What does the Bible say about speaking in tongues?

At times, tongues are understandable by everyone: "[E]ach one heard them speaking in the native language of each" (Acts 2:6). Other times tongues are understood by no one except God: "For those who speak in a tongue do not speak to other people but to God; for nobody understands them, since they are speaking mysteries in the Spirit" (1 Corinthians14:2). Such diverse manifestations thus share the same essence as Spirit-inspired sounds with meaning beyond a speaker's mental comprehension. Yet they reflect a different use and purpose: communication to others (Acts 2:8), personal edification (1 Corinthians 14:4), prayer to God (1 Corinthians14:14), corporate edification (if paired with interpretation - 1 Corinthians 14:5), or evangelism (1 Corinthians14:22)

• Mark 16:17, signs like speaking in new tongues will accompany those who believe
• Acts 2:1-5, Pentecost
• Acts 10:45-46, gift of the Holy Spirit
• 1 Corinthians 12:7-11, manifestation of the Spirit for the common good
• 1 Corinthians 13:1, "If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal"
• 1 Corinthians 14:4-5, tongues and prophesying
• 1 Corinthians 14:23-28, "Let all things be done for building up."
• 1 Corinthians 14:39-40, do not forbid speaking in tongues but all things should be done decently and in order

Sermon ideas about speaking in tongues

Speaking in tongues and neuroscience

"Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania took brain images of five women while they spoke in tongues and found that their frontal lobes — the thinking, willful part of the brain through which people control what they do — were relatively quiet, as were the language centers. . . . [I]t was unclear which region was driving the behavior." (Benedict Carey, "A Neuroscientific Look at Speaking in Tongues," The New York Times, Nov. 7, 2006.) Also: "For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unproductive. What should I do then? I will pray with the spirit, but I will pray with the mind also" (1 Corinthians 14:14-15).

Tongues as an ambiguous phenomenon

Christianity is not the only religion that experiences ecstatic speech. Ecstatic utterances are testified to in early Egyptian writings, in the oracles of Delphi, Epirus, and Dodona, in various tribal religions, and in some expressions of modern New Age spirituality. Linguistic analysis of tongues speech has found that while speaking in tongues does appear at first to resemble human language, the actual pattern of speech was not organized and there was no existing relationship between units of speech and concepts. (William Samarin, {{Tongues of Men and Angels: The Religious Language of Pentecostalism}}, Macmillan, 1972) In another study carried out with a group of sixty spiritually agnostic undergraduates, 20 percent of subjects could accomplish speaking in tongues after listening to only a minute-long sample, and about 70 percent could succeed with some moderate training. (Nicholas Spanos et al., "Glossolalia as learned behavior: An experimental demonstration," Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95(1), 21-23) So the phenomenon of speaking in tongues is thus not itself sufficient to discern the presence of the Holy Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22 - 23) is a less spectacular yet perhaps more reliable evidence of the Spirit's presence.

Tongues and church history

Christian experiences of glossolalia and responses to it are varied, ranging from the belief that no modern Christians can speak in tongues to the belief that all Spirit-filled Christians should. Cessationists limit such dramatic manifestations of the Spirit to the time of the original twelve apostles. John Chrysostom wrote: "This whole place is very obscure: but the obscurity is produced by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation, being such as then used to occur but now no longer take place." (John Chrysostom, Homily 29 on First Corinthians) And John Calvin wrote: "The gift of the tongues, and other such like things, are ceased long ago in the Church". (John Calvin, Commentary on Acts, Volume 1, Chapter 10) In contrast, some in the modern Pentecostal movement view speaking in tongues as a necessary sign of baptism in the Holy Spirit: "The baptism of believers in the Holy Spirit is witnessed by the initial physical sign of speaking with other tongues as the Spirit of God gives them utterance." (Constitution of the Assemblies of God) A mediating position views tongues as a legitimate but not necessary manifestation of the Holy Spirit that, along with other possible spiritual gifts, exists for the edification of the church as a whole (1 Cor. 12:4 - 11).