1 Corinthians 14:39-40

“Wherefore, brethren, covet to prophesy, and forbid not to speak in tongues. 40. But let all things be done decently and in order.”

We have already seen again and again in this Epistle that after a searching discussion, going to the very heart of his subject, Paul likes to conclude with a brief practical direction, in which the different sides of the question are reflected; so 1 Corinthians 7:38; 1 Corinthians 11:33-34. It is the same here. The preference given to prophecy over tongues is expressed by the antithesis of the two verbs: covet and forbid not. The latter expression reminds us of the two sayings 1 Thessalonians 5:19-20: “Quench not the Spirit,” and: “Despise not prophesyings.” It appears from these two warnings that the general tendency at Thessalonica was to disdain and disparage the extraordinary manifestations of the Spirit, whereas at Corinth they were exalted, especially in the instance of tongues. The apostle takes care to guard each Church, on right or left, according to its wants.

Vv. 40. If 1 Corinthians 14:39 is the summing up of the dissertation on gifts, contained in chaps. 12-14, 1 Corinthians 14:40 is the close of the whole section which refers to questions of worship, chaps. 11-14. The word εὐσχημόνως, with seemliness, refers particularly to the demeanour of women and to the celebration of the Supper; the κατὰ τάξιν, in order, rather alludes to the recommendations given in regard to the exercise of gifts, chap. 14.

Conclusion regarding the gift of tongues.

The detailed study of this chapter has, I think, confirmed the previous result, to which we were led, chap. 1 Corinthians 12:10, regarding the nature of glossolalia. Most certainly the tongues spoken at Corinth could not be really existing foreign tongues. The glossolalete did not evangelize, did not preach; he praised and gave thanks. To express such feelings would an existing tongue be chosen which had never been learned?

The same objection may be made to the Bleek-Heinrici explanation. What purpose would it serve to go in quest of old unused expressions, or to create extraordinary combinations of words to give utterance to the impressions of joy and adoration with which the possession of salvation filled the heart? Such a course would rather betray the labour of reflection than emotion or ecstasy. In any case, it is far from probable that there would be at Corinth many believers having at command the archaic forms of the learned tongue.

The explanation held in our day by many commentators, that the tongues consisted only of inarticulate groanings and a babbling of confused sounds, which had no meaning, is not less incompatible with our chapter. How would the apostle have attached to this gift such value as to give thanks for the rich command he had of it himself? The apostle, as chap. 14 itself shows, was too sound-minded to give himself up to a religious exercise so puerile as is thus supposed, and to allow it a regular place in Church worship. Finally, it is impossible not to connect the gift which was developed at Corinth with that which was manifested on the day of Pentecost at Jerusalem, and which is again mentioned on several subsequent occasions in the book of the Acts 10:46: “They heard them speak in tongues” (at the house of the Gentile Cornelius); Acts 19:6: “The Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied” (the twelve disciples of John the Baptist instructed by Paul). The term being the same in the Acts and in our Epistle, it ought to denote a kind of language radically homogeneous. Now how is it possible to suppose that on Pentecost the speaking in tongues could have consisted of unintelligible utterances which had really no meaning? Could the multitudes have exclaimed: “We hear them speak in our own tongues the wonderful works of God ” (Acts 2:11).

I can only therefore regard the gift of tongues as the expression, in a language spontaneously created by the Holy Spirit, of the new views and of the profound and lively emotions of the human soul set free for the first time from the feeling of condemnation, and enjoying the ineffable sweetness of the relation of sonship to God. And as the influence of the Holy Spirit takes possession of the whole soul and every one of its natural powers, to make it its organ, it also took possession of the gift of speech, transfiguring it, so to speak, to give utterance to emotions which no natural tongue could express. It was, doubtless, a something intermediate between singing and speech, analogous to what we call a recitative, and the meaning of which was more or less immediately comprehensible like that of music. On Pentecost, when this language was manifested in its most distinct form, every well-disposed hearer understood it at once, in a way analogous to that which produced interpreters at Corinth, and could translate it immediately, so that he thought himself listening to his own tongue: “How hear we every man in our own tongue wherein we were born?” It must be borne in mind that human language is not an accidental, arbitrary creation, nor the work of the understanding only, but that it is the spontaneous product of the entire human soul. There is at the root of all existing languages, an essential, unique language; no doubt, if it existed as such, it would be composed of onomatopoeiae. This is what Plato expressed, after his own fashion, in a passage of the Cratylus, quoted by Heinrici: “It is manifest that the gods at least call things truly (πρὸς ὀρθότητα), and theirs are the natural names (φύσει ὀνόματα).” This necessary language of the human spirit could be drawn forth at this decisive point of history by the Divine Spirit from the depths of the soul, and made more or less imperfectly the organ of His first communications.

I have quoted various witnesses, in the two notes pp. 278, 286, as to the manifestations which signalized the first serious religious awakening that led to the founding of the Irvingite Church. It seems to me impossible to regard these phenomena as purely artificial imitations of those described by the New Testament in the first times of the Churches of Judea and Greece. At the beginning especially, these manifestations were remarkable for unaffected sincerity. Later, love of the extraordinary and desire to shine undeniably introduced an impure alloy, as was the case at Corinth itself. Such manifestations therefore give evidence of a real faculty latent in the depths of the human soul, which a profound religious awakening may call into exercise at any time under fixed conditions, and the creative action of which may yet in our day produce effects similar to those of the first days of the Church. We were not wrong, therefore, in maintaining the possibility of the reappearance of gifts during the whole course of the present economy (see on 1 Corinthians 13:8), while concluding from the apostle's words in this same chapter that the normal progress of the Church tends rather to the diminution of such phenomena, as a transition to their complete disappearance in the perfect state.