chockfull

The OTHER records (note the plural there) in Acts do not indicate the tongues were understood natively, but needed interpretation. Thus the need for instruction on what consists of interpretation of tongues and prophecy in I Cor. 14. People today are NOT trying to replicate Pentecost, insomuch as they are trying to live the instruction given in I Cor. 14. Pentecost was the initial outpouring of the gift of HS, and had special miracles going on like pictures of tongues like fire and all the audience understanding the speech in their native languages. Not without interpretation. Even in Bible times. The letters to Corinth were circulated 53-56AD. Here's a link to Paul's chronology for reference - http://www.bombaxo.com/paulchron.html So interpretation of tongues was in practice in Corinth in that timeframe.

You are playing word games. Samarin clearly lists all 16 of Hockett's attributes of language. Then he states the six in which he feels glossa does not meet. By this he ABSOLUTELY IMPLIES that it meets the other criteria, including the very obvious example I showed. You are presenting misinformation, then coming back saying "where did I say this?". You want to make this thread about you too. It's not about you. It's about scripture.

I provided the exact quote. Of the items on the list, your contention is that Samarin concludes that glossolalia doesn't meet any of the criteria on the list. So for instance (I'm just doing this for one out of the 11): 1. Vocal-auditory channel: the channel for all linguistic communication is vocal-auditory. So your contention is that Samarin finds that glossa doesn't use the vocal-auditory channel for communication. RIDICULOUS!!! Now you've got me occupied with dealing with your misinformation on two threads. And this one is dedicated to discussing scripture.

But that isn't what is happening - taking one or two verses like scorpion for an egg or bread for s stone and ripping them from context. What is happening is people are constructing entire belief systems based upon the entire topic in scriptures, then when acting on their beliefs they are comforted by some simple clear verses in scripture to encourage them. For example, I Cor. 12 - 14. People are working those scriptures and applying them, coming to conclusions about gifts and manifestations. At least they are on the affirmative side of the argument that SIT works as the Bible describes. On the other side of the argument where people believe that SIT is human faking and lying, I mostly see people avoiding discussing those verses, and avoiding them altogether. They focus on problems in the Corinthian church, they focus on that Corinthians is a reproof epistle, they focus on scientific studies purporting to show fraud, they focus on anything besides looking at those scriptures directly and living them in their personal modern lives like they describe. In my opinion they are doing this because of a superstitious premise that SIT died with the apostles, or what is sometimes commonly termed "cessationist theory" in Christianity. However, when you ask them for detail like "what changed?" there seems to be no answer. People seem to gravitate towards that theory also because of abusive practices in TWI, some of them related to this practice. To me that seems a lot shakier ground to stand on than being comforted by a couple simple scriptures assuring you that God answers prayer.

It makes me sad too. Hearing that story reminds me of friends and stories related to trying to keep marriages intact while leaving TWI. There are many fears related to this people deal with. Definitely the questions about the future. "Will my spouse leave me because I'm leaving the church?" Also making me sad are the memories of leaders in TWI getting in the middle of marriages and splitting them up. Just the look on the faces of certain people - a sadness and a look like they are just lost and don't know what to do. Like they sacrificed their marriage and kids, but are still "standing on the Word". Those leaders and clergy in TWI splitting up marriages and doing that to people deserve a special piece of judgment.

Direct quote from Samarin - p. 67 Hartford Quarterly: "Glossas, by this standard, are not human languages, primarily because they really are not systems of communication. They are not characterized by semanticity (7), arbitrariness (8), displacement (10), prevarification (14), and reflexiveness (15)". So I count 5 of the 16 characteristics Samarin takes issue with, which leaves 11 of 16 which he does not. Also of interest is his reason WHY he does not consider glossa human languages. He adds detail here saying it is primarily because they really are not systems of communication. What does this mean? You are not going to ask your spouse to go to the store for milk in tongues and have a back and forth conversation going on about it in tongues. I completely agree with his assessment. I have seen NOWHERE that ANYONE claims that tongues are a system of communication between people, outside if you really want to stretch the concept in Acts 2 where people understood natively. And Hockett's 16 characteristics were not developed to characterize communication between a person and God that involve things like 'praying in the Spirit'. This is what makes discussion tedious.

I'd be especially interested to hear how acting and theater training help those people who never had any background in it fake TIP manifestations in TWI after 90 minutes of hands-on instruction. That should really be informative.

