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The Tower of Babel

The incident in Corinth is not unlike the other tongues-related judgments God issued in the Old Testament. Genesis 11 records the first incidence of unintelligible tongues serving as a judgment from God. As the story goes, various men proposed to build a tower that would reach unto heaven. This tower was to serve as a central place of commerce. It would be so high that all the people could see it from great distances and thus be able to stay close to it and never separate from the commercial metropolis. Such plans were against God's command to "be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth" laid out in Genesis 1:28 and reiterated in Genesis 9:1-7 after the Flood. In fact, it was the first incident of population control, for the men of those days refused to spread out and fill the earth with people. They wanted everything for themselves.

In order to stop this disobedience, God caused the men to speak in different languages so that they could not understand one another. As a result, they could no longer build the tower or commune with one another, and were thus forced to separate into different parts of the earth. Not surprisingly, the name given to the place where the confusion of tongues occurred was Babel (Genesis 11:9), which is the origin of the colloquial expression "babbling," when someone is uttering incomprehensible sounds.

By analogy, the story of the tower of Babel has relevance to the situation at Corinth, for, similar to the men of Genesis, in 1 Cor. 3:10-17 Paul speaks of the Corinthians as being in a building project of their own, but the tower they are building is God's tower. As they build God's tower the Corinthians are to: (1) build only on the foundation that has already been laid, Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 3:10-11); and (2) build with proper materials (1 Cor. 3:12-13). If they fail to do so, they will be "destroyed for destroying the temple" (1 Cor 3:17). In Corinth, the main sin causing the destruction of the church was prideful divisions. Divisions are caused by jealousy and strife, which Paul mentions specifically in 1 Cor. 3:3. Jealousy and strife are caused by the divisiveness of tongues, wherein one claims that it is the superior gift and the foremost sign of the Holy Spirit, which is a lie. To do so is to build the temple of God with wood, hay and straw, as Paul warns against in 1 Cor. 3:12-13.

The Israelites had done something similar in their day. After having despised the prophetic word of God, Ezekiel says the Jews began building the house of God with untempered mortar and whitewashing the outside to make it look fashionable (Ezekiel 13:10-11; 22:28-31). In doing so, they created their own religion to replace the religion of God. The Corinthians, by building on the wrong foundation and/or building with faulty materials, were similarly destroying the temple of God, and God would "consume them with the fire of his wrath" just as He had done to the Israelites.

In light of these warnings, we must be very careful to look at tongues from the proper biblical perspective.

First the New Testament does not regard tongues as a prominent gift of the Holy Spirit. The latter books of the New Testament do not even mention the gift of tongues. This is clearly evident in listings of the spiritual gifts and offices (cf., Rom. 12:4-8; Eph. 4:11-12; Gal. 5:22; 1 Pet. 4:7-11; 1 Tim. 4:14; 2 Tim. 1:6). This suggests that the gift of tongues was already ceasing in the biblical times, which coincides with the preponderant evidence from the earliest Fathers of the church. Indeed, tongues is the only gift that the New Testament specifies will "cease" at some point in time. Yet, even when tongues are viable they are classed as one of the least important spiritual gifts (1 Cor. 14:1-25). In the book of Acts, which contains the most instances, tongues are spoken by only three groups of people: the twelve apostles, Cornelius, and the twelve Ephesians. In Acts 2, the 3,000 converts at Pentecost are not said to speak in tongues, nor are the 5,000 believers of Acts 4:4. Indeed, in the sum total of Christians mentioned in the book of Acts, less than 1% of them receive the gift of tongues. At Corinth, Paul gave strict instructions that only two or three could speak in tongues at any given assembly, which is a small percentage of the actual numbers in the congregation. This is quite unlike modern forms of tongues-speaking in which often twenty or even hundreds of people speak in tongues at the same time (Goodman, p. 74). Moreover, when spoken in biblical times, tongues were a spontaneous phenomenon, quite unlike the coaching, coaxing and teaching characteristic of the many illicit experiences of tongues recorded in modern times.

