Seeing that modern tongue-speakers dogmatically assert that Spirit Gifts did not die out after the Apostolic era they have an obligation to demonstrate this assertion from history. There is a similar situation here to that of the British Israelite. Both set out to study historical evidence with a predisposition to interpret any evidence in a particular way. But whereas the British-Israelite can make quite sweeping allegations about events of 2500 years ago confident that allegations of any kind are not easily disproven, even if they are not proven, the Pentecostal “historian” does not find it quite so easy.
Quite early in my researches into this subject I was handed a stenciled copy of a lecture by a local Pastor.[1] Six of its pages were devoted to a study of “The Baptism of the Holy Spirit revealed in Church History”. I have subsequently seen almost identical lists of “evidence from history” in Pentecostal publications.
Conflicting Evidence
It is utterly astonishing, as one reads the conclusions of those who study Church History, to see how much they vary — even to the point of total contradiction. One Pentecostal enthusiast, Donald Gee, asserts that
“Irenaeus, Tertullian, Chrysostom, Augustine, all refer to these gifts as being existent in their own times”?[2]
By contrast, another writer, Cleon L. Rogers Jr. states
“… it is significant that the gift (of tongues) is nowhere alluded to, hinted at or found in the Apostolic Fathers.”[3]
Who is right? It would need a study in detail of the 2nd and 3rd Century writings to reach a positive conclusion. Even then, obscurities of meaning may still leave reservations. Take the case of Justin Martyr, who wrote his dialogue to “Trypho the Jew” about A.D. 150, saying, according to the Pastor’s manuscript,
“If you want proof that the Spirit of God who was with your people and left you to come to us, come into our assemblies and there you will see Him cast out demons, heal the sick, and hear Him speak in tongues and prophecy”.
No specific source is given. Gromacki quotes similar but not so specific testimony from this “Dialogue” and then goes on to make the point that Justin is arguing to prove to the Jew that God’s Spirit is working amongst the Church as it once did amongst the Jews. He observes,
“At first glance this would appear that the spiritual gifts, including the gift of tongues, were in existence in the time of Justin. However, the extant gifts were those which Israel once had, and it is nowhere stated in the Old Testament that speaking in tongues was a normal or even a rare activity of the Israelites. Justin, himself, defined the nature of the gifts that were then present. He related the prophetical gifts to Solomon (spirit of wisdom), to Daniel (spirit of understanding and counsel; to Moses (spirit of might and piety), to Elijah (spirit of fear), and to Isaiah (spirit of knowledge).[4] These gifts cannot be identified with the spiritual gifts of 1st Corinthians 12″.[5]
Gromacki quotes Justin Martyr as writing “it is possible to see amongst us women and men who possess gifts of the Spirit of God…”[6] It appears that to him, Justin Martyr does not define the gifts as being fully parallel with 1st Corinthians. We must hold the quote by the Pentecostal writer as suspect at this stage.
The most quoted writer is Irenaeus. He lived A.D. 120-202 and wrote prolifically. There is a passage in his book “Against Heresies” which has become the centre of contention. Pentecostalists quote it regularly as proving that tongues were spoken much in the church more than a hundred years after Corinth, but they ignore its context. Hoekema considers the problem in some detail in his book “What about tongue speaking?”[7] He notes that it occurs in the course of an argument against the Gnostics and their denial of the resurrection of the body. He appears to be defending Paul against a Gnostic distortion of his meaning in 1 Cor, 2. They preached the perfection of the Spirit and that the body was of no account. Irenaeus was seeking to correct a misapplication of the word “perfect” — he wrote,
“For this reason does the apostle declare, ‘We speak wisdom among them that are perfect’, terming those persons ‘perfect’ who have received the Spirit of God, and who through the Spirit of God do speak in all languages, as he used himself (i.e. Paul) also to speak. In like manner we do also hear many brethren in the Church, who possess prophetic gifts, and who through the Spirit speak all kinds of languages, and bring to light for the general benefit the hidden things of men, and declare the mysteries of God, whom also the apostle terms ‘spiritual’, they being spiritual because they partake of the Spirit, and not because their flesh has been stripped off and taken away, and because they have become purely spiritual.”
