Babbling against Speaking in Tongues

The ONLY way to become "Nourished" spiritually is to focus upon Jesus, and be in His scriptures, not in chasima, as in jesus we have ALL spiritual blessings!

 

Applying that honestly should lead you to conclude that’s all the gifts of the Holy Spirit are no longer needed. Otherwise you are selectively applying it to some gifts and not others when the verses give no indication of that.

 

correct

 

John of Japan: "frankly, you must be cut off from the academic world, because Kittel are [sic!] rare since he was soundly debunked by Barr and Silva so thoroughly debunked his semantics method, which was based on etymology rather than contemporary usage."

First, Kittel is only the editor; the articles are written by many different scholars.
Second, I own Barr's "The Semantics of Biblical Language." Barr has had little impact on modern exegesis.
Third, you overlook the relevance of the Kittel artice, I. e. classic examples of "Tongues" as incoherent gibberish in need of interpretation.
Fourth, as I already mentioned the Latin equivalent of "stenagmoi alaletai" in Rom 8:26 is used to refer to the gibberish of the Delphic pythia that needs coherent interpretation. My Harvard professors acknowledged that I established that point.

John of Japan: "And by the way, the typical Charismatic "tongues" has been examined by numerous linguists;;;, and found to be without syntactic structure or discernable semantic content.
Yes, I did a research paper on that claim at Princeton that focuses on Samarin, et al.Your comment is irrelevant for 2 reasons:
(1) If you read what I said, you'd realize that I consider 90% of modern glossolalia to be "of the flesh."
(2) I have encountered 3 thrilling cases in which Pentecostal glossolalia is confirmed as human language. Of course, there are seldom linguists present in such services who know enough languages to recognize which human languages are being spoken. In any case, it is the transforming power and impact of the tongues, not their semantics that matters.

John of Japan: "So "the tongues of angels" view is out. Tongues are usually just gibberish."

Well, Paul and the Corinthians thought their tongues was angelic language (1 Cor 13:1; 14:12--note Paul's phrase "zealots of spirits' = angels (see Hebrews 1;7)). But it did seem like gibberish to them and it is possible that their realization that tongues were no discernible human language prompted them to opt for the common Jewish view that humans can speak and interpret angelic tongues. That's how respectable exegesis works--it uses contemporary cultural interpretive models to fill in exegetical gaps. I'm confident that Corinthian glossolalia was basically the same motor reaction as modern glossolalia. After all, they broke Paul's principle of interpretations for tongues in services attended by outsiders. So the offending glossolia could not have been Spirit-inspired.

John of Japan: "I've actually been trained in Greek exegesis at the grad level (have you? ),"

Yes, I was Prof. Zeph Stewart's Teaching Fellow in the Harvard Classics dept. and graded his students exams and papers. I also took advanced Greek at Harvard and taught Masters level biblical courses at a Catholic university.

John of Japan: "Why then do you need tongues?"

Paul wants us all to speak in tongues and thanks God that He speaks in tongues more then all of us (1 Cor 14:5, 18) and Paul repeated commands us to imitate his example. So I guess Paul is authoritative for my spiritual practice, and besides, I don't believe the Holy Spirit's gifts are dispensible rubblish. In fact, I'd bet my life that if you experienced what I did at age 16, your glossolalic experience would be by far the most edifying highlight of your life, as it was for me.

 

Paul urged believers to come behind in no gift until the coming (apocalypse or Revelation) of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 1:7). This is the same word John uses for the apocalypse of Jesus Christ. What we call the book of Revelation.

So this is likely what Paul saw through a glass darkly. A revelation he knew was coming but didn’t know how or when. Paul urged them to continue seeking spiritual gifts until Christ provided a revelation. We know a revelation came through John about the time speaking in tongues disappears from history.

 

This babbler will not answer my questions.

 

I assume that you mean "charisma" by "chasima." Here you are guilty of a bibliolatry that neglects what matters most: a living vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ that includes His guidance and the spiritual gifts that allow believers to experience an intimate personal relationship with Him and make His power relevant to daily living.

What many Baptist here don't get is Luke's assurance in Acts about the "gift of the Holy Spirit:"
"The promise is for you, for your children, and for many who are far off [in the distant future], everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Him (Acts 2:39)." Shockingly Luke makes no mention in Luke-Acts of the regenerative work of the Spirit, not even in his summary of sermons by Paul and Peter. What he means by the promise of the Spirit is what he illustrates in his reports--an outpouring of the Spirit that inspires ecstatic utterance like tongues and empowers witnessing. At least that is included and because it is included speaking in tongues must be viewed as a gift intended for the church through the ages.

