chockfull

And later on, to complete the irony, Martindale drops at least one guy from the Corps for doing exactly this.

The interpretation part of the study quoted by this guy is absolutely wrong to me because SIT and it's interpretation according to instructions in I Cor. 14 NEVER talk about having one person SIT and to go down the line asking a bunch of people to interpret it. If these manifestations are spiritual then you have to do them according to the instructions, or they won't work right. You can't game God on this stuff. And you can't rule out that as a matter of course, the first guy interpreting had the genuine message and the other guys down the line were making it up. I mean, I could get bogus results on the revelation manifestations by doing things wrong too. All I would have to do is picture a cookie jar and put tons of mental effort into God revealing to me something about a situation. I could sit there for years and decades and have the same experience - no power from God. So the guy's conclusion is that you can't get anything cognitively out of tongues, but you can get a lot out of the emotion of the speaker and voice inflection? What a crock!!!! And these are representative of the types of studies that I'm supposed to believe "absolutely prove that SIT doesn't produce a language?" I don't think so.

Your analogy doesn't sound silly to me. Of course if Paul's SIT had substantial elements different from modern day SIT, then that would give you scientific relief. But it causes doctrinal problems. If I can do everything Paul and the Bible instructs regarding SIT, and God does not come through with power from His end, then wouldn't that make God a respecter of persons? Even further, can we trust scripture then? If it doesn't produce what it says when you act on it, it has no more value than any other book. Paul himself had critics on the day of Pentecost, people who saw the miracle right before their eyes, and chose to get up on a platform and cry out that these guys were drunk with new wine. What's to say that you guys aren't the same thing in modern days? As I asked you before, if you want me to believe I'm using sugar and Paul used salt, you are going to have to provide some kind of logical explanation. Why would SIT no longer work now, when it did then? What changed between the first century and now? If that changed, how can you be certain that other things in the Bible that are available still are? Do promises of God come with an expiration date? Oh, and also, there are some studies again which say glossolalia does not produce language, there are others that contradict that and say that it does. Samarin himself uses linguists that don't arrive at his same conclusions. His linguists did NOT conclude that glossolalia was definitely NOT a language. Only Samarin. There are other sources that disagree with him.

Either statement is fine. They aren't the limiting factor. For me, the convincing part involves an element of faith - of trusting God and acting. And an element of logic, both scripturally and scientifically. I mean, sometimes facts and logic can't get you all the way there. What do I mean? Well, for example, Euclidean geometry. Everything there is derived from 3 postulates - point, line, and plane. Those are reasonable postulates that pretty much nobody will refute. So we be-bop on our merry way living life and designing things based upon Euclid's theorems. But then Einstein comes along, and asks "what happens when you try to apply all these principles as you are approaching the speed of light?" And things change. Lines, planes distort into curves, objects. The seemingly solid postulates don't hold up in that environment. I want the science, the logic, the proofs, the objective analysis. But I still realize that all this is the surmising of ants in a very large universe, all created by God.

I'm not inclined to make that argument of "it can't be disproven so it must be so". I would be more inclined to reach a doctrinal position that is relatively sound and logical and use that (at least for myself) as a basis or augmentation of personal proof. That and just pray and trust direction will be there. All of your roadblocks you are highlighting remind me of Thomas Edison. Just 990 more experiments and you'll discover the light bulb. Or if we can't we'll at least be a lot more educated on the topic :)

Yes, that's the challenge. The embarrassment and exposure. Those are real considerations. Also, what would it do to community/professional areas? Those reasons would be very real ones to consider using a pen name. Like "Sky Rider". That way the people who know or could figure out know. And the rest be-bop around blissfully ignorant of who you are, preserving current day relationships. All awesome.

Yeah, well it didn't work. I've encountered a few with the real disease that probably would have been better off at an AA meeting than a fellowship. Just by common sense, the folks at AA are much better equipped to handle the disease than your average fellowship coord. in TWI (or even you non-average - Corps / clergy / whatever). TWI provides NO training AT ANY LEVEL on dealing with the disease of alchoholism. Hypocritically, he was largely governed by his Baptist upbringing there. VP would do moonshine at a night owl. Craig would never. He should have stuck with his Baptist upbringing on sex.

