Tag Archives: tongues

Keep Quiet?

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This fresco in the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom (St. Sophia) in Kiev shows the apostles receiving Holy Communion from Christ. Although visitors and non-believers could attend Christian dinners and other activities, they were not allowed to attend the Eucharist. Only believers who had been properly instructed and baptized could attend the Eucharist because non-believers would not understand what was going on.


If the whole church comes together and everyone is speaking in tongues, and if then outsiders and unbelievers come in, won’t they say that you are all crazy? If, however, you are all prophesying …. the visitors will fall on their faces and worship God saying, “God is really in your midst!” (1 Cor. 14:23-25)

St. Paul is still dealing with the troublemakers at Corinth who boast that they are the spiritual elite because they can speak in tongues. The apostle points out that anyone visiting the Christian dinners will think the Christians are all crazy if they are all babbling in some way that no one can understand. But if they hear people prophesying, i.e. preaching well, that is more likely to bring them to conversion.

The unbelievers will think the Christians are just crazy people if they hear the Christians babbling on and on in tongues because they won’t understand anything that the tongue-speakers are saying.

This is the same reason that non-believers were not allowed to attend the celebration of the Eucharist: because they won’t understand what the Christians are saying, even if the Christians are saying words in a language that the non-Christians speak. Unless a person has been properly instructed and baptized before coming to the Eucharist for the first time, nothing they hear or see will make sense. The words “Body of Christ” and “Blood of Christ” will sound like cannibalism. The love of each Christian for the “brothers” and “sisters” will sound like incest. The exchange of a Kiss of Peace will underscore the appearance of incest because only family members were allowed to kiss each other.

None of these words and behaviors make sense without prior instruction, i.e. catechism. Therefore non-believers should be kept out of the celebrations of the Eucharist. (Besides, non-believers might be there as spies for the government, in order to arrest the Christians they see at the Eucharist.)

Addendum, based on a thoughtful question (see “replies” below):

How does this carry over into our contemporary situation? I think the question of who understands what is very complicated now. We live in the remnants of Christendom and presume people have a grasp of basic Christianity but I think that is not true—-many people have no understanding of even the most basic Christian teachings and no familiarity with even the most fundamental Biblical stories. We must redouble and even triple our efforts to teach and proclaim the whole Gospel, from its beginning in Genesis to its conclusion in the Apocalypse. I think we should refer to the great apologists of the second and third centuries: what did they think was of first importance in explaining to the non-Christian world and how did they proclaim it in a way the world could understand?

We have to have a better grasp of contemporary culture as well as contemporary language to do this. But we should not wait until we have the “perfect” message to share. We must begin now and do the best we can with what we have. What we cannot do is sit on our hands and expect someone else to do all the work!

Love vs. the Barbarians

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The story of the Tower of Babel (depicted here in a 12th century mosaic in the cathedral of Monreale, Sicily) is about people losing the ability to communicate with each other. God punishes their arrogance with more than 70 languages and these many languages divide the human race into struggling, battling factions; it is the gift of many languages at Pentecost that makes these languages a reflection of harmony rather than a cause of division.


For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays and my mind is useless. What then? I will pray in the spirit and I will pray in my mind. I will sing praise in the spirit and I will sing praise in mind…. I prefer to utter five words with my mind so that I instruct others rather than utter an untold number of words in a tongue. (1 Cor. 14:13-19)

When St. Paul talks about love (agape) in this epistle, he wants his readers to understand that when we love/practice agape, we are participating in the Kingdom of God. When the gospels talk about love, it is always in the context of behavior: love is not a feeling or emotion but a way to behave. In this epistle, love is both a way to behave and a way to think; “strive for love” is both a way for the Corinthians to behave towards each other and an attitude towards each other that they should embrace.

If the Corinthians love one another, they should always want to support each other and build each other up. St. Paul points out that this attitude should be apparent in the way they pray together: it is better to say a few words that everyone can understand and that build up the community rather than lots and LOTS of words that mean nothing to most people.

The notion of “barbarian” is rooted in this inability to speak in a way that others can understand. The ancient Greeks thought that anyone who could not speak Greek and that they could not understand was simply making nonsense sounds and repeating “bar, bar, bar.” Hence, the term barbarian to mean someone who could not be understood. St. Paul implies that if the Corinthians do not pray with love, they are barbarians.

“I would rather speak five words that other people can understand.” Today, many preachers might take this to heart. Rather than say many fancy-sounding words that only a few can understand, it is better to preach in a way that everyone can appreciate. It is possible to talk about many sophisticated theological ideas in very simple language; one of my favorite guides to preaching suggests that a preacher never use words that are more than one syllable. That way the preacher avoids using fancy-sounding jargon and sticks to words that everyone knows. But using short words that everyone knows does not make a sermon boring. What makes a sermon boring are words that no one understands!

If I Speak With the Tongues of Angels But Have Not Love

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In addition to the Eucharist, Christians would meet for banquets known as “agapes” or “love feasts” in order to eat, pray, and share their goods together. This is a fresco of a female figure holding a chalice at an early Christian Agape feast, depicted in the Catacomb of Saints Marcellinus and Peter, Via Labicana, Rome. Perhaps the woman with the cup is the personification of Agape-Love herself. The Patriarch Job is often called the Long-Suffering because of his many afflictions; he shown wearing a crown because he is described as a king in the oldest manuscripts of the Book of Job.


If I speak in the tongues of humans or even of angels, and do not have love, I have become sounding brass rather than a resounding cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy … and do not love, I am good for nothing. (1 Cor. 13:1-2)

This chapter is a digression in the apostle’s instructions to the Corinthians, but it has become one of the most recognizable chapters in the New Testament. Chapters 12 and 14 of the epistle are about the Church but Chapter 13 is about the essential quality of Christian life: agape, translated simply as “love” is the clearest expression of Christian faith and practice.

St. Paul mentions angels a few times in this epistle (chapters 4, 6, and 11) but this is the only place where he refers to “the tongues of angels.” Perhaps he is thinking of the Testament of Job (written between 100 BC-100 AD), in which the daughters of Job are given the ability of ecstatic speech to make up for their not being allowed to inherit their father’s property on an equal footing with their brothers. The ecstatic speech of the daughters is described as the language of angels and cherubim.

Paul chooses speaking in tongues as his example because the Corinthians thought that it was the greatest of the gifts…. The tongues of angels are those perceived by the mind, not by the ear.

Theodoret of Cyr, Commentary on the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians

But this ecstatic speech is useless without love. Even prophecy, which St. Paul had earlier said was truly the greatest of the gifts, is useless without love.

Balaam prophesied even though he was not a prophet (Numbers 22-24). Even his donkey prophesied…. King Saul prophesied but was filled with an evil spirit (1 Samuel 16, 19).

Ambrosiaster, Commentary on Paul’s Epistles

Love is not just a quality of Christian life. Love is what is natural to divinity.

Since true charity loves all, if someone knows that he hates even one other person he should hasten to vomit up this bitter gall, in order to be ready to receive the sweetness of charity [Christ] himself.

St. Caesarius of Arles, Sermon 23.4

Many people have heard that there are four different words in Greek that are commonly all translated by the English word “love.” C.S. Lewis wrote a well-known book about these words, known as The Four Loves.