Conversations at the Edges of Things

Reflections for the Church in Honor of John Goldingay

Bridger, Butler

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781621899532
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

John Goldingay is an internationally renowned biblical scholar, teacher, and theologian whose writings have impacted Christians across the globe. In Conversations at the Edges of Things, Francis Bridger and James Butler bring together a wide-ranging collection of essays from John's friends and colleagues throughout his career and around the world in honor of his seventieth birthday and his lifetime's service to the church and the academy. Contributors:Roger BowenFrancis BridgerColin BuchananJames T. ButlerGraham BuxtonGeorge CareyChristopher CocksworthVivienne FaullKathleen Scott GoldingaySarah GoldingayAthena GorospePhilip JensonRobert KingAnne LongNancey MurphyGordon OliverTom SmailMarianne Meye ThompsonStephen Travis

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1 Corinthians and Tongues Revisited

Colin Buchanan

I once owned a backstreet, one-horse publishing house called Grove Books. It functioned from the premises of St John’s College, Nottingham, and developed a series of 10,000–word “Grove Booklets on Ministry and Worship.” In the series’ first year, 1971–72, there appeared a booklet by a certain John Goldingay, entitled The Church and the Gifts of the Spirit: A Practical Exposition of 1 Corinthians 12–14. It brought together a number of Bible expositions he had delivered in the College chapel. His exposition stayed within what I shall call the conventional understanding; but his concern was above all pastoral, that believers should be accepting of one another’s gifts and should live together in love. The series has run to the present day. But, despite all other Charismatic and contemporary pressures, it has never returned to 1 Corinthians 12. Yet life in the Christian assembly, the subject matter of 1 Corinthians 14, must be of continuing interest—and my investigation here arises from my growing suspicion that the conventional understanding, and particularly the understanding of “tongues,” has proceeded on a wholly mistaken presupposition.1

To address 1 Corinthians 14 we need first to examine “gifts” (Greek, charismata). This Greek word does not occur in 1 Corinthians 14, though all the English versions insert it in 14:1, many in 14:14, and some also in page, chapter or section headings—all of them gratuitously! Charisma does occur in 1 Corinthians 12, but its meaning is more elusive than my Charismatic friends seem to think. It is relatively rare elsewhere in the New Testament, but a full view includes Romans 12, where the listed “gifts” are not only prophesying and teaching, but also hospitality, sharing, and showing pity. These “gifts” of ordinary discipleship start to indicate that charisma is not a technical theological term for a defined special role as “given” by God. The use in 1 Pet 4:10–11 confirms this; for Peter mentions charisma, but quite artlessly; as in Rom 12, a different word (say of “abilities” or “calling”) would have done instead. He simply commends a wide open use of speaking and serving, and all such activities by disciples he calls charismata.

Putting Romans 12 alongside 1 Corinthians 12 reveals that Paul is arguing in opposite directions in the two chapters. In Rom 12 he argues from the given unity of the body to discovering (and exercising) the individual functions (unreflectively called “gifts”) within the body; whereas in 1 Corinthians 12 he argues from a listed set of functions apparently named and prized in differing individual ways in Corinth to insisting that the Corinthians really grasp the unity of the body and exercise their functions harmoniously to promote it (sealed, says ch. 13, by loving each other). Only “healings” are here called “gifts”—other activities are simply named, warranting my neutral term “functions.”