What I'm starting to see is that a lot of the position taken by people on whether or not "tongues of angels" has any leeway for being interpreted as different than a human language has to do with their views on some of the prayer related verses surrounding SIT where it is not explicitly stated as tongues. Like Rom. 8. I personally am not 100% either way on that one currently. I'm kind of approaching it on two fronts - one is Biblical/doctrinal. The other is scientific / practical. I'm doing the best I can to put posts in the right place for that, but probably still failing. So for me, if discussing SIT drives me to a bottle of beer, what does that do for my salvation? Just asking. Allan, "free vocalization" is the term a bunch of scientists came up with in the studies we are reading. I don't have a major issue with the term. SIT is literally "glossa" = "laleo" - "tongues" + "speaking without reference to the words being said". So I view those terms interchangeably so I can have a conversation with many on it. SIT, glossolalia, free vocalization. The distinction I have internally currently is that studies describing "free vocalization" are showing people doing similar things (at least they appear similar to all scientific and senses evaluation) whether or not they claim to be inspired by God. So by sheer logic, if SIT works like the Bible describes, then whatever the nonbelievers are doing probably can't be energized spirit. So they are doing the exact same thing, or something real similar without the spirit of God being involved at all. Raf, I'll get to Sherrill later today - I'm a bit slammed earlier.

Well, by your logic and application of the figure hyperbole, I'm sure your interpretation of those verses is that Paul was saying to have as much sex as possible and that only women should preach in the church. That would be consistent with your interpretation of "I would you all spoke with tongues". It means the opposite, right? Because Paul was reproving them and their attitude wasn't right? It's funny how people only see pride in others but miss it obnoxiously sticking out of their own persona. Here again, like scripture says, why don't you worry about your own issues? You are not the matron of gentleness, tolerance and kindness that you view yourself to be. Wow - now look who's getting nasty. That's OK - I've faced this kind of thing plenty before. People don't want to address their illogic, and if you persist bringing it up to them all they do is get more angry with you. I'm a little more direct with you because you run over people. And I'm not surprised that you are going to stay as far as you can away from people who SIT. People will go to extreme lengths to avoid that within themselves that they need to change. And they will do it acting as pious and Christian as you please, all the while the rabid anger is rising up within them. And they look for anything else around them to blame except themselves. I don't need to defend my faith to you. And I'm having a fine time on this thread discussing in a rational matter the topic with other people who aren't as mad as you.

I ran across another reference - The Psychology of Speaking in Tongues by John Kildahl: http://www.amazon.ca/psychology-speaking-tongues-John-Kildahl/dp/B000GRFWIW/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1350325467&sr=8-2 This is an out of print book published I think in 1972. It's reviews call it "devastating to Pentecostals" so I am gathering that it negates SIT scientifically. Reviews also state that the psychology portion of it is very insightful and has been established w more since then.

The difference in my views are that I hold the Romans 8:24 reference to be a non-Trinitarian interpretation, and the "groans that cannot be uttered" to me are describing private prayer life. As such, I would not limit the communication between myself and God to need to be in the language of a person on earth. That could support a "tongues of angels" type interpretation.

Next Moore gets into what I call "Jehova's Witness" territory. He claims that if you are doing something yourself that God didn't recommend, you could be possessed. This is great logic for introducing fear around the subject into the reader, and moves pretty far away from any scientific analysis. Suffice it to say any person can refute this and probably does daily. For example, I do things probably on a daily basis God doesn't recommend (probably and hypothetically). There's a lot more things God says I should do that I don't. This is called "being human". This is not going to get me possessed by the spirit of Dr. Pepper. (or whatever). Come on, Moore. Can we move beyond the tribal superstition "booga booga" mindset here? The section after this one is Are the tongues of 1 Corinthians different than the tongues in Acts? For this section it brings up theological arguments I have never heard before, and thus I learned a lot. Many sociologists and theologians bring up differences between Cor. and Acts in what they were doing. Honestly never thought of that before, but it's important to consider if there is a lot of mainstream Christian attention on it.

Next, we come up to geisha's favorite section: Here Moore IMO misses the forest for the trees. While it is stated that SIT builds up one's self, that is miles away from defining the purpose of SIT as for personal enjoyment or benefit. While true, that is secondary. One gets the picture of a muscle-bound egotist at a Gold's Gym SIT for hours and looking at themselves in the mirror. Thus the focus is taken off the smaller tidbits of truth contained in the letter, and on to the discussion of building up others. The main purpose of SIT is not for building up the body, it is for one's private prayer life. As an example of this, as a child myself and friends would like to make up things speaking in Pig Latin. We would play and hold a private conversation which we held to be special and just between us. Because we were speaking in Pig Latin, only we could understand. It made us feel closer and that outsiders couldn't eavesdrop. SIT in my private prayer life feels like speaking to my friends in Pig Latin. I wasn't doing it to become a Pig Latin linguist and United Nations translator, or to make myself big and Pig strong, I was doing it because we could and it was cool. No big deal, kids will be kids. Now reading through this example again, it provides a lot of ammo for the "faker" side in saying "yeah, and that's why you made up SIT as an adult". Hopefully the reader can sort through the tangibles in the example without resorting to that logical leap. With Moore's handling of I Cor. 14:4 the problem is this: here the context is talking about what they do in the temple, in church meetings, or at each others house when interacting with others in the body. It is not discouraging SIT in private prayer life, it is contrasting the private prayer life benefit which was being over-emphasized in Corinth with how they should be more mindful of one another, and look to edify others "in the church". Some people really like to latch on to the latter, and use it to disprove the former. However, the only way you can really do that is to say that the context and tone of Corinthians is the ONLY thing important, and the individual verses can possibly be untrue and stated just in the context of reproof. While that may be OK to do something like that when you are evaluating personal interaction, like an argument between two people, we are discussing scripture here. If it has no more weight than a mere statement in anger someone had while reproving Corinthians, then really there is no authority of scripture that can be held to, as it could be an incorrect statement made by a human at any given point, and not divinely inspired.

