12/06/2025

 

Samuel Clifford

 

“The Historical Approach" states that there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that tongues did in fact cease early in the history of the Church. Within this argument there are two distinctive points/evidences given:

 

1. No mention of tongues can be found in any of Paul’s later epistles.

 

2. The testimony of the Early Church Fathers shows Tongues ceased. 

 

In this post, both points/evidences will be examined in greater detail.

 

1. There is No Mention of Tongues That Can Be Found In Any of Paul's Later Epistles.

 

Tongues is mentioned only in Acts, a book on the start of the Church, and 1 Corinthians, an early epistle. Two later epistles, Ephesians and Romans, both discuss gifts of the Spirit at length—but no mention is made of the miraculous gifts like tongues. By that time miracles were already looked on as something in the past (Hebrews 2:3-4). Therefore, point 1 is true. There is no mention of tongues in the later epistles. 

 

2. The Testimony of the Early Church Fathers Shows Tongues Ceased. 

 

This point will be longer than point one as many church father quotes will be given.

 

It should be noted that charismatic gifts do appear in the earliest parts of the church fathers but those who use these gifts are always deemed as heretics. Clement of Rome wrote, in the last two decades of the first century, against a group of young men who supposedly used these gifts because they had “kicked out” the elders in control of the church of Corinth (1 Clement 21.5). This doesn’t contradict most cessationist views if they infact were using the gifts such as tongues since 1 Clement was written before the Bible was completed. Also in A.D. 172 Montanus claimed the same supernatural gifts that the apostles yet he was universally condemned by the church as a heretic. In A.D. 325 Eusebius quotes Apollonius who wrote about Montanus in A.D. 210: 

 

“But who this recent teacher is, is revealed by his works and his teaching. This is he who taught dissolution of marriages, who made laws for fasting, who gave the name of Jerusalem to Pepuza and Tymion, (these are small towns in Phrygia), desiring to bring people together there from everywhere, who established collectors of money, who contrived the receiving of gifts under the name of offerings, who provided salaries for those who preached his doctrines, that its teaching might prevail through gluttony.’ This, then, he says about Montanus. After proceeding a little further, he writes this about his prophetesses: ‘Now we show that these first prophetesses themselves, from the moment they were filled with the spirit, deserted their husbands. How, then, they did lie when they called Priscilla a virgin.” (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.18, 325 A.D.)

 

With the knowledge that those who supposedly used the gifts as being heretics, let’s move on to learning what the Church Fathers stated about the existence of tongues. Firstly, let’s read a quote by Augustine in A.D. 400:

 

“In the earliest times, ‘the Holy Ghost fell upon them that believed: and they spake with tongues,’ which they had not learned, ‘as the Spirit gave them utterance.’ These were signs adapted to the time. For there behooved to be that betokening of the Holy Spirit in all tongues, to shew that the Gospel of God was to run through all tongues over the whole earth. That thing was done for a betokening, and it passed away. In the laying on of hands now, that persons may receive the Holy Ghost, do we look that they should speak with tongues? Or when we laid the hand on these infants, did each one of you look to see whether they would speak with tongues, and, when he saw that they did not speak with tongues, was any of you so wrong-minded as to say, These have not received the Holy Ghost; for, had they received, they would speak with tongues as was the case in those times? If then the witness of the presence of the Holy Ghost be not now given through these miracles, by what is it given, by what does one get to know that he has received the Holy Ghost? Let him question his own heart. If he love his brother, the Spirit of God dwelleth in him.” (Augustine, Homilies on First John, Homily 6, 6.10, 400 AD)

 

Augustine here states that in the earliest times the Holy Spirit fell upon believers and caused them to speak in tongues. Indicating it wasn’t happening presently. This is further confirmed when Augustine states tongues had “passed away.” 

 

Furthermore, the great preacher Chrysostom in A.D. 400 stated:

 

“This whole place is very obscure: but the obscurity is produced by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation, being such as then used to occur but now no longer take place. And why do they not happen now? Why look now, the cause too of the obscurity hath produced us again another question: namely, why did they then happen, and now do so no more? This however let us defer to another time, but for the present let us state what things were occurring then.” (Chrysostom of Antioch, Homilies on First Corinthians, Homily 29, 12:1-2, 349-407 AD)

 

As with Augustine, Chrysostom speaks, in the context of Tongues, of their cessation. In conclusion, within the Bible the mention of Tongues is only found in the earliest epistles and not mentioned in the later epistles. Indicating the decline of tongues and its inevitable cessation. This is even further proven when an examination of the Church Fathers beliefs on the cessation of tongues is considered.