@CS1 (post #4,259) –
Essentially, you’re saying what a lot of people tell me – namely, that I’m trying to explain/understand something ‘supernatural’ in non-supernatural/human terms; trying to understand the ‘spiritual’ in ‘carnal’ terms.
If you’re doing something and I can show you exactly what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, and the entire process behind what you’re doing can all be explained in relatively simple terms, is it something supernatural, or just something natural being used in a supernatural (religious) context?
As the old saying goes, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks likes a duck……
The gift of languages is the ability to easily and quickly learn languages in order to spread the word of God to different nations and peoples (an oversimplification – see some of my posts above in this thread for further detail). In short, when this ability is used to further the glory of God, it can be termed a “spiritual gift”.
When Paul’s letter was written, he wasn’t addressing it to modern day Pentecostal/Charismatic Christians; he was addressing it to a church in a major seaport city rife with cultural and linguistic diversity, where everyday communication could be challenging at best. There just isn’t anything in Paul’s letter (or any other place ‘tongues’ are referenced) that does not describe real, rational; language(s) situations.
Can anyone have the God-given ability to learn languages quickly? Yup. But, as mentioned above, when said gift/ability is used to further the glory of God, that gift can be said to be ‘spiritual’. I might suggest that this is why “tongues” (read ‘languages’) is regarded as the least of the gifts Paul mentions. Considering he mentions gifts in three different places and the list is not quite the same in all three, this seems to suggest that just about any God-given gift/ability/talent, call it what you will, can be considered a “spiritual gift” if used in a ‘spiritual manner’ (using it for the further glory of God).
Why don’t people have similar explanations for the other gifts – I would have to argue that it’s because there is no ambiguity as to what they are. “Tongues” on the other hand, seem to be something grossly misunderstood, problematic, in most cases taken completely out of context, and in modern times, completely redefined to fit a very modern experience by a particular group of Christians.
Mind you, I’m completely differentiating “tongues” here from the “tongues experience” – they are two different things entirely. ‘Tongues’ as the tool they are (as described in some of my earlier posts) are a very powerful tool which can produce some pretty miraculous results (the "tongues experience"). But the tool itself, i.e. the “tongues” produced, is entirely self-created.
To reiterate what I’ve said in previous posts – the fact that what people are doing today is not to be found in the Biblical narratives does not in any way make it somehow wrong; but what you’re doing today is not at all what Paul is talking about, nor is it anything to be found in the Biblical narratives.
Yeah, translate/interpret - a bit of syntactical splitting of hairs. When something is written, it’s typically said to be “translated”, when spoken, it’s “interpreted”. In theory the same thing, but ‘interpretation’ opens itself to some leeway on the part of the interpreter; it’s not always as literal as a 'translation'.
The interpretation of tongues may also be said to be a self-created phenomenon. Interpretation is ‘spiritual improv’ of sorts, inspired by one’s deep faith and beliefs.
There is absolutely nothing that correlates a glossic utterance with an interpretation.
Why is that? Interpretations are characterized by typically being inordinately longer than the actual glossic utterance (e.g. a 30 second utterance equating to twenty minutes of interpretation), rather generic and non-specific in nature, and perhaps not surprisingly, open to multiple non-related ‘interpretations’. In other words, have ten interpreters listen to a glossic string and you’ll get ten different (typically unrelated) “interpretations”. In short, when it comes to “tongues”, ‘The big brown dog is slow’, can also be interpreted as ‘The small white cat is quick’. These latter two characteristics do not suggest anything that is divinely inspired. It fails even the most basic tests and criteria that define ‘communication’ itself.
The common come-back to the multiple interpretation issue is that God/the Holy Spirit gives different interpretations to different people. As someone once put it, “Pentecostal Darwinism does not exist – there’s no mutation or transformation of one message into several for the sake of justifying an obvious discrepancy. If this were the case, it would completely eradicate the need for ‘tongues’ in the first place.”
As I’ve mentioned I am neither a so-called cessationist or continuationist; I don’t identify with either term. Since Biblical tongues refer to real, rational language, and since people still speak, and many still have the ability to learn languages incredibly fast, ‘tongues’ (read 'languages') have not ceased.
A few quick asides, and to some of your points –
There is no such thing as “fake tongues” or “demonic tongues” – they are all produced in the exact same way. What would make you think they are somehow demonic? Is it the sounds that the glossic string contains? Tone, pitch – what? To use an analogy, is it because it sounds more like Tolkien’s “Black Speech” than his “Sindarin/Quenya Elvish” (i.e. it just “sounds evil”; God wouldn’t talk like that!)?
As far as ‘fake’ goes, what is there to fake? Random free vocalization is random free vocalization. That said, I actually do differentiate between “fake” and “real” glossolalia – ‘faking it’, for me, would mean that it’s something that looks and sounds like it’s being produced using an obvious conscious effort (kind of like watching and listening to someone speaking a fluent Pig Latin – you can almost see them transforming the words right before they say them), while ‘not faking it’, to me, would mean that the speaker is producing it on a subconscious level; just letting the sounds flow as they come. Virtually no effort involved.
BTW – speaking for myself, there’s no intellectual desire to ‘know all’; there is however, a curiosity in studying and understanding an interesting, very tangible, linguistic phenomenon which also just happens to lend itself rather well to study.
Using Scripturam ex Scriptura exclusively, to put it somewhat bluntly, is a concept that is severely limiting, enforces a type of strict (religious) control over people, and tends to keep them from daring to think too far out of the box. The concept is fine, so long as it’s used in conjunction with allowing people to think and question. For some groups of Christians, however, not exclusively adhering to Scripturam ex Scriptura seems to be somewhat frowned upon.
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