Speaking in Tongues: A Critical Historical Examination, Volume 2
Tongues through Church History
by Philip E. Blosser and Charles A. Sullivan
Foreword by Randall B. Smith
Imprint: Pickwick Publications
In three carefully researched volumes, this ground-breaking study examines the gift of tongues through two thousand years of church history. Starting in the present and working back in time, these volumes consider (1) the modern redefinition of "tongues" as a private prayer language; (2) the church's perennial understanding of "tongues" as ordinary human languages; and (3) the Corinthian "tongues," which, in light of Jewish liturgical tradition, turn out to have been a Semitic liturgical language requiring bilingual interpreters.
This second volume tracks the perception and practice of tongues back through the first eighteen hundred years of church history, demonstrating that "tongue-speaking" was always active but puzzlingly different from today's glossolalia. From Pope Benedict XIV's detailed treatise in the 1700s, it works back through long-forgotten scholastic and patristic debates to the earliest Christian writers such as Irenaeus. No other resource on the subject approaches the depth and scope of the present volume.
Philip Blosser is professor of philosophy at Sacred Heart Major Seminary (Detroit).
Charles A. Sullivan is an independent scholar and linguist with interests in church history.
“Here is a book I wish we had fifty years ago when I came into the Catholic charismatic renewal, for it sheds a clear light on the history of ‘praying in tongues’ within the Pentecostal and charismatic movements. Its critical but sympathetic treatment of the subject illuminates and clarifies what a vibrant charismatic spirituality truly is. It is a must-read.”
—Adrian Reimers, professor of philosophy, Holy Cross College
“The fruits of the study of Philip Blosser and Charles Sullivan are a great gift to the Church and an excellent help to anyone who seeks a deep understanding of the gift of speaking in tongues.”
—Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, prefect emeritus, Apostolic Signatura
“If the notion of tongues as glossolalia or some form of ecstatic utterance is indeed an invention of nineteenth century higher critical thought that then filtered down to the popular level where early Pentecostals adopted it, then Pentecostals should admit the novelty of such a theory.”
—Dale M. Coulter, professor of historical theology, Pentecostal Theological Seminary
“Philip Blosser and Charles Sullivan demonstrate with comprehensive erudition that the Christian tradition as a whole—Eastern and Western, Catholic and Protestant—has had a very different conception of these ‘tongues’ than the one assumed or asserted in modern exegetical, Pentecostal, and Charismatic circles. The breadth and depth of research the authors bring to the table is astonishing.”
—Peter A. Kwasniewski, fellow, St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology
“At last, an authoritative yet accessible history of the charismatic gift of ‘tongues’! This meticulously researched and even-handed study peels back layer after layer of church history to reveal the fascinating metamorphosis of the ‘gift of tongues’ since the earliest Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian New Testament. A most worthy and welcome successor to Ronald Knox’s classic Enthusiasm!”
—Neil J. Roy, STL, former editor, Antiphon: A Journal for Liturgical Renewal
Related Titles
