cheenc03a.pdf

SPIRITUAL GIFTS
SPIRITUAL GIFTS
mean 'any made in the rcrnicular hiring ths
sure of ecrtary. Wrieht har heen led to put forward his
hyp0thc1i. 'from a sense of the very reriau5 danger of calling
in quercion the hirfoiical truth of the Acts of the Ap"rd"s.'
With the purpo,. of ahviaring this dnngrr he doer ar great
violence to ,he language oiPaul as any or hlr picdeseisors.
What is excluded by the wordr of Paul is exactly
what is meant in Acts 21-13: the izo of l xi spoke
10,*ets2,~r) in the languages of the Parthianr.
and Mlr Meder, etc.
(=) The expedients that have been
resorted to are innumerable : the friendly address produced
in the foreigner5 only a homelike feeling ; or they
interpreted the disconnected sounds of the actual tonguespeaking
described in r Cor. in each case as utterances
of their own language; or the 1x0 spoke a single
language, a new one miraculously intelligible to all.
whether that of Paradise or the filture Ianpnage of
heaven : or they spoke not Aramaic but Hebrew, and
in this the foreigners, who all of them were Jews or
Proselytes, recognired the language of worship to which
they were accurfomed at home: or the 1.20 spoke only
a few languages, not wholly unknown to them but only
unfamiliar, such as Arabic, colloquial Greek, colloquial
Latin: or those who spoke were not by any meanr
only the 120 but all the foreigners who were present
with then). This and all the like is strictly excluded
by the thrice repeated stntemmt (w. 6 8 -) that every
man of the foreienerr - heard the izo s~ealtine - in his
own mother-tongue.
(6) The only theory still left open would seem to be
thaf of a mir~cle of hcarine instead of a miracle of
speaking. Yet neither docs such a supposition hit the
mennin~ of the author: for according to what he rays
the foreign languages were not only heard bur also
spoken. The words of a. ) : 'they began to speak
with other tongues' (iripae yhdmo~r), receive their
interpretation precisely in the statement 'we hew them
speak in our mother-tongue' (rair ipsrdpa~r yhdooarr.
. I ; 'each in his mother-speech,' Ynaarar r$ 18ie
d~ohixiy, w. 6 8).
It is possible to ru pore a miracle of hearing therefore, only
in the scnre of uc.i&ng to the author a FonfLrion of such a
miracle ~ ith one of speech. ~ uwhy t should it have been pre.
cirely mirrcie of henring? If it occurrrd in thc ears or rather
in the minds of the hemerr thcrc is no answer to the question
wherefore if war that the doly Spirii his mirnculous
influence precisely ilrhir quarter, whllrf if is not only iald (u. 1,
but is a1ro appropriate to the nruat,on, that it w+ on r$e
speakers that he wrought. According to others the mlracle m
1 miracle of hcanng, happzned during the trmrAir.
rlon from the mouth of the speaker to rhe e u of thc hearer.
The Holy Spirit 'interpreted the words during their plrrzge
through the am, ro rr ro prerent them to the carr of rhc numerous
ii.tcncrr, to each in his nlit>ve toneue.' Here one cm only ark
in increnred surprise why it is the Holy Ghost that ii
named as the author of r miracle whlch rsaccomplirhed in no
human being bur is a deadobject.
(i) Another question : Wherefore the ' tongues as of
fire' (yh0oca~ hod rup6r ) in u. 8? In this view that
a miracle of hearing is intended, they are left wholly
out of account. Other interpreters have, in view of
whnr is said of the tongues. supposed that according to
Acts the miracle was one wrought on the organs of speech.
since 'tongue' in u. 3 denolcr the organ of speech this seemed
to he the cue also in .I. 1; the meaning wauld rhcrefure bc:
they received in their mol:thr new tongues and therewith spoke
new speech. Here, however, not only docs one miu all
p~rrihilily of conceiving the nature ofwhar hap ned so that
one is compelled to describe the suggestion ocf a; rimply
fantastical ; the idea further is not in the learr indtcatcd hy the
wordr. The 'tonyes as ot fire' ofu. j hnvenothing to dowirh
Ihc 'other tongue.' of u. * ; for the tongues of fire do not enter
:he mouth bur rest upon the head. Such remrinr the meaning
even if the reading ' re~fed' (irdhmu: ring.) is adopted ; for
neverthelcrr to Lx read, u in KXD ah. cop. pcrh.
(d) These tongues of fire, however, remain out of
account also in the interpretatiorr that a miracle of
speech is intended in so far as that interpretation has
been set forth malir (a]. Since, however, they cannot
by any meanr be regarded as of subordinate importance
they urgenrly call for some explanation. This has in
part bren given already (see hll~l~rmv, 5 zr i). 'The
event of Pentecost ir there reprrsented as a parallel to
the giving of the 1.aw on Sinai. To tli~ parallel belongs
also the loud noise from heaven with which the rcmc Ir
opened in u. 2. In virtue of this very circurnatsllce,
however, the narrative lies gravely open to the suspicion
thaf it rests not upon obrer\,afion of fact but upon the
(i) In other passages (10+6, 196) Acts mentions
ton~ue-speech without the idea of a speaking in foreign
languages and without the addition of ' other ' (irdpa~r)
to 'tonper' (yhhssa~~), so thnt there is no reason for
doubting that the same thing ir iniellded as that which
we find in Paul. Kor. this cannot by any tnennr lend
to our finding ourselves compelled, at the cost of what.
ever violence to the wordr, to find the same view of the
matter also in Acts 2; but it dwr doubtless tend to
rnire the question whether perhaps Acts 2 also may not
depend on an underlying source which spoke of tonguespeech
as fittingly as did those which have been used in
1016 196. The same idea is suggested also by the
remark of peter in 104, that Cornelius and his house
'have received the Holy Ghost ar veil as we' (cp 1115,
I). Further it has long ago been remarked thnt the
re~roach of drunkenness in 2x3, if the lanmnerr of
fo;eign nations were what war being heard, ka"ld by
no meanr have been appropriate, and that the spcech of
Peter in 2 14-16 hur no relation to hearerr from foreian
parts or to any miracle of this description, but erpla&s
the exent by the prophecy in Joel (3,-~) as to the outpouring
of the Holy Spirit xith prophetic speccher,