Why Do Only Weird People Speak in Tongues?

An Evangelical Theology of Bashaba Dabba Shundala Ribba Shabba

I’ve never spoken in tongues. And, in all sincerity, I’d prefer not to.

They weird me out. In the few times I’ve heard someone babbling, my mind immediately runs to “They are making it up.” And over the years, I’ve flirted with, and even defended, cessationism (Rest in Power, Johnny Mac). And yet, recently, I’ve come to terms with the fact that most of my gripes about these various gifts (tongues, prophecy, healings) have more to do with human reason and preference than scriptural conviction.

And being completely honest, I’ve never really had a problem with the gifts of prophecy or healings. It makes good sense to me that such gifts experienced in the early Church would continue to this day. It is specifically tongues I have a problem with. Again and again, I keep returning to Why? What purpose do tongues actually serve? Why do we still need them?

In this article, I won’t be defending continuationism over cessationism; plenty of smarter and more experienced people have done that elsewhere. However, my aim is to first explain biblically what tongues are and to present a theology (of sorts) as to why we need them today.

Who Are Tongues?

Traditionally, there are (essentially) two options, tongues are:

1. Real unlearned human languages (known as xenolalia). Think of someone speaking Arabic without any prior knowledge.

2. Ecstatic utterances¹ or “heavenly languages”. You know, the scary stuff.

Now, to be clear, saying that these two options are agreed upon would be criminal. For instance, many believe that only option one (xenolalia) is what the New Testament calls “tongues,” while option two was invented by Kenneth Copeland.

One reason for this is that the Greek word for “tongues” is glossolalia (plural), which can simply be translated as “languages”. Such as “And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new languages (glossolalia)” (Mark 16:17). (For the remainder of the article, I’ll use glossolalia instead of tongues.)

Thus, many argue that whenever Paul and Luke discuss tongues, they are only talking about people speaking real, unlearned human languages.

However, as we’ll see, I do think Scripture attests to both options one and two. For some summaries on this debate, see this ungodly long footnote.²

“Pentecost,” Index of Medieval Art, Princeton University, circa 1300-1349

Xenolalia

“Each one was hearing them speak in his own language (dialekto)” Acts 2:6.

It seems especially in the Acts of the Apostles that the ability to speak in glossolalia is tangibly connected to the cross-cultural ministry of the Spirit. Indeed, in Acts, the main message is that the Spirit’s mission is to build the Church with the fullness of God’s people.

Many cessationists have argued that precisely because Luke connects glossolalia to the cross-cultural ministry of gentile inclusion, there is no need for the gift to continue. That is to say, Christianity is now unbelievably gentile. Mission accomplished!

On one level, this makes sense. Glossolalia happens at three distinct times in the Acts of the Apostles. For instance, Pentecost (Acts 2) is 100% about gentile inclusion. As is the gentile moment at Caesarea (Acts 10). However, this doesn’t make sense, at least to me, for John’s disciples (Acts 19). There is no indication that John’s disciples in any way were not a part of God’s people or were gentiles. It was an issue over baptism, not nationality.

Nonetheless, we can say one of Luke’s main objectives is to show that the ministry of the Spirit, via glossolalia, reveals that God’s people are now many tribes, tongues, and nations. If God’s people were scattered with many languages at the Tower of Babel (Gen 11), then at Pentecost, they were brought together with many languages.

However, Luke seems to only know or discuss xenolalia, not bashaba dabba. That is an issue for our brother Paul.

Ecstatic utterances

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels” (1 Cor 13:1).

Here, I am convinced we see Paul acknowledging the two types of glossolalia. “Tongues of men,” which would be xenolalia, and “of angels.”

Now, this is a new category.

One of the things I have always been struck by in the New Testament is how glossolalia is such a new (and weird) category for Jews and gentiles, and yet no one seems completely perturbed by it. They just perform the gift as if they have a framework for it. And to my surprise, we do have some evidence that various Jews did have a familiarity with the practice.