Samarin shows in his study that glossa samples have the same construct as languages with respect to the cadence and linguistic breakdown into sentences, phrases, sub-phrases, and words. Samarin also finds that glossa samples meet 10 of the 16 criteria on Hoskell's language characteristic chart. That is not "no resemblance".

The main problem with lack of "progress" lies in the fact that after an 88 page thread on the topic, the bulk of the evidence we REALLY have is "modern SIT seems to not resemble Biblical SIT". Nothing proven, nothing evidence based - but "seems" is the word used when people are being honest about the evidence. The other main problem in lack of "progress" lies in people NOT being honest about the evidence. They state opinion as fact, and de-emphasize the details of linguists language classification efforts while at the same time crying out "evidence shows this, evidence shows this". Dishonesty hinders progress. It just couldn't be that -A- doesn't have any scientific substance to it of course. No, it always has to be about something else. No, WordWolf, it's not about tying tongues being alive to the power of God. If I never spoke in tongues again for the rest of my life, God's power still would be there for me. Wow, then having a background in theatrics it must be that you are most impressed with the theatrical manner in which one side of the argument expressed their opinion. Because it certainly isn't making sense to me from any kind of a science or logic background. Look, very simply here is what makes sense to me. Modern SIT is the same as Biblical SIT, because God isn't fickle. People don't understand the language because God explains in I Cor. 14:2 that they won't understand it. He is the one energizing what's going on behind the scenes, so He would know. Linguists in higher education, like scientists in higher education, in general reject God and Christianity and favor Darwinism and evolution. So the popular opinion is largely against SIT being genuine in those circles. They are trying to put God in a false dilemma to try and test Him. This act runs contrary to scripture including one of the 10 Commandments. So they don't find anything. Big surprise. Charismatic Christians continue to pray to God with their understanding and by the spirit which includes speaking in tongues. And miraculously, because He is God, He hears them and understands. It could be something about Him understanding a few more languages than modern linguists. Oh, and since his resume includes the tower of Babel reference, it's legit. That's the bottom line to the matter. Whatever people are or are not doing on these train wrecks of threads has no impact on the matter whatsoever. Inconclusive meaning they did not prove that it was not a language either. And there is anecdotal evidence supporting it, where people understood a tongue in their native language. So to say there is NO (zip, zero, none) existing evidence is simply lying. Which, one more time, is why we aren't making progress on these threads.

That makes absolutely no sense. Session 12 of PFAL, people like prayed in tongues out loud once or twice together. INT class, they got 3 practice sessions in doing worship manifestations. The first one, they practiced SIT only and new mouth sounds. The second two, they practiced interpreting and prophesying in a prayer meeting. The entire duration of these 3 sessions is about 90 minutes. Somehow, a "culturization" occurs in this process whereby people are able to perform extemporaneously and make up large volumes of prayer speech on the fly? If that's true, then the Way is totally missing its target market for the Int. Class. They should sell the cr@p out of that to aspiring Hollywood actors. After all, just one short class and you can immediately perform under pressure not only delivering memorized lines, but making up new ones on the fly perfectly extemporaneously. All this with about 90 minutes of hands-on training.

If that question could be phrased equally about the marriage as it could about cult involvement, then I don't think this is a question about the group at all. Every individual deserves a family that works from a basis of mutual respect. If the marriage is unhealthy, then decisions need to be made on that basis. Counseling, different future paths, etc. That this decision involves both that of deciding about a marriage as well as deciding about a church, you have a person that is going through two incredibly difficult life changing events all at the same time. Of course I'm taking your word about the marriage being in trouble. Being pregnant with a second child is another major thing. The woman very obviously needs a lot of love and a support structure including friends that care. Like you. People need support systems to make decisions that are best for their own lives. If they don't have that, then they gravitate to their current situation as the only reality they have an option for. He certainly sounds like he has designs for the kids future in a cult. However, you never can tell where people will end up. That couple is a unit, and has to figure it out for their lives and futures. For her, you can't act out of or plan from a position of fear or negative belief about what the future may bring, you have to make positive plans with a trust in God. She needs a support system outside her husband, and the marriage issue is more important than the cult issue, but that's a battlefield priority. Too many things stacking up at once. They need to be slowed down and dealt with one at a time.

