The Strife of Tongues

Modern Pentecostals, to justify their use of tongues, refer most of all to St Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians. St Paul wrote this passage precisely because "tongues" had become a source of disorder in the Church of Corinth; and even while he does not forbid them, he decidedly minimizes their significance. This passage, therefore, far from encouraging any modern revival of "tongues", should on the contrary discourage it- especially when one discovers (as Pentecostals themselves admit) that there are other sources of speaking in tongues besides the Holy Spirit! As Christians we already know that speaking in tongues as a true gift of the Holy Spirit cannot appear among those outside the Church of Christ.

If we are already made suspicious by the exaggerated importance accorded to "tongues" by modern Pentecostals, we should be completely awakened about them when we examine the circumstances in which they occur.

Far from being given freely and spontaneously, without man's interference- as are the true gifts of the Holy Spirit- speaking in tongues can be caused to occur quite predictably by a regular technique of concentrated group prayer accompanied by psychologically suggestive hymns, culminating in a laying of hands, and sometimes involving such purely physical efforts as repeating a given phrase over and over again, or just making sounds with the mouth. One person admits that, like many others, after speaking in tongues, "I often did mouth nonsense syllables in an effort to start the flow of prayer-in-tongues", and such efforts, far from being discouraged, are actually advocated by Pentecostals. "Making sounds with the mouth is not speaking in tongues" but it may signify an honest act of faith, which the Holy Spirit will honour by giving that person the power to speak in another language". Another Pastor says: "The initial hurdle to speaking in tongues, it seems, is simply the realization that you must speak forth.... The first syllables and words may sound strange to your ear. They may be halting and inarticulate. You may have the thought that you are making it up. But as you continue to speak in faith... the spirit will shape for you a language of prayer and praise".

A Jesuit theologian tells how he put such advice into practice "After breakfast I felt almost physically drawn to the chapel where I sat down to pray. Following Jim's description of his own reception of the gifts of tongues, I began to say quietly to myself "la,la,la, la". To my immense consternation there ensued a rapid movement of tongue and lips accompanied by a tremendous feeling of inner devotion.

Can any sober Christian confuse these dangerous psychic games with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. There is clearly nothing whatever Christian, nothing spiritual here in the least. This is the realm, rather, of psychic mechanisms which can be set in operation by means of definite psychological or physical techniques, and speaking in tongues would seem to occupy a key role as a kind of trigger in this realm.  In any case, it certainly bears no resemblance whatever to the spiritual gift described in the New Testament, and if anything is much closer to shamanistic speaking in tongues as practised in primative religions, where the shaman or witch doctor has a regular technique for going into a trance and then giving a message to and from God in a tongue he has not learned.