In a pseudepigraphic text known as the Testament of Job, it states that Job’s daughter spoke: “ecstatically in the angelic dialect, sending up a hymn to God in accord with the hymnic style of the angels. And she spoke ecstatically. . .”³ The text goes on to describe other characters who experience this same phenomenon. To be clear, we don’t know what this actually sounds like, but we do have precedent for “tongues of angels” that seems to be of a similar type of utterance that Paul is talking about.

And in Paul’s ministry, his main pastoral concern is with angelic utterance or ecstatic speaking, not xenolalia. And interestingly, Paul is pretty pissed about glossolalia. It seems as if Paul could be holding his own Strange Fire Conference. Paul says that “no one understands” tongue speakers and that they “build up” themselves (1 Cor 14:2, 4).

However, we should be careful not to draw too many conclusions from Paul’s tone here. We ought to be reminded that Paul’s main concern is building up the local gathered body. Thus, he’s not upset with glossolalia; literally, in the next verse, he exclaims, “I want you all to speak in glossolalia” (1 Cor 14:5).

For the Corinthians, Paul does not want performance. His main aim is for the gathered body to be edified, and the Corinthians have gone out of their way to make a scene with their glossolalia. So, Paul wants to hold them accountable. “Speak in tongues all you want!” Paul says (my translation), but make sure it can be interpreted (1 Cor 14:13).

But notice that Paul does not diminish private tongues. One of my main gripes with cessationist views on glossolalia is that they often believe its necessity has ceased. According to this theory, it was given only to the early Church for a specific purpose and at a specific time. But if Paul urges believers in Corinth to practice glossolalia in private, what specific purpose does it actually serve for the early Church? And on what grounds would that be connected only to the early Church? It seems to me that Paul very much sees this as a (mostly) personal prayer language, not limited to the early Church but broadly applicable to believers in their personal lives.

To drive home the point that Paul did not diminish private tongues, the late-great Gordon Fee gets this right:

“[glossolalia] has sometimes been called ‘self-edification’ and therefore understood as something pejorative. But Paul intended no such thing. The edifying of oneself is not self-centeredness, but the personal edifying of the believers that comes through private prayer and praise.”⁴

In sum, Paul doesn’t want unintelligible and non-edifying glossolalia in the assembly. Period. Or as Paul says it, “If I were to come to you speaking in tongues, how does that help you at all?” (1 Cor 14:6, my paraphrase). Paul would rather speak five intelligible words than babble a thousand words and no one be edified (1 Cor 14:19). But again, we must underscore that his enemy is not tongues per se, but uninterpreted public tongues. Paul’s main question is “who is being edified?”

It’s akin to how I was taught the biblical languages in seminary. My Greek professor used to always say, “Greek is like underwear, never seen, but always supporting.” That is, your knowledge of Greek should hardly ever be discussed in your sermons or public Bible studies. Because it often alienates people rather than helps them understand.⁵ But obviously, learning Greek is still valuable. And this is similar to Paul’s point, just because you ought to do something in private does not mean it’s not beneficial and edifying.

A Theology of Glossolalia (or Why Do We Still Need Them?)

My guess (or projection) is that many of us would prefer that Scripture rule out glossolalia, but Paul does the opposite. He desires that we all speak in tongues (privately or interpreted). But why do we still need them? Here are my three reasons why the gift of tongues is needed, not just permissible, for the Western Church today.

Book of Hours, 1483, Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY.

The End of Rationality

The debate between cessationism and continuationism is, for the most part, a debate within Western churches. Which isn’t bad. We have some great debates. But anyone who has done global missions knows just how seriously other cultures take the spiritual realm.

One of Satan’s greatest ploys against the Western church, and particularly the American church, is the dilution of the supernatural. We are fine with the supernatural in the days of Rome, but skeptical of it in the present. It is quite extraordinary that on a typical Sunday, millions of people will gather together to declare and sing that Jesus of Nazareth was born of a virgin, lived a perfect life, literally raised from the dead, ascended into Heaven, and will descend again soon—but speaking in ecstatic utterances—that is too far.

