Patterson on tongues: God could do it again, but call for an interpreter

By Tammi Reed Ledbetter
April 9, 2006
No Comments

FORT WORTH?Baptist evangelicals recognize that the charismatic movement shifts the focus of attention from salvation in Jesus Christ to the person of the Holy Spirit, stated Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Paige Patterson in an April 4 chapel address. Instead, he reminded, “The major work of the Holy Spirit is to point our attention away from himself and to the Lord Jesus Christ.”

In one of a series of messages on the Holy Spirit he has been preaching throughout the spring semester, Patterson said the “critically important process” of building doctrine must be done by “majoring on what the Bible majors on and putting to the side that which is difficult, if not impossible to understand and explain.”

Unlike some cessationists on the seminary faculty who believe none of the sign gifts are applicable today, Patterson said, “The same God who made it happen in Acts 2 could make it happen again if he chose to do so.” He described the gift of tongues as expressed in Acts 2 as having a specific purpose in bringing men to Christ.

“The Spirit of the living God worked a miracle,” he added. “I don’t know if it was in the speech of those who spoke or the hearing of those who heard, but probably in the speech of those who gave the message. They proclaimed Christ to those who could not have heard it unless they heard it in their own languages.”

“They were speaking languages they’d never formally studied for the purpose of presenting the gospel of Jesus Christ,” he stated. “When we come to 1 Corinthians 14, it would appear there is something different,” offering one of three possible interpretations of the passage.

First Corinthians 14 instructs that “if a man speaks in a tongue he speaks not to men, but to God,” which seemingly contradicts the Acts 2 account “to speak to men the gospel of Jesus Christ,” Patterson said, offering three possible explanations. He led with a view held by early church father John Chrysostom?and Southwestern’s Executive Vice President Craig Blaising?that all references to tongues in 1 Corinthians 14 are the same gift described in Acts 2?actual known human language.

“The vast overwhelming majority of people in the U.S. who have any view” regarding the gift of tongues hold to a second view that there are two separate gifts?one in Acts 2 that clearly speaks of a language never studied and one in 1 Corinthians 14 represented by “a rush of indeterminate sounds for the purpose of praising God and for self-edification.”

A third view, to which Patterson subscribes, considers the only legitimate gift of tongues to be found in Acts 2.

“There is also an attempt to imitate in the power of the flesh that which the Spirit of God did in Acts 2 and it is that which you will see in part, but not in whole, in 1 Corinthians 14.”

Similar expressions of tongues were common in the Roman Empire, he said, noting accounts from Aristophenes, Plato and Irenaeus.

After pointing to Paul’s illustrations of distinguishing a flute from a harp and the need for a certain sound of a trumpet to prepare for battle, Patterson noted the interchange in 1 Corinthians 14:10 between different kinds of languages and unintelligible speech. He regarded the verse as Paul contrasting the gift given at Pentecost?intelligible language, with the Corinthian effort to imitate it through unintelligible speech.

In the current debate over the legitimacy of a private prayer language, Patterson said advocates often turn to Romans 8:26.

“You can’t get it there,” he insisted. “The Apostle Paul said when he reached the point where he didn’t know what to say in his prayer, that the Holy Spirit gave him the ability to pray with groanings which cannot be uttered.”

He defined groanings as “no spoken communication at all,” according to the Greek text. Instead of oral speech, it was “the yearnings of the heart for God,” Patterson explained.

The only other appeal for the practice might be found in 1 Corinthians 14:15 where Paul said he prefers to pray with understanding. The lack of intelligible speech makes it impossible for those in the congregation to offer affirmation, Patterson said.

In his book “The Troubled Triumphant Church, An Exposition of First Corinthians,” Patterson provided a more detailed examination of the relationship of the text to current Christian practices. During the chapel address he recommended Neil Babcock’s book “My Search for Charismatic Reality” as a thorough examination of the subject of speaking in tongues.

<P class=MsoNor