Comments on: Research On Glossolalia

By: Will Phillips

Will Phillips — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 21:16:13 +0000

Right. Well, as one who leans towards the gift of tongues Biblically supposed to being actually, Earthly languages, a lot of the “tongues” I hear - to be gut level honest - are little more than two to five syllables repeated over and over again.

I love being Pentecostal, absolutely, and I value praying in tongues myself. I just have to wonder how much of the “tongues” that gets prayed in churches today is an authentic gift of the Spirit.

By: Glen

Glen — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 17:29:20 +0000

Such studies have been done and are not nearly as encouraging. The tongues-speech observed in the studies matched no known earthly languages and also proved to have non-linguistic properties when scrutinized carefully.

Having said that, three responses come to mind. First, there’s that whole “tongues of angels” thing in Paul’s thinking. Second, the non-linguistic properties involved excessive repetition - which makes me wonder if the researchers were comparing the tongues with everyday speech or worship/prayer - because there’s a TON of repetition in worship and prayer. Third, depending on your theology of tongues there’s the whole “private prayer language” vs public utterance phenomena.

But I think it would be fair to say that this is one of the only truly encouraging tongues studies.

By: Will

Will — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 02:44:51 +0000

Now that’s pretty slick. Great find as always, Glen.

You happen to have an studies a/b messages in tongues or general glossolalia relating to actual languages? That’d be interesting.