We are skeptical about anything that we cannot prove or understand. As Charles Taylor put it, we live in a world “where instrumental rationality is a key value.” Somehow, Christianity in the West has given itself over to fine-tuning arguments, detective-like evidence for the Resurrection, and digging in the dirt for Noah’s Ark. We think our faith ought to be rational. Provable. Defensible. Searchable.

This isn’t all bad. We should defend the faith. Parts of it should be provable. However, we should also recognize our finite limitations. When our faith becomes centered on human reason, rationality, and evidence, the Gospel’s supernatural claims and the supernatural realm are forgotten altogether.

For instance, Jon Tyson shared this example in his book Fighting Shadows, and it has always stuck with me. In what follows, Tyson gives a Gospel presentation, but he intentionally omits something. Can you find it?

“In the beginning God created the world. He made humanity his image-bearers to love and serve him. They chose to rebel, desiring to determine what was good and what was evil for themselves. This sin resulted in their expulsion from Eden and the entrance of sin into the world. The result of this sin was separation from God and physical and spiritual death. In his grace, God worked a plan of salvation into the human story, first through the formation of the people of Israel, and then through the sending of his Son, Jesus. Christ came and lived a perfect life, died for our sins on the cross, and rose again on the third day. If we repent of our sin and trust in his finished work, we can become children of God.

We are given a new identity and a calling to seek his kingdom and walk with him in this life. When we die, we will live forever in a new heaven and earth when God comes to restore all things.” - Jon Tyson, Fighting Shadows, pp. 160-61

That’s really good, isn’t it? Even better than most preachers could do on a Sunday.

But did you spot it? I didn’t either on my first read. What’s missing? It’s Satan.

How did we get here? If we are honest, it’s because in the West, the mere mention of the demonic realm is met with our eyes rolling over. I’ve noticed this in my own preaching. I often refer to Satan as “the enemy,” which is a safe and rational word; after all, we all have enemies. But to say Satan makes me feel like I am outing myself as a crazy person. How far we have come from the first century, where the world was filled with gods, goddesses, temples, shrines, sacrifices, idols, gifts, miracles, healings, and resurrections.

All this is to say that the invitation of glossolalia is to experience the supernatural. One where we are not in control of what we are saying, but God is. Nor do we fully understand what we are saying. Nor does it entirely benefit us. It’s a supernatural experience in which we give over our rational minds for our desire to experience the realm where God works.

The legendary New Testament scholar Craig Keener reflects on this in his account of his first experience of speaking in tongues. Stating, “For years up to that point I had tried to discover meaning in life analytically. . . but during that intense spiritual experience (speaking in tongues) I discovered that I’d found in God the very purpose for which I had been made. I would give God everything that was in me.” For Dr. Keener and perhaps many of us, the desire for an analytical life was at the expense of a spiritual one.

So why do only weird people speak in tongues? Often, because they are willing to experience a realm that we so often neglect. They are inhabiting Christianity’s great tradition of being weird. When Christianity first came on the scene, non-Christians in the Roman Empire thought Christians were plain weird, even crazy. “They eat Jesus’s body?? They are willing to accept persecution!? They take care of the unborn?? Who are these people??” Weird people. God’s people.

We Know Not What We Pray. . .

In his letters to the Romans, Paul writes, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Rom 8:26). There is some solid evidence that here Paul is not just talking about our typical prayers where we are at a loss for words, but he is actually referring to glossolalia. It still remains a minority position, but it has picked up some steam (Spirit?) in the last decade or so.⁶

As we covered, Paul’s main caution with glossolalia is that it benefits one over the many. Not that it is useless. It is very useful. And the area where it is particularly useful is in private prayer. In a prayerless generation of Christians, glossolalia is an invitation to enter into a prayer life directed towards God. It is an overwhelming experience in which one’s inner being “groans,” as Paul says, in ecstatic utterances to their heavenly Father.