So what I'm getting from WordWolf is that if you have experience in acting, faking interpretation and prophecy isn't that hard. OK. So those with acting backgrounds could more easily fake it. I don't have an acting background. So I couldn't easily fake it. The vast majority of people in TWI don't have acting backgrounds (except for trying to act like they were happy). So for the vast majority, faking it would be exactly like I describe it. I DO have some background in formal psychology, but the details of that are remaining private. I was bringing up you mentioning metacognition. Your little snide insults are cute, but really what I was pointing out was that you made some kind of obscure reference to a term outside of any context of what you brought up, and failed to mention your evidence or supporting article for bringing up metacognition. Also, that's a nice little analogy about your constructed society there. It COULD be a plausible explanation to what happened in TWI. However, so could a hundred other things. Without proof or supporting evidence, it remains that. A nice little story. And your opinion. As to the veracity of your claims that you were lying and faking, again I see 2 options: 1) You are accurate about having lied and faked it. 2) You are writing history post revisionist and NOW saying it's a lie and fake because you have renounced TWI and turned your back on anything that might have been taught related to TWI. Which is true? We need evidence, not anecdote. My opinion on what happened in TWI is different. I think in TWI you had a group of young people that wolves in sheep clothing preyed upon. I think in many of the young people's hearts and minds in TWI they were serving God and loving God. I think that God looks on the heart, like He says in scriptures, and rewards those even in the midst of the clutches of the wolves. So I think Christians in TWI had genuine experiences because God looked out for them. I don't think God would rip the rug out from under them in their private prayer lives or in their prayer meetings by all of a sudden stopping to energize SIT. What, did He roll a pair of dice beforehand, it came out under 7, and all of a sudden, NO SIT or interpretation and prophecy? Whereas before in the church it was genuine? That's as plausible of an explanation as anything your side of the argument has presented on WHY it would be genuine in the 1st century yet fake today.

I don't want to argue semantics with you either. I want this thread open to discuss I Cor. 12 - 14 in a doctrinal sense. I don't want people to be censored with what they are posting up on those verses. The fact that you did this, then WW had to come in and try and smooth things over and did so in a completely biased fashion, all that did was bring up the whole context of the evidence argument again. I would rather not have this thread be a repeat of the other one. Please.

Actually, by calling his post "patronizing" and "barraging with scriptures", you ARE discouraging him from posting anything he wants. And I want that behavior stopped.

"this has been proven", "this has been demonstrated", "all the evidence leans in one direction" - all of these phrases for the general reader are going to mean the same thing, and I put forth that you are totally aware of that and banking on it to move your opinion forward. So while I appreciate you coming forward in WordWolf's defense and clarifying that when he says "all the evidence leans in one direction" does not mean anything is proven, I don't think anyone reading the thread is going to pick up that distinction at all. And honestly, I think it wasn't until we started really digging into the detail of the scientific method that you stopped using the phrase "proven". So my objection stands.

This is Doctrinal, where "a ton of scriptural references" actually BELONGS. Someone presenting an exegesis of I Cor. 14 that they have previously worked up certainly applies, and for you to discourage it by calling it "patronizing" and "barraging" is against the purpose of this subforum and the general guidelines of this site. I don't want to see this kind of post on this thread again. I would prefer to see that post removed, and anywhere I've quoted it I will remove the entire post and rebuttal also.

And this is one of the primary reasons it's been contentious. There are a number of studies we've read, and most of the authors are of the opinion that people are making up tongues. However, they don't really provide evidence. The most accomplished linguist of the lot presented some studies where he mapped consonants in a language to a glossa sample (we never saw detail on where those were obtained or who they involved for the most part). The evidence pointed to an inconclusive result. However, even that author drew a conclusion that there were no languages involved. So you have the negative side making absolute statements like this that something has been proven, or all the evidence supports another side. And that's absolutely a falsehood. That's the root of the contention. An accurate statement from the evidence seen to date would be that all the evidence is inconclusive trying to prove that SIT produces a language. This also is a problem handling this subject honestly. So many people have had negative and traumatic experiences in TWI that ANYTHING that could be perceived as TWI doctrine is very negative to them. Well, I would say that if the negative side of this argument can't come up with some patience to cover doctrine and studies that could run parallel or have similar points to a TWI teaching, then they should just zip it and suffer in silence. After all, the positive side of this argument has had to endure about 70+ pages of opinion stated as fact, just like the first paragraph of your post here. And people who want to be Christians in a modern world want to pattern their lives after scripture. So for naysayers to present that something changed magically to make that not available any longer, yet have no logical explanation of what that might be (other than one poster made a one-line comment saying check into cessationist theory) - that is just disingenuous. If you've heard the common description "dog in a manger", that is basically what they are doing with no logical basis to back them up. No, they are not getting the dialogue they want with the affirmative posters. Meaning having all their opinion received as fact unchallenged. I say post up your research and studies regardless of where they are positioned w/r to TWI. If knuckleheads want to hate on it, let them. I seriously doubt that. Anyone that could write the first paragraph of that post has their mind made up by the incessant rhetoric of opinion and will not let any fact get in their way.

