Is speaking in tongues Biblical? (Updated)

March 25, 2010

 

I've seen men and women "speaking in tongues" in my church and being "filled" by the Holy Spirit, but I'm not sure what to think about the practice. Are these things consistent with the Bible's teaching?

 

In explaining our perspective on speaking in tongues by a secondary or subsequent filling of the Holy Spirit, we will base our answer on three arguments: a scriptural argument, a historical argument and a theological argument.

Update: Additional content has been appended to the end of this article.

 

Scriptural Argument

The gift of speaking in tongues is described by the Apostle Paul as part of an extended teaching from 1Cor 12-14.  In these chapters, Paul teaches five basic points about spiritual gifts to the Corinthian church:

1. The Church needed to recognize the importance of a plurality of gifts within the Body and that all gifts come from God alone and not according to the desires of men.
2. Paul wanted the church to stop teaching that speaking in tongues should be a primary goal for believers in the church.
3. They needed to recognize the proper priority of gifts within the Body (with tongues at the bottom of the list) and the need to give greater attention and emphasis to the higher priority gifts within the Body rather than the lower priority gifts.
4. They needed to understand how the gift of tongues should be used within the church when it is present.
5. They needed to understand that there is one gift of the Spirit that is common to all members of the Body and transcends all other gifts for all time in eternity: the greatest gift of all, love.

The first point of Paul's teaching in those three chapters is to de-emphasize the gift of tongues rather than to emphasize it. To explain why, I need to provide a little detail from those chapters, focusing on verses 12:27-31. 

1Cor. 12:27  Now you are Christ’s body, and individually members of it.
1Cor. 12:28 And God has appointed in the church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, various kinds of tongues.
1Cor. 12:29 All are not apostles, are they? All are not prophets, are they? All are not teachers, are they? All are not workers of miracles, are they?
1Cor. 12:30 All do not have gifts of healings, do they? All do not speak with tongues, do they? All do not interpret, do they?
1Cor. 12:31 But earnestly desire the greater gifts.

In the preceding verses of Chapter 12, Paul had taught that the Church is made up of individuals each with different God-given gifts, yet the Body can only function in a healthy way if it works as a team just as the various parts of the human body work together.

The sin of the Corinthian church was that it elevated one gift (i.e., speaking in tongues) above the rest in importance and desireability, and it taught all members of the church to seek toward attaining that gift. Paul taught that this kind of thinking regarding spiritual gifts is wrong.  First, not all Christians will be given the same gift nor can we acquire gifts for ourselves by our own power or desire. God alone assigns gifts. So, it was wrong for the church to expect every believer to acquire a specific gift like tongues, for that was impossible.

Then in verses 27-31, Paul deals with the second mistake the church made by elevating tongues above other gifts. They gave the gift of speaking in tongues the wrong importance. Rather than being the highest priority gift, speaking in tongues is actually the lowest priority gift. In verse 28, Paul gives the correct order of importance for the gifts to the Body. This listing is presented as a hierarchical order in the Greek language, so Paul is clearly setting forth an order of importance for the gifts of the Spirit, listed the gifts in a diminishing order of importance as we move down the list. 

In verse 28 Paul begins by saying that the most importance gift to the Body is the gift of apostleship. Only certain men could meet the strict tests required for apostleship presented elsewhere in scripture (e.g., having been appointed by Christ or having seen the resurrected Lord in person, having the power of miracles, etc.). Therefore, the gift of apostleship is no longer available in the church today though it did exist in Paul's day.

The second priority gift is the gift of prophecy. By prophecy Paul could have meant the ability to reveal new spiritual truth or the ability to foretell future events, which are different kinds of prophecy. In the context of these verses, it seems most likely Paul was referring to the ability to reveal new spiritual truths, since this kind of prophecy is tied to the gift of apostleship (i.e., New Testament scripture was revealed through apostles). Since Revelation and Hebrews teaches that all prophecy has ceased until Christ's return, this gift is no longer available either. 

The third most important gift is the gift of teaching (e.g., the ability to communicate spiritual truth). Since the first two gifts are no longer functioning within the church today, the gift of teaching now takes top priority within the Body. From there, the list continues in decreasing priority to the gifts of miracles, healing, helps, administration, and various tongues (e.g., speaking in tongues, interpreting tongues, & other speaking or exhortation gifts). 

So in today's church, the highest priority within the Body should be placed on the teaching gift, and ironically, the lowest priority is given to the gift of tongues. As stated above we cannot aspire to certain gifts nor coach others to attain them. Only God appoints the gifts, and we can only have the gifts God gives us. Consequently, Paul's list of gifts is not intend to be a "wish list" for an individual Christian. Rather the list assigns the proper priority for how the Church should make use of the various gifts when gathering together (e.g., emphasize teaching rather than emphasizing speaking in tongues, etc.).