Right now, my one-year-old speaks to me strictly in glossolalia. I am fairly confident she has no idea what she is saying, and neither do I, but somehow I simultaneously feel like I understand every word. Often, when she babbles “ADDA!” I respond “ADDA! ADDA! ADDA!” It’s a beautiful experience where we both don’t know what we’re saying, and yet, somehow, we become wonderfully intertwined. The limits of language do not prevent communion; they can sometimes deepen it.

Glossolalia is similar to this. We know not what we say, but the Spirit intercedes for us; our Father in Heaven understands every word.

And for the record, many respectable and well-known scholars and evangelicals have reported experiencing this type of private prayer phenomenon. N.T. Wright, Jon Tyson, Craig Keener, Gordon Fee, John Mark Comer.

But these men are but a blip. Paul reports having spoken in tongues more than any of the Corinthians. Even D.A. Carson calls Paul’s ability to speak in glossolalia “remarkable.”⁷

Thus, to pray in glossolalia is to join a long list of believers, old and new, in the practice of allowing the Spirit to intercede for us and to “groan” on our behalf.

“I said, Lord, I am still eager to speak in tongues. Would you give me that gift? . . . The Lord has always said to me, without words, ‘No.’ . . . But I don’t assume that’s his last word, so every now and then I am just going to go back to him.”

- John Piper

The Public Benefit of Private Tongues

Given Paul’s emphasis on private glossolalia or interpreted/translated glossolalia, many argue that there is no public benefit to such a private gift.

This is simply not true.

Based on 1 Corinthians 12-14, we can summarize that the peeps in Corinth were speaking in a lot of uninterpreted or untranslated glossolalia. Thus, Paul’s aim is to underscore repeatedly that this cannot keep happening. However, the conclusion of Paul’s diatribe ought not be that there is no public benefit to tongues. That is simply not the case with most, or even all, private gifts.

Would we say there is no public benefit for prayer? How about fasting? Doing good deeds? Jesus recommends we do all of these in private. And yet, each of them will benefit the Church directly or indirectly.

Glossolalia is a (mostly) private discipline, but the effects do not remain private. When glossolalia is practiced, believers reach the limits of language and experience a supernatural effect in their relationship with their Heavenly Father. D.A. Carson gets this right:

“Some wish to rule out the legitimacy of any private use of tongues. . . What possible benefit for the entire community is there, they ask, in such private tongues-speaking? Clearly, there is no direct benefit: no one but God is hearing what is being said. But Paul was granted extraordinary visions and revelations that were designed only for his immediate benefit (2 Cor. 12:1-10); yet surely the church received indirect profit insofar as those visions and revelations, not to mention the ensuing thorn in his flesh, better equipped him for proclamation and ministry. . .[1 Cor 12:7] rules out using any charisma for personal aggrandizement or merely for self-satisfaction; it does not rule out all benefit for the individual (just as marriage, one of the charismata according to 1 Cor. 7:7, may benefit the individual), providing that the resulting matrix is for the common good. The context demands no more.”⁸

Amen. Amen.

So, Where To?

Over the last year or so, I have felt God invite me to experience Him anew. I am a biblical scholar. I spend most of my days in languages, contexts, history, archeology, etc. There was a point in my own discipleship when (ironically) I felt like I had “learned” too much to be “spiritual.” I was depending on the rational side of my brain because that feels safe to me.

But now, I feel like the Lord is pushing me to be uncomfortable. Not for humility’s sake, but to acknowledge how grand God is and how mysterious His ways are to humanity. I think of the call on John Piper’s life when he made the change from professor to pastor. He felt as if God had told him, “I will be proclaimed and not just analyzed or explained.” I feel this same pull.

Unlike Piper, I don’t feel the need to leave the academy to do so. I have a foot in both the academy and the Church, and I desire to analyze God and proclaim Him in all of His majesty and fullness, especially if it makes my rational side uncomfortable.

I still have never spoken in glossolalia. And if I am being sincere, I still do not want to, but I want to want to (:

Thus, if I think 1 Cor 12-14 is prescriptive, and I do, then the plea for my own heart is to desire the gift. I may never obtain it, but I’d like to grow willing to let God control my mind, my heart, and my glossa.

