Ii. The Pauline Data
I. THE CONTEXT
One understands Paul and his gospel poorly who does not recognize the crucial role the Spirit plays in his entire theological enterprise; 57 and crucial to the Spirit’s central role is the thoroughly eschatological framework within which Paul both experienced and understood the Spirit. The gift of the out-poured Spirit, who had played a fundamental role in his — and others’ — eschatological expectations, came to serve for Paul, along with the resurrection of Christ, as the primary cause of his radically altered eschatological perspective. On the one hand, the coming of the Spirit fulfilled the Old Testament eschatological promises, the sure evidence that the future had already been set in motion; on the other hand, since the final expression of the Eschaton had not yet taken place, the Spirit also served as the sure guarantee of the final glory. It is quite impossible to understand Paul’s emphasis on the experienced life of the Spirit apart from this thoroughgoing eschatological perspective that dominated his thinking.
It is within this context that one is to understand the inherent ambivalence one finds in Paul’s letters between the themes of “power” and “weakness.” Indeed, “power” is something of an elusive term in Paul’s writings. On the one hand, it often refers to clearly visible manifestations that evidence the Spirit’s presence (e.g., 1 Cor 2:4-5; Gal 3:5; Rom 15:19). The evidence from 1 Thessalonians 5:19- 22; 1 Corinthians 12-14; Romans 12:6; and especially Galatians 3:2- 5 with its matter-of-fact appeal to the continuing presence of miracles in the churches, makes it certain that the Pauline churches were “charismatic” in the sense that a dynamic presence of the Spirit was manifested in their gatherings.58 And even where “power” means that believers apprehend and live