When the Corinthian church gathered, the gathering had become all about speaking in tongues rather than teaching or other higher-prioritiy spiritual activities. In reality, speaking in tongues was the least important gift within the church, so it shouldn't have been emphasized at all.

Now, that brings us to verse 31. Paul says earnestly desire the greater gifts.  The word for "earnestly desire" is zeloo, which translates seek zealously. Two questions arise at this point. Who should do this seeking and what is Paul saying they should seek? In answering the "who," the first thing to understand is that Paul's statement in verse 31 is written in the second person plural in the Greek - in Texas we would say "y'all." So, Paul is addressing the church body as a whole in this verse - not an individual Christian. 

Secondly, we know that the church in Corinth had incorrectly elevated a low priority gift (i.e., tongues) to an inappropriately high degree of importance within the gathering of the church. This mistake resulted in too much attention being given to those within the Body who exercised the gift of tongues, and it did so at the expense of those who might exercise the more important gifts, like teaching. So, the church was neglecting the importance of teaching, miracles, helps, etc. while spending too much time on speaking in tongues. 

So, Paul is working to reverse that trend by telling them in verse 31 to seek earnestly the higher priority gifts within the fellowship (like teaching, miracles, etc.).  In other words, desire to see teaching exercised, desire to see miracles exercised, but don't desire to see lessor gifts exercised at the expense of greater gifts. Sadly, the Corinthian church had turned the priorities of gifts on its head. They had elevated speaking in tongues to the top of their priority list, and furthermore they incorrectly told believers that they should desire to gain that gift when it wasn't possible to gain a gift God hadn't appointed first.

Therefore, the message in verse 31 wasn't that individual Christians should strive to attain a better gift - that's impossible, since only the Holy Spirit bestows gifts according to God's desires.  Rather, the church as a whole should seek to have the higher-priority gifts (like teaching) made more prominent within the Body, because the higher priority gifts naturally promote greater maturity and growth among believers.

To add additional weight to this teaching, Paul later introduces a proof text from the Old Testament in Chapter 14:

1Cor. 14:20 Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; yet in evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature.
1Cor. 14:21 In the Law it is written, “BY MEN OF STRANGE TONGUES AND BY THE LIPS OF STRANGERS I WILL SPEAK TO THIS PEOPLE, AND EVEN SO THEY WILL NOT LISTEN TO ME,” says the Lord.
1Cor. 14:22 So then tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe but to unbelievers; but prophecy is for a sign, not to unbelievers but to those who believe.

In verse 20, Paul chastises the church for being spiritually immature in their thinking. Their inappropriate use of the gift of speaking in tongues was evidence of their spiritual immaturity. In fact, Paul goes further and says that if they must be ignorant of something (i.e., if they must be "infants"), let them be ignorant of evil rather than being ignorant of the proper place for speaking in tongues. 

Paul implies that the Corinthian church was ignorant in not appreciating what had already been written in the Torah concerning the purpose for God giving a gift of speaking in tongues. He reminds them that in Deut 28:49 (later repeated in Isaiah 28:11-12) that God had foretold how one day in the future the Jewish people would see a "strange people" (e.g., Gentiles) speaking to God in strange tongues. This event would be a sign to the Jewish people that their Messiah has come, and yet God says the Jewish nation wouldn't heed this sign (i.e., the Jewish people would not receive their Messiah). This was the essential - and exclusive - reason God gave the church the gift of tongues.

Paul then presents his essential conclusion in verse 22. Tongues, Paul says speaking in tongues was to be a sign to the unbelieving Jews of Paul's day that their Messiah had come. It was NOT a gift given to the Church for the edification of believers (1Cor 14:12). On the contrary, the sign to believers was to be the fulfillment of this prophecy (i.e., the fulfillment of Jews not believing in their Messiah). So ironically, the church in Corinth was ignorant of their fulfillment of Isaiah's prediction from God's word (which they should have recognized had they given proper attention to learning God's word), and meanwhile they were too busy giving inappropriately emphasis to the gift of tongues, which is was meant for unbelieving Jews and not for them!

Based on Paul's teaching in 1Cor 12-14, the gift of tongues is no longer needed in the Body after it had served its prophetic purpose in the first century (since the fulfillment of its purpose occured in Paul's day), and therefore the gift has disappeared from the Church. While we can't rule out the possibility of this gift re-emerging at times according to God's purposes, those occasions should always require an audience of unbelieving Jews in keeping with its stated purpose according to Scripture.