It is evident that Irenaeus’ reference to Spirit gifts is only in passing to illustrate the meaning of “perfect” and “spiritual” in Paul’s writings. Hoekema queries the translation from the Latin and suggests Irenaeus is writing in the past tense.[8] He observes
“These people, Irenaeus is saying, Paul calls ‘Spiritual’. If Irenaeus meant to say that certain people in his own day were the kind of people whom Paul would have called spiritual if he were now living, why was this not made more clear? Why did Irenaeus not use a perfect subjunctive instead of a present indicative? It is also significant that the spiritual gifts spoken of in this second sentence are precisely the ones described in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, to which the first sentence of the quotation alludes. It is therefore possible that Irenaeus is not speaking here about a phenomenon occurring in his day, but simply about what happened in New Testament times”.
Another problem with this quotation is that we only have a Latin translation and not the Greek in which Irenaeus originally wrote.
The Montanist Movement
It was in the days of Irenaeus that the Montanist Sect sprang up. Pentecostalists point to them as another example of the continuation of tongue speaking. The Pastor’s lecture affirms –
“Tertullian (one of the most eminent men the church has produced) speaks of the spiritual gifts including the gift of tongues, as being still manifested among the Montanists, to whom he belonged”.
Now it is true that this movement did claim tongues. But the facts that have come down to us indicate a similarity to the 20th Century phenomenon rather than the first century. The Pelican History of the Church states—
“A Phrygian named Montanus was seized by the Spirit and, together with two women, Prisca and Maximilla, delivered utterances of the Paraclete in a state of ‘ecstasy’, i.e. not being in possession of his faculties. It was the peculiar form of these utterances to which other Christians objected”.[9]
The article also states that they prophesied the nearness of the End and that “local patriotism led the three prophets to claim that the heavenly Jerusalem would descend in Phrygia”. The article also revealed that other Christians criticised it for its divisiveness and the “irrational ecstasies which lead to pride and censoriousness”.
However, it must be admitted that by this time (approx. A.D. 200) various wayward beliefs and practices were starting to dominate the teaching of the Church and the Montanist movement was in some measure an attempt at reform. They were hostile at the declining expectation of Christ’s literal return and the growing acceptance of the Gnostic view that there was no “literal resurrection of the flesh”. It seems it was this aspect which attracted Tertullian to side with them. Chadwick states,
“Its puritanism and revivalist ethics won for it a notable convert in the brilliant African orator Tertullian, who died fulminating against his former Catholic brethren because they imagined that the Church was constituted by bishops rather than spiritual men”[10]
According to Gromacki, the Montanists also opposed the growing practice of infant baptism.[11]
So we must not be completely critical of the Montanist movement although it is evident that in their zeal to restore the original practices of the 1st Century they went too far. We must remember that the lack of printing presses and easy communication created a very limited pattern of development. The world is flooded with knowledge today of everything which takes place, so much so that most of us have only time to read a fraction of it. It was quite different in those days. Awareness of the background to events was very restricted. By the 4th Century Christians were puzzling over the meaning of Paul’s reference to Holy Spirit Gifts. Robert Gustafson writes[12]
“… in the 4th century we read from the church Fathers that tongues had indeed vanished as foretold by Paul. Proof of this can be seen in the writings of both Chrysostom (A.D. 347407) and Augustine (A.D. 354430). Chrysostom in regard to tongues as mentioned in I Corinthians 12 says:[13] ‘This whole place is very obscure: but the obscurity is produced by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation, being such as then used to occur, but no longer take place’. Also concerning the ceasing of tongues, Augustine writes:[14] ‘In the earliest times, The Holy Ghost fell on them that believed: and they spake with tongues, which they had not learned, as the Spirit gave them utterance. These signs were adapted to the time. For there behooved to be that betokening of the Holy Spirit in all tongues, to shew that the Gospel of God was to run through all tongues over the whole earth. That thing was done for a betokening, and it passed away’.”
Doubtful Evidence
It is very perplexing at first when we meet in Pentecostal writings apparent quotes which contradict the above. A superficial reading of the Pastor’s lecture would leave the impression that tongue-speaking was known to both Chrysostom in A.D. 390 and Augustine in A.D. 400.But a careful reading of the quote he makes from Chrysostom soon reveals that this is simply about what happened in “Apostolic days”. It also makes clear that this Bishop thought the tongues were literal languages, “… one straightway spoke in the Persian language, another in the Roman, another in the Indian, another in some other tongue…”He makes a quote from Augustine which is the very opposite to the one made above. According to him there is a statement which he attributes to Augustine which reads as follows —
“We still do what the Apostles did when they laid hands on the Samaritans and called down the Holy Spirit on them in the laying-on of hands. It is expected that converts should speak with new tongues”.