Cessationists play into the skeptic's narrative that if God can't or won't do it today, there is no reason to believe He could or would have done it back in the apostolic age. Historical logic proceeds on the basis of the principles of analogy and causality. But my God is the same yesterday, today, and forever!

 

Calminian: "Problem is, I don't know anyone who is claiming to have these gifts, even among the most Charismatic churches. So it appears they've ceased for now."

You just need to get out more and leave the myopic confines of your severely limited Baptist Ghetto. Don't project the paucity of miracles in your church on Charismatic Spirit-filled believers! Our little prayer group has produced miracles on a par with apostolic miracles--e. g. instant healing of life-threatening huge blood clots and a dramatic healing of an elderly blind woman so that she could read a doctor's eye chart. Pentecostal services, like ancient Corinthians services, are rarely attended by multi-lingual visitors. But there are compelling cases of Charismatics speaking in a later verified unknown human language with great power and miraculous impact.

Caminian: "No, that's not was Paul is saying. Praying is the Spirit has nothing to do with speaking gibberish."

God's Word refutes your claim: "I will pray in the Spirit, but I will pray with the mind also (1 Cor 14:15)."
The context demonstrates speaking in tongues as the way he prays in the Spirit. In fact, he celebrates such praying in tongues: "I thank God that I speak in tongues more than you all (14:19) and adds," I want you all to speak in tongues (14:5)." His preference for prophesying is simply based on his desire to avoid offending outsiders with ecstatic gibberish (tongues) that is not interpreted.

If you read my thread carefully, you would realize that the Greek expression "stenagmoi alaletai" ("groans too deep for words") precisely refers to speaking in tongues in Paul's day. The meaning of experiential Greek words is determined by their use in the contemporary culture. Every respected Bible scholar recognizes this and my 5 Harvard New Testament professors approved of my parallel cultural examples in which this expression refers to ecstatic gibberish, which is in fact a veiled message in need of interpretation.

Calminian: "Yeah, says the group that can't duplicate it. You have no choice but to say that because you can't do anything that was done at Pentecost (in regard to miracles). So, you move the goal posts."

 

Modern speaking in tongues can at times express modern languages. (a) In his book "Jesus in Beijing," NYT reporter David Aikman reports a message in tongues in Hebrew in a Pentecostal church in Amonte, CA. The preacher's wife who gave the message didn't know Hebrew, but the message was understood by a visiting American Jew. It called Dennis Balcombe to be a missionary to China. By the time Balcombe had finished his secret ministry in China there were 80 million new Chinese Charismatic Christians attending house churches. As on the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit sometimes simply fell on these Chinese seekers and induced glossolalia without anyone laying hands on them or praying with them.

Every Christian should watch the video documentary posted below on how God used Willian Seymour, the son of a slave, to ignite a great revival that has now led to 600 million Pentecostals worldwide. Unfortunately, the central role of minorities in this great awakening seems to have been suppressed due to racism:

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?...4F82351216ACB7DFDB194F82351216ACB7D&FORM=VIRE

Christians struggle to understand Jesus' claim that His disciple would be better off without His physical presence (John 14:12) and would do "greater works" than Him (John 16:7) after His departure through the power of the Holy Spirit. Dennis Balcombe's unprecedented missionary effectiveness is surely one example of what Jesus had in mind.

(b) I traveled with Loren Cunningham, founder of Youth with a Mission. He was given a message in tongues in the language of a remote Amazon tribe his team was visiting. The result was a great witness and healing of a woman with a severe cataract problem.

(c) A family in Saskatchewan received a message in tongues in Swahili, the language of the remote tribe where their daughter had been very sick, but could not be contacted. An African present in the meeting confirmed that the message in tongues was in Swahili. It confirmed that the daughter was OK and would return home soon. Such examples could be multiplied.

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I wish you'd learn to use the quote feature on the BB. It would make it easier to interact with you here. It's not that hard, especially for a Harvard grad. :)

Let's see: "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self control." No, no insulting in there.

So you are lecturing me about my own grandfather and what he believed, though I lived with him and worked with him and edited three of his books? That's a first, even for the BB. And you gave a quote ostensibly from Rice, but you did not source it. That is not only unethical it is against BB rules. And you did not pay attention to how I stated my comment. I did not say what you think I said.

