Foundations of the Christian Life. Chapter 27. The Holy Spirit #8 - Speaking in Tongues.

Foundations of the Christian Life.
Chapter 27. The Holy Spirit #8 - Speaking in Tongues.

Probably the area of greatest controversy in the work of the Holy Spirit has been the Pentecostal insistence that speaking in tongues is the “Sign” of having received the experience of the Baptism in the Spirit. This has been the greatest stumbling block to acceptance of the whole experience. Even Charismatics choke on this one a little. Usually a Charismatic (rather than a Pentecostal) presentation of the Baptism in the Spirit will not press the point on tongues. Rather Charismatics tend to say that the evidence of the gift of the Spirit is moving into any of the gifts of the Spirit.

I have real problems with the Charismatic position here because I know various people who have moved in the other gifts of the Spirit and have not had this Pentecostal experience. So “moving in the gifts of the Spirit” seems to me to be no sort of proof of having had this experience at all. It is simply a way of trying to avoid the embarrassing question of tongues.

And embarrassing it is! How can you explain to people that you expect them to speak in a language they don’t know; that they don’t understand and that no one else will understand – except God. It is more than a little offensive to the sensibilities of nice middle class people. In fact, it could be construed to be a sure sign that you have gone a bit crazy in the head.

So the point of question in this chapter, then, is the Pentecostal claim: Is tongues the sign of having received the Pentecostal experience?

I have to admit here again that I take quite a different position to just about anyone I have ever heard or read on the subject. The “answers” given me by both “pro-tongues” and “anti- tongues” people really didn’t satisfy as they left too many unanswered questions. So here is my contribution to the debate.

To understand what we are going to look at in this chapter I am going to put a few ideas up that seem at first to be quite unrelated, but before we finish I will draw the threads together.

BACKGROUND IDEAS:

1. A Biblical Psychology.

I covered some of this in Chapter 21 so I do not want to go over that in detail again but we need to summarise to set the scene again.

(a) Man as Created.

Genesis 2:7.
"The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being/soul."

This verse describes to us the construction or make up, or “psychology”, of the human personality as God intended in creation. In God’s creation of man we were made one being with three distinct parts: A spirit, a soul and a body.

In God’s plan this is how man was meant to operate:
The Holy Spirit was to dwell in our spirit. I used the illustration of a hand in a glove to try to explain this.
We were made to be Spirit-filled.
The Holy Spirit was to speak to us in our intuition.
Our spirit would then inform our soul through our mind.
The mind would then direct the will.
Resulting in bodily action.

(b) Man as Fallen.

When Adam rebelled against God, in what we know as the Fall, there was a major disruption in the human personality.

The first thing that happened was that man died spiritually. By this we do not mean that mankind now has no spirit at all. His spirit still exists but his spirit has lost contact with the spiritual realm, in particular the Spirit of God who he was created to relate to in a unique way. The Holy Spirit withdrew from the human spirit. The result is that even though there still is a human spirit, it is flat, weak, performing below God’s original intention, just like a glove without a hand in it.

The link between the Holy Spirit and the human spirit was broken. Man no longer could receive knowledge from the Holy Spirit. But man’s soul still needed knowledge to survive so he turned to the body to gain knowledge through his senses – that is what “eating of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” means.
But in turning to the body for knowledge the soul became dependent on the body so a reversal took place in the human personality.

The Body
Now rules the Soul
Which is in turn merged with the human Spirit.

This is what we call the “fleshly, or carnal, man” because the fleshly appetites of the body are now the dominant drives in human beings.

The human spirit is thus “trapped” inside the carnal soul and body and cannot break free to rule.

(c) Man as Redeemed in Christ.

The Holy Spirit enters into our human spirit again and we are “born again”. But the bondage of the “flesh” is not removed immediately. We need to be sanctified in spirit, soul and body (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

So the fact is, though we are “born again” our spirit is still in fleshly bondage.

2. The Power of Words.

Man was made in God’s image – and the only thing we know about God at the point man was made is that God is a speaking, creative God – he created by speaking.

So we must assume man was also made a speaking, creative being.

Our words have spiritual power to create things, they have power to build up or to destroy, to bless or to curse. And this power is not just spiritual or soulish – there is power in the physical realm as well.

