Praying with the Mind

…Spirit, that is, the ability to speak in tongues. So if, he says, I offer the prayers in the churches “in the spirit,” that is, using the tongue given through the Spirit, my mind will be unfruitful (1 Corinthians 14:14). For in prayer one must be intent and seek from God what leads to salvation, not pride oneself on a tongue and give oneself over merely to speaking in a tongue, since then the mind becomes unfruitful and gains no benefit from such display.

“I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the mind also” (1 Corinthians 14:15). So, he says, if I choose to pray in a tongue, that is, to win esteem by speaking in a tongue, I must take earnest care not to have an unfruitful mind, and not to give myself over only to speaking in the tongue, but to rouse my mind within me. And if I happen to sing in a tongue, I must sing no less with the mind as well, by understanding the meaning of the psalmody and of the prophecy, and not leave such words unexamined (1 Corinthians 14:15). For if I utter empty sounds, “I have become a noisy gong” (1 Corinthians 13:1). So it is better to prophesy, that is, to interpret the divine Scriptures in church, than to be fond of merely using tongues.

What, then, will be the better way? “I will pray with the spirit, I will pray with the mind also” (1 Corinthians 14:15). Here again by “spirit” he means the gift given through the Spirit. Since his aim, through a great many compelling arguments, is to show that speaking in a tongue is useless unless the ability to make the prophets plain to others goes with it, he adds still further points, in which one can see him saying it clearly.

“Otherwise, if you bless with the spirit, how will the one who fills the place of the uninstructed say the ‘Amen’?” (1 Corinthians 14:16). When you speak in a tongue, he says, how will the one who stands in the rank of the layman, if he does not know your language, answer “Amen” at your thanksgivings, that is, your prayers? For it is plain to everyone that in the churches the custom is for the prayers of those in the leaders’ charge to end together with the prayers of the leaders. They answer “Amen,” closing their own supplications to God at the priest’s words, so that whatever seems lacking in the people’s measure may be made up by the perfection of the priests, and so that God may receive, as it were, “the small together with the great” (Psalm 115:13) as in unity of spirit. For the people in their charge, joining their own prayers to the prayers of the priests, have believed that these will be accepted.

With this aim, too, God commanded that even poor sacrifices be brought to the altar of burnt offerings, so that the small, mixed with the perfect, might become acceptable to God. For we are all one in the Lord. So when you speak in a tongue, he says (for this is what “blessing with the spirit” means), how will the one who does not know what you are saying say the “Amen” at your thanksgiving? You yourself will do well, at least by the understanding that is in you, but the other is not built up (1 Corinthians 14:16–17). Yet everything we do must be done for building up and for the benefit of the brothers (1 Corinthians 14:26).

Tome Five. Discourse Four.

“Now I make known to you, brothers, the gospel that I preached to you” (1 Corinthians 15:1). Very aptly and wisely he calls the preaching about the resurrection of the dead, and surely also about the resurrection of Christ himself, a gospel, for it truly is the announcement of every good thing to those who have received the faith. And he says that they stand in it and are being saved (1 Corinthians 15:1–2). “To stand” signifies that believers are firm in hope and well established in glory, while “to be saved” signifies that they have even been shown…