No, that's not the case. However, we have equally well-intentioned people on the other side of the argument that have told us stories about being in meetings where the tongue that was spoken was understood. So for equity and balance on both sides of this argument, you don't get a free pass for saying that you lied and faked. That also has to be proven. My experience is different. So in the absence of any proof you provide for this, that is the extent of what we have. Different experiences around the worship manifestations, you say people can make up full 10 sentence messages on the fly, having them flow perfectly with scripture and make sense. I say that's highly questionable from what I have seen and what I personally could accomplish. I think they are not making them up, and the extent is that they get stuck and insert some words. So your use of the words "darn well" you are presenting as proof here of some sort? Of course we have all seen pages and pages of rhetoric, opinion stated as fact, and research that doesn't prove anything. I think the fact that I've seen all that is a joke, for sure, as opposed to proof and realistic conversation. But I can't do anything about that. I can see you seem honest about how things worked in your mind. When you say "no immediate revelation", my understanding of interpretation and prophecy in a worship setting is that it doesn't work via revelation. It works speaking it forth very similar to how you SIT. I would take issue with the phrase "I reached into my subconscious mind". If it's subconscious, then reaching into it is a conscious act, hence making it not the subconscious mind. Of course you may BELIEVE NOW that your subconscious mind is producing the interpretation or prophecy. But that is not proof or a guarantee that is actually what occurred. Your intentions and what actually happened are not necessarily tied together. You could not mean to lie or fake it, and actually be lying and faking it. You could also not mean to lie and fake, and NOT have any of that involved. So in other words whoever convinced you that you were lying and faking has made you less happy? You're losing me - I don't see a link to any study related to metacognition. I didn't find that at all. And that includes hearing messages on the teaching service hookups. That doesn't validate the teachings were any good. Messages were different, varied, and edifying. You know, interestingly enough there is a Charismatic Catholic movement. And as far as being inspirational, I would listen to manifestations at any meeting over listening to those clowns pray with their understanding. I felt like I needed a shower after that.

I'm not able to do it and remain believable.

I think the literary world uses "metaphorically" in a broader sense than Bullinger does, basically meaning what you say - a synonym for "figuratively". I took your use of the word "metaphorically" to be in the literary sense. There could be more than one figure of speech applicable to that phrase.

I have done that test. In my experience it is NOT easy at all to extemporaneously recall portions of scripture lodged in memory and arrange them, not in the span of less than a second between when I SIT and when the interpretation flows. Prophecy feels the same - not really a different category of experience. In my experience, I could fake maybe up to about three phrases of words, then it would fail. Perhaps someone used to delivering lines like an actor might be able to more easily do what you ask.