No source for this quote is given. It is a quote often used by Pentecostalists — but they never give the source! John Sherrill refers to it in his book,[15] as part of a chain of “evidence” for the continuation of tongues. A. A. Hoekema[16] notes several instances of this quote in Pentecostal writings and comments, “In no case, however, is any documentation given for this statement”. Hoekema gives other quotes from Augustine, out of the same Homily from which Gustafson quoted. For example, “In the laying-on of hands now, that persons may receive the Holy Ghost, do we look that they should speak with tongues?. For who expects in these days that those on whom hands are laid that they may receive the Holy Spirit should forthwith begin to speak with tongues?”
This laying-on of hands procedure was probably the forerunner of modern Confirmation methods in the major churches. But it is clear evidence that it has nothing directly in common with modern Pentecostalism, and we cannot help but have a firm impression that the alleged quote which Pentecostals make from Augustine is either very distorted or spurious.
Pentecostal writers claim various evidence of the continuation of tongues right down through the centuries. In most cases the nature of the occurrence seems to have more in common with the 20th Century Pentecostal practice than that of the Apostolic era. For example the Encyclopaedia Brittanica is cited concerning the Wesleyan Revival of the mid 18th Century as including “inarticulate utterances of ecstatic joy”,[17] a total contrast to what happened at Pentecost!
The Pastor’s lecture gives 17 “evidences” of tongues after the time of Augustine up to the end of the 19th Century. Except for a woman in 1885 the only other “evidence” which explicitly claims to be tongues in a known language is in connection with Francis Xavier in 1552. He is a Catholic Missionary who “is said to have made himself understood by the Hindus without knowing their language”. [18]But the Encyclopaedia Brittanica article on Xavier specifically states that he encouraged missionaries to study native languages.[19] The historian Joseph Acosta states that Xavier had to work very hard to master the Japanese language and other languages which he studied.[20] Hoekema observes —
“When we see how the process of embellishing the history of saints with fantastic legends was operative in the case of Xavier, we learn to take with more than a grain of salt other mediaeval claims for the miraculous gift of foreign tongues”[21]
This must complete our survey of claims that the experience of Pentecost has been repeated down through the centuries. We hope that in the space available we have given enough evidence to help readers hold very strong reservations about any claims they may come across and may also help any who are influenced by misleading Pentecostal propaganda. The very fact that Pentecostals apparently willfully distort the facts of history to strengthen their teaching should increase our wariness of all the things they urge us to believe. We are reminded that Paul was mainly referring to problems within the church when he warned, “But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived”. (2 Tim. 3:13)
Sources
[1] “The Baptism of the Holy Spirit” by Pastor D.R. Dawson of the Christian Revival Church, Frankston.
[2] “Concerning Spiritual Gifts” D. Gee p.10 cited by Gromacki in “The Modern Tongues Movement” p.11 published by the Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co.
[3] Ibid p.11 quoted by Gromacki from Bibliotheca Sacra CXXII (April-June 1965) 134.
[4] See “Dialogue with Trypho” Vol. 1 of the Ante-Nicene Fathers (Wm B. Eerdman’s Publishing Co. 1950) sec. 81 p.242.
[5] Op. cit. p.12.
[6] Op. cit. sec.88 p.243
[7] Published by Paternoster Press. P.12-15.
[8] Quoted by A.A. Hoekema from Vol. 1 of the Ante-Nicene Fathers p.531. (Eerdmans ed. 1956)
[9] Vol. One “The Early Church” by Prof. Henry Chadwick p.52-53.
[10] Ibid. p.52-53
[11] Op. cit. p.12.
[12] :Authors of Confusion” p.46 Grace Publishing.
[13] Quoted from ‘Homilies on the First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians’ XXIX
[14] Quoted from ‘Homilies on the First Epistle of John’ VI.10.
[15] “They Speak with Other Tongues” Spire Books ed. p.76.
[16] Op. cit. p.17 including footnote comment.
[17] Quoted by Paster Dawson as from People’s Ed. P.451.452
[18] Alleged to be a quote from Schaff’s “History of the Christian Church” but no specific source is given
[19] 1964 Ed. XXIII. 836.
[20] Quoted by Hoekema as from G.B. Cutten “Speaking with Tongues” p.46.
[21] Op. cit. p.19.
Is Pentecost Happening Today? (Part 7) – Tongues Shall Cease