Therefore, on the authority of Scripture we believe that when we obseve men and women "speaking in tongues" in churches today (e.g., in Pentecostal or other charismatic congregations) in the absence of unbelieving Jews, this behavior is a forced ritual of the flesh rather than a natural expression of the Spirit. In other words, we believe speaking in tongues is often (if not always) a faked utterance by unwitting participants deceived by unBiblical teaching and group pressure to create this expression.

 

Historical Argument

Before the rise of the charismatic movement in early 20th century America, the gift of speaking in tongues was virtually unknown in the church. There is no mention of it in authoritative church literature following the first century, and neither do respected church leaders after the Apostolic age ever teach on the continuing use or appearance of the gift. The gift seems to have disappeared from the Church soon after the first century (as Paul's teaching would anticipate).

Mysteriously on April 14, 1906, in Southern California, something resembling the practice of speaking in tongues re-emerges in the form of the modern Pentecostal movement. Most church historians trace the origins of this movement to a revival meeting led by William J. Seymore in the African Methodist Anglican Church. The unorthodox practices of this group included claims of extreme manifestations of the Spirit, which continued for several years and were roundly criticized by many respected Christian authorities as unbiblical.

In fact, the Los Angeles church in which Seymore first preached his message of pentecostalism subsequently barred him from further preaching following his introduction of the teaching that salvation must be accompanied by speaking in tongues. His teaching was correctly declared to be heresy, and the church wisely separate itself from his influence.

Like many false teachers, unfortunately, Seymore eventually found a new audience for his false teaching, and the Pentecostal movement began to grow by peddling a captivating style of emotional, experiential religion. Under the influence of Seymore's preaching (and those who followed him), speaking in tongues was soon viewed as an essential work of salvation by many Pentecostal churches, and it became the defining characteristic of a movement that continues today in various forms.

Today the charismatic movement takes various names and holds to a variety of doctrinal views, but the uniting force behind the movement often remains the unbiblical belief in a post-salvation supernatural manifestation (or filling) of the Spirit, accompanied by speaking in tongues, which is said to be the necessary "proof" of faith.

If God did intend the gift of speaking in tongues to be an essential aspect of every Christian's experience, then how can we explain the fact that the practice disappeared from the Church for over 1,900 years only to re-emerge in these last days under the teaching of a shading California preacher? This defies common sense and the teaching of Scripture concerning the establishing of the church and the end of all prophecy.

Interestingly, the Pentecostal movement's beginning closely mirrors the establishment of another false and uniquely American religious movement: Mormonism. Both movements claim to have sole ownership of the truth...a truth that was supposedly lost to the world until conveniently discovered by a solitary American figure of questionable background.  Again, these stories of lost knowledge rediscovered defies common sense and Biblical teaching.

The history of this movement gives compelling evidence to support our conclusion that the charismatic movement is a man-made, false expression rather than a true movement of the Holy Spirit.

 

Theological Argument

The charismatic emphasis on speaking in tongues (and in fact, the entire Pentecostal movement itself) runs counter to scripture in the way it elevates the role of the Holy Spirit in our Christian experience at the expense of Christ Himself. The charismatic experience is centered on the work of the Holy Spirit. His presence is emphasized, His power is featured, and His glory is sought after. In this "Spirit-centered" environment, Christ's role in His Church is inevitably diminished.

This is exactly opposite to scripture's teaching concerning the role of the Holy Spirit in the Church and in the Godhead. Scripture teaches that the principle role of the Spirit in the Godhead is to testify of Christ and bring Him glory. It is never to bring glory nor attention to Himself (i.e., John 15:26; 16:13-14). Consequently, the Holy Spirit never produces nor participates in any outward manifestation within the Body of Christ which seeks to glorify Himself over Christ. Instead, the primary way we come to know of the work of the Holy Spirit among men is to witness the conviction of sin and a confession of Christ (Acts 2:37-38). 

Unfortunately, the Pentecostal movement has placed this Biblical principle on its head. Implcit in the teaching and practices of this movement is a view that the Spirit exists for His own sake and to bring glory to Himself within the Church (i.e., leading believers to call upon the Spirit and request His "filling"). In such an environment, Christ receives glory only peripherally by association with the Spirit. The Bible, however, teaches that the role and ministry of the Holy Spirit is a background role visible only in the way He draws men to the Lord (e.g., John 3:8).

