OBJECTIONS
ANSWERED
In part 1 of this article I argued
that the Bible fits better with the position that God
continues to give the gift of speaking in tongues than with the view that He
ceased doing this long ago.
I will now move on to look at
objections that are made by those who say that God no longer gives this gift. I am confident that each objection can be
answered adequately.
I mentioned at the beginning of the
article that 1 Cor 14 refers to two different kinds of tongues. First, there is tongues for strengthening the
individual Christian. And second, there
is the tongue plus interpretation method of
strengthening the local church.
As I also noted, the second kind of
tongues is really just equivalent to a prophecy. So the objections that are levelled against the
existence today of this kind of tongues are almost exactly the same as the
objections that are levelled against the existence today of the gift of
prophecy.
In an earlier article, “Every
Christian Should Desire the Gift of Prophecy,” I have given answers to
objections to the existence of the gift of prophecy today, and I don’t want to
repeat all that here. Readers who are
interested can find part 2 (the relevant part) of that article here.
In what
follows I will concentrate only on objections that are made to the existence of
tongues for strengthening the individual Christian. So in the following discussion, when I refer to the gift of
tongues, I will be thinking specifically of this kind of tongues.
Some of the objections will overlap
each other to a certain extent, and so will some of the answers.
Objection 1:
The
gifts of the Spirit listed in 1 Cor 12:8-10, including speaking in tongues, are
what are known as “sign gifts.” These
gifts were given by God in the first decades of the church to act as signs pointing
to the truth of the gospel message while the church was getting established. However, once the church was established,
sign gifts no longer had any place in God’s purposes.
Answer:
There
are several big problems with this argument:
(1)
“Sign gifts” is not a biblical term, and even the concept is not a helpful one.
To
begin with, some of the gifts listed in 1 Cor 12:8-10, such as distinguishing
between spirits (v. 10), don’t really seem to have all that much to do with
pointing to the truth of the gospel message.
Furthermore,
even gifts that do often point to this have other purposes too.
For
example, let’s think for a moment about the healing miracles that we read about
in the book of Acts. This book refers to
some supernatural healings that served to confirm the gospel message (e.g., in
Acts 3:1-10; 8:5-7; 9:36-42). However,
this was not all that these miracles did.
They also helped to build up those who were already saved in the faith. And there is no doubt that part of God’s reason
for working these miracles was simply because He loved people and wanted to
free them from suffering. To say that
the Christians who worked the miracles in Acts had “sign gifts” is an unhelpful
description. These miracles were much
more than just signs.
(2)
To the extent that some gifts of the Spirit did function in the first century as
signs pointing to the truth of the gospel, there is no reason whatsoever to
think that these signs would be any less effective today. The fact that the church is now well
established is beside the point.
(3)
There seems to be an unspoken assumption in this argument that God wants to do
the minimum amount of giving gifts that is possible. The argument seems to suppose that after the
first few decades of the church, God said to Himself:
“Phew! Finally! The church is now established enough that I don’t have to give gifts like tongues any more. What a relief!”
But
why would we assume that God wants to give these gifts as little as He has to? There is no good reason.
(4)
It is a least questionable whether the gift of tongues for strengthening the
individual Christian should be understood as a sign at all. It is true that in 1 Cor 14:22 Paul describes
tongues as a sign for unbelievers. But
the focus in this verse is on tongues that are spoken out loud in Christian
gatherings. Tongues for strengthening
the individual is normally a private thing.
Objection
2:
The
gift of tongues was useful for a time when there was no New Testament. However, once the NT was completed tongues no
longer had any place in God’s purposes.
Answer:
Again,
there are big problems with this argument:
(1)
Those who argue in this way seem to be assuming that there is much more of a
difference between the first century and today than there really is.
In
the first century, Christians had the Old Testament and the apostles’ teaching
ministries. Today we have the OT and the
NT. The difference between then and now
is not that great, because the NT is full of the apostles’ teaching. So if the gift of tongues was useful in the first
century to complement the OT and the apostles’ teaching, it makes sense to
think that it would be useful today to complement the OT and the NT.
(2)
The gift of tongues for strengthening the individual
Christian is a mysterious thing that involves a deep work of the Spirit to
build up that Christian in the faith. The
fact that the NT now exists is really beside the point as far as the usefulness
of this gift is concerned.
Objection
3:
Christians
who say that God still gives the gifts of 1 Cor 12:8-10, including tongues, also
accept Pentecostal theology on baptism in the Holy Spirit. This theology claims that God usually
baptises Christians in the Spirit at
some point after their conversion. However,
the Bible teaches that Christians are baptised in the Spirit at
conversion. Therefore, we should reject
the idea that gifts are for today.
Answer:
It
is true that Scripture teaches that Christians are baptised in the Spirit at
conversion (1 Cor 12:13). Nevertheless,
there are some serious mistakes in this argument.
