Chapter 3
The Gift of Tongues

The gift of tongues is usually the most problematic charismatic gift to explain. The thought of babbling like a baby is repulsive for those who try our best to act like sophisticated adults in both our secular and religious life. Many view tongue-talkers as religious fanatics at best, and mentally unstable at the worst. Most religious folks in the US nowadays consider speaking in tongues as somehow beneath them or simply “not their cup of tea.”

Three Types ofTongues

Scripture describes the gift of tongues in three distinct ways, all of which were active in the earliest communities of Christian faith.

1. Tongues for Evangelization: Speaking to those who haven’t heard the gospel in a language they understand as in the description of Pentecost in Acts 2.
2. Tongues for Proclamation: Speaking in a tongue during community worship for the sake of building up the Body. This type of tongues needs someone to interpret what is being said. (See 1 Corinthians 14.)
3. Tongues for Prayer in the Spirit: Personal prayer in tongues that builds up the one who is praying. Paul urged believers to “pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests” (Eph 6:18).

What occurred throughout most of the Acts of the Apostles isn’t specified. In Acts 2, it is clear that the disciples spoke in languages they themselves didn’t understand. But what they said was understood by people—those who had traveled to Jerusalem from other parts of the world—in their own language. These arehuman languages. This phenomenon has been calledxenolalia, (literally “foreign tongues”), or the “proof tongue” because it serves as a sign to unbelievers. The tongues experienced in Acts 2 are more rare, but not unheard of. Sometimes, it has been reported that missionaries who preach in whatever language they know are understood in the language of the people they addressed. Only afterward did they go on to learn the language of the people they were evangelizing.

But St. Paul also describes what he refers to as the “tongues of angels” (1 Cor 13:1), today referred to asglossolalia. This is the Greek word used in scripture. It simply means “speaking in tongues.” Sometimes referred to as the “prophetic tongue,” the practice of speaki