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2.2.1 - A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age
Primitive Jewish Christianity
Pentecost and the Earliest Evangelism - Speaking in Tongues
The day of Pentecost, immediately succeeding the death and resurrection of Jesus, has always been regarded as of epochal significance for the history of the Christian church. Luke himself evidently so considered it; for even in his Gospel the event casts its shadow before, and the first chapter of the Book of Acts is clearly intended to lead up to it.
That is was an important day in the history of the church there can be no doubt, but its importance is not that which is ordinarily ascribed to it.
It was not the birthday of the Christian church, as it is so commonly called, for the Christian church was in existence before Pentecost; nor was it the day upon which began the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, for his promised coming preceded, or at least was closely connected with, Jesus' own return to his disciples after his resurrection, so that it was through the Spirit's enlightening influence that they became convinced that he still lived and was sill with them.
Certainly, if the revealing agency of the Spirit was ever needed by the disciples of Jesus, it was needed in the days succeeding his death; and if the Spirit ever did act as the revealer of truth to those disciples, and as the interpreter of the Master's promises to them, it was at the time when they became assured of his resurrection from the dead.
As Jesus declared on an earlier occasion that it was not flesh and blood, but his Father in heaven that had revealed his Messiahship to Peter, it could not have been mere flesh and blood that had convinced Peter of the resurrection of the Lord. That conviction must have been the work of God.
But in the thought of Jesus there was no distinction in such a case between God's work and the Spirit's. It must be assumed, in the light of this and other facts, that the Holy Spirit promised by Jesus before his death, had already been received by his disciples; that hey were under the influence of the Spirit when they recognized the risen Lord, when they returned to Jerusalem to take up his work, when they met together there for prayer and conference, and when they filled Judas' vacant place, just as truly as they ever were.
What, then, is the historic significance of Pentecost, if it was neither the birthday of the Christian church nor the beginning of the dispensation of the Spirit? Its significance is indicated at the close of Luke's Gospel, and in the eighth verse of the first chapter of Acts, where a baptism of power is foretold.
Pentecost was a day of power, a day on which the Spirit of God manifested himself through the disciples as a power for the conversion of others. It was the inauguration of the evangelistic activity of the Christian church, when the disciples began to work to which they believed themselves call by the risen Lord, the work of witness bearing.
Under the influence of the Holy Spirit they bore testimony on the day of Pentecost to their Master, and they bore it with power; and it was not the coming of the Spirit, but the testimony of the disciples, that constituted the great central fact of the day, the fact that makes the day historic.
But in accordance with his general conception, the author of the Book of Acts finds the chief significance of Pentecost in the descent of the Holy Spirit, whom he regards a snot given until then; and that descent he represents as accompanied by certain marvelous phenomena, -- a sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind, tongues parting asunder like as of fire, and sitting upon each one of the disciples, and the speaking by all of them with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
The author conceives these phenomena, not as separate and disconnected events, but as manifestations of the one Spirit. Their significance lies in the fact that they reveal the Spirit's presence. With the sound as of wind, and with the tongues as of fire, we need not particularly concern ourselves, but the "speaking with other tongues" demands brief attention.
From various passages in the New Testament we learn that a peculiar gift, know as the "gift of tongues," was very widely exercised in the apostolic church, and the fourteenth chapter of Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians makes the general nature of the gift sufficiently plain.
It was evidently the frenzied or ecstatic utterance of sounds ordinarily unintelligible both to speakers and to hearers, except such as might be endowed by the Holy Spirit with a special gift of interpretation [1 Cor. 12:10]
The speaker was supposed to be completely under the control of the Spirit, to be a mere passive instrument in his hands, and to be moved and played upon by him. His utterances were not his own, but the utterances of the Spirit, and he was commonly entirely unconscious of what he was saying. He was not endowed with the power to speak in foreign tongues; his words were divine, not human, words, and had no relation whatever to any intelligible human language.
It was not unnatural, therefore, that the speaker should appear demented to an unbelieving auditor, as Paul implies was not infrequently the case. [1 Cor. 14:23] But his ecstatic utterances, inspired as it was believed by the Holy Ghost, were regarded by hi fellow-Christians as spiritual utterances in an eminent sense.
The "speaking with tongues" constituted, in the opinion of a large part of the church, the supreme act of worship, the act which gave the clearest evidence of the presence f the Spirit and of the speaker's peculiar nearness to his God. [Paul himself had the gift pre-eminently, as he says in 1 Cor. 14:18.]
No other gift enjoyed by the early church so vividly reveals the inspired and enthusiastic character of primitive Christianity. It was apparently this "gift of tongues" with which the disciples were endowed at Pentecost, and they spoke, therefore, not in foreign languages, but in the ecstatic, frenzied, unintelligible, spiritual speech of which Paul tells us in his First Epistle to the Corinthians.
