At one fundamental level, Ekaputra Tupamahu’s new book presents a daring historical-critical project. He argues that Paul’s suppression of glossolalia involves not “tongues of angels” but “tongues of mortals.” His case is daring, first, because it directly counters a consensus view, one developed and held for about two hundred years. Second, Tupamahu contributes to the image of an authoritarian Paul who enforces conformity to the dominant language, Greek, to the exclusion of the diverse languages immigrants have brought to Corinth. This reading renders the universalist, inclusive Paul as still universalist but in the hegemonic mode. And third, Tupamahu identifies an early Christian controversy: Not only does language constitute a bone of contention in Corinth, it also distinguishes Luke from Paul. Luke counters Paul’s presentation by valuing rather than restricting the capacity to communicate in multiple languages. Tupamahu situates the elevation of this conflict as his project’s “primary concern.” In short, Tupamahu not only rejects a consensus that is long and widely held, his project also challenges sympathetic readings of Paul and identifies a new dimension of conflict among the early Christians. Daring, indeed.

Yet I have just mischaracterized this book. It is indeed a daring historical-critical proposal, fundamentally engaged with first century cultural politics. But it is also, and just as fundamentally, a work of engaged cultural criticism. This is true on at least three levels. First, Tupamahu grounds the project in his own experience as an immigrant who speaks the dominant language. In other work he explicitly rejects being described as “an English-speaking immigrant.” He describes his experience this way: “I now speak a language that is not mine” (6). (At this point I would also note his facility with German and Greek, which are superior to my own.) The concern for contemporary language politics, especially in the United States, shapes this book’s introduction and conclusion.

Tupamahu does not perform autobiography. For example, he never mentions his home country. But he deeply engages the cultural politics of the United States among other nations that experience conflict involving a dominant or authorized language, including conflicts involving ancient Greek and Latin. He tends to focus upon contemporary Western countries rather than, say, Turkey or Thailand, where related politics play out. Then again, Roman imperialism shapes his interest in the ancient world, as Western imperialism motivates his contemporary analysis. This journey into contemporary and ancient contested languages directly informs his point of entry into Paul’s intervention in Corinth.

Second, Tupamahu provides a critical intellectual history concerning how readers have framed glossolalia. Prior to modern German scholarship, most readers understood glossolalia to denote a capacity to speak in ordinary human languages, often by divine enablement, a gift that empowered cross-cultural evangelization. Tupamahu labels this interpretive model as “missionary-expansionist,” connoting its tendency to accompany colonialism. But with Johann Herder’s 1794 work, Tupamahu identifies a “romantic-nationalist” mode that is driven by a commitment to language as core to national identity. For Herder, because one’s native language shapes character and thought patterns, a person is fully themselves only when functioning the language of their people (25). Remarkably, however, Herder also argued that colonial subjects should speak the language of their colonizers (27)—a kind of cultural double standard modern Americans would immediately recognize. Herder proposed that the glossolalia reflected in Acts was not so much language functioning as a vehicle for communication as it was a mode of expression emerging from the deepest affective spaces (30). In Paul’s context, such language would be expressive, even moving, but not discursive. The Corinthians, posits Herder, so exceeded the enthusiasm of the Pentecost proclaimers as to be unintelligible to others (31). Since Herder, interpreters have tended to assume that glossolalia is ecstatic, non-rational, and grounded in extreme emotion. By 1919, an emerging scholar could dismiss those who interpret glossolalia as the capacity to speak foreign “languages” as “few, and for the most part, unimportant” (47).1

We might pause here to admire the scholarship reflected in Tupamahu’s genealogical analysis. It’s not often that we cite doctoral dissertations from 1919 by scholars otherwise unremembered. This level of digging is characteristic of Tupamahu’s work, through Charles Shumway’s dissertation may also have pointed to other long-forgotten contributions. This is valuable work on Tupamahu’s part.

Responding to the interface of historical and cultural criticisms in Tupamahu’s argument, I have three questions. Eka, I do not expect responses to all my questions in this session. But I would like to voice them.

Question 1: Does your experience of migration offer an epistemic advantage in analyzing the history of scholarship and your assessment of Paul and Acts? One could read your treatments of contemporary cultures as a rhetorical strategy; that is, as efforts to help readers understand your main argument. However, it seems to me that these reflections also play a fundamental role in your reasoning. After all, you do read glossolalia in 1 Corinthians against the consensus, and you do critique other cultural frameworks that have generated their own interpretations. How would you speak to the interplay of one’s particular social location with hermeneutical insight? How would this epistemic advantage relate to the project of historical criticism? You also ask, “Can one change one’s allegiance from Paul to the plurality, openness, and inclusivity of tongue(s)?” (215). In performing historical reconstruction, are you also an activist?

Question 2: My own discomfort with conventional historical criticism lies in the certitude with which many interpreters express their judgments. Historical criticism requires series of judgments concerning probability, often linked together in one chain of argumentation. Inherently such logical structures suffer from a cumulative improbability, yet historical critics often downplay the complexity of their argumentation. At points it seems to me that you present some of your own arguments with language like “clearly” (64) and “obvious” (59, 64). What level of certitude to you assign to your basic case?

I ask about your level of certitude because of your choices in argumentation. This question is a bit of a challenge, but more a matter of curiosity. I expect your reply would help me learn. It seems to me you have advanced two primary arguments: you lay the ground for your case by performing a deep cultural analysis of the received consensus, then you build the case for multilingual assemblies in Corinth, where languages are a space for conflict. In your book I do not see a rebuttal, an analysis of the evidence others advance to support the consensus view, and I am curious about this choice.

Several items in 1 Corinthians 12–14 favor your argument, and you call attention to them. Paul’s references to “kinds of tongues” better aligns with multiple human languages than with a heavenly language that Paul would likely consider singular (12:10, 28; pp. 19–20). You explicate how Paul’s metaphorical appeal to instruments that make uncertain sounds bleeds into his attack that tongues speakers resemble barbarians (14:7–11; pp. 108–16). Indeed, Paul appeals to the language of “foreigners” at another point in his argument (14:21).

However, the consensus view advances other aspects of Paul’s discussion that you do not address head-on. For example, you discuss the tongues of mortals/tongues of angels dichotomy (13:1), but without rebutting the view that “tongues of angels” might refer to heavenly languages. On a related note, you read Paul’s statement that tongues-speakers “do not speak to other people but to God” (14:2) as indicating that only God understands their native languages. You also argue that here Paul focuses not on “the languages themselves but the hearers” (117). I think you make several very strong points in these paragraphs. However, what about those who read “not to others but to God” alongside “tongues of mortals and of angels,” together constituting evidence for heavenly languages?

As a third instance, if “tongues” involves ordinary but nondominant languages, why does Paul identify them as a desirable, albeit limited spiritual gift? And how does it make sense to pray for the gift of interpretation (14:13)? Likewise, why does Paul contrast speaking in tongues against speaking from the mind (14:19)?

Again, my larger question involves mode of argumentation. I think your positive arguments are very strong, so much so that I want to agree. But in the historical-critical mode, I would also value more direct rebuttals of the familiar lines of argumentation you reject. Would you like to speak to your rhetorical strategy?

In addition to historical and cultural approaches, Tupamahu deploys a third set of resources: cultural theory. Especially heavy weight is assigned to Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of heteroglossia. As Tupamahu indicates, Bakhtin ruled out any notion of pure monoglossia. All languages carry the traces of their own linguistic past and engage with other languages (51). Even individual languages are heteroglossic. By imagining ancient Corinth as “a linguistically rich space” (84), Tupamahu can then unpack Paul as attempting to reduce, control, or exclude linguistic diversity—all under the banner of unity and order. Read in our context of global religious nationalism—Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist—that construction has chilling implications. Not always but often nationalisms link religious and linguistic identities.

Thus, Question 3: Eka, do you envision ways your research might resource contemporary workers for democracy? Does this question interest you?

Thank you for a remarkably rich, deeply learned, and truly provocative work of scholarship. You’ve given us much to learn, celebrate, and discuss. And you just might turn the consensus while providing a model of life-giving interpretation that does not simply apologize for the biblical text.

In his Contesting Languages: Heteroglossia and the Politics of Language in the Early Church, Ekaputra Tupamahu offers a groundbreaking discussion on the topic of language. He invites us to consider adopting a heteroglossic-immigrant mode of reading, calling our attention to the “tension between multiplicity of differences and the unitary language” (52). Tupamahu builds his heteroglossic-immigrant mode upon three pillars: Mikhail Bahktin’s notion of heteroglossia; linguistic diversity in the ancient Mediterranean world, especially in Roman Corinth; and his experience as an immigrant in the U.S. whose language is not the dominant language of society. Tupamahu identifies the aim of his book, “Because early Jesus followers came from a diverse linguistic background, for them language became an inevitable site of political struggle” (10). And Tupamahu achieves this aim, not simply, but thoroughly, throughout the book. His examination of Greco-Roman materials is careful and compelling; his handling of Greek grammar and vocabulary is meticulous; and his engagement with critical theory is pertinent. Just as Tupamahu invites us to the “reading from a particular place” (7), I align my reflections on this book with four of my identities.1   

As a fellow Pauline scholar invested in the ancient Greek and Roman world in relation to the earliest communities of Jesus followers, I was particularly interested in how this book reframes what we know about the milieu of early Christianity. Linguistic diversity is not something that immediately comes across when we, New Testament scholars, attempt to reconstruct the world of early Christ believers. Besides the stories of the Pentecost and mission trips in Acts, and perhaps some stories of Jesus conversing with non-Jews, like the Syrophoenician woman, there are not many narratives in the New Testament that instantly make us pay attention to language differences. But as Tupamahu successfully demonstrates in the second chapter of the book, the Greco-Roman world was polyglot and, moreover, heteroglossic. This is the context in which Tupamahu probes into glossa, “tongue.” In his discussion on 1 Cor 14, Tupamahu offers us a more complex understanding of glossa: “the phenomenon of tongue(s) in the Corinthian church was not glossolalia (i.e. unintelligible utterances)”—which Tupamahu names a romantic-nationalist reading, “nor xenolalia (i.e. miraculous ability to speak in foreign languages)”—which is a missionary-expansionist mode according to Tupamahu, “but heteroglossia (multiple stratified languages)” (87). Some early believers, including Paul, consciously or subconsciously participated in the heteroglossic discourse of their day and thus perpetuated the dominance of Greek and the stratification of languages. Tupamahu reminds us that Paul was a privileged person—a privileged man—for he was literate in Greek. I wonder how this can be further complexified by him being a diaspora Jew in the Roman imperial world. Paul, too, was a subjected being before he subjected the Corinthian believers. How does Paul’s own identity bolster his intention to subdue tongues in the Corinthian church?

Another significant contribution of Tupamahu’s heteroglossic-immigrant mode of reading goes beyond the Corinthian ecclesia and the early church. His concern for linguistic diversity and stratifications is equally enriching for our scholarship. Many of us, probably all of us, learned Greek as the default language of the field, memorizing noun declensions and verb conjugations, and I believe we stayed in the field because we did pretty well in that elementary Greek class. For many of us, as well as for Paul and early Christ believers, Greek is the dominant language. In this light, Tupamahu’s argument in this book invites New Testament scholarship to think beyond the Greek centricity deeply embedded in us. I also think the same applies to English, the dominant language of scholarship, not only in the US but on the entire globe. Tupamahu’s work provides avenues for considering how this heteroglossic resistance can help us reimagine and redraw New Testament scholarship. How can heteroglossia be a resource for endeavors to decolonize our guild? How can we bring minoritized languages, as well as voices, of both ancient days and today from the margins to the center, or trouble the bifurcation of center and periphery?

As an immigrant whose dominant language is not English, I genuinely appreciate Tupamahu’s work of debunking the desire for one pure language, represented by a phrase like “English only.” I know those minor feelings all too well. Tupamahu draws upon Bahktin’s theory of heteroglossia as a theoretical underpinning. Heteroglossia is not simply to display the co-existence of multiple languages and stratifications, but also to address diversity in any language, even in any dominant language. Tupamahu writes, “For him [Bakhtin] there is no such thing as pure monoglossia. ‘After all, one’s own language is never single language: in it there are always survivals of the past and a potential for other-languagedness’” (53). Greek and Latin, two dominant languages in the ancient Mediterranean world, were no exceptions. These two languages impacted each other as they developed vocabularies that originated from the other. It is not easy to trace evidence, but it may not be too implausible that local languages penetrated Greek, Latin, or both.

As Tupamahu acknowledges, “language, as expressed through human utterances, is inherently and radically diverse” (54). Here, I find Tupamahu’s discussion on translation illuminating. Truthfully, translation, whether done in a formal setting or one’s head, is a shared experience among immigrants who speak English as their second or third language in the US. Then, I thought to myself: my use of English, in any possible way, may dissolve the dominance of English and, by doing so, loosen the tension between English and Korean, my native language, because my English can never be the same as the English of any native speaker. Can my Korean way of speaking and thinking penetrate English, make cracks, big and small, and eventually decenter it? Can this also be a heteroglossic-immigrant mode? And if yes, can Paul’s call for translation, whether he intended it or not, even though it still perpetuates Greek centricity, result in a subtle way of deconstructing and decentering Greek? I wonder because translation is an interpretation no matter how thoroughly it is done.

As a new mom whose child will be a second-generation Korean American, I find Tupamahu’s work on the intersection of language and race compelling. I cannot agree more when he writes, “The term βάρβαρος—like other racialized terms—is political because consciously or unconsciously it produces subjected beings” (152). Barbarian is a fictitious entity (or identity), and so is Greek. The significance of language made “Greekness” more contested and more fluid. Here, I am thinking of some ancient figures like Pausanius and Favorinus. Pausanius, born in Asia Minor, traveled to Greece and wrote in Greek. In his writing, he often presents himself as a fine Greek man because he knows Greek mythology, literature, and also language better than most “Greeks.” Favorinus, a well-known Sophist in the second century, active especially in Corinth, was from Gaul, but it is known that he had Greek rhetoric skills par excellence. They participated in the heteroglossic discourse by using and mastering Greek. Still, their Greek language skills granted them to be not just barbarian or just Greek but barbarian and Greek simultaneously. It was Greek, the language, that enabled them to transgress the line between Greek and barbarian. So, when Paul says he does not want to be a barbarian in 1 Cor 14:11, he is dismissive of this multiplicity of racial/ ethnic identities. I appreciate Tupamahu’s keen and convincing reading of this verse.

Going back to my new role as a mom, I hope my child will be bilingual (or trilingual because she will likely grow up in Texas), and it will be exciting and challenging to see how multilingualism will intersect with her racial/ ethnic identity, and vice versa because my experience as a first-generation immigrant will be different from hers. And speaking of generational differences, one thing that the heteroglossic-immigrant mode of reading can illuminate is a possible generational conflict in the Corinthian community. In his The Young Against the Old: Generational Conflict in First Clement (Fortress Academic, 2018), Larry Welborn convincingly argues that 1 Clement attends to a generational conflict in the Corinthian church by assailing the youth who revolted against their elders. Could a linguistic struggle play a role in this generational conflict? I think this might be worthwhile to explore.

Lastly, I would like to address another matter as a self-identified woman whose pronouns are she, her, and hers. 1 Corinthians 14:33b–36 is one of the most controversial texts in the Pauline corpus. As a seminary professor, I often meet women students who gave up their calls to ordained ministry because churches would not ordain them based on biblical passages like this one. For them, Tupamahu’s interpretation of this passage can be promising. Tupamahu argues that Paul joins the Greco-Roman gender discourse, in which female language was perceived to be inferior, irrational, and thus needed to be silenced, by associating foreign languages with femaleness. Paul makes tongue speakers female by treating them as female (166), so it is those tongue speakers whom Paul actually silences, not biological women. This is such an original reading of this passage. Could you elaborate more on the liberative message that this reading generates? I would be interested to hear whether or how this heteroglossic-immigrant interpretation of 14:33b–36 can direct us to read 1 Cor 11:3–16, another passage where Paul seemingly justifies women’s subordination to men, in a fresh way.

This book is a remarkable contribution to Pauline scholarship. At the same time, it offers much to think about for anyone interested in the politics of language, whether it involves Greek, English, or any other language. Tupamahu invites us to a critical awareness of how languages shape identity. Congratulations on this fascinating book and thank you for inviting me to share my reflections. 

My initial response to Ekaputra Tupamahu’s Contesting Languages included a lament that his book did not conclude with something like a verse-by-verse recounting of at least 1 Corinthians 14 in light of his thesis that the issue there concerned the presence of minoritized immigrant languages against the backdrop of the Greek dominant in the city and the congregation. I recognize that a first book for a Neutestamentlar not only should not attempt to do everything but take on a focused thesis and research question. Yet, the argument made, that “tongues” in the Corinthian letter refers to foreign (minoritized) languages rather than to ecstatic or unintelligible speech, has potentially profound implications for the belief and practice of the dominant form of Christianity around the world: Pentecostal-charismatic ecclesial communities. To be sure, given that Tupamahu’s upbringing and even theological education within the Pentecostal-charismatic milieu has motivated his research, we can recognize this work seeks not only to make a contribution to the field of Pauline studies and New Testament scholarship more broadly but also to catalyze Pentecostal-charismatic scholarly engagement with and interpretation of Paul and prompt conversation about how these ideas might inform and perhaps transform contemporary Pentecostal-charismatic spirituality and practice. Toward especially these latter ends, as a theologian situated in part within the Pentecostal-charismatic world, let me provide a brief re-reading of the fourteenth chapter of Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth to reinforce the value of Tupamahu’s efforts and perhaps enable its further reception for this diverse global community. For our purposes, we will use the New Revised Standard Version, albeit our bracketed insertions of [foreign language/s] will replace the words “tongue/s” in order to lift up what is important from Tupamahu’s thesis.

The beginning of the chapter reads thus:

Pursue love and strive for the spiritual gifts, and especially that you may prophesy. 2For those who speak in a [foreign language] do not speak to other people but to God; for nobody understands them, since they are speaking mysteries in the Spirit. 3On the other hand, those who prophesy speak to other people for their building up and encouragement and consolation. 4Those who speak in a [foreign language] build up themselves, but those who prophesy build up the church. 5Now I would like all of you to speak in [foreign languages], but even more to prophesy. One who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in [foreign languages], unless someone interprets, so that the church may be built up.

Three quick comments. First, there is a dominant language, Greek, within the congregation, so immigrants or those who can and then do speak in other, minority, languages in this arena will be unintelligible to the majority of the members/attendees (the “nobody understands them” in v. 2 being hyperbolic) and in that sense and from that perspective, only be “speaking mysteries in the Spirit” (v. 3). Second, the priority, for Paul, is the building up of “the church,” which includes the dominant majority; while it is understandable that those more fluent in minority languages are allowed or even encouraged to express themselves in their mother tongues, within the congregational contexts only they or the few who understand them will be edified. Thus, for the moment, the preference is for prophecy, albeit given in the dominant language that is intelligible to most. It might be the case that other verbal utterances, including spiritual gifts like words of knowledge or words of wisdom, could also build up the congregation, so long as they are in the majority tongue. 

While this Pauline injunction might create a binary between foreign language non-prophetic speech and Greek (in this case) prophecies, it may be that in the rest of this discourse, Paul allows for a foreign language utterance that becomes prophetic by virtue of translation into the dominant language. First, Paul next asks that while he might “come to you speaking in [foreign languages], how will I benefit you unless I speak to you in some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching?” (v. 6). Then later, Paul writes, “one who speaks in a [foreign language] should pray for the power to interpret” (v. 13). Finally, on this point, it is clearly stated: “If anyone speaks in a [foreign language], let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn; and let one interpret” (v. 27). In other words, foreign languages are not prohibited in the congregation, although there is the burden—to be carried either by the speaker or others who understand these minority languages—of translating what is said so that the majority can comprehend. When accompanied by translation, then, foreign language speech can be revelatory, prophetic, and edifying. On the one hand, Paul insists that the incomprehensibility be grappled with: “if in a [foreign language] you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is being said?” (v. 9). On the other hand, when the dominant language is used, the congregation is deified; “So with yourselves; since you are eager for spiritual gifts, strive to excel in them for building up the church” (v. 12). 

Tupamahu’s study helpfully shows how “tongues” understood as foreign languages illuminates the text, including the singular-plural usages of tongue/s and language/s, how the discussion of such tongues/languages can and should be translated, and how this approach makes better sense of other notoriously obscure segments. Along these lines, a few comments on vv. 14–25 are in order. 

First, when Paul says, “For if I pray in a [foreign language], my spirit prays but my mind is unproductive” (v. 14), the latter reference should be understood vis-a-vis the lack of comprehensibility of what is prayed (said) to the dominant group and in that respect such prayers, even by those who are in the Spirit, will be less if at all edifying to (most of) the congregation. In this sense, when minoritized language speakers pray in their mother tongues, it’s not that the mind is unproductive in terms of being disengaged; rather, the invitation is to be attentive to the linguistic needs of the dominant group. Thus, “I will pray with the spirit, but I will pray with the mind also; I will sing praise with the spirit, but I will sing praise with the mind also” (v. 15). In other words, productive prayer—or song, or verbal utterances of any sort including exercise of the charismata like words of knowledge or words of wisdom—will be intelligible to and thus edifying of the minds of the ecclesial community. That is why for Paul: “in church I would rather speak five words with my mind, in order to instruct others also, than ten thousand words in a [foreign language]” (v. 19). 

Then, the “outsider” (v. 16) and the “unbeliever” (v. 22) are practically synonymous, even set together conjunctively in vv. 23–24. Tupamahu suggests that these refer to “Greek-speaking nonaristocrats, or common folk, who are unable to speak or understand foreign languages” (p. 135). While in this respect, it is not incorrect to then conclude that “Paul’s imagination is apparently shaped by a monolingual social possibility” (ibid.), the invitation is also to consider how Paul draws upon the ancient prophets but also adapts Isaiah (28:11-12)—the Septuagint’s γλώσσης ἑτέρας or “another tongue/language” becomes in 1 Cor. 14 ἑτερογλώσσοις or “other tongues/languages” – to make the point that the speaking of foreign languages do not communicate theologically but rather, because of their unintelligibility, are effectively or practically un-edifying. Thus, are these comments to be understood: “[Foreign languages], then, are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers, while prophecy is not for unbelievers but for believers. If, therefore, the whole church comes together and all speak in [foreign languages], and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your mind? But if all prophesy, an unbeliever or outsider who enters is reproved by all and called to account by all” (vv. 22–25). 

I am sympathetic to much of what Tupamahu argues regarding how what we read in this Pauline epistle reflects at least the apostle’s hierarchical conception of majority versus minority languages and their accompanying politicization, how that unfolded across the Pax Romana, and then how that also shaped what happened at Corinth and Paul’s response vis-a-vis immigrants and women in the ecclesial community. And while I can appreciate how Tupamahu seeks to make clear and counter the Pauline hierarchy (wherein Greek sits at the top), my approach here is to take seriously the Corinthian linguistic situation and attempt to read this passage for contemporary Pentecostal faith and practice. For the latter purposes, there is one more minor point to be raised with regard to where Paul begins to draw some conclusions: “What should be done then, my friends? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a [foreign language utterance], or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. If anyone speaks in a [foreign language], let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn; and let one interpret” (vv. 26–27). If the value of foreign language speech flows only when there is interpretation or translation, then the conjunction “and” should have been used instead of “or” since the assumption is that the foreign language utterance should not exist on its own. On the other hand, perhaps that is also why of this enumeration of what members of the congregation might bring verbally, the issue of foreign language contribution is explicitly then addressed: as many (up to three) as might be sounded, members of the community that understand these languages ought to be ready to interpret and translate them so that the dominant group can be built up and edified. With these qualifications and according to these parameters, then, Paul is comfortable with linguistically minoritized members of the community exercising their gifts: “So, my friends, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in [foreign languages]; but all things should be done decently and in order” (vv. 39–40).

The preceding is intended as a pentecostal reflection on 1 Corinthians 14 in light of Tupamahu’s thesis. The argument here does not necessarily undermine Pentecostal practice of speaking in tongues in terms of glossolalia, manifest as (perhaps) ecstatic, linguistically unintelligible speech. There is no space to review 1 Corinthians 12 here, except to say that while popular notions of the spiritual or charismatic gifts might presume their supernaturalistic character, the various tongues understood as previously learned languages can be understood to be gifts of the divine spirit in terms of their timely elevation just as gifts of faith, interpretation, or healings might also providentially manifest to edify the body even if the members through whom such gifts are expressed have cultivated or nurtured such capacities in various ways before. Yet, going even further in this direction has broader implications for Pentecostal belief, particularly the claim that glossolalia is a kind of evidence for Spirit-baptism, which most Pentecostal churches dating back to the early twentieth century hold.

Intriguingly, the evidential tongues doctrine has been constructed, historically, from out of the book of Acts, not 1 Corinthians. Tupamahu urges that “tongues” in the Pentecost texts can even more readily than the Corinthian letter be understood as referring to foreign languages and in that respect, Luke was at least indirectly speaking back to the Pauline prioritization of Greek at Corinth. Foreign languages are clearly spoken in Acts 2 (versus the minority interpretation that these were glossolalic ecstatic utterances), and so most interpretations of the initial evidence doctrine allow for the possibility that the infilling of the Spirit might also be manifest in the speaking of foreign languages. Tupamahu’s thesis, however, would press the point that these languages are not necessarily unlearned by the speakers (even if also understood by the hearers in their native tongues)—traditionally termed xenolalia—but could be learned (minority/foreign) languages. But if this is the case, then this is also applicable to the two other texts drawn upon to undergird this belief—Acts 10 and 19—since the Greek in each of these cases is similar if not identical to the plural forms of tongues/languages referred to in the first Corinthian letter. These texts would then read: “for they heard them speaking in [foreign languages] and extolling God. Then Peter said, ‘Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?’…. When Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in [foreign languages] and prophesied” (Acts 10:46–47, 19:6). What happened on the Day of Pentecost is simply repeated in Caesarea and Ephesus.

The question that might percolate then is how and why the “sign” of the reception of the Spirit might be the speaking of foreign languages. Does this include previously learned (second, third, etc.) languages or would this need to be limited to the speaking of unlearned languages? Luke, of course, does not pose such questions. Instead, his interests are, we might say, missiological: the heralding by the Spirit of the good news of God’s deeds of power starting in Jerusalem, then extending into Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth, and doing so via the minority languages spread across the Roman empire. In that respect, Pentecostal Christians can embrace such manifestations of foreign language utterances as consistent with their missiological priorities and commitments.

Now, while some might then conclude that the initial evidence doctrine should not be derived from the book of Acts, I am here not arguing one way or the other about this matter. Instead, I believe the tongues as foreign languages interpretation now at least puts on the table, for those for whom the evidence of Spirit baptism is important, multiple phenomenological possibilities: foreign languages whether previously learned or unlearned, or ecstatic (non-linguistic) speech. To be sure, going down this road will invite pressing further into these matters not only phenomenologically and dogmatically but also practically and missiologically. Most importantly, such considerations invite focused and sustained attention on a theology of languages and of linguistic diversity and pluralism, which is quite different than a theology of glossolalia. In my mind, Pentecostal-charismatic scholarship has yet to seriously engage with the former, and if that were to come around, we would have Ekaputra Tupamahu (at least in part) to thank.