This pattern is best exemplified in the story of Abraham finding a bride for his son, Isaac in Genesis 24. The Godhead is represented in the story, where Abraham represents the Father, Isaac is the Son and Rebekka is the Bride of the Son (i.e., the Church). But where is the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is pictured by the nameless servant of Abraham, who travels to Abraham's ancestoral home to select a Bride. The key feature of the story is that the Spirit is never named. His identity remains in the shadows of the story to emphasize how the Spirit works behind the scenes on behalf of the Father and to the glory of the Son.

Based on our Biblical understanding of the Spirit's role and manner, we can safely say that the Spirit would never participate in any process that resulted in bringing glory to Himself, including speaking in tongues (apart from the narrowly-defined purpose presented in Scripture) or other such manifestations. Rather, the ministry of the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to draw men to Christ and equip the saints to spread the Gospel. As Paul stated, "Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified." (1Cor 1:22-23).

Therefore, we believe based on scripture, history and theology that speaking in tongues or similar manifestations are almost always false and man-initiated. In fact, we believe that in many cases such displays are likely the work of the demonic realm, knowing Satan desires to blind unbelievers with false signs and weaken believers by emphasizing personal experience over sound Biblical doctrine.

 

The Error of the "Filling" of the Holy Spirit

We believe the secondary "filling' of the Holy Spirit is also a false doctrine of the Pentecostal movement. For the sake of brevity we won't offer a detailed explanation here, but in general two kinds of error are responsibile for this incorrect doctrine.

First, those who teach of a secondary filling by the Spirit commit a logical error in concluding that what occured within the early Church must be expected to continue today.

The belief in a subsequent "filling" of the Holy Spirit comes from misunderstanding the meaning and purpose of various passages in Acts that describe the ministry of the Holy Spirit during the early Church. In the earliest days of the Church, men often came to a saving faith in Christ (an act which requires the active participationg of the Spirit to soften the heart), yet a some later point they experienced an outward manifestation of the Spirit's indwelling (i.e., speaking in tongues or other supernatural manifestation).

Though this was a common experience in the first years of the Church, Scripture never teaches that this would be the common experience of all believers. That last statement bears repeating: Scripture never teaches that all believers should expect a subsequent "filling" experience by the Holy Spirit. Today as then, a believer is indwelled by the Holy Spirit at the point of faith, but there is no expectation for an additional "filling" or manifestation of the Spirit to follow. Instead, the normative experience for Christians since the first century has been to see the Holy Spirit manifest His presence only through the fruit of the Spirit and the giving of spiritual gifts (Gal 5:22).

Nevertheless, the Pentecostal movement leaders assumed that the supernatural experiences of the early Church should be universal for all believers, so they began teaching that the way the Spirit worked in the early church will, by necessity, continue for all believers who are worthy or who seek His filling. This is a false assumption built on faulty logic and without support in scripture. As believers, we can't determine our doctrinal beliefs by presuming what God may do apart from His word. For example, using the same logic employed by the Pentecostal church, we might also teach that because God once caused a donkey to speak in Numbers 22 that therefore we should expect Him to make donkeys speak regularly. Obviously it's nonsense.

In reality, the early church experienced many unique practices. It had the benefit of the apostle's testimony and leadership, and it had the burden of establishing the truth of the Gospel among a skeptical population that had never experienced the New Testament faith. The Apostles had to win over their first converts from three different groups (Jews, Samaritans and Gentiles) that each had some prior (and incorrect) understanding of God's plan of redemption.

These challenges led God to make special accomodations for the Church using supernatural manifestations. The supernatural manifestations of the Holy Spirit were powerful and essential tools to validate the message of the Gospel and the authority of the Apotles during the establishment of the early church. The supernatural manifestations also validated and distinguished the true church and true apostles from those who might try to counterfeit or distort the Gospel during its early days.

Secondly, this belief comes from an error in the interpretation of scripture. The Pentecostal movement improperly interprets the Greek word "pleroo." When used in Scripture, the word means to be made full or amply supplied. It does not usually mean to "fill up." As an example, Paul says in Phil 4:18 "And my God will supply (pleroo) all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus."  As the word implies in this verse, God isn't "filling up" our needs but rather meeting our needs fully. This is the proper view of the word.

Unfortunately, the Pentecostal movement has misappropriated this word to suit their own purposes in claiming that the word describes a more complete giving of the Holy Spirit, particularly in often-quoted passages like Eph. 5:18: "And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit." As with the earlier verse from Philippians, the "filling" here refers not to a greater measure of the Spirit but a greater reliance on the Spirit as He already exists in us.

To suggest that there is "more" of the Spirit available to any believer defies the Biblical protrayal of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a single entity, without division or measure. Consequently, all Christians receive the entire Holy Spirit. There is nothing less than the whole Spirit available to all believers from the moment of faith. On the other hand, a believer can be in submission to the leading of the Spirit to varying degrees. This is the meaning of the phrase "be filled by the Holy Spirit." Paul meant that the believer should be completely reliant upon and obedient to the Spirit, not that some additional "giving" of the Spirit was necessary or even possible.

