By Angus Harley

The folktale ‘The emperor has no clothes’, written by Hans Christian Anderson, is famously known for its story that a certain emperor was duped into thinking he was wearing a royal garment of such fine threads that he would be the envy of his kingdom. Indeed, the garment was so fine that to the human eye there was nothing there at all. That’s because there was nothing there! Two deceivers, conmen, had sold to the emperor a fictitious garment, and due to the emperor’s vanity, he actually paid them for it. He went out and paraded nakedly in public, thinking that he was clothed in the finest of garments. The kicker was that everyone around the emperor was so obsequious and fearful that they, too, praised the emperor for his fine garment. That the emperor has no clothes on did not matter, for if the emperor was persuaded he did have them on, then everyone would agree.

The problem

I love Don Carson. Who does not? He is like an emperor in his kingdom of exegesis. He is a Continuationist (he believes the ‘charismatic gifts’ are still ongoing), so he argues that tongue speaking is alive and well today. Theologically, he knows that the tongues of Corinth were real languages, but he has to find a way of justifying that the modern phenomenon of tongue speaking is the same as that in Corinth. The problem is that modern tongues sound like gibberish. Completely undeterred, Carson continues that because the modern phenomenon of tongues “seems to do more good than harm”, he believes the assembly is at an “impasse” as to what to think about modern tongues.[1]

The hypothesis

Enter Vern Poythress. According to Carson, Poythress put forward the solution of “free vocalization”. Here’s the full quote by Carson of Poythress:

“Free vocalization (glossolalia) occurs when (1) a human being produces a connected sequence of speech sounds, (2) he cannot identify the sound-sequence as belonging to any natural language that he already knows how to speak, (3) he cannot identify and give the meaning of words or morphemes (minimal lexical units), (4) in the case of utterances of more than a few syllables, he typically cannot repeat the same sound-sequence on demand, (5) a naive listener might suppose that it was an unknown language.”[2]

Poythress is putting forward a hypothesis called ‘free vocalization’: a supposedly scientific, working, starting point for understanding modern tongue speaking (glossolalia) by Christians. It is Poythress’s own view, and is not an actual linguistics model. Nor is it scientific, but is a desperate attempt to try and fit the modern phenomenon of tongue speaking into a linguistic mold of some contrivance. Indeed, Carson himself is fully aware of the scientific and linguistical analysis of the modern tongue-speaking phenomenon. He writes:

To my knowledge there is universal agreement among linguists who have taped and analyzed thousands of examples of modern tongues-speaking that the contemporary phenomenon is not any human language. The patterns and structures that all known human language requires are simply not there.[3]

The linguistic proposal

Carson proposes his own way of understanding modern glossolalia. I will give most of what he writes:

I shall manufacture another. Suppose the message is:

“Praise the Lord, for his mercy endures forever.”

Remove the vowels to achieve:

PRS TH LRD FR HS MRC NDRS FRVR.

This may seem a bit strange; but when we remember that modern Hebrew is written without most vowels, we can imagine that with practice this could be read quite smoothly. Now remove the spaces and, beginning with the first letter, rewrite the sequence using every third letter, repeatedly going through the sequence until all the letters are used up. The result is:

PTRRMNSVRHDHRDFRSLFSCRR.

Now add an “a” sound after each consonant, and break up the unit into arbitrary bits:

PATARA RAMA NA SAVARAHA DAHARA DAFARASALA FASA CARARA

I think that is indistinguishable from transcriptions of certain modern tongues. Certainly it is very similar to some I have heard. But the important point is that it conveys information provided you know the code.”[4] [emphasis his]

Carson concludes that although the above does not fit in with the model of human languages such as found in Acts 2, there were different kinds of tongues (1 Cor.12:10, 28), and modern tongues seem to meet the standard of what the NT describes as tongues.

I think that Carson’s opening statement ironically summarizes his view: it is manufactured. It is not science, linguistics, or biblical exegesis. As to the different kinds of tongues, why this is taken to mean anything more than there were numerous human languages to be spoken is beyond understanding. Acts 2:4 states “other tongues” (hetarais glossais), and 1 Corinthians 14:21 combines both words into one, “other-tongues” (hetoroglossois), and in the latter context, it is about Yahweh sending men of foreign speech into the land of Israel as a curse against Israel (Deut.28:49; Isa.28:11, 12). That is why 1 Corinthians 14:22 concludes, “So then tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe but to unbelievers”. The New Covenant in Jesus’ blood opened up salvation to all men. God was challenging them in their midst, calling them to repentance. Tongue speaking was used to that end (thus Acts 2). When all is said and done, all Carson and Poythress have is a very, very poor hypothesis that does not bear up to Scriptural scrutiny.

The emperor

But one cannot say this about the emperor or his views, can one? To the eyes of some, Carson is beyond reproach as an exegete, the prototypical scholar. However, here is a great scholar defending the completely indefensible by resort to utter nonsense. How deceived is he? As much as the emperor! It is our duty as Christians who have the blessing of the Spirit, and whom God has taught by his Spirit, from the Scripture, to oppose human delusions. The noble Berean Jews questioned Paul’s apostolic doctrine. How much more do we need to yell out that the emperor has no clothes on, and that gibberish is gibberish?!

[1] Don Carson, Showing the Spirit: A Theological Exposition of 1 Corinthians 12-14 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2019), Kindle: Kinds of Tongues and Interpretation of Tongues (12:10, 29, 30).

[2] Ibid. Citing Vern Poythress, “Linguistic and Sociological Analyses of Modern Tongues-Speaking: Their Contributions and Limitations,” in Westminster Theological Journal 42 (1979): 369.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.