1. I like Vern Poythress’s definition: “[An] utterance consists of language-like sounds but does not belong to any actual human language.” Vern S. Poythress, “The Boundaries of the Gift of Tongues: With Implications for Cessationism and Continuationism,” Themelios 44.1 (2019).

2. One of the most convincing cases that option two, “heavenly tongues,” does not exist in the New Testament is the recent contribution, The Earliest View of New Testament Tongues (2024), by Maurice E. Vellacott. In his contribution, Vellacott argues that neither option one nor two is correct. Rather, it is people speaking in their native tongue. For instance, individuals reading the Old Testament in Hebrew or speaking classical Greek dialects that less-educated people, who could only speak Koine, wouldn’t fully understand. Vellacott’s argument is riveting, though perhaps not fully correct. He bases much of his evidence on Epiphanius, the Jewish Bishop. However, his overemphasis on Epiphanius’s understanding of tongues is merely one represented in the various views of the early Church, and Epiphanius is much later than some of our other Church Fathers (Irenaeus, Clement, Origen), who understand tongues in a similar way to how I’ve outlined in the article.

Nonetheless, the idea of the “heavenly language” being Hebrew has the most gas. Given how much Hebrew had been lost, and in a revitalization movement, we do see Jews returning to the Hebrew language (2 Macc 7; 12). However, I am not 100% convinced this is taking place in 1 Corinthians, I just can’t imagine Paul calling the Hebrew language “a noisy gong”.

In his article for ETSJ, Mark J. Cartledge outlines twelve options that scholars see in Luke and Paul. He gives the following list:

1. Paul and Luke thought that glossolalia was a miraculous ability to speak unlearned human languages

2. Paul thought glossolalia was the miraculous ability to speak heavenly languages

3. For Paul, glossolalia was some form of combination of (1) and (2)

4. Paul thought that glossolalia was a kind of sub- or pre-linguistic form of speech, possibly a coded utterance, similar to but not identical with speech

5. Paul thought glossolalia was idiosyncratic language, a dialect for prayer, in which archaic and foreign terms dominated

6. Whatever Paul and Luke thought, glossolalia was, in fact, unintelligible speech, perhaps with a small number of authentic foreign words occurring

7. The Apostles spoke fragments of Hebrew texts

8. People spoke various Greek dialects

9. Corinthian tongues were enigmatic “dark sayings”

10. Glossolalia comprised “cadences of vocalization which did not constitute discourse”

11. Corinthian tongues were unintelligible due to their manner of delivery (involving spontaneity, excitement, and incoherence

12. The real miracle in Acts 2 was not one of speaking but of hearing, as the hearers were given the ability to understand a language or unintelligible speech that was otherwise incomprehensible

See Mark J. Cartledge, “The Nature and Function of New Testament Glossolalia,” Evangelical Quarterly 72, no. 2 (2000): 136-38.

Also, I found this blog, “The Linguistic Phenomena of Corinthian Tongue-Speech,” helpful for various views from Christian theologians.

Interestingly, Scot McKnight thinks there are four types of tongues:

1. Missionary tongue

2. Victorious prayer

3. Public revelation to the church

4. Singing in tongues

Scot McKnight, Open to the Spirit: God in Us, God with Us, God Transforming Us (New York: WaterBrook, 2018), 175.

3. James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume 1: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983), 866.

4. Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, rev. ed., New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 728.

5. While I like this rule, over the years I have found myself disagreeing with it more. I think it matters the tone and how you use it.

6. See Gordon D. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), 77 n. 311. Also Bertone, J. (2003). “The Experience of Glossolalia and the Spirit's Empathy: Romans 8:26 Revisited.” Pneuma, 25(1), 54-65.

7. D. A. Carson, Showing the Spirit: A Theological Exposition of 1 Corinthians 12–14 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1987), 105.

8. Carson, Showing the Spirit, 27.