(1)
It is simply not the case that all Christians who say that God still gives the
gifts of 1 Cor 12:8-10 also accept Pentecostal theology on baptism in the
Spirit. Many who accept the gifts do
accept this theology. However, many others
who accept the gifts reject this theology.
Some
major figures in present-day evangelicalism who accept that gifts are for today
but reject Pentecostal theology on Spirit baptism are D. A. Carson, Wayne
Grudem and Sam Storms.
Should
we accept that the gifts are for today? Absolutely!
Should
we side with Pentecostal theology on baptism in the Spirit? Absolutely not!
Whether
gifts are for today and whether Pentecostal theology on Spirit baptism is
correct are two separate issues that mustn’t be confused.
(2)
The logic of this argument makes no sense anyway. Basically, the argument says that because a
group of people believe something false, then another belief they have must also
be false. But this is illogical. Just because Pentecostals make a mistake
about baptism in the Spirit, it doesn’t follow that they must be wrong to say
that God still gives the gifts of 1 Cor 12:8-10.
Objection
4:
Between the end of the 1st century and the
beginning of the 20th, orthodox (i.e., non-heretical) Christians never claimed
to be able to speak in tongues. This
shows that it was always a temporary gift.
It seems very strange to think that God allowed this gift to die out and
then chose to revive it in our time. Therefore,
it makes sense to think that all claims to be able to speak in tongues today
are false.
Answer:
I can only assume that those who use this argument haven’t
taken time to research the matter. In fact,
there have been more than a few claims of speaking in tongues by orthodox
believers between the 2nd and 19th centuries.
For example, Irenaeus, who lived c. 130 – c. 202,
wrote:
“...we hear many of the brothers in the church, who have prophetic gifts, and who speak all sorts of tongues by the Spirit, and who also bring to light the secret things of people . . .” (Against Heresies, book 5, ch. 6)
Similarly, Tertullian, who lived c. 155 – c. 240, in
a challenge to the heretic Marcion, wrote:
“. . . let him produce a psalm, a vision, a prayer – only let it be by the Spirit, in an ecstasy, that is, in a rapture, whenever an interpretation of tongues has come to him . . . Now all these signs can be provided by my side without any difficulty . . .” (Against Marcion, book 5, ch. 8)
It is true that Tertullian speaks here about
interpretation of tongues, which has to do with tongues used to strengthen the local
church. And, as I have said, in this
part of the article I am defending the existence today of tongues used to
strengthen the individual Christian. Nevertheless,
if one sort of tongues existed in Tertullian’s day, it seems highly likely that
the other sort existed as well.
It is not just in the first centuries of the church
that there were claims by orthodox believers to have spoken in tongues. For example, there is good evidence that some
Huguenots, i.e., French evangelicals, claimed to be able to speak in tongues in
the 18th century.
The idea, then, that between the 2nd and 19th
centuries no orthodox Christians claimed to be able to speak in tongues is
simply not true.
Objection 5:
If God continued giving the gift of tongues
throughout the Christian era, we would expect Him to have done this as often as
He did in the 1st century. However, it
can’t be denied that there have been relatively few claims of tongues in the
following centuries as compared to the 1st century. Therefore, this suggests that the claims
there have been after the 1st century were all fakes or wishful thinking.
Answer:
It is surely true that for at least most of the Christian
era there have been relatively few claims of tongues as compared to the first
century. However, there are two
important things to consider here.
(1) The Bible often makes receiving things from God
conditional upon believing. The
believing is very important. So when a
Christian doesn’t believe that God wants to give a gift of some sort, it seems
that He would very probably not give that gift, even if He wanted to.
I would suggest that part of the reason why there
has been a lack of tongues throughout church history is because most Christians
wrongly believed that God had no desire to give this gift.
(2) We need to recognise that the Holy Spirit is
thoroughly mysterious, and it is a mistake to think that He must have chosen to
do things in roughly the same amounts in each century of the church.
In 1 Sam 3:1 we are told that when Samuel was a
boy, “the word of the LORD was rare in those days.” Similarly, I think that even under
post-Pentecost, New Covenant conditions, it is not all that surprising if there
is considerable variation in how much the Spirit operates supernaturally from
time to time.
That is not to say that over the centuries God has
been inconsistent in His requirements or promises. In all centuries of the church He has wanted
Christians to seek the ability to speak in tongues. But it is much too simplistic to say that we
should expect God to give gifts in uniform amounts in each century of the
church.
Objection
6:
The principal Reformers in the 16th
century, most notably Martin Luther, John Calvin and Huldrych Zwingli, believed
that God stopped giving the gift of tongues in the first century. Because these men were giants of the faith,
it makes sense to think that their views on this point were correct.
Answer:
It is true that the Reformation was
extremely helpful in some very significant ways. But to assume that the Reformers were correct
on everything of importance can’t be right for the simple reason that they differed
among themselves on a number of key issues.
There are unfortunately many Christians
today who follow certain people in church history without questioning their
beliefs nearly enough. This is really a
form of idolatry and it should be carefully avoided. What matters is what the Bible teaches, not
what certain Christian leaders have believed in the past.
