The Nature of Tongues

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Ever since 1906 Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, from which the current Pentecostal and charismatic movements flow, speaking in tongues has been the subject of controversy. Some of the confusion concerns the nature of the gift. One idea is that tongues is a mode of utterance that can be understood by anyone regardless of his native language. Another is that tongues are a “private prayer language” that is uniquely created by the Holy Spirit for each tongues-speaker.

Neither idea is correct, and both stem from a failure to appreciate what the word “tongues” means. Contemporary English speakers often look on the term as if it were mysterious and hard to understand. It’s not. When discussing speech, “tongues” has a simple and established meaning. It just means “languages.” Obviously, the word tongue can refer to the physical organ in our mouths. This organ is part of human anatomy, and every language has a word for it. But because of the association the tongue has with our power of speech, the tongue is invariably used as a metaphor for the manner of speech. Thus in almost every language the word for tongue is the same as the word for language. We speak of “the Spanish tongue,” “the French tongue,” and so forth. Over time, this usage became less common in English, and the word “language” has become dominant. That is why the term “tongues” can sound mysterious. We don’t use it to refer to languages most of the time anymore. Today, for English speakers, “tongue” more often will bring to mind the physical organ rather than the idea of a language.

Confusion is also caused by the fact that English Bibles switch back and forth between “tongue” and “language,” even though they are translating the single Greek word glossa. It would be clearer if they were consistent in using the term “language,” allowing us to talk about the gift of languages and to read in our Bibles of the apostles and the early Christians speaking in languages. By keeping in mind that this is what Scripture means, we more easily can understand what “tongues” is. It is an supernatural endowment by which one is able to speak in another language. One may not understand what one is saying (Paul suggests that people should pray to be able to interpret what is said in tongues; 1 Cor. 14:13-14). The content of one’s speech is determined by the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:4), so one’s own understanding is not essential, as it is in normal speech. This corrects the first misunderstanding of the gift: If tongues could be understood by all listeners, no matter what language they spoke, then Paul would not exhort people to pray for the gift of interpretation...

The second misunderstanding of the gift-that tongues is a spontaneous, Spirit-created “private prayer language” — is rebuffed by the text of Scripture. As the multinational crowd gathered on the day of Pentecost showed, the languages in which the apostles spoke were real human languages that could be understood by anyone who spoke them (Acts 2:11). This has prompted some Pentecostals and charismatics to assert that the gift of tongues in Acts is different from the gift of tongues mentioned by Paul, but there is no basis for that. The claim would appear to be rooted in many Pentecostals’ and charismatics’ awareness that what they are speaking in is not a real language (not to say that the gift of tongues doesn’t occur; it does, just not as frequently as some claim). Paul nowhere hints that the phenomenon he refers to as “speaking in languages” (Greek, glossais lalon, from which we get “glossalalia”) is different from the phenomenon his companion Luke referred to by the same name when writing Acts.

Paul speculates that a person might be given the superlative gift of speaking a language used by angels (1 Cor. 13:1). But, in context, it is not clear that Paul thinks it a real possibility. He posits it as the greatest imaginable kind of tongues, parallel to knowing all mysteries and knowledge (the greatest imaginable extent of prophecy, 13:2a), having faith that can move mountains (the greatest imaginable gift of faith, 13:2b), and giving away all one’s possessions and delivering one’s body to be burned (the greatest imaginable expression of selflessness, 13:3). Paul isn’t saying that speaking in angelic languages occurs (or even that angels have languages). He is using Middle Eastern hyperbole to say, “Even if I could speak in the tongues of angels, that would not profit me if I did not have love.”

He portrays speaking in languages of angels as something that would be extreme and rare, if it occurs at all. That means tongues normally will be ordinary human languages. They certainly would not be unique, divinely-invented languages for the believer and God alone — something that would be even more special than angelic languages.

The Nature of Tongues

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Tongues, GIFT OF, or GLOSSOLALY (yXc.RrcoXaXta), a supernatural gift of the class gratioe gratis datoe, designed to aid in the outer development of the primitive Church. The theological bearing of the subject is treated in the article Charismata (11). The present article deals with its exegetical and historic phases.

St. Luke relates (Acts, ii, 1-15) that on the feast of Pentecost following the Ascension of Christ into heaven one hundred and twenty disciples of Galilean origin were heard speaking “with divers tongues, according as the Holy Ghost gave them to speak”. Devout Jews then dwelling at Jerusalem, the scene of the incident, were quickly drawn together to the number of approximately three thousand. The multitude embraced two religious classes, Jews and proselytes, from fifteen distinct lands so distributed geographically as to represent “every nation under heaven”. All were “confounded in mind” because every man heard the disciples speaking the “wonderful things of God” in his own tongue, namely, that in which he was born. To many the disciples appeared to be in a state of inebriation, wherefore St. Peter undertook to justify the anomaly by explaining it in the light of prophecy as a sign of the last times.