In summary, the Pentecostal movement and the teaching of a subsequent filling of the Holy Spirit accompanied by speaking in tongues are distorted unbiblical doctrine built on poor interpretation of Scripture and faulty logic. They are an impediment to spiritual growth – not a means to it – and they they have served to divide the Body and confuse believers for the past 100 years.

 

UPDATE

After receiving additional questions on the same topic, we have expanded this question to include the following details:

We are not proposing that speaking in tongues cannot happen today. On the contrary, we believe the gift can exist today. Though the gift of tongues will cease in the future, it will not end apart from the end of all utterance gifts (1Cor 13:8). Furthermore, Paul's comments in 1Corinthians 13-15 leave open the possibility that speaking in tongues could happen in the church today, however Paul sets specific expectations for when and how this gift will be expressed anytime it is prompted by the Spirit.

For example, in a corporate setting the gift will only be prompted by the Spirit for the sake of giving testimony to unbelieving Jews (1Cor 14:21-22). If no unbelieving Jews are present, then the gift will never be prompted by the Spirit, for the Spirit will never lead us to an improper use of a spiritual gift. Therefore if speaking in tongues happens in a group that lacks unbelieving Jews, then we can know that this manifestation is not a prompting of the Spirit, but rather it is a product of the flesh (i.e., it is being "faked").

Secondly, we believe that speaking in tongues may occur privately in an individual time of prayer and worship. Some refer to this private expression of tongues as an individual prayer language. The person speaking tongues in this way would not understand his or her own words of praise or prayer, but God would receive them nonetheless, because they were words prompted by the Spirit.

Third, it's important to remember that only those Christians who have been given the gift of tongues by the Spirit will be able to speak in tongues. We cannot "obtain" this gift simply because we desire it. Spiritual gifts are given by the Spirit according to God's will at (or near) the point of our conversion, and they are not "negotiable" nor do they come "on demand" as a result of our petitions. Simply put, we either have the gift or we don't, just like any other spiritual gift, and therefore we shouldn't concern ourselves with seeking it nor desiring it.

Fourth, speaking in tongues is not a practice of speaking gibberish. Speaking in tongues always involves speaking a real human language. When a Christian is truly speaking in a tongue (and not merely faking it in their own power), they will speak using a real, understandable human language, though it will be a language that the speaker himself does not know and cannot understand. If someone familiar with the language were able to hear it, they would immediately understand the speech.

For example, an English-speaking Christian with the gift of tongues might be prompted by the Spirit to begin speaking in Chinese, even though the person has never learned Chinese. For this Christian himself, the speech is an unknown tongue, but the Chinese language itself is not unknown. A normal Chinese speaker could hear the language and understand it easily.

You can see this principle at work in Acts 2, when thousands of new Christians began to speak in unknown tongues at Pentecost. In Acts 2:4-8. we see that these "tongues" were actually languages that many foreigners in the crowd could understand. The miracle of the moment was the way the speakers themselves couldn't understand the words coming out of their own mouths!

So, speaking in tongues will never be people spouting gibberish and nonsense.  It always involves Christians speaking in normal, understandable human language, though the language is foreign to the speaker himself.

Finally, we shouldn't confuse speaking in tongues with praying in the Spirit. Praying in the Spirit is a phrase that means praying in the will of the Spirit or under the guidance of the Spirit. The phrase does not mean praying in a foreign tongue. Both Jude 20 and Eph 6:18 are speaking about praying under the guidance of the Spirit, not praying in a foreign tongue.

All Christians are called to pray in the Spirit, because we are all called to pray according to God's will and by His Spirit (Matt 6:10). Paul also describes praying according to the will of the Spirit in Rom 8:26-27:

Rom. 8:26  In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but  the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words;
Rom. 8:27  and He who searches the hearts knows what  the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

Notice that Paul says that when we don't know what to pray, the Spirit intercedes for us according to God's will, but He does so WITHOUT words. Paul is not teaching that the Spirit produces foreign words, but rather His intercession takes places without words, because He intercedes as Spirit.  Paul is teaching that our needs are before God even when we don't know how to express them, since the Spirit is always at work directing our prayer life according to God's will. Jesus echoes this thought in Matt 6:8:

So do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.

So, praying in the Spirit does not mean speaking in tongues. All Christians are expected to pray under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but only a few Christians will have the gift of speaking in tongues.

We hope these points of clarification have been helpful.