All right. Next point of discussion in this topic, since we are as Raf put it "measuring what man produces" not what scripture says. In the poll in this post, 50% of the options, or 3 out of 6, include the words "I lied about it". Further elaboration on this communicates that people are admitting to "faking it" as well. Now up to this point, we have had zero scrutiny on those answers. We have simply relied on whatever a person tells us in this category to be true. However, we are not doing this for ANYTHING on the other side of the argument. For instance, anecdotes where people in worship meetings understood the tongue in their native language. We don't believe the people relating these accounts until they are proven. So my next area to scrutinize is those answering "I lied an faked". Do we just immediately trust that they are telling the truth? Do we immediately trust that even if they are telling the truth to the best of their ability, that when they SIT in TWI that what actually was happening was they were not producing languages? I say no. I've run quite a number of INT classes. I've seen faking. I've seen people struggling. In my opinion, there is way too little time when people are practicing in a worship meeting between when they SIT and when they interpret for them to completely construct the sentences in the interpretation. I've seen people ALL THE TIME interject a few words they thought up into the message instead of crafting the whole message in their mind. Sometimes what they interjected was weird and embarrassing to them, other times it fit in. I have done this myself, interjecting a couple words. Does this mean THE ENTIRE MESSAGES provided by interpretation and prophecy are made up? I say it is not. I say it is way too much information of praise and way too little cognizant brain engagement for the message to have been ENTIRELY made up. So you are left with a dilemma. How to handle it? Well, the most noted linguist study we have from Samarin handles this by developing a position that he marvels at the intricacies of the subconscious mind, how it can craft sounds with cadence, sentence, phrase, and word structure like real languages contain. Did he really say that? Yes he did. I know that portion of his research has been de-emphasized to non-existence, but it's there. I am not so gung-ho on the innate power and ability of the human mind. My views on that are that I hear what comes out of man's mouth, so I'm not as impressed with his thoughts. So, all you liars and fakers out there. Prove that you faked it. Explain to us exactly how it was you crafted long entire TIP messages for worship meetings. And prove that when you SIT in TWI, it did not produce a language. I mean I'm sure that the very LAST THING that you want to be doing is to be convincing yourself and others that they are liars and fakers if you all did not do this in fact. More fun, everyone!!!! P.S. What's really needed here is more exposure to the methods of linguists identifying languages. All we have to date is consonant maps (where a linguist writes down the consonant letters in a language and then maps the sounds of an unknown sound byte to those consonants), and Hockett's 16 attributes of a language. The only article I have on that is one of Samarins, which is shorter and intented for public consumption, and surely less elaborate than any of his 4 books related to the topic. Nothing else from other linguists on methods I've seen. Post up links here or in doctrinal on SIT reading room thread if you have an article with more language definition practices on it. Oh - one more thing. Suggestions to contact linguists are nice, but if you have that suggestion, why don't you contact the linguist you are suggesting and ask about their methods for identifying language and post up their response and any linked resources?

Even further along these lines, the phrase "speaking in tongues" to me IMMEDIATELY signifies a figure of speech? Why? The phrase itself is a departure from normal usage. It is redundant. Simply using the word "speaking" (in either Greek or English, or Aramaiac - same in any language) IMMEDIATELY connotates the use of a language. The English common translation of that phrase uses the organ as what is defined. It COULD have been translated "speaking in languages". Do you see how redundant that sounds in English? I say from what I've noticed there is a FOS called metonymy in that phrase (metonymy is the Greek word for "change"). This figure is a changing or swapping out of words. In this case I can notice a metonymy. In other words, the word "tongues" is expressed for what it produces - "language". This calls attention to even deeper meaning possibilities. Like for example, you use your tongue literally, then God changes it to produce the language on the back end. To me the figure makes it clearer what is going on. This is an aspect of language we haven't dealt with yet. I'm thinking in English typing this. Yet not using any vocal sounds whatsoever to communicate.

Suffice it to say that the extent that languages have mathematical structures that can be charted and verified is debatable and questionable. The most we have seen on any published research to date is the practice of consonant mapping (taking the consonant letters of a language and trying to map sounds of an unknown segment of speech against it), and Hockett's 16 rules of language (what consists of a language). Language is like a code. If you understand the code and can speak it, it makes sense. If you do not, it does not make sense. One example of this is the movie "Wind Talkers". That movie is very interesting with respect to the topic on this thread and other similar ones. In that movie, WWII enemy code crackers were breaking the codes normally used in communications in the Army, and obtaining an advantage. So a code was constructed out of Navajo soldier's native language, and a figurative representation of certain words being code within the native language for troop configurations and movement. The code was not broken throughout the duration of the war. The men involved were honored as heros, and a movie was made out of it. To me this represents how easy it is to encode a message within a language and have it be undetected. Your understanding expressed in this paragraph to me just shows how effective one side of the argument has been here in convincing others to blindly accept the opinion of researchers without questioning their methods.

The angle on this that struck my mind reading through Raf's succinct detailing out of the scriptures with the word glossa in them was that of the three definitions, are we ABSOLUTELY SURE that glossa in I Cor. 14:2 means "languages" when used in the format "speaking in tongues" as opposed to a more figurative interpretation of metaphorically representing the physical organ itself? Could it be a "tongues like as of fire" reference? Could there be more to understanding the metonymy FOS with the tongue being stated for the language it produces? Could this metonymy be a clever play on words by God portraying that you take the action in the physical realm with the organ itself and God responds in the spiritual realm with a language? These are just thoughts, nothing proven, nothing cemented into belief, just considering the implications and reading scripture. Probably doesn't do anything for proof for either side of the argument either, but it's an interesting consideration.