How does this work?

Some Questions:
(a) God speaks into our spirit – so what does the spirit run on?
Answer: Words.

(b) Our spirit informs our soul in our minds – what does the mind run on?
Answer: Words.

(c) Where does the spirit and mind find their most natural outlet in the body?
Answer: In the tongue.

(d) What does the tongue run on?
Answer: Words.

So at the point of our tongue – our speaking – spiritual power, mental power and physical power come together in a unique way in God's plan.
It all runs on words. Speaking. The tongue.

This does not change because of the Fall – “the gifts and the call of God are without change of mind” on his part (Romans 11:29). Having given man this ability he is not going to take it away. The real power of the fleshly man is still just where God created it to be – in the tongue. This is taught in the Bible in many ways.

That’s two sets of ideas I want you to be aware of.
1. We were created in God’s image, a three part being of Spirit, soul and body that was designed to work in a particular way. As a result of the Fall there has been a complete corruption of the human personality.
2. The human personality finds its greatest power of release in words, in the tongue. This was true before the fall where Man worked in the image of God – creating by commanding. It remains true today. The point where the physical word, the spiritual world and the soul come together most powerfully is at the tongue, in our words. Through our words we affect the physical, soulish and spiritual worlds.

Let’s put these two ideas up on the shelf for a few minutes while we look at another set of ideas.

(3) Functions of the Human Spirit.

The human spirit has many functions – normally we would identify three in teaching on this:
* conscience – the ability to discern moral right from wrong,
* intuition – the ability to perceive knowledge spiritually and not in the mind, and thirdly
* communion – the deep desire to know God that every human being has. There is a “God-shaped vacuum” in each one of us that can only be satisfied by a relationship with the Spirit of God dwelling in our hearts, just as God originally intended.

But there are other functions of the human spirit. To illustrate this I will mention two:
* Creativity. I have already touched on this in saying we were created in the image of God – a creative being. This is a spiritual function. God is Creative and God is Spirit. Creativity belongs to Spirit. Despite what many modern philosophers say, creativity is not a function of the mind, it is a spiritual function. It arises out of the depths of the human personality and is completely irrational in its function. Much has been said about this – even by secular philosophers – and it is now pretty well accepted that creativity is not a rational function of the mind. It too often runs counter to the mind’s operation. Creativity is not planned in the mind, rather it is birthed in the inner being, in the spirit, and only later does the mind become aware of it. Often the mind cannot cope with the shear irrationality of the creative force. The mind likes to order things into nice neat compartments – creativity likes to break the bounds of the boxes the mind creates.
* The other area is health. John and Paula Sandford talk in their book, “Healing of the Wounded Spirit”, about this function of the human spirit. The spirit’s job, if you like, is to sustain life in the body, and as such releases spiritual powers of health and healing throughout the body so that we can live in the body. They give several quotes from scripture to illustrate this function but we wont go into that now.

But besides these functions of the human spirit there are others – some of which we are almost completely unaware of. Reading George Otis’ book, “The Twilight Labyrinth” gives a few clues as to what the human spirit is, or was, capable of. I recommend it. Also, Watchman Nee, “The Latent Power of the Soul”.

So let’s just put that idea up on the shelf for a few minutes: The human spirit has functions we are unaware of - and look at another idea.

4. Spiritual Gifts.

There are many ways of looking at the whole question of spiritual gifts. Just for a few moments let’s look at a way you may not have thought of before.

There are two kinds of spiritual gifts:

1. There are those gifts that are totally supernatural – they are a gift from God and there is no measure of human ability that we can put into the equation. For instance, healing or working of miracles would seem to me to be something that is totally supernatural. We don’t have the ability to do these things in the natural and can only do them if God gives us a new supernatural spiritual ability.

2. But on the other hand there are some spiritual gifts that are not so totally supernatural. Rather they are – or can be - natural abilities we have which are lifted to a higher level by God anointing it with a spiritual gift or power. Some gifts that can be like this are teaching, preaching, evangelism. We could see, in some cases, how a person had a natural bent towards that ability even before they became a Christian and God then took it and used it in a Christian context. However even these gifts may be in some people totally supernatural.
I, myself, was not aware of any natural ability to teach before God gifted me with the gift of teaching. Then I had to learn to use the gift – and I’m still learning.