Conclusion

The information we have gathered leads us to several important conclusions about tongues-speaking. Although the New Testament does not specify that the gift of tongues would no longer be manifested in the Church before the return of Christ, it severely warns against any illicit elevation of tongues over the other gifts, and warns, in no uncertain terms, that a mass proliferation of tongues in the church is a sign of sin and unbelief. The unbelief is not of a nature that denies God or Christianity, but one that creates a pseudo-faith. Although when used legitimately, tongues remains a gift of God, nevertheless, history shows that legitimate tongues-speaking is a rare occurrence. It is a gift given to very selective people in very selective instances. Conversely, in the modern movement, tongues-speaking is advertised with a very high-profile of acceptability and accessibility. Underneath this profile, however, there is an almost total disregard for the biblical directives regarding tongues speaking, which in itself suggests an illicit origin. The preponderance of research shows that modern glossolalia is a self-generated and learned experience, showing all the signs of a classic psychologically induced phenomenon which relies solely on the vast pool of information already stored in the linguistic background of its recipient. Coupling this with the fact that tongues speech is common in many pagan religions, cults and heretical groups, which produce tongues in unique states of hyper-arousal and mental dissociation, it must be concluded that most of modern tongues is far removed from the legitimate gift described in the New Testament.

There is, however, one dimension about modern tongues which is closely akin to the tongues of biblical times. As the church of Corinth found itself in the midst of a mass proliferation of tongues, Paul characterized it as a sign to unbelievers of God's ensuing judgment. So, too, a proliferation of tongues in modern times is a sign of God's ensuing judgment. Indeed, the presence of tongues on a mass scale would be one of the signs God is permitting to occur in order to show the world its desperate spiritual condition. It is a sign that judgment looms ahead, even as God judged apostate Israel by the babbling tongues of the Assyrian and Babylonian invaders. As God complained to Jeremiah that the prophets in those days were speaking from their own mind yet declaring their words were from the Lord , so too, many today have done the same. For this God's judgment will indeed be severe.

"Thus saith the Lord of hosts: Hearken not to the words of the prophets that prophesy to you, and deceive you: they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord" (Jeremiah 23:16). END

Bibliography

Bauman, Louis, S. The Tongues Movement, 1963. Belvin, Edwin R. The House of Seleucus, 1966. Birch, Desmond. Trial, Tribulation and Triumph, 1996. Carroll, Leonard, R. The Glossolalia Phenomenon, 1966. Culpepper, Robert H. Evaluating the Charismatic Movement, 1977. Dillow, Joseph. Speaking in Tongues, 1978. Ferm, Virgilius. Encyclopedia of Religion, 1959. Goodman, Felicitas D. Speaking in Tongues: A Cross Cultural Study of Glossolalia, 1972. Gromacki, Robert G. The Modern Tongues Movement, 1972. Hamilton, Michael P. The Charismatic Movement, 1975. Laurentin, Rene. Catholic Pentecostalism, 1977. Kelsey, Morton, T. Tongue Speaking, 1968. Kildahl, John P. The Psychology of Speaking in Tongues, 1972. Knox, Ronald. Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion, 1950. McDonnell, Kilan. Charismatic Renewal and the Churches, 1975. Oates, Wayne E. Glossolalia, 1967. Poythress, Vern S. "Linguistic and Sociological Analyses of Modern Tongue Speaking." Westminster Theological Journal, Vol. XLII, 1980. Ricciotti, Giuseppi. The History of Israel, 1955. Sherrill, John, They Speak in Other Tongues; Smith, Charles R. Tongues in Biblical Perspective, 1972. Unger, Merrill F. New Testament Teaching on Tongues, 1971.

Endnotes:

1. The Greek word for "tongue" is (glôssa) and the Greek word for "speak" is (laleô).

2. NPNF II, V. 12, p. 169.

3. Greek dialektos also used in Acts 1:19; 21:40; 22:2; 26:14.

4. The 15 nations are: Parthia, Media, Elam, Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia Pamphylia, Egypt, Libya around Cyrene, Rome, Crete, Arabia.

5. Kelsey, p. 39.

6. Culpepper, p. 40.

7. NPNF II, v. 12, p. 168.

8. Homily XXXII, NPNF II, v. 12, p. 187.

9. NPNF II, vol. 7, pp. 497-498.

10. The Gospel of John, Tractate 32.

11. Hamilton, p. 68.

12. Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion, p. 551.

