Del Tarr is professor emeritus and past president of the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary and holds a PhD in communications from the University of Minnesota. In The Foolishness of God, he applies linguistic and theological insights in a breakthrough analysis of the phenomenon of speaking in tongues, an analysis enriched by his experience as a missionary educator of learning and teaching in three languages, besides English.  He argues that God characteristically reveals himself by "the foolish things of the world to shame the wise" (1 Corinthians 1:27). 

According to Pentecostalism's "cultured despisers," speaking in tongues is the ultimate foolishness. Well-known linguistic studies have shown that it is usually outside of normal human language patterns. Speaking in tongues requires relinquishing control of our most guarded ability-to gain status with clever and articulate speech, to be well spoken.  Moreover, critics claim that it is snake handlers, TV evangelists, and the economically and socially dispossessed who speak in tongues, not socially respectable people.

With all this against it, Tarr asks, "why did God choose a sign related to human speech/communication that would be so ridiculed, maligned, resisted and rejected" (page 31)-the "least of the gifts" as judged by some-to express the New Covenant of the Spirit, which is the goal of God's redemptive purpose?  

In intertestamental Jewish tradition, Pentecost became the celebration of the gift of the covenant at Sinai where the direct voice of God was rejected in favor of a document (Exodus 20:18-19; Hebrews 12:25). According to Luke, it now celebrates the goal of both the Scriptures and Jesus' mission, namely, to "baptize you with the Holy Spirit" of the New Covenant (Luke 3:16; Acts 1:5), a mission fulfilled when Jesus "poured out what you now see and hear" (Acts 2:33) in the utterance of tongues. 

The very climax of one of the most important messages in all of Christianity, the Pentecost sermon, describes the fulfillment of salvation history, the New Covenant, characterized by tongues-speech. In Acts 2:39, Peter says, "The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off-for all whom the Lord our God will call." His words alludes to Isaiah 59:21, wherein God says: "This is my covenant with them: the Spirit that I place upon you [i.e., Jesus, Isaiah 61:1-2; Luke 4:17-21], and the words I place in your mouth, will not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouths of your children, nor from the mouths of your children's children, forever." The "words" in the "mouths" of Isaiah's prophecy find partial fulfillment in the phenomenon of Pentecost experienced by Peter, the Jerusalem believers, and their audience. Paul later paraphrases Isaiah 59:21 in Romans 11:29 when he writes, "God's gifts [in Greek, charismata] and his call are irrevocable."  So the gift of Spirit-utterance, glossolalia, in this instance, is for everyone forever.

So it's clear that God sent this characteristic gift, but the question remains: Why tongues?  

Tarr argues that it is precisely because tongues speech is so bizarre and foolish, so easily dismissed by the "cultured despisers of religion," that tongues perfectly expresses God's characteristic manner of revealing himself to humanity. Against the human temptation to exercise autonomous knowledge and control-a temptation faced by both the first and Second Adam-God's revelation in tongues-speech requires a radical shift from the gleaming fortress of our own intellectual arrogance to a filthy stable, to see a powerless baby born to a virgin from a backwater village (p. 262). To "see" Jesus in that context, Tarr argues, required getting past a great deal of small-town gossip and disdain. So also, God's "sign" of speaking in tongues, which both strengthens the believer and hardens the unbeliever (1 Corinthians 14:21; Isaiah 28:11-12).

The Old Covenant was a written document. Tarr argues that while the written format has the advantage of being more or less permanent, unchanging, and reliable, it nonetheless is inferior to the New Covenant, which is God's Word written directly into one's heart (Jeremiah 31:31-34; 2 Corinthians 3:3). God's New Covenant emphasizes the superiority of "orality," direct, personal revelation, over a text even written in stone. This great contrast-writing vs. orality-is laid out in 2 Corinthians 3. The "oral" immediate "word" of God revealed by the Spirit and spoken directly into our hearts, and out again from our mouth, has the great advantage of expressing God's very presence in our bodies, addressing, at the most appropriate moment, the exact needs of our soul. Speaking in tongues "edifies" the speaker, while our mind is "unfruitful" even as our spirit (or Spirit) is praying mysteries (1 Corinthians 14:4,14; Romans 8:26). The restorative, healing power of tongues speaking has been confirmed in science laboratories  (p. 391ff).

Tarr insists that despite the vindicating growth of Pentecostalism in the last one hundred years, so that it is now perhaps the largest active group in Christendom, "my desire is less to defend tongues than to show how this humbling experience can open the door to empowerment." Dr. Del Tarr, the linguist who looks at the mystery of tongues, has offered a profound, groundbreaking explanation: it convincingly captures the heart and wisdom of God in tongues-speaking, God's "foolish" revelation to humankind.

The Foolishness of God cites over three hundred sources, and it includes author, general, and Scripture indexes, as well as a glossary. It will challenge both the professional theologian and the spiritually interested layperson alike.

Jon Ruthven is professor emeritus of theology at Regent University.

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