Moving on. He goes on to define SIT a little more narrowly: Since he is in the theological section here, I'll say that this is accurate in its limited scope but does not represent the entirety of SIT. Next he covers "Is glossolalia real human language?" and delves into a topic that Raf supports strongly - where he makes the case for I Cor. 13:1 tongues of angels being a hyperbolic statement. He does a good job making a case for that tying in all the other hyperbolic statements Paul makes and pointing out he didn't move mountains, etc. So his aim there is to narrow down SIT to human language only for purpose of examination and proof. Next he digs into Romans 8:24: This verse is problematic in proofs as it is very closely tied to the doctrine of the Trinity. Is the Spirit here the third person of the Godhead, or is it talking about the gift itself? Depending on your views on the Trinity, this could make or break someone's view towards SIT - if it's the 3rd person of the Godhead, then SIT is unnecessary, and the Spirit does the work. If it's the gift, then that's a supporting verse for SIT being valuable in someone's private prayer life. Obviously the author is a Trinitarian and thus his interpretation here follows.

Second here on encouragement for writing a book. You are a prolific and inspiring author, even on simple thread posts. I would buy a copy.

This so transparently exposes TWI as a leech of an organization. First, they don't want to reach people in genuine need or with obvious needs - that would actually require doing some work, getting the hands dirty, helping people who are down and out improve and put their lives back together. You know - real beneficial work that legitimate non-profit corporations are doing all the time. Second, they are after the devout. Why? No problems, steady work, more money. Where does the money go? To help the devout? No. It goes back to HQ's little fiefdom structure. And they keep a tight lid on the money. 75/25 was the budget breakdown I was familiar with. When the ABS in a state went below what would support having a Limb coord. be salaried, they have always asked them to work secularly, and keep the same workload. Third, they have zero infrastructure in communities. People meet in homes, usually in violation of local housing ordinances. There was even specific language that would be communicated from the Trunk office to use when neighbors complained about parking or gathering problems. We would always be encouraged to use free rooms for community meetings - in Branches - like libraries, community centers, fire stations, etc. So that we wouldn't have to pay to have larger meetings. Then after that care was taken to keep costs down on Limb level meetings, and approval would be denied for anything nice. If you look at this from a perspective of the real underlying reason is TWI wants to leech off society, collect money for doing as little as possible, and preserve their little fiefdoms.

I'm working through this source now. I thought I'd comment here rather than clutter up the SIT Reading Room thread with discussion when that might be a good place to collect references. Mark Moore - What We Can Know About SIT I. What We Can Know About Speaking in Tongues Historically Some good stuff here. Great references, from church history and modern history. I learned something here. II. What We Can Know About Tongues Theologically Here he starts to get into trouble. His focus on supernatural language and his #2 assumption are both inaccurate and unsupported scripturally. IMO he is constructing a straw man here. In the definition it is not necessarily a "supernatural language". Tongues define themselves as "the tongues of men or angels" in Corinthians. This means that they are either a language used by men on Earth at some time, or a language spoken by angels. The alternative proposed interpretation is that "of angels" is a figure of speech (like hyperbole or in that family of figures) to exaggerate or over-emphasize the power and magnitude of what tongues represent. If it is figurative, what would "of angels" be meant to communicate? Since angels are spirit beings the first and most obvious point would be that it would be a language to communicate with spirit beings as opposed to humans. The second would be that it represents spiritual power as different from power in the physical realm.

You would like to go back and do wut?

Consider for a moment providing reference material? I'm going to read this and re-read our other sources again.

My experience with 12 steps is completely related to interacting with Christians in my fellowships over the years that were alcoholics. Overall, they are much needed and very helpful. I did notice a difference in what you might call "degree of alcoholism". I mean there were some people that I saw drank a lot due to psychological trauma. (Maybe there's a lot on this forum that have been in that category). Those types of people tended to get better as they healed. Then there was the real disease - those people would never get better and need to never touch alcohol again in their lives as one beer or glass of wine would start an out of control spiral ending up in disaster. The category of people with the real disease were the ones I thought needed to stay in AA 12 steps ongoing throughout their lives. For the others, I saw they may have gotten some benefit out of the program for a time, but it wasn't beneficial to stay in a 12 step program ongoing throughout their lives. My experience or .02.