So that’s another set of ideas – keep them in mind – some "spiritual gifts" are not totally supernatural but are natural abilities lifted to a higher level by the gift or anointing of God.

Now let’s look at another set of ideas.

5. There are two types of “Speaking in Tongues”.

One of the helpful distinctions that Pentecostals have made in the whole discussion about tongues is the distinction between the “gift of tongues” and the “prayer tongue”.
This distinction is based on the following scriptures:
a. 1 Corinthians 14:18 Paul himself spoke in tongues - but not in public. Therefore there is a private use of tongues.
b. 1 Corinthians 14:14 – speaking in tongues can be prayer.
c. In this context Paul says that the public use of tongues is a message from God and so should be accompanied with interpretation. The implication is that interpretation is not necessary if tongues is used in private as it is prayer and God understands even if we don't.

Paul seems to be making a distinction here between a private use of tongues as prayer and a public use of tongues in church where it is usually a message and would require interpretation. This is particularly helpful, as we shall see shortly.

The difficulty is Paul talks about both uses of tongues in this passage (1 Corinthian 14) but a little thought can sort it out. Pentecostals are certainly right in making the distinction between the “prayer tongue” and the “gift of tongues”. This distinction holds together pretty well even if there are a few Bible teachers who object to it. The objectors mainly seem to be members of the group of Christians who don’t believe in tongues anyway. Those who speak in tongues are more likely to understand the fine distinctions between various forms of the phenomena than those who do not or who are opposed to the phenomena. If I wanted to know about flying a plane I would ask a pilot, not a farmer. In the same way if I want to know about the finer details of speaking in tongues I am better off talking to someone who has spoken in tongues than in someone who doesn’t believe in tongues.

It is the so-called “prayer tongue” that we find in the Acts instances exclusively. Nowhere in Acts do we see the gift of tongues for messages or for preaching. Rather what we see is people overwhelmed by the Spirit using a private manifestation of tongues in a place where others happen to see them doing it. But the fact that others saw them doing it is incidental. They were not speaking in tongues so others could see them. Nowhere is the demand made that the tongues be interpreted.

Question: What about Acts 2 – people understood the languages?
Answer: That was incidental. The speakers were not bringing messages neither was interpretation used. They were praising, not preaching (“glorifying God” = a Hebraism for “praising God”) and some of the bystanders happened to recognise some of the languages being spoken, but this was purely incidental. God did this as a sign (1 Cor 14:22) at that time and may do it again but that is not the gift of tongues. It is a by-product of the fact that tongues can be, as Paul says, “of men or of angels” (1 Corinthians 13:1).

It is the “prayer tongue” I am talking about here, not the gift of tongues.

That’s the last idea – there is a difference between the prayer tongue and the gift of tongues.

Summary of background ideas:
1. We are beings made up of three parts: Spirit, soul and body.
2. As a result of the Fall our human spirits have been placed in bondage to our body and soul and many of the functions of our spirit work at a lesser ability, or not at all. Some of them we are unaware of.
3. We are spiritual beings and the power of our spirit is released through words, through the tongue, for good or evil. The tongue is the place where our spirit, soul and body comes together in a unique way so power is concentrated there in a unique way.
4. There are two types of spiritual gifts – some are totally supernatural, but others are natural abilities that God takes and anoints to a higher level.
5. There are two manifestations of tongues – the so-called prayer language and the gift of tongues.

Now let’s tie it all together:

SPEAKING IN TONGUES:

I struggled with all this Pentecostal stuff. I was raised in a church that did not believe in it – in fact they were convinced that speaking in tongues was of the devil and anyone who did it was clearly demon possessed. Not only that, they believed that no Christian could be demon possessed. So, by implication, all Pentecostals were not Christian.

My problem was that, at university, I encountered hundreds of young Christians who spoke in tongues and gave no appearance of being demon possessed – in fact they had bright Christian lives and witnesses.

So I researched the matter. I read books for tongues by Pentecostals, and against tongues by others – until I got sick of them all. Then one day my father, who was similarly struggling with the issues, bought an interesting book on the subject by an American writer. The book was called, “Tongues of Men and of Angels” by William J. Samarin. This was the book that made the most sense of the whole question because it didn’t come from a preconceived opinion but rather was trying to understand the whole question of tongues from a purely evidential viewpoint.

