I never said the 5 parallel examples in 1 Cor 13:1-3 were impossibilities. I said they were hypothetical extremes, the highest conceivable degree of each of those gifts. All things are possible with God. He could cause someone to speak the language of dolphins if he wished. But there is no record of anyone doing so. Nor is there any record of Paul or anyone else speaking the tongues of angels or performing any other of those examples (apart from martyring yourself).
The point is Pentecostals and Charismatics use this verse to biblically justify their unintelligible utterances. They say Paul spoke in the language of angels and that is what they are doing. When the reality is that verse is just a wildly exaggerated hypothetical example.
Dolphins are not fully sentient creatures. No dolphin has ever spoken a human or human-like language. Angels on the other hand appeared to men, spoke human languages, and presumably have their own languages similar to ours. In fact men have entertained angels without knowing it (Heb 13). Even if 1Cor 13:1 didn't exist, the theory of speaking an angelic tongue is an entirely plausible notion.
There is no biblical justification for non-human tongues.
Yes there is biblical justification for non-human languages. The justification is this:
"Indeed, no one understands them; they utter mysteries by the Spirit" (14:2).
This isn't apodictic proof but it's at least a reasonable basis for suspecting it's a language unknown to men. An angelic language would qualify. I just don't get it. I don't see how someone can claim to categorically rule out the possibility of angelic tongues.
What they practice is the phenomenon of the flesh known to linguists as free-vocalization or glossolalia.
I wasn't focusing primarily on what the churches practice, but rather on the possibilities indicated by exegesis.
But I will make one comment on current practice because you might be overlooking something. Prayer can be a laborious process if we're trying to find words to say. This is similar to a writer who has writer's cramp. As a result, sometimes we don't pray due to the sheer effort involved. And yet, ultimately all of us, as Christians, want to pray the same basic things, namely, "God be glorified. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done." As I understand it, then, God empowers prayer-in-tongues as a way of relieving us from the struggle of finding words to say. He gives us confidence that uttering the tongue is satisfactory because, deep down, He KNOWS what types of things we want to say.
Now for the point that critics tend to overlook. Technically, He need only do this one time. All we need is a set of syllables to forever pull us out of writer's cramp. It does't matter if, from then on, we remix them in meaningless ways ('free-vocalization'). God is more interested in the things that we are trying to say with our
hearts. Regardless of whether you dislike present-day utterances, it makes for a lot of prayer and praise otherwise repressed.
To summarize my views:
ideally the initial experience of tongues should be truly inspired. What happens subsequently is less important. And I'll be the first to suspect that many of today's Pentecostals never even had an authentic initial experience. Even so, let's not be so Pharisaical that we prematurely discount their utterances as useless. In this dark world, any heartfelt attempt to supplicate God is potentially invaluable.
What I DO find annoying,on the other hand, is that some Pentecostals seem to presume their "babbling" to be a higher form of prayer than intelligible words. I don't think that's a reliable assumption.