It is interesting to note. I have close friends in JW. They are absolutely conditioned to fear SIT. Not just as a matter of doctrine. They literally believe people SIT are possessed, and become visibly agitated when the topic comes up. On the gay side of things my views on that is that TWI had a whole lot of angst against that group of people, especially in LCM's era. IMO that was because he was cheating on his wife and his wife was leaving him for another woman, but hey. In Biblical times, the Greek culture had a lot of homosexuality in it. The middle-aged men would have relationships with young boys, and gay relationships were part of and acceptable in culture. That didn't change Paul's work or God's direction to bring them to Christ. And to complicate matters, Paul's letters in a short time had to handle all of that and provide direction for new Christians to live as believers and navigate within that part of culture and their past, which I'm sure couldn't be easy. So no surprise to me there. You are right. Landry was the one quoting Samarin. Not Polythress. Polythress had plenty of his own research sources not related to Samarin.

Yes, Raf. That terminology would put the scientific side of this discussion on par with and accurate with the scientific method and the statistics used as proofs in most of the softer sciences that are related to human studies. And it would probably get us past some of the "logical fallacy" bickering over whose responsibility it is to prove it. I don't know if it's possible to prove or not for reasons I've highlighted. But if it can be proven, that's the right path to approach it. We could kick around the hypothesis statement to try and ensure it covers all angles or is stated the most accurately.

It doesn't matter whether it's in the context of doing the after dinner dishes. The context doesn't magically 100% change the meaning of the verse around. Again, for about the 10th time on this point, it really doesn't matter whether or not Paul was mad at the Corinthians, if he was reproving them, if they were bad boys, etc. etc. etc. What Paul says about SIT is about the only detail we have in the Bible about it. If you go jumping all over hyperbole as a figure of speech saying it means you really shouldn't speak in tongues when the verse says "I would that you all do it", if you interpret where he talks about praying with the spirit and understanding as not applying to the private prayer life because he's talking about praying in church, and if you do all sorts of other antics with Corinthians to support what you've already decided is your position about it, then there really is nothing to discuss here doctrinally either. Believe what you want. It is absolutely no logical way to approach scriptures, though. No, the access to God was given to us by Jesus sacrifice making the new birth possible. Gifts / manifestations come along with the new birth. I didn't know questioning SIT would bring you to doubting the whole underpinnings of the new birth. That certainly was not God's intent. No we are not. I am extemporaneously stringing together concepts directly from verses related to SIT. The verses appear in different parts of your Bible, so it's like an extract from a subject scriptural study on it. Can I gently remind you that you sound very similar to Bildad the Shuhite here? No duh. Of course this is the case. And part of what God accomplished through Jesus amazing sacrifice was this beautiful gift related to the new birth. You should check it out some time, rather than arguing with God about what its intent is.

Yeah, and Polythress quotes his exact same study while emphasizing the point I was making, that Samarin's own linguists in the study saw elements of language. He may have been citing that study to point out Samarin's forceful conclusions weren't exactly supported by his own evidence.

I'm just saying the other accounts do NOT say others understood the tongues. And there is a place in the Bible saying that generally those speaking in tongues are not understood by others. Sorry if that "misdirects" you. So since Paul uses the figure of speech hyperbole frequently, then you just can't trust the man not to exaggerate? Even if that phrase were hyperbole, I would read it that he is confronting the problem that some people SIT and others didn't and that they probably were going around making internet threads arguing over it. Or whatever they did during that century of the sort. So he wished everyone would just do it so it wouldn't be an issue. Acts 10:45-46 And they of the circumcision which believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost. 46 For they heard them speak with tongues, and magnify God So you are saying here that this states that the Gentiles were SIT in what language? One that they of the circumcision understood, but the Gentiles did not? What language pray tell would this be? Aramaiac was spoken by all in the region. Greek was the Gentiles primary language - Paul may have been preaching in Greek. I don't know about that. If it was important they understood without interpretation, I think that would have been stated. I mean you can carry the first usage way too far here. Not every time someone SIT does it need to be Pentecost. Why are you reading in me being bothered in this? I'm not. I can easily understand Paul was reproving and correcting the Corinthians, yet still was speaking truthfully and accurately. Why is it so hard for you to see that the man was speaking accurately inspired by God even when he was reproving them, so you can rely on his literal words, not some figure of speech meaning really he didn't want them all to SIT? I can see you have your UPSET filter on here. Helping those who help themselves is so far from what I was saying there it's not funny. Yes you are very misguided. The gift opens up further access to God, to communicate spiritually, to pray "in the spirit" and "with my understanding". To enhance the relationship further. To help us communicate with God better. It's not a Harry Potter wand. IMO.