As far as I know Samarin is/was not a Christian. He is/was a psychologist and linguist. His purpose in writing the book was that it was his thesis for his doctorate. The phenomena of tongues in churches had hit the media in the States big time and he thought it would be a good topic that brought together his two areas of study – psychology and linguistics – for his Doctoral Thesis.

As books go it made more sense than anything else I have read on the subject.

Samarin examined tongues speaking throughout history and around the world at that time – the early 1970s. He found out some interesting things.

1. Tongues speaking is not something peculiar to Christianity. It occurs in every religion in the world and the history of religion shows that it seems to have so since time began.
2. Speaking in tongues in the religious context seems to occur at times of spiritual revival or renewal – no matter what the religion is. It has frequently appeared in Church history at various revivals. It is not new with Pentecostalism. When spiritual passion is high tongues often accompanies such passion.
3. Many non-religious people find it easy to speak in tongues and do so regularly. In particular Samarin found creative people – musicians, artists, poets, writers and the like – find speaking in tongues very easy.

After all his research Samarin came to the following conclusions:
* Speaking in tongues is a normal and natural phenomena of the human psyche, or subconscious.
* It requires some trigger, or mechanism, for it to be released in most cases (creative people being the exception).

This is interesting in what it says but to understand what he is saying we have to translate it into “Christianese”.

Remember we looked at the structure of the human personality as God created it and then as a result of the Fall.
I pointed out that the human spirit in fallen man is “dead”, in that it is not functioning properly, but it is still there. But the spirit has been merged, or may I say now, submerged, under the conscious activities of the soul.
So the normal functions of the spirit are now “sub-conscious”. And this is what we find in psychological literature. Areas that we Christians understand to be functions of our spirit are deemed to be part of our “subconscious” by psychologists. Psychologists, in general, deny that the concept of a human spirit, in the Christian sense, exists at all. Then, having denied its existence, they then ascribe its functions to this elusive “subconscious”.

Things that get dealt with this way include conscience, intuition, religious affection and creativity. Samarin lumps tongue speaking in here too.

But note what he said – creative people find it easy to speak in tongues. We Christians understand that the whole area of creativity is intuitive and is a part of our human spirituality. Samarin's research suggests there is a link between creativity and tongues speaking in thast they arise out of the same part of the human psyche. That "part" we Christians would recognise as being the human spirit.

So, in our language, Christianese, what Samarin is saying is this:
“Speaking in tongues is a natural function of our human spirit.”

This is a profound conclusion and has tremendous implications for us as Christians.

Now let’s see what Paul says about this.
1 Corinthians 14:14.
“For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays”

We probably need to give this verse it’s fullest meaning – when we speak in tongues it is our human spirit speaking. Not “the Holy Spirit praying through us”, not some sort of divine gift but our own human spirit praying in a language our minds do not know.

Now let’s go back to what I said about the two types of spiritual gifts – gifts that are totally supernatural and gifts that are natural abilities that God takes to a higher level. I want to suggest that speaking in tongues – or what Pentecostals call “the prayer tongue” – is actually a natural function of the human spirit. But at times and with some people God takes this natural ability and raises it to another level and it becomes “the gift of tongues” wherein God speaks a message to a group. Then it requires interpretation.

The normal assumption, by those who know nothing about the historical background of tongues, is that tongues is a gift that is totally supernatural, i.e. it is a gift from God that we didn’t have before we became Christians. But Paul’s words here suggest otherwise.

Hence Paul can make two statements that sound almost contradictory:

1 Corinthians 14:5
“I want you all to speak in tongues”
Presumably meaning the ability to pray in tongues, speak in the language of our human spirit. But then he can say in:

1 Corinthians 12:30
“Do all speak in tongues”
This, in the Greek, demands the answer, “No!” But here it is in a list of gifts of the Spirit, so it means, “Not all of us have the gift of tongues to bring messages from God, just as not all of us have the gift of apostleship, teaching, etc.”

They are not really contradictory but are talking about two quite different things.

Tongues is thus a natural function of the human spirit which all human beings have by virtue of creation. God thought of it. He created it.

