TONGUE SPEAKING: PENTACOST (ACTS 2:1-21)

Concerning the subject of tongues, I must admit from the very start that I am approaching it from the outside. The various churches I have attended over the years were at best neutral to the subject and at worst treated it as a sign of demonic possession. The proof text most often cited to prove their stance was I Corinthians 13:8-10 predicting that spiritual gifts such as prophecy and speaking in tongues would cease “when that which is complete comes.” That last phrase was interpreted, without any justification, as referring to the completion of the New Testament. Thus, I feel we should all remain open on the question of tongue-speaking today.

One confusing aspect of tongue speaking as it occurs in the NT is that there appear to be as many as four different types of phenomena associated with that description depending upon the setting: at the Day of Pentacost, upon conversion, within a congregation, and during private prayer. So I am going to discuss each of these separately.

In approaching the subject of what transpired at the Day of Pentacost, as described in Acts 2, several things appear to be obvious:

    Tongues were obviously not a sign of the apostles' initial conversion.

    The tongues appear to have been real human languages.

    Not every one present was apparently able to understand the apostles.

Remaining to be answered are at least four questions, each of which will be looked at separately:

A. How was this phenomenon related to the Joel prophecy that Peter quotes?

Here are some comments from I. Howard Marshall in Commentary on the NT Use of the OT:

Peter changes “afterward” in Joel's prophecy to 'in the last days' but “both versions of the text have reference to the last days before the coming of the day of the Lord. Probably the intention of the change is to emphasize that the events of Pentacost do belong to the activity of God in the last days.”

He also “inserts 'my' with male and female slaves, emphasizing their role as God's agents rather than their social status. "The effect is that the terms referring to literal slaves in Joel are now understood as a general description of God's servants."

“We should not expect a word-for-word fulfillment of every detail in the description. There will be dreams and visions later in Acts, but not necessarily confined to young and old respectively – early Christians could recognize poetry when they saw it!”

“But what about 2:19-20? Luke's addition of 'signs' is doubtless fulfilled in the healing and other miracles in Acts.” The following language “is that associated with theophany, especially with the judgment on the day of the Lord...It is true that in 2:22 'miracles, wonders, and signs' were done by Jesus, but these hardly fit 'wonders in the heaven above'...A further point, however, is that the theophanic language is particularly associated with the description of the original giving of the law at Sinai...The phenomena that accompanied the giving of the law now accompany the coming of the Spirit in the last days.”

“The final verse of the quotation was originally simply an offer of deliverance from the impending judgment. It retained this sense for Peter, but the reference to being 'saved' broadened out in the early church to include all the present blessings experienced by those who were convinced that they would also be delivered from the final judgment and enter into the presence of God.”

B. Shouldn't the phenomenon better be described as a miracle of hearing instead?

I have heard this statement made several times from the pulpit, and I am sure it is based on Acts 2:8-11 where those in the audience remark that “we hear, each of us, in our own native language” and “in our own language we hear them speaking.” However, of course they would say that if the apostles were indeed speaking in their language. The seemingly decisive factor is to look at verse 4 where it clearly states that “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages...”

There are only two facts that might support the idea that it was strictly a miracle of hearing, and both are only indicative, and not as definitive as verse 4.

In the first place, there were only eleven apostles present and yet they managed to communicate to people of at least sixteen different geographical regions (see vv. 8-11). That argument is easy to counter since (a) there would have been nothing impossible for each apostle to switch from one language to another during the course of his sermon to the crowd and (b) the people at that time living in the regions listed had many native languages in common, and all would have been fluent in at least Greek. In addition, it is possible to interpret the text to say that other disciples as well as the apostles were speaking on that occasion.

The second argument goes like this: If the apostles were indeed speaking in the human languages of all those present, why do some of the scoffers dismiss the whole thing by saying that the speakers are obviously drunk (vv. 12-13). Again, that argument is easy to counter. Just as some viewers of Jesus' miracles would not even believe the evidence of their eyes, these listeners refused to believe the evidence of their ears. And remember that even if one apostle happened to be speaking in the scoffer's tongue, the other ten would have appeared as if they were merely babbling nonsense words under the influence of wine.

C. Was this sort of speaking in tongues ever repeated in biblical times?

We have probably all heard from the pulpit anecdotal stories about a stranger from another country visiting a Christian congregation when suddenly a parishioner begins speaking to him in his own language while having no prior knowledge of that language. On the other hand, one could refer to the manual of exorcism used by the Roman Catholic church, mainly in older times, in which speaking in a foreign language in that manner is treated as a sure sign of demonic possession (just view The Exorcist if you don't believe me). Back to the serious subject at hand.

It is probably safer to just stick to the biblical evidence here. And again, we only have indirect indications to go with since none of the various conversions recorded in Acts specifically say that the converts spoke in a particular earthly language. One possible indication that the phenomenon continued after Pentacost is in Paul's statement in I Corinthians 13:1 beginning “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels...” Unless Paul is just talking hypothetically here, he seems to imply that one of the types of tongue-speaking still present in the Corinthian church involved speaking in a foreign language.

One could argue that whenever the gift of tongues is mentioned, it must refer to foreign languages but that is certainly not stated definitively, would not necessary need someone with the gift of interpreting tongues to explain it, and certainly runs counter to the modern experience of tongue-speaking in some churches today.

Finally is the evidence of Acts 10:44-48 of the conversion of Cornelius and his family who have the gift of the Holy Spirit poured out on them and they begin speaking in tongues. Peter's comment upon seeing this happen was that they “have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” But the “we” in this case referred to Peter and certain men from Joppa who accompanied him (see Acts 10:5,23), and those men were probably not with Peter on Pentacost and preaching alongside him. In addition, it does not say that Peter knew that Cornelius' family was extolling God in tongues because he happened to understand that particular human language, but that they spoke in tongues and extolled God.

Lastly is the difference in wording between here and earlier on. The unique phenomenon at Pentacost happened after the apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit while the family of Cornelius was said to have received the Holy Spirit. This distinction is the subject of Section D below.

D. Was this the first time that the apostles had received the Holy Spirit?

Here the issue boils down to the relationship of the event at Pentacost, when it states that the apostles “were filled with the Holy Spirit” (v. 4), and a slightly earlier occasion recorded in John 20:22 in which Jesus breathes on them and pronounces “Receive the Holy Spirit.” The most simple way of understanding this distinction is to say that all believers receive the Holy Spirit permanently, but some are filled with the Spirit for a given time period in order to accomplish a particular task.

Going back to the OT, one can see the example of Samson, admittedly not the best role model in the Bible. It states in Judges 13:24-25 that “the spirit of the LORD began to stir in him” when he was only a boy. But later on the spirit of the LORD “rushes” or “comes” upon Samson three different times in order that he might accomplish certain feats of strength (Judges 14:6, 14:19 and 15:14).

New Testament examples are even clearer in teaching that believers could still be “filled with” the Holy Spirit at certain specific times in their lives. Most of these examples involved people being filled in order to speak powerfully and prophetically when necessary. For example, it is stated in Acts 6:5 that Stephen was “a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit.” And yet in Acts 7:55 right before his martyrdom he was said to have been “filled with the Holy Spirit” in order to see and describe a vision of heaven. Other examples include Elisabeth (Luke 1:41), Zacharias (Luke 1:67), Peter (Acts 4:8), the believers in Jerusalem (Acts 4:31) and Paul (13:9). In addition, Paul counsels the believers in Ephesus to not be filled with wine, but with the Holy Spirit.