with the Spirit alongside those speaking with tongues; with verse 39 should be 2. Manifes- compared I Thess. v. 19-20. Paul had tations in not had occasion to warn at Thessalonthe Early ica against ecstatic and related phe- Church. nomena (cf. II Thess. ii. 2). Gal. iv. 6 and Rom. viii. 15-16, 26-27 are to be brought into this relation, in which the crying (Gk. krazori) of the Spirit and its testimony are distinguished from that of man's spirit. It is God's spirit which speaks within us, and when we know not how to pray, the Spirit makes intercession with unutterable groanings (Rom. viii. 26), and this God understands (verse 27) . The apostle himself has had experience of this speaking with tongues (I Cor. xiv. 18; cf. II Cor. xii. 1, in which he describes ecstasy, and note verse 4, which is to be placed with I Cor. ii. 9). Somewhat unrelated to this species of ecstasy are the phenomena of Rev. i. 10, iv. 2, xvii. 3, xxi. 10, which deal with apocalyptic vision. Justin Martyr relates that in his own times spiritual gifts were active in the Church (Trypho, lxxxii., lxxxviii., Eng. transl., ANF, i. 240, 243-244) though it is not certain that speaking with tongues is here intended ; in chap, xxxix. he speaks of seven kinds of gifts, and this seems to combine Isa. xi. 2 and I Cor. xii. 7-10, though speaking with tongues is again not mentioned. The " Address to the Greeks," chap, x., hardly comes into account here, since the Greek doctrine of inspiration is here under discussion.
In the Acta Perpetuce et Felicitatis, viii., the Spirit overpowers Perpetua and constrains her to utterance of a name of which she had not thought. The description of the outbreak of Montanism in Eusebius, Hist, eccl., V., xvi. 7 sqq. (NPNF, 2 ser., i. 231) does not exclude speaking with tongues, though the concern here is not with unmeaning and unintelligible speech but with prophetic utterance, and not only Montanus but two women had the seizures. Epiphanius (Hcer., xlviii. 4) makes Montanus describe his experience as a taking-out of his own heart by the Lord and the implanting of a new one. Tertullian (Adv. Marcionem, V., viii., Eng. transl. ANF, iii. 445-446) seems to include, among his demands of Marcion, that the latter explain what seems to be a claim to glossolalia, and the same thing is probably meant when in his De resurrectione carnis there is a kind of utterance mentioned which no one can know without interpretation. A weighty witness for the continuance of this gift is presented by Irenaeus (Hmr., V., vi. 1), who speaks of " many brethren in the Church who through the Spirit speak all
kinds of languages " (ANF, i. 531), and he evidently refers to the phenomena noted by Paul. Yet it can not be decided whether Irenseus meant speech in foreign languages like that of Pentecost or a phenomenon like that of Corinthians. But that some such phenomena were in his mind is clear, with a probable reference to I Cor. xiv. Chrysostom appears at a loss to describe the facts, which are no longer manifested in his times. In a book that is half Jewish and half Christian, the Testament of Job, is a description of the ecstatic speech of the daughters of Job, one of whom used the method of one class of angels; and this implies the conception of a foreign tongue. Yet the phenomenon is not altogether common, and it can not have been important in the apostolic Church; later manifestations of which church history knows, such as those of the Irvingites, must be explained as repristinations of the events of Pentecost and early Christianity.
Conditions similar to those outlined in the foregoing are indicated in the Old Testament, where the influence either of the Spirit of God or of an evil spirit is represented as producing exalted, enthusiastic, ecstatic speech or action. To the examples
noted under Ecstasy (q.v.) may be
3. Old-Tes- added the seventy elders of Num. xi.
tament and 24-30, and the illustrations furnished
Ethnic by Jer. xxiii. 32, xxix. 26. Having a
Parallels, connection with these phenomena is
the condition of the prophet when having his vision; the consciousness however permits the prophet to give a clear and connected account of what he sees and an interpreter is not needed, and nothing is said in this relation of ecstatic speech. But the things seen in the visions appear to the prophet to be psychological realities. The Greek-Roman world furnishes many evident parallels. The Greek oracles were mediated through priests or priestesses who uttered what the divinity suggested to them while their consciousness was in complete abeyance. Another characteristic of the giving of oracles is the obscurity or unintelligibility of the oracle, which ever needs explication. So
Speaking1 with Tongues Speer, Robert Elliott