In some cases, with some people, God takes that natural ability and raises it to a higher level with an anointing so they move in the gift of tongues. But not everyone who speaks in tongues has the gift of tongues.

Now this is actually the position most Pentecostals have come to but they describe it differently. What they do is make a distinction between the “prayer tongue” and the “gift of tongues”. They are aware that there is a difference, but most of them haven’t a clue why there is a difference or what the difference entails. I have just explained the difference.

So speaking in tongues is a natural function of the human spirit when the human spirit is released from soulish bondage

Because it is a natural function of the human spirit anybody and everybody can do it. Non Christians included.
This means when the non-Christian speaks in tongues it is not demonic (though the means of release may be). But equally when the Christian speaks in tongues it is not the Holy Spirit (though the means of release may be).

The tongues we are talking about here, the prayer language, is therefore not a gift of the Holy Spirit, nor is it Demonic, it is a purely human phenomenon, as such it is part of how God created us.

Hence Paul's statement: "My spirit prays" can be allowed its full weight. We do not have to try to find a way around it.

This idea that speaking in tongues is a natural function of the human spirit is confirmed in a strange way by an interesting fact of the way Luke has written Acts ch 2.

Throughout the chapter Luke makes many allusions to the tower of Babel story (Genesis 10 & 11). You only have to go onto the internet and Google “Babel” and “Pentecost” and you will find hundreds of pages of sermons and Bible studies that bring out the parallels.

So Luke is clearly associating Pentecost and the Tower of Babel together in some spiritual way.
At Babel tongues were divided to divide men so that men could not continue their rebellion against God.
At Pentecost tongues were “given” in a sense, or better “released”, in the Church by the action of the Holy Spirit to bring men together in a new spiritual unity so that they could better serve God.
Pentecost, in that sense, is the reversal of Babel.

It is my personal view that before the Tower of Babel men communicated by speaking in tongues and their spirits still were able to function in the gift of interpretation. My feeling is that, at Babel, God “shut down” the ability of the human spirit to interpret the tongues men were speaking and so immediate confusion resulted. As a result they had to learn to understand each other in their minds and so the control of the soul over the spirit was strengthened – a judgement of God bringing men into bondage. The need to learn languages slows down the progress of acquiring knowledge so the slide into sin would be slower.

In other words, the languages we normally speak in, which we learn from our parents, were not the languages men used before Babel. Language before Babel was intuitive, not learned. Have you ever heard a young child, who cannot speak properly in the language of their parents yet, speaking in their “own language”. We (clever?) adults call it “babbling” (after the Tower of Babel). But are you sure? Are they speaking in the language of their spirit, an intuitive language, unlearned because it is spiritual? It may be that the languages we adults communicate in are the “babble”.

Let’s come back to the Pentecostal experience.

Derek Prince says it is an experience of three parts:
1. A Baptism in the Spirit.
2. A Filling of the Spirit, and
3. An overflow, seen in speaking in tongues.

Let’s redefine that third aspect in the light of what we have seen here.

The third aspect of the Pentecostal experience is a release of the human spirit seen in speaking in tongues, which is a natural, God-given-in-creation function of the human spirit.

But the human spirit, and tongues, has been bound up. The spirit of man as a result of the Fall has been bound to the soul and it needs releasing for us to be able to speak in tongues.
As Samarin says, there needs to be some sort of trigger to enable us to release it.

A RELEASE.

What Samarin says is that tongues are a natural function of the human spirit but they need to have some form of release for people to experience them.
Once people have done it the first time it seems to be easy to do it again at will. But the first time there usually needs to be a release trigger.

In pagan religions this release is usually a combination of music, dance, alcohol, drugs and sex.
For this reason when the crowd saw the disciples speaking in tongues in Acts 2 they said, “They are drunk.” This was their experience of speaking in tongues up to that point – it happened as a result of some sort of religious festival or orgy.
But in fact it was the Holy Spirit of God who had given them the release.

An Important Aside:
Speaking in tongues was not a new thing at Pentecost. It was, in fact, common in the religions of the ancient world, particularly in the Middle East. There are several instances in the OT where tongues are probably the best explanation of what happened – e.g. when the Spirit fell on King Saul and he “prophesied”.