The glossolaly thus described was historic, articulate, and intelligible. Jerusalem was then as now a polyglottal region and could easily have produced one hundred and twenty persons who, in the presence of a cosmopolitan assemblage, might express themselves in fifteen different tongues. Since the variety of tongues is attributed to the group and not to individuals, particular disciples may not have used morethan their native Aramaic, though it is difficult to picture any of them historically and socially without at least a smattering of other tongues. The linguistic conditions of the country were far more diverse than those of Switzerland today. The number of languages spoken equaled the number of those in which the listeners “were born”. But for these Greek and Aramaic would suffice with a possible admixture of Latin. The distinction of “tongues” (v. 6, &bXexroe; v. 11, yXioao-a) was largely one of dialects and the cause of astonishment was that so many of them should be heard simultaneously and from Galileans whose linguistic capacities were presumably underrated. It was the Holy Ghost who impelled the disciples “to speak”, without perhaps being obliged to infuse a knowledge of tongues unknown. The physical and psychic condition of the auditors was one of ecstasy and rapture in which “the wonderful things of God” would naturally find utterance in acclamations, prayers or hymns, conned, if not already known, during the preceding week, when they were “always in the temple”, side by side with the strangers from afar, “praising and blessing God” (Luke, xxiv, 52, 53).


Subsequent manifestations occurred at Caesarea, Palaestina, Ephesus, and Corinth, all polyglottal regions. St. Peter identifies that of Caesarea with what befell the disciples “in the beginning” (Acts, xi, 15). There, as at Ephesus and Jerusalem, the strange incident marked the baptism of several converts, who operated in groups. Corinth, standing apart in this and other respects, is reserved for special study. In post-Biblical times St. Irenaeus tells that “many” of his contemporaries were heard “speaking through the Spirit in all kinds gk (iravro&aaais) of tongues” (“Contra haer.”, V, vii; Eusebius, “Hist. eccl.” V, vii). St. Francis Xavier is said to have preached in tongues unknown to him and St. Vincent Ferrer while using his native tongue was understood in others. From this last phenomenon Biblical glossolaly differs in being what St. Gregory Nazianzen points out as a marvel of speaking and not of hearing. Exegetes observe too that it was never used for preaching, although Sts. Augustine and Thomas seem to have overlooked this detail.

St. Paul’s Concept (I Cor., xii-xiv).—For the Biblical data thus far examined we are indebted to the bosom friend and companion of St. Paul—St. Luke. That being true, the views of St. Paul on supernatural glossolaly must have coincided with those of St. Luke. Now St. Paul had seen the gift conferred at Ephesus and St. Luke does not distinguish Ephesian glossolaly from that of Jerusalem. They must therefore have been alike and St. Paul seems to have had both in mind when he commanded the Corinthians (xiv, 37) to employ none but articulate and “plain speech” in their use of the gift (9), and to refrain from such use in church unless even the unlearned could grasp what was said (16). No tongue could be genuine “without voice” and to use such a tongue would be the act of a barbarian (10, 11). For him the impulse to praise God in one or more strange tongues should proceed from the Holy Ghost. It was even then an inferior gift which he ranked next to last in a list of eight charismata. It was a mere “sign” and as such was intended not for believers but for unbelievers (22).

Corinthian Abuses (I Cor., xiv passim).—Medieval and modern writers wrongly take it for granted that the charism existed permanently at Corinth—as it did nowhere else—and that St. Paul, in commending the gift to the Corinthians, therewith gave his guaranty that the characteristics of Corinthian glossolaly were those of the gift itself. Traditional writers in overlooking this point place St. Luke at variance with St. Paul, and attribute to the charism properties so contrary as to make it inexplicable and prohibitively mysterious. There is enough in St. Paul to show us that the Corinthian peculiarities were ignoble accretions and abuses. They made of “tongues” a source of schism in the Church and of scandal without (xiv, 23). The charism had deteriorated into a mixture of meaningless inarticulate gabble (9, 10) with an element of uncertain sounds (7, 8), which sometimes might be construed as little short of blasphemous (xii, 3). The Divine praises were recognized now and then, but the general effect was one of confusion and disedification for the very unbelievers for whom the normal gift was intended (xiv, 22, 23, 26). The Corinthians, misled not by insincerity but by simplicity and ignorance (20), were actuated by an undisciplined religious spirit (wvei ev), or rather by frenzied emotions and not by the understanding (vows) or the Spirit of God (15). What today purports to be the “gift of tongues” at certain Protestant revivals is a fair reproduction of Corinthian glossolaly, and shows the need there was in the primitive Church of the Apostle’s counsel to do all things “decently, and according to order” (40).

Faithful adherence to the text of Sacred Scripturemakes it obligatory to reject those opinions which turn the charism of tongues into little more than infantile babbling (Eichhorn, Schmidt, Neander), incoherent exclamations (Meyer), pythonic utterances (Wiseler), or prophetic demonstrations of the archaic kind (see I Kings, xix, 20, 24). The unalloyed charism was as much an exercise of the intelligence as of the emotions. Languages or dialects, now rccitwatr (Mark, xvi, 17) for their present purpose, and now spontaneously borrowed by the conservative Hebrew from Gentile foreigners (grepoyh/do-o-ocs, xeL)(eo i Erip47Y, I Cor., xiv, 21), were used as never before. But they were understood even by those who used them. Most Latin commentators have believed the contrary, but the ancient Greeks, St. Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret, and others who were nearer the scene, agree to it and the testimony of the texts as above studied seems to bear them out. (See Charismata.)

Gift of Tongues