That the Pentecostal phenomenon is thus to be regarded not as something unique, but as the earliest known exercise of the common gift of tongues, is rendered very probable by the lack of all reference to it in other early sources; by the absence of any hint that the disciples ever made use in their missionary labors, or indeed on any other occasion than Pentecost itself, of the miraculous power to speak in foreign languages; by the effect produced by the phenomenon upon some of those present, who accused the speakers of intoxication, and by the fact that it is treated as a fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel, who say nothing of "other tongues" but characterizes the Messianic Age as an age of revelation and of prophecy.
But the most decisive argument is to be found in Peter's discourse, which constitutes our most trustworthy source for knowledge of what actually occurred. Nowhere in that discourse does he refer to the use of foreign languages by his fellow disciples, not even when he undertakes to defend them against the charge of drunkenness, though it would certainly have constituted a most convincing refutation of such a charge.
[It is clear that the author of the Book of Acts had another conception of the phenomenon in question than that presented in the text. He evidently supposed that the disciples used foreign tongues, for he took pains to emphasize the fact that those present heard them speaking in the languages severally native to the auditors. It has been claimed that the author's representation is due to a misunderstanding on his part of the common phenomenon of the glossolalia, arising from the fact that he had himself never witnessed it, and an argument is drawn therefrom for the late date of the Book of Acts. But it is to be noticed that in two other passages (Acts 10:46, 19:6) the author mentions the glossolalia in the correct Pauline way, without any hint of a misunderstanding of it, and some other reason must therefore be given for his misinterpretation of the Pentecostal phenomenon. That reason is perhaps to be found in the glamour which surrounded the infant church in the eyes of its historian, who was himself far removed from the events which he records. Under the circumstances he could hardly avoid investing even familiar occurrences with marvel and mystery. It may well be that the attendant wonders which he doubtless found recorded in the sources upon which he based his account, -- the sound as of wind and the tongues like as of fire, -- led him to think of the speaking with tongues, which was associated with them in his sources, as only another and similar supernatural manifestation of the inauguration of the dispensation of the Spirit; and hence to picture it also as entirely unique in its nature, and to separate it from the common everyday phenomenon with which the church of his time was familiar. At any rate whatever the cause of his misunderstanding, it is certain that his conception of the phenomenon is borne out neither by Peter's speech nor by his own account of the farther events of the day. It was the opinion of Dr. Schaff (History of the Christian Church, Vol. I. P. 231) that wile the Pentecostal "speaking with tongues" was in reality the ordinary glossolalia, and therefore did not involve the use of foreign languages, the Holy Spirit interpreted the ecstatic utterances to some of those present, so that each supposed that he heard the disciples speaking in his own tongue. Compare also Overbeck in De Wette's Kurzgefasstes Handbuch zum Neuen Testament, 4te Auflage, S. 23sq; and Wendt in Meyer's Apostelgeschichte, 7te Auflage, S.59 sq. This makes the whole scene clearer than the ordinary view and better explains the accusation of drunkenness brought against the speaker by some of the onlookers; but it fails entirely to account for the silence of Peter in his discourse, and is no more rearly in accord with the conception of the author himself than is the view presented in the text, for the author evidently understood that the disciples actually spoke in foreign languages and were not merely supposed to have done so by certain of the hearers. For an elaborate discussion of the whole subject and a statement of the various view upon it, see Wendt, l.c.]
The disciples then, it would seem, were endowed on the day of Pentecost with the figt of tongues, just as on many other occasions when the Holy Spirit made his presence felt, and under the influence of that Spirit they gave utterance in ecstatic phrase to the profoundest spiritual joy and gratitude to God.
Their speaking with tongues thus constituted the earliest testimony borne by Christ's disciples after his resurrection in the presence of unbelievers. It did not consist in the explicit and intelligible announcement of Jesus' Messiahship, but it was testimony nevertheless.
For the impressive thing about the phenomenon was that men whose leader had been crucified but a few weeks before, and who had fled and scattered in fear and despair, were now gathered together again in the very city where he had been condemned, and under the very eyes of the authorities that had condemned him, and were giving evident and most demonstrative expression to the liveliest joy and gratitude.
The amazing fact demanded an explanation, and that explanation Peter gave in his discourse. He interpreted the unintelligible utterances of those who had spoken with tongues, and in the light of his words the strange phenomenon took on new meaning and became the most powerful kind of testimony to the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus, for it was the testimony of the common conviction of a multitude of men.
It was not Peter alone, then that bore witness on the day of Pentecost; witness was borne also by all the assembled disciples, and Peter acted simply as the interpreter of that testimony to those who did not understand it. [On the views of the early disciples of Jerusalem see, in addition to the general works on New Testament theology and on the history of the apostolic age, Briggs: Messiah of the Apostles, p. 21 sq.]
Used by permission of the publisher.
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