13. ST, Commentary on the Gospel of John, Ch 32.

14. Angel of the Judgment: A Life of St. Vincent Ferrer (Notre Dame: IN, Ave Maria Press, 1953), pp. 137-138.

15. Kelsey, p. 50.

16. Laurentin, pp. 138-142.

17. Ibid., pp. 84-85.

18. Kelsey, p. 53.

19. Ferm, p. 115.

20. Kildahl, p. 16.

21. Gromacki, p. 21.

22. Kelsey, p. 57.

23. Culpepper, pp. 41-43.

24. Ibid., p. 44.

25. Ibid., p. 45.

26. Ibid., p. 46.

27. Article 7, The Book of Mormon.

28. Kelsey, p. 58.

29. Dillow, p. 9.

30. Bauman, p. 34.

31. Goodman, p. 74.

32. Ibid.

33. Smith, p. 23.

34. Smith, p. 111.

35. Goodman, p. 65.

36. Kelsey, p. 170.

37. Ferm, p. 693-694.

38. Ibid., p. 695.

39. Kelsey, p. 184.

40. Jung, Collected Works, Vol. 12, (New York, 1953).

41. Kelsey, p. 197.

42. Ibid.

43. Kelsey, p. 211.

44. Ibid.

45. Goodman, p. 58.

46. Ibid, pp. 59-60.

47. Ibid, p. 64.

48. Ibid, p. 68.

49. McDonald, p. 81.

50. Smith, p. 107.

51. Smith, p. 96.

52. Ibid., p. 102-103.

53. McDonnell, p. 84.

54. Smith, p. 70.

55. Goodman, p. 89.

56. Ibid., p. 68-71.

57. Ibid., p. 89.

58. Ibid., p. 93-97.

59. Goodman, p. 108.

60. Goodman, pp. 118-119.

61. Ibid., p. 132.

62. Dillow, p. 168.

63. Ibid., p. 125.

64. Smith, p. 105.

65. Kelsey, p. 207.

66. Smith, p. 99.

67. Kildahl, p. 55.

68. Ibid., pp. 58-60.

69. Hamilton, p. 39.

70. Kildahl, p. 65.

71. Oates, pp. 84-89.

72. Ibid., pp 90-91.

73. Kelsey, p. 69.

74. Ibid., pp. 75-77.

75. Kelsey, pp. 95-97.

76. Kelsey, pp. 126-128.

77. Laurentin, pp. 11-22.

78. La Croix, January 19, 1974.

79. Unfortunately, Scripture does not have good things to say about those who "fall backward" (Gn 49:17; Is 28:13; 1Sm 4:18; Jn 18:6).

80. McConnell, pp. 15-16.

81. Ibid., pp 19-24.

82. Ibid., pp 64-65.

83. Ibid., p. 112.

84. Ibid., p. 117.

85. Poythress, pp. 370-371.

86. Ibid., pp. 373-375.

87. Catechism

88. See also 1 Corinthians 14:39: "Forbid not to speak with tongues."

89. 2 Timothy 3:1; Hebrews 1:2; James 5:3; 2 Peter 3:3; Catholic Catechism ¶ 732.

90. Hebrew: (az panim).

91. See Giuseppi Ricciotti's The History of Israel, p. 43. Also Edwin R. Belvin's The House of Seleucus, pp. 138-145, as cited in Trial, Tribulation and Triumph by Desmond Birch, p. 486.

92. Jerome writes: "Therefore, let us state what all the ecclesiastical writers have passed down the following: At the consummation of the world, when the Kingdom of the Romans has been destroyed, when ten kings shall have divided the territory of the Romans between themselves, an eleventh shall rise to a small kingdom, who when he shall have overcome three of the ten kings, ie, the king of the Egyptians, of the Africans, and of the Ethiopians and consequently as we learn more manifestly - whom he shall have killed, the other seven kings shall submit their necks to the victor." Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, Vol. LXXV A, S. Heironymi Presbyteri Opera, Pars I, Commentoriorum in Danielum, p. 844. Of the future Antichrist, Jerome writes: "Nor do we think him to be the Devil or a demon (as some others do), but one of mankind in whom Satan shall dwell totally...his mouth uttering great boasts, for he is the man of sin the son of perdition, such that he will seat himself in the temple as if he were God." Ibid.

93. Paragraph 675.

94. Goodman, p. 74.

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