Objection 7:
In
churches that claim to use the gift of tongues, there is often a frenzy of
emotion in worship services. These
churches also frequently support false teaching, such as the so-called “Prosperity Gospel.”
Answer:
It is true that many churches which use
the gift of tongues make some big mistakes, as do all sorts of churches.
However, to say that abuses and
mistakes show that this gift is not given today makes no sense. By the same logic, we should avoid anything
that is abused or about which mistakes are sometimes made.
For example, teaching from the Bible
is something that is often abused in our day.
Every Sunday there are thousands of so-called Christian leaders
worldwide who say they are teaching from the Bible, but who are actually
promoting heresy in one way or another.
But this doesn’t mean that all
teaching from the Bible is false! It
doesn’t mean that leaders on a Sunday should abandon giving biblical
instruction to their flocks. And the
same applies to tongues. To say that
abuses and mistakes mean that there is no place for tongues today is illogical.
Wherever there is something that is
from God, Satan will almost always try to counterfeit it. He will also tempt Christians into using
gifts, including tongues, in ways that are less than edifying. And part of what it means to be a sinful
human being is to make mistakes. So even
Christians with good intentions and motivations can get things wrong at times.
Therefore, bad reports surrounding
tongues in no way mean that God doesn’t give this gift today.
Summing up
There are other arguments that are
sometimes used to support the view that God doesn’t give the gift of tongues
today, but I have given the most important of them. In short, none of the objections convinces.
TESTIMONY
OF TONGUES
When
we are forming our views on some aspect of the Christian faith, what the Bible
has to say is far and away the most important thing to consider.
Nevertheless,
listening to what Christians say they have experienced also has some value. Being a Christian, after all, isn’t just
about believing certain things to be true, although that is an important part
of it. It is a relationship with God. Anyone who has been a believer for any length
of time should have testimony of what they have personally experienced God do. Some will have experienced a lot more than
others, but we should all be able to tell others something of what we have
experienced of God.
In
this respect, it is important to listen carefully to Christians who claim that
they can speak in tongues.
In
some Christian circles which deny that God still gives this gift there seems to
be the idea that all believers who claim to speak in tongues are shallow,
sensationalist and anti-intellectual.
I
think it is true that many Christians who use the gift of tongues do have these
faults. But there are a great many who
don’t. Many who claim to use this gift
are very biblically minded and cautious about what they do and say. We need to be careful not to tar everyone
with the same brush. That is really a
form of false accusation, and God hates it when people are falsely accused.
For
what it’s worth, I can speak in tongues myself, and I have been able to do this
since 1988. I have also led a few other
Christians to begin speaking in tongues.
Nor
do I believe that I am shallow, sensationalist or anti-intellectual. Furthermore, when I see Christians who use
the gift of tongues acting and speaking in these sorts of ways, I am the first
to level criticism. If you doubt this,
have a look at some of my other articles.
Several of them of them are aimed at abuses and mistakes in Christian
circles that use the gifts of 1 Cor 12:8-10.
I
would therefore encourage readers of this article to take Christians like
myself seriously when we say that we can speak in tongues.
THE
BIBLE COMMANDS US TO SEEK SPIRITUAL GIFTS INCLUDING TONGUES
In part 1 of this article we saw that the Bible suggests
that the gift of tongues will continue until Jesus returns. And in part 2 we have seen that there are no
convincing objections to the existence of tongues today, and that we should
take seriously the claims of Christians who say they have experienced this gift.
All
things considered, it makes sense for us to accept that God still gives the
gift of tongues.
But
we should do more than just accept this.
We are actually under obligation to seek gifts of the Spirit, including
tongues, from God:
In
part 1 I commented on 1 Cor 14:1, where Paul tells the Corinthian Christians:
“Pursue love, and eagerly desire spiritual gifts . . .”
As
I noted in my comments, the spiritual gifts Paul refers to in this verse
certainly include the gift of tongues. And
I noted too that this command to desire gifts including tongues would have
applied to all Christians at the time 1 Corinthians was written.
Whenever
there is a biblical command that applied to all Christians at the time of
writing, by far the most
natural way of understanding it is as a command that applies to all Christians
in all centuries of the church. Therefore,
anyone who claims that today we shouldn’t follow a biblical command that
applied to every Christian when it was written needs to have a very strong
argument indeed to support their view.
In part 1 we saw that the Bible
doesn’t lead us to believe that God has ceased giving the gift of tongues. On the contrary, we found that the evidence
actually points in the other direction.
This means that we have no excuse for
not obeying the command in 1 Cor 14:1 to eagerly desire spiritual gifts. And for those who don’t currently speak in
tongues, this will include desiring this gift.
Let all of us, then, who are
following Jesus as Lord, be faithful in heeding what the Spirit says in this
verse of Scripture. We dare not disobey
it.
See also:
