One objection to the gift of tongues…is that nothing is of spiritual value unless it passes through the cerebral cortex of the brain and can be cognitively understood. Any notion that the Holy Spirit might engage with the human spirit directly, by-passing our cognitive thought processes, is anathema to most evangelicals. If it is to be spiritually profitable it must be intelligible. But there is a vast difference between the necessity of intelligibility for the sake of the entire body of Christ, on the one hand, and whether or not a Christian can be edified and blessed and built up spiritually while speaking in uninterpreted tongues privately, on the other.
Tongues in the corporate assembly must be intelligible or interpreted for the sake of others who are listening. When you pray in tongues in private, you are most certainly praising. But praying, praising, and giving thanks is most certainly taking place! And all this at the same time he lacks cognitive awareness of what is happening.
Shut it down. Forbid it. If Paul had been fearful of trans-rational experience which, by the way, is far and away different from being irrational , would not his next step be to repudiate the use of tongues altogether, or at minimum to warn us of its dangers? At the very least we should expect Paul to say something to minimize its importance so as to render it trite, at least in comparison with other gifts.
But he does no such thing. Paul asks the question, in view of what has just been said in v. His response is found in v. There we read that he is determined to do both! If Paul speaks in tongues more frequently and fervently than anyone else, yet in church almost never does preferring there to speak in a way all can understand , where does he speak in tongues? In what context would the affirmation of v. Clearly, Paul exercised his remarkable gift in private, in the context of his personal, devotional intimacy with God.
Again, the only grounds I can see for objecting to this scenario is the reluctance that many cessationists have for spiritual experiences that bypass or transcend the mind. This is the man whose incomparable mind and power of logical argumentation rendered helpless his theological opponents.
This is the man who is known to history as the greatest theologian outside of Jesus himself. This is the man who took on and took out the philosophers in Athens Acts 17! Yes, logical, reasonable, highly-educated Paul prayed in tongues more than anyone!
Paul not only believed in the spiritual value of praying in private in uninterpreted tongues, he also himself practiced it. In fact, he happily declares that he prays in private in uninterpreted and therefore unintelligible tongues more than all the tongue-happy Corinthians combined! But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. Surely, then, we should not expect all to speak in tongues either.
Secondly, according to 1 Cor. In other words, Paul seems to suggest that the Spirit sovereignly differentiates among Christians and distributes one or more gifts to this person and yet another, a different gift to this person and yet another gift to that one, and so on. Then there is 1 Cor.
In Greek there is a grammatical structure that is designed to elicit a negative response to the question being asked. Paul employs it in 1 Cor. Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification. If anyone speaks in a tongue, let there be two or at the most three, each in turn, and let one interpret.
When used in this way, the gift of tongues should be used to emphasize and support the spiritual message, and not because you feel strongly moved in your emotions. In this way, others besides the one speaking in tongues will be edified. Therefore tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe but to unbelievers. In this way, it could benefit those who attend a gathering but have not yet committed their life to Christ.
There are also occurrences in the book of Acts in which people who were baptized with the Holy Spirit spoke in tongues at the same time. This occurred most notably on the day of Pentecost when the baptism of the Holy Spirit was given for the first time, though it did also occur at other times see Acts 1 and Acts However there is nothing written that these two always are to occur together.
Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Are all workers of miracles? The gift of tongues is also talked about in detail in 1 Corinthians The emphasis is on the mysteriousness of the language; this could be referring to a natural language being spoken when no one else can understand it, but this description also fits the mysteriousness of charismatic glossolalia.
From 1 Corinthians It is hard to imagine someone walking into a church and seeing a variety of people praising God in recognisably natural languages and thinking that they have lost their minds — why would they? On the other hand, it is easy to see why someone might react that way if the tongues in question were glossolalia. Therefore, depending on our interpretation of this passage and of 1 Corinthians Even if we consider the gift of tongues to be speaking in foreign languages only, this does not necessarily mean that the gift has ceased.
It is clear that at the time when these New Testament books were written receiving the gift of tongues was a frequent experience of believers. Mainstream Christianity has often been suspicious of gifts of the Spirit that seem to challenge the control exercised by religious leaders, like prophecy, healing and tongues.
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