Would you say it’s the other way around? Do you think that the speaking of ‘tongues’ in the Catholic Church had any influence on the Pentecostal movement?
(I really don’t know anything about speaking in ‘tongues.’ Someone asked me once if Orthodox Christians speak in tongues. I said “Sure we do, we speak in all kinds of tongues: English, Greek, Slavonic, Arabic, Romanian, etc…”)
A
I’m just the messenger here
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My personal opinion is that it was always a very old Church practice that was died and revived at various points in history, including the 1970s, when the charismatic movement was ‘born (for Catholicism, I mean).’ I try not to attribute it to any ‘group’ in particular.
The Pentecostal perspective on tongues is as follows:
Pentecostals essentially believe that when Jesus left and sent us the Holy Spirit, we would also be endowed with gifts from the Spirit which would help us in our faith, our holiness, and help edify the Church and ourselves.
This part is the crux of Pentecostalism: When Jesus said that we would be Baptized in the Holy Spirit, he was speaking of a specific spiritual event with specific, recognizable evidence - the speaking of tongues. It occurred on Pentecost, and in various other passages in Scripture where an Apostle laid a hand on men and they spoke in unknown tongues. According to Pentecostalism, in order to be baptized in the Holy Spirit,* you must exhibit the initial evidence of speaking in tongues*, which is available to all. Not having it doesn’t mean you are not saved (although some
Oneness Pentecostals will tell you that you do), just that you didn’t have the experience.
Within the church congregation itself, the manifestation of the gifts are expected to be orderly. If a man speaks aloud in tongues, there must be an expected interpretation (as Paul commanded) in order that the congregation might be edified. Anything else is chaos.
However, there is, in Pentecostalism, ‘private prayer language’ in which you can speak in tongues quietly, but it’s between yourself and God. It can occur (and often is the case) that the language spoken is a common earthly tongue you hear anywhere. For instance, my parents have told me that in a session once, a woman was speaking in French, even though she didn’t speak French, and another woman spoke in English, again, without having any knowledge of the language (though my parents can speak them).
That is the jist of the Pentecostal movement. There is belief in the other gifts, of course, and in standard Evangelical doctrine, but this is what distinguishes Pentecostalism from other Evangelical Christians in particular.
The Orthodox Church rejects it. It has never given the kind of tolerance for it as the Roman Catholic Church has done. They consider tongues to be strictly what happened on Pentecost - IE, what you say is understood by a non-speaker of your language.