I say that his position is very relevant to this topic. As I told you, he wrote two books against tongues, and that's what your OP is about, is it not? John R. Rice was completely against almost everything you've written in this thread. He expressed his opposition to Charismatic/Pentecostal tongues over and over.

"'Tongues' in the Bible always means languages, if not the physical tongue in a mouth. And since it is plural--'tongues'--it means other languages than one's own, that is, foreign languages. Remember, 'tongues' means natural foreign languages" (John R. Rice, The Charismatic Movement, p. 34).

"John Wesley, Whitefield, Charles H. Spurgeon, J. Wilbur Chapman, Billy Sunday, Len G. Broughton, George W. Truett, Gipsy Smith--all these mighty soul winners depended upon the power of the Holy Spirit and had that power so that in each case they won many, many tens of thousands, some of the hundreds of thousands of souls, yet none of them talked with tongues!" (JRR, Speaking With Tongues, p. 36).

"In I Corinthians 14, our Pentecostal brethren have tried to find teaching to bolster their idea of speaking in tongues as an ecstatic experience, speaking in tongues that people could not understand, as if that were a miraculous gift. It is not a miraculous gift now. It was not a miraculous gift there in Corinth, recorded in I Corinthians, chapter 14" (JRR, Great Controversial Subjects, p. 304).

I could give many, many more quotes from his commentaries and other of his 200 books. John R. Rice was against what you are advocating concerning speaking in tongues. Yet God used him to see over 200,000 saved. End of story.

Sorry, that is very unconvincing. If 90% of a movement is carnal and wrong "of the flesh," then that movement has already lost the spiritual battle, and it's only a matter of time before the 10% follows.

That's great. It's part of the 10%. but it doesn't validate the fleshly 90%.

You need to get out to Africa (don't just read a book) and see the huge damage being done there by the Charismatic movement. The 90% are doing far more damage than the 10% are doing good.

I have.

I think it's a very valid point. If you believe tongues are so great, why have you not spoken them in decades? I assume you have seen God bless your ministry during that time. Why then do you advocate something you don't do yourself?

I played on a chess team in high school, but the last tournament I participated in was 15 years ago, just some missionaries and a Japanese brother getting together for some fun. (The Japanese brother won.;)) If in spite of that I were to get on here and advocate chess as the greatest game in history, giving huge personal joy, you'd think I was nuts, since I have barely touched the game in 15 years, but play many other games.

 

Boy, are you out of touch. You need to read some up-to-date literature about hermeneutics. "1961 saw the publication of James Barr's The Semantics of Biblical Language, a work that shook the foundations of the then many attempts to prove theology in the shape of word-studies" (Linguistics and Bible Interpretation, ed. by Peter Cotterell & Max Turner, p. 110.-111).

Simply because glossa is used extra-biblically for incoherent gibberish does not mean that the NT examples must mean that unless there is relevant context for that view. There is not.

Hey, guess what. Simply because your Harvard profs approved what you wrote doesn't make it authoritative for 2018. How long ago was that? Have you done relevant original research since?

Point taken.

Okay, your 10% again.

You are following the Kittel "word study" approach. Simply because there was an isolated contemporary usage in which glossa was an unknown, non-early tongue, does not mean that the Biblical examples must be the same. I contend (with John R. Rice and many others) that the glossai (languages) of 1 Cor. 12-14 were simply foreign languages. That fits the context, it fits NT usage (3 times in Acts 2 and ten other NT usages arguably human language) and the normal Greek secular usage.

I believe that the "gift of tongues" in 1 Cor. is simply the gift of normal language. In a great surprise to me, Japanese was easy for me. Those two years in Japanese language school were two of the best of my life. Then I learned I had a gift for Greek, and have taught it both to individuals and in two Bible schools in Japan and now here in the States.

Paul simply wished for everyone to be able to speak foreign languages to win others to Christ. This interpretation is just as true to the text as yours is.

I don't think anyone has said that on this thread.

 

I think your memory is faulty. I just looked up Rom. 8:26 in the Greek, and the phrase is stenagmois alaletois, whether in the Byzantine tradition or the eclectic text. And that brings up something your famed Harvard profs may have missed: if the groanings are not able to be uttered, how could this be the "tongues" of the Charismatic movement, which are uttered but not understood?

Now, concerning Behm's article on glossa in Kittel, here is an excellent rebuttal: https://charlesasullivan.com/7985/delphi-prophetesses-christian-tongues/#easy-footnote-17-7985

Behm's work was faulty. He only quoted two words to try to prove that the Delphi Oracle used glossalalia. Charles Sullivan goes back to the original Greek and conclusively proves Behm's article to be wrong.

