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The Church Fathers on Christian Initiation
We move now to the experience of the early Church Fathers, beginning with Tertullian in 2nd century North Africa, circa 198, who wrote a treatise On Baptism addressed to those about to receive the sacraments of initiation: Baptism, Laying on of hands, and Eucharist. He directs them to specifically ask for the charismatic gifts during initiation:
Therefore, you blessed ones, for whom the grace of God is waiting, when you come up from the most sacred bath of the new birth, when you spread out your hands for the first time in your mother’s house with your brethren, ask your Father, ask your Lord, for the special gift of his inheritance, the distributed charisms, which form an additional, underlying feature [of baptism]. Ask he says, and you shall receive. In fact, you have sought, and you have found: you have knocked and it has been opened to you. - On Baptism 20.
According to theologians McDonnell and Montague, the “spreading out your hands” refers to a posture of praise and intercession. “In your mother’s house with your brethren” refers to being in the church with the rest of the community. The newly baptized, who are about to join in the celebration of their first Eucharist, are exhorted by Tertullian to ask for the charisms. Tertullian adds, “you have sought, and you have found,” indicating that they did not ask in vain. The most obvious conclusion is that they experienced various charismatic gifts (presumably including the gift of tongues) during the Rite of Initiation. McDonnell and Montague conclude with the following:
Tertullian ostensibly wants the newly baptized to be aware that such charisms (which he does not specify) are associated with baptism, that the charisms are expected, and that the neophytes should even, at this most appropriate moment, request them… Such a prayer indicates that the charisms belonged to the normal, day to day life of the ordinary Christian community. In addition to urging this petition, Tertullian suggests that it was granted. Charisms were facts of church life in the first centuries; therefore expectations that they would be granted within the rites of initiation does not seem unusual. Christian Initiation, p. 104-105.
Tertullian was not designing a new, innovative rite of initiation, but describing the practice of the Church at the time. The charisms, including the gift of tongues, were operating in the Church. This is corroborated by Irenaeus (130-200), who writes in Against Heresies, 5:6,1:
We hear of many members of the Church who have prophetic gifts, and, by the Spirit speak with all kinds of tongues, and bring men’s secret thoughts to light for their own good, and expound the mysteries of God.
The expectation of receiving charisms at baptism continued into the 4th century. In his Tract on the Psalms, 64:14, Hilary of Poitiers, a doctor of the Church, describes baptism as an experience of “intense joy, when we feel the first stirrings of the Holy Spirit” and where “we are inundated with the gifts of the Spirit.” From his writing On the Trinity, we know that Hilary recognizes the use of all the gifts of the Spirit from 1 Corinthians 12, including the gift of tongues. Another 4th century Doctor of the Church, Cyril of Jerusalem encourages those preparing for baptism to “prepare your souls for the reception of the heavenly charisms.” (Catechetical Lectures, 18:32).
