timmopussycat
Puritan Board Junior
Even those who maintain that it is simply “a prayer language” such as an angelic tongue fail to demonstrate why every time an angel spoke in Scripture he used a human language. Secondly, v8 states that tongues “shall cease” and the verb pauo is a future middle, meaning that “tongues” would stop by themselves without a passive force acting on the subject. Therefore, they were never intended to be permanent in the Church throughout all ages.
That's one of the problems I've tackled when discussing this subject with Pentecostals/Charismatics. Whenever I stated that the "tongues" had to be a known language they would bring up the text when Paul says something along the lines of speaking in an "angelic tongue." They would then conclude that there are two types of "tongues"...the angelic and the known (somehow they were all speaking in the "angelic"). With the bold statement above that would be a good rebuttal to their claim. Thanks for posting that.
One can also point out to naive Pentecostals, charismatics etc. that Paul's statement about tongues of angels is a hypothetical. Paul could be trumping their speaking in human languages by mentioning that even IF one spoke in the language of the angels but did not have love, nothing would be gained. There is no NT evidence whatsoever that tongues were actually anything other than known human languages.
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