Paul’s purpose means that he is not objectively listing important functions (let alone listing them in priority), but is writing ad homines, naming a range of functions which come to mind because they have been reported to him as claimed and prized by individual Corinthians. Thus he begins by mentioning ‘the spiritual things’ (1 Cor 12:1), quite probably a cover term the Corinthians used for their different activities, each acclaimed as from (or “in”) the Spirit with a distinctive profile in the congregation. Paul plays down the individual activities, and puts charismata into their place. Thus charismata occur in 12:4 where he cites a variety of them, but in 12:5 there is also a variety of diakoniai, and in 12:6 a variety of energēmata. A parallel English use would cite a variety of, say, “abilities, roles, and ways of working.” Such broad abstract nouns do not suggest, whether separately or cumulatively, a defined and institutionalized listing of specific identified functions. So it is here: there are varying functions, and because these come from God (12:7–11), they may sometimes (and sometimes not) be called “gifts.”2 But the actual lists are compiled ad homines; they illustrate variety rather than canonize particular activities; and they neither expound the character of this or that activity, nor engage in any deliberate order of priorities.3

We thus approach 1 Corinthians 14 not as a charter for discovering particular “gifts” with an expectation of then exercising them, but rather as a particular divisive case of people (or their supporters) promoting differing favored activities. Paul will want the various functions of the body to contribute to harmony—which may mean restraint as much as use. He will now have to expound different functions in order to evaluate them comparatively. But his aim is still the harmony and “building up” of the body of Christ. He allows (14:1) the quest for “spiritual activities” (in effect using speech marks himself, quoting the Corinthians back to themselves), but now, in addressing an actual conflict, he specifically names prophecy as the preferred pneumatikon, and gives the Corinthians his reasons.

So we ask how to render glōssai and diermēneuō in English. The great tradition, beginning with Tyndale, canonized in the King James Version, and followed by all main English versions since, has been to adopt the terms “tongues” and “interpret.” Other English words exist—“languages” and “translate”—but, at first sight, the tradition is valid. English does sometimes use “tongues” for “languages” and “interpret” for “translate”; they can be interchanged. But in 1 Corinthians 12–14 the interchangeability has been forfeited: for “tongues” and “interpret,” while innocent English equivalents for the Greek, have acquired a special religious sense from the KJV use in this chapter. And it is that use we must revisit.

The translators of the KJV New Testament knew the words “language” and “translate,” but always translated glōssa as “tongue,” and hermēneuō or diermēneuō as “interpret.”4 “Tongue” was their normal word for “language,” not, as for us, a slightly poetic or esoteric alternative to it.5 They admittedly confused the picture slightly with the italicized “unknown” prefixed to “tongues” as a conjectural gloss (it is no more), but the question is whether they rightly saw in glōssa itself, without qualification, a language unknown on earth—i.e., that which is today most usefully termed “glossolalia.”6

I offer an interesting contemporary check. John Calvin worked from the Greek text, though with the Vulgate open as he wrote in Latin. To him glōssai always refers to known languages. He knows of many languages; he commends learning them; he condemns his opponents for stopping people learning them; he believes that in Paul’s day some may have had miraculous knowledge of languages not learned by normal processes; but he never concedes that Paul would have approved truly unknown languages:

For it is incredible (at least we do not read of any instance) that there were any people who spoke by the influence of the Spirit, in a language they did not themselves know. For the gift of tongues was not bestowed merely for the purpose of making a noise, but rather for the purpose of communication, of course. Fo...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: 1 Corinthians and Tongues Revisited
• Chapter 2: Ruth in Two Canons
• Chapter 3: Old Testament Narratives and Ethics
• Chapter 4: What Holds the Bible Together?
• Chapter 5: Models of Commitment in Paul
• Chapter 6: In Praise of Mystery
• Chapter 7: Evangelical Mary
• Chapter 8: Why Psychology Needs Theology (and John Goldingay)
• Chapter 9: Theology with Passion
• Chapter 10: Growing Old in Gethsemane
• Chapter 11: Biblical Principles of Calling and Training for Mission
• Chapter 12: The Gift of Community
• Chapter 13: To the Man in the Pink Shirt
• Chapter 14: When Choristers Grow Up
• Chapter 15: Encountering Abraham in Africa
• Chapter 16: Filming the Bible
• Chapter 17: Pausing for Thought
• Chapter 18: A Paradigm for the Interpretation of Sacred Space
• Bibliography