Speaking in Tongues

Chapter Five

If there is one phenomenon associated with the Renewal that is widely known, it is the Gift of Tongues, allegedly widespread among Charismatics and Pentecostals. We discussed the history of the supposed reemergence of the gift of tongues in the chapter on the history of Charles Parham and his cult in Topeka, Kansas. Of course, there were no miraculous tongues — which is to say languages — that resulted from Parham’s fraudulent religious scam, so any talk of the return of the gift of tongues in Topeka is either wilfully misleading or based on immense historical ignorance.

What is the Gift of Tongues in Catholic Tradition?

The gift of tongues is a miraculous ability bestowed by the Holy Ghost, enabling individuals to speak in various languages that they have not learned. This gift was notably manifested during Pentecost when the apostles, filled with the Holy Ghost, spoke in languages understood by people from different nations (Acts 2). The significance of this gift lies in its role in the early Church, facilitating the preaching of the Gospel to diverse populations.

The gift of tongues serves as a sign of the Holy Spirit's action in the Church, demonstrating the unity of belief and charity among different peoples. It is not merely a personal experience, but a means to communicate the teachings of Christ effectively to others.

Additionally, it is important to note that the gift of tongues is distinct from the modern phenomenon of glossolalia, which involves speaking unintelligible and incoherent words. The authentic gift, as experienced by the Apostles, was characterized by clarity and understanding among listeners.¹

When we investigate what early Christian authorities believed about the gift of tongues spoken in the New Testament, we can see that there has been a consensus in the Church as to what it means to “speak in tongues.”

To provide a list of Church Fathers and great theologians from the history of the Church would be exhaustive and unnecessary, but suffice it to say I welcome any reader, Charismatic or not, to find a single eminent and authoritative theologian before the rise of the Holiness Movement in Protestantism who would define speaking in tongues as anything other than speaking a foreign language or hearing a foreign language in your native tongue. Evidence to the contrary simply does not exist. Augustine, Chrysostom, Irenaeus, Ambrose, and virtually every other Church Father or early Church authority who lived and wrote during antiquity will attest that never was it the perception of sound Catholic biblical theology that speaking in tongues meant anything like the modern concept of glossolalia. In fact, even in Protestantism, the notion of speaking unintelligible languages as evidence of the gift of tongues was not an acceptable thesis until after the failed tongues in Topeka. Remember, even the alchemist, sodomite, would-be Elijah III, Charles Parham, believed that the gift of tongues meant the miraculous ability to speak a foreign language.

Not even those possessed by devils were daft enough to think that making strange noises and babbling was a gift from God.

Bait-and-Switch

Somewhere along the way, there was a monumental shift in Christian scholarship in both Catholic and Protestant circles on the gift of tongues to accommodate the growing Pentecostal and Charismatic movements. This shift originated in the scholarship of the German Higher Critics, a class of intellectuals imbibed with the errors of Rationalism and who sought to explain away the miraculous in the New Testament. For the Higher Critics, there could be no way that anyone could miraculously speak another language or miraculously hear a foreign language in their own tongue; therefore, what was recorded in the New Testament was the result of a spiritualization of a natural phenomenon of religious emotion, wherein those who had the “gift” were merely praising God with ecstatic utterances that sounded strange or foreign.²

This revamped understanding of speaking in tongues became known as glossolalia, a term that has even found its way into otherwise sound and trustworthy Catholic theological discourse. Now, in fairness to many Charismatics, they do not deny that the gift of tongues can mean speaking in foreign languages miraculously or hearing them miraculously, such as in the second chapter of Acts. However, given that this authentic gift of tongues has been practically absent for centuries, they promote the false gift of tongues that resulted from the failed tongue experiment of Pentecostalism.³

The reality is that the modern tongues phenomenon arose in Pentecostalism, and therefore was not on the radar of good Catholic theologians — why would it be? But, with the unfortunate surprise of the Charismatic Renewal making its way into the Catholic Church, Catholics found themselves the recipients of a novel theological movement that was completely foreign. For this reason, Catholics have not had a strong defence against it, generally speaking. Fortunately, some brave scholars have taken the modern error of glossolalia to task and have, through their herculean effort, provided us with significant research as of late.

Eminent Catholic scholar and professor Philip Blosser co-authored an exhaustive and impenetrable three-volume work on the history of the gift of tongues with Protestant scholar Charles Sullivan called Speaking in Tongues. Commenting on the unprecedented bait-and-switch from the classic understanding of speaking in tongues to the new heretical understanding of tongues as glossolalia, Sullivan and Blosser summarize the history concisely:

When we say “unprecedented in Church history” and “completely unknown in ecclesiastical writings before the nineteenth century,” we mean that this mystical interpretation and practice of speaking in unintelligible glossolalic tongues, whether ecstatic or otherwise, is found nowhere in Catholic tradition or in the mainstream of the Protestant Reformation stemming from Luther, Calvin, the Anglican divines, and their proximate successors. A reference to glossolalia-like vocalizations can be found in the ancient separatist sect of the Montanists, and another in the obscure ecstatics described by the anti-Christian Celsus. A very few more can be found in modern separatist sects of spiritual enthusiasts such as the Jansenist convulsionaries, Camisards, Ranters, Shakers, and Mormons, most of whom the mainstream, established churches regarded as heretical or “nonconformist.” (Emphasis added)⁴

So, even in Protestant theology and history, speaking in tongues always meant what the Catholic Church had always understood, and the only groups to promote a glossolalia-like tongue-speaking were schismatic and heretical sects. Once again, we see the Montanist heresy from Phyrgia reemerge as the prototype for the Charismatic Renewal and Pentecostalism.