Tongues and the One Body

…and to those who live in Mesopotamia, to Cappadocians and Egyptians, they spoke in their own languages (Acts 2:9–10). The thing was carried out for them by the working and grace of the Spirit, for it is written, “Divided tongues as of fire appeared to them,” and what follows (Acts 2:3). What happened was part of God’s plan, but not all understood it.

But once they were speaking in the languages of others, they made the grace given through the Spirit into a kind of display and took the sign as an occasion for boasting. They grew careless about their duty to discuss with the crowds what comes from the holy prophets and to argue for the teachings of the Gospel as foretold from of old, long beforehand. Priding themselves on the mere ability to speak in tongues, they thought they should lay claim to this and this alone, and it ranked among their most pressing concerns.

“For just as the body is one and has many members,” and so on (1 Corinthians 12:12). For we are united to one another and have become one body in Christ, since he has raised us up together and all but bound us into one through the one Holy Spirit, who is in all, and whom we have been given to drink as a life-giving drink (1 Corinthians 12:13). So it was that Christ, when he was speaking with the woman at Jacob’s well, said, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him, it will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13–14). And somewhere he also said to the Jews, “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ ” “Now this he said,” it says, “about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive” (John 7:38–39).

Do not be surprised. For if he himself is “the river of God,” in the words of the Psalmist, the one “full of waters” (Psalm 65:9), the torrent of delight whom God the Father is said to give as drink to those who love him (Psalm 36:8), how could his Spirit not have to be understood as the life-giving drink and water? Since, then, we have been called into unity through the Spirit and have become one body with Christ, let us keep the bond of love unbroken (Ephesians 4:3).

Tome Five. Discourse Two.

“For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God,” and so on (1 Corinthians 14:2). He weans them from thinking that speaking in tongues does more for one’s good name than interpreting the writings of the prophets. For once faith and hope have first been laid down in us and given first place, and indeed love toward God and the brothers, which holds the fulfillment of the whole Law (Romans 13:10), let the rest be added. For then, then indeed and at the right time, we shall be filled with the very gifts that come from God and grow rich in the gifts given through the Spirit. I mean the ability to prophesy, that is, to interpret the writings of the prophets.

For once the Only-begotten had become man, had suffered and been raised, and his saving plan for us had been carried to completion, what time was there still for prophecy, or what events were still left to foretell? So here “to prophesy” would be nothing other than simply being able to interpret prophecies. And when we make them as clear as we can to our hearers, and then from them firmly establish our own teaching in the truth, we shall be right and unerring interpreters of the noblest things.

So, he says, one who speaks in a tongue speaks to God rather than to men. But how, or in what way? “For no one hears,” he says (1 Corinthians 14:2). For if, say, it has been given to one of the disciples to be able to speak the language of the Medes, and to another that of the Elamites, and the men we are speaking of were then to address the synagogues of the Jews or the throngs of the Greeks, who would be there…