I think I said somewhere else on this thread that I had yet to see the Greek which proves the Delphi Oracle point. I'm still waiting.

 

There are a couple issues here. I don't know any cessationists who deny the possibility of miracles. I have no doubt God could miraculously break a language barrier to bring someone the gospel. But that's not the same as a gift. The gift of tongues is something given to some particular person who can then exercise that gift at will. That's why Paul regulated the use of that gift.

But that is by no means saying miracles cannot occur today, even a tongues miracle. But it does seem there are no gifted individuals running around today, miraculously speaking in other languages at will. And if there were, I would have no problem with that either, but let's be honest, no one is even claiming to have the gifts we saw at Pentecost today.

 

Are all of your theoligical sources from the liberal/critical bent than?
You seem to be claiming that conservative sources are boguss, but rthe sources that you rely upon are highy suspewct and dubious in their approcah to the scriptures.
And the Tongues are not needed for today, as we now have the full sscripture, and God has already firmly established the Person and Gospel of Christ!

 

It bega the question, does God work through the scriptures, especiallt the message of the Cross, to save out His saved people, or does he promised that the signs and wonders will not return back void?
And I do see God still able to heal, do miracles, to do whatever he wants when he wants, but what was described in Acts was not to be the Norm for all time forward!

 

The signs and wonders ones are!

 

I just think that he is parroting pretty much liberal/critical scholarship, whose theology would be very suspect in reagrds to both the inspiration of scriptures and the workings of the Holy Spirit!
He also has to accept that the solid majority of what passes for modern Chasamatics is suspect, so why such an emphasis on it for today?

 

The United Methodists are famous for their liberalism. Don't know if Deadworm is a liberal per se, but his denomination is. We once had a supporting church that was independent Methodist, having exited the denomination when they decided to ordain homosexuals.

 

based upon how he view the inaccuracies of the scriptures, and how Rome and us now teach same things, would say really liberal...

 

The online article "Stuff Fundies Like" contains the quotes cited below form John R. Rice,​

Speaking in Tongues. Despite Rice's prolific writing career, he is no scholar and I cite him only because he is your grandfather.​

Rice: "Well, first of all, as far as I know these gifts [in 1 Cor 12:8-10, including tongues] are still available today. I do not mean available in the sense that you can ask for whatever you want about these gifts. The Bible never does teach that one can decide for himself what gifts to have....Now, are these gifts for today? They probably are."

His concession that tongues are for today insults the Holy Spirit because he opposes Pentecostal abuse of this gift, while failing to take seriously a similar abuse by the Corinthians. The Holy Spirit doesn't inspire junk! The counterfeiting of precious gifts of the Spirit does not mean that defeat should be conceded and Pentecostals should desist their glossolalic practice!

I'm amused by your compulsion to set up straw men so you can avoid the Spirit's miraculous work in the most blessed Christian movement in the world (600 million charismatics globally!). Can you say "Westside Baptist Church?" Notice that I haven'tstooped to drawing your attention to the countless Baptist kooks out there!


Rice: "We are expressly taught to seek to prophesy. That means speak for God, witness for God, in the power of the Holy Spirit."
Rice has in mind: "You can all prophesy one by one (1 Cor 14:31)" and "I would like...even more for all of you to prophesy (14:5)." Set aside for the moment that he has no clue as to what the gift of prophesy entails.

Rice: "We are supposed to “covet earnestly the best gifts,” but we are never taught to covet the gift of tongues."

What Rice doesn't get are 2 points:
(1) Paul twice urges us to strive for spiritual gifts (12:31; 14:1) and both times he immediately discusses the gifts of tongues and prophecy. Nor is he alert to the significance of Paul's desire," I want you all to speak in tongues (14:5), a desire that implies this gift is for everyone, especially when Paul proceeds to encourage the Corinthians with the celebratory remark: "I thank God that I speak in tongues more than you all (14:18)."
(2) The gift of tongues is not the least of the gifts. It can be listed last only because of Corinthian abuse in allowing uninterpreted tongues in meetings frequented by outsiders. If prophecy is the best gift, tongues are its equal when interpreted (14:5).

They probably are. You would have to remember that they are not very often manifested even in the New Testament times. There is only one clear-cut case of talking in tongues in the Bible and that is in Acts, chapter 2. There are two other cases where languages are mentioned, but the Bible doesn’t say a gift of languages, and maybe it was and maybe it was not...