Tongues 2

2. Tongues in Acts
Most Pentecostals understandably make their home in Acts 2 (thus, Pentecost-als ;-). Acts 2 provides for many a direct association between being filled with the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues. Thus for the original Pentecostals (who had their roots in the holiness movement), speaking in tongues was a second or even third "work of grace" for a Christian after conversion. For those like the United Pentecostal Church, who see the Spirit-fillings of Acts as an essential part of conversion, it is a short step to say that you can't even be a Christian if you do not speak in tongues.

There are a number of problems here.

For one thing, the book of Acts does not say anywhere that tongues are always involved when the Holy Spirit fills a person. There are of course three incidents in Acts where tongues are mentioned when the Holy Spirit comes (Acts 2:4; 10:46; 19:6). But there are other places where the Spirit comes and tongues are not mentioned (Acts 4:31; 8:17-19; 9:17-19; and the rest of Acts).

A person who argues you have to speak in tongues to have the Spirit is arguing from the silence of the text. I think Acts does indicate that tongues of its sort are an indication that you have the Spirit (e.g., 10:46). But Acts never says the opposite is true: that you will speak in tongues if you have the Holy Spirit. It never says this.

I might also add that 1 Corinthians 12:30 gives me the final answer on the issue of whether all Christians will speak in tongues: "All don't speak in tongues, do they?" In Greek this is a question introduced by me, thus a question expecting a no answer: "Do all speak in tongues? No" is a legitimate translation. And for those UPCers out there, Paul doesn't say, "Do all have the gift of tongues?" He simply says that all do not speak (laleo) in tongues, the same word that Acts 2:4 uses when it says the apostles spoke (laleo) in different tongues.

As a matter of argument, tongues are rarely mentioned in the New Testament as a whole. They feature prominently in 1 Corinthians where Paul is addressing a problem in the Corinthian church. But he doesn't even mention them in his list of spiritual gifts in Romans 12:6-8 (see their absence also in Ephesians 4:7-13). Indeed, they are last on his list even in 1 Corinthians 12:10. In short, a Pentecostal would not have written the New Testament this way--it would not look this way if their emphases were that of the NT authors.

So what of those Pentecostals who would distinguish between tongues as evidence of the Holy Spirit and tongues as a gift, as in 1 Corinthians 12-14? First, this is not a distinction we find the Bible ever making. That's a tell tale sign of a Christian tradition taking over, when the heart of a doctrine is nowhere stated. It's an ingenious way of splicing Acts to 1 Corinthians--just not one the Bible ever says. And I've already mentioned that 1 Corinthians 12:30 argues against this line of interpretation.

Again, if tongues were the evidence of the Holy Spirit, then we would expect it to go hand in hand with any discussion of the Holy Spirit. We would expect John to say the Holy Spirit leads into all truth (John 16:13), convicts of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8), and you will know it because you will speak in tongues. We would expect Romans to say that the Spirit bears witness with our Spirit as we speak in tongues and tells us we are a child of God (Romans 8:16). We would expect Paul to say that the Holy Spirit is a downpayment that guarantees our inheritance (2 Cor. 5:5; Eph. 1:14), God's seal of ownership on us (2 Cor. 1:22), made clear as we speak in tongues. And it would sure be great if Hebrews 6:4 would be a little clearer in telling us that the heavenly gift it has in mind is speaking in tongues--it does relate it to partaking of the Holy Spirit, after all.

A Pentecostal would have told us these things in these passages. The New Testament authors did not. The most logical reason they don't is because they do not think of tongues every time they think of the Holy Spirit.

A second thing to think about is the fact that the tongues in Acts 2 are human languages, at least that is the most natural way to take it. I think Charles Carter used to suggest that they were speaking the same thing as 1 Corinthians 14, but that the people were given the gift of interpretation to where they heard it in their own languages. Ingenious! But of course Acts says nothing like this. It is another reading into the text to iron out an issue in our theology.

"They began to speak in different languages [tongues] as the Spirit was giving to them to speak out" (Acts 2:4) ... "... each one was hearing them speak in his own dialect (2:6) ... we hear them speaking in our languages [tongues] the great things of God (2:11)."

It seems to me that the most natural way to take this is that they spoke in different languages and the people heard them in those different languages.

I suspect strongly that the tongues of those who claim that their tongues are the evidence of the Holy Spirit would not pass a foreign language test. Yet this seems to be the tongues of Acts 2.

And while Acts 10 and 19 do not tell us if the tongues are foreign languages or not, the book of Acts itself gives us no basis to consider it anything different from the tongues of Acts 2. That is, Acts never informs us of the 1 Corinthians 14 type of tongues. In the story world of Acts, they do not clearly exist. The burden of proof is thus on anyone who would argue that the tongues in Acts 10 and 19 are angelic languages or prayer languages or ecstatic languages or anything other than the different human languages of Acts 2.

So why does Luke mention tongues these three times?

It is interesting to me that the interpretation Peter gives of the tongues in Acts 2 is a Scripture from Joel that sees prophecy as a primary feature of the coming of the Spirit. This fits with the fact that the tongues in Acts 2 are used for missionary purposes--not for personal edification as the "evidence" of the Spirit turns out to be in the UPC. One of Luke's special emphasis is that the gospel is for the whole world and to the ends of the earth. How appropriate that the prophetic message be given to people from all over the world through the ability to speak in their languages!

I believe Luke mentions the tongues in Acts 10 to make it clear that the experience of the Gentiles wasn't different in any way from the experience of Jews on the Day of Pentecost. This was a very important point so that Jewish Christians could not claim any superiority over Gentile Christians. Again, tongues in Acts 10 serve an important corporate purpose.

Similarly, I believe that Acts 19 mentions tongues to make it doubly clear that being baptized by John the Baptist was not the same thing as being baptized by the Spirit. The tongues emphasize this point. Again, tongues serve to make a theological point here.

A final note. The text of Acts 2, presenting us with events on the Day of Pentecost, has proved to be extremely important as a sacrament of revelation both to Wesleyan and Pentecostal communities of faith. Indeed, this text is more important to us than to most other Christian communities. A good deal of our past identity is tied up with a particular reading of this text. Without closing the doors to these sacramental means of theological grace, we might also keep in mind an original meaning concern in the process.

While we have four gospels, we have only one Acts. Those gospels are often quite unique from each other and can differ both in arrangement and emphasis. Indeed, in some instances we might be quite misled if we had only one of them.

For example, we would not know that Mary and Joseph came from Nazareth to Bethlehem if we didn't have Luke. We would think they had always lived in Bethlehem and only moved to Nazareth after Jesus was born (from Matthew). Similarly, we would not know that Jesus spoke in parables or cast out demons if all we had was John.

Here's the warning: if we had second volumes to Matthew, Mark, or John, they would likely differ as much from Acts as Luke differs from Matthew, Mark, and John. Unfortunately, we don't know exactly how they would differ.

So we probably should not take Acts to be a straightforward videotape of events in the life of the early church. This fact argues against basing the core of one's theology on a specific way of reading between the lines of the specifics of Acts. And that is exactly what Pentecostals tend to do.