In the ancient world the greatest spiritual experience one could have was to be “possessed” by the god and prophesy. “Oracles” or “prophets” were highly regarded in all countries of the ancient world. But the epitome of this experience of “possession” was speaking in tongues. It was considered to be a form of prophecy, but was the highest form of prophecy because the person speaking had (apparently) lost total control to the gods. Hence tongues was a highly sought after experience in the ancient world. In Corinth there were many religious groups who practised speaking in tongues, usually induced by music, drugs, alcohol and sex.

Hence the statement made by the onlookers in Acts 2 “they are drunk”. In their experience that was how you got to the point of speaking in tongues.

In the light of this historical background Paul’s cryptic comment in 1 Corinthians 12:2 makes a lot of sense”
“You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols.”
He is referring to their past spiritual experiences, and tongues in particular.
Some people are afraid of tongues because of the demonic aspect in some cases. But note that Paul, knowing all about demonic religions and their use of tongues, does not shy away from tongues. We should show the same fearlessness. Again, as I have said before, Satan is not creative. He has no ideas of his own. He only takes and corrupts things God created. As Christians we are to take what has been corrupted and restore it to the rightful use and place in our lives.

Tongues needs some form of release.

How does the Holy Spirit give this release?

1. The Holy Spirit “clothes” us with himself in the Baptism of the Spirit. Our physical bodies are clothed with power from on high. This is the “upon” relationship of the Spirit to us.
2. The Holy Spirit “fills” our human spirit, inspiring and energising it with his presence. This is the “in” relationship of the Spirit to us.

This is the God side of the miracle of spiritual release from soulish bondage: God, in the person of the Holy Spirit, clothes us and fills us.

The stage is set then for a miracle of spiritual release. Our spirits are filled with the Holy Spirit and our bodies are empowered by the same Holy Spirit. Spiritual release - release of our human spirit from the bondage of the soul - is now possible through the person of the Holy Spirit.

If we, in our spirit, then take control of our bodies, by-passing our soul then:
1. The false merging of soul and spirit is immediately broken.
2. The spirit takes rulership over the body and the inverted human psychology (Body ruling soul/spirit merged) is put back in Divine order (spirit controlling soul controlling body).
We are then on the path to spiritual maturity.

But to any miracle there is a human side also. The two gifts of the Holy Spirit are on us – the “in” and the “upon” – but it is like they are “short circuited”. The power resident in them is not released. It is like having two phases of a three-phase electrical circuit. If all three phases are not connected the whole circuit malfunctions and the power is not fully released.

The missing phase is something we have to do. We have to “flick the switch” as it were.

How do we, by our spirit, rule our body?

Answer: Our whole being was designed to run on words. Somehow we have to allow our spirit to express words through our body, by-passsing the mind, which is the normal way this happens. This is speaking in tongues.

The power of God in us is released through words.
The power of our spirit, soul and body as created by God is released through words. To make the connection so that the three phases: The Spirit on us, the Spirit in us and our own spirit released all come together we must do something – we must speak.

But not in the language of our minds – because that is soulish and will only increase the bondage we are under to the flesh. We must speak in the language of our spirit. We must speak in tongues. When we do that the connection between the Spirit on us and the Spirit in us in made and supernatural power is released in and through us to the glory of God.

Release is given through the person of the Holy Spirit who bypasses for us the mind – that thing which normally controls our tongue and enables us to take ownership of our tongue by our spirit.

It’s our choice.

Back to the question: Is tongues the sign of the Pentecostal experience?

The answer has to be, “Yes”. But not in the way Pentecostals usually teach. Rather the work of the Holy Spirit in bringing us to spiritual release in our human spirit is not completed until we “flick the switch” and speak in tongues. When we do this the power of the Holy Spirit is released in us to bring us freedom. If we don’t “flick the switch” there are ways we remain in bondage to the flesh – forever. Speaking in tongues is “flicking the switch” and the fact that we can do it without sex, drugs, alcohol, heavy music and dancing proves that the Holy Spirit is at work in us. It is the proof of having received the Holy Spirit.

One thing is for sure – the full power of the Holy Spirit, as given to us in the baptism and Filling of the Spirit, is not released through us if we don’t speak in tongues. It is short-circuited by our failure to “connect”.