Praying in the Spirit: Just What Is the Nature of the Prayer Language?
The foreign language view leaves open the possibility of Christians or non-Christians exercising interpretation by natural means, whereas interpretation is a gift of the Spirit. Yet Paul does not envision the Corinthian congregation soliciting “translators” (Malatesta, p. 37); instead, he implies that only through divine intervention (1 Corinthians 14:13) does this ability come. The multilingual composition of Corinth as the port city further strengthens this point, for if an interpreter was needed there, surely the utterances were not merely human languages (Laurentin, p. 91).
In the same vein, some argue against an evangelistic function of tongues. This is not to say God has never used this gift in evangelism, but nowhere in Scripture do you find anyone using the gift of tongues to witness to someone.
… Nor would such a gift in the days of the Apostles have been of any great value. Greek was almost always understood, where the Graeco-Roman civilisation had penetrated in the East. … Nor does the evidence of I Cor. xii.-xiv. support this view. St. Paul, earnest as he is that all gifts should be used for the edification of the Church, does not bid the Corinthians go down to the harbour, and employ their gift in the evangelisation of the motley crowd which they would find there.
(Goudge, p. 134)
Indeed Paul’s instructions that the Corinthians stop forbidding the speaking of foreign languages is a strange injunction to have to give (14:39).
Verses 14 and 15 of I Corinthians 14 also defy the foreign language view: “For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind. …” Too many additional qualifiers must be inserted into the verses to make them square with the foreign language view. But no additional qualifiers are needed to make them square with the ineffable language view, which allows a straightforward understanding of the verses.
In verse 28 Paul tells the tongues-speaker to speak to himself and to God when no interpreter is present. One might ask why Paul would advise someone to pray silently to God in a foreign language (and why he boasted about speaking in a foreign language to God more than the Corinthians, verses 18-19). A foreign language would have no value as a sign; and why would it be more edifying than speaking to God in one’s native language? “If tongues were foreign languages it would be reasonable to assume that they were for the purpose of conveying a message to those who understood the language miraculously spoken” (C. R. Smith, p. 33). Why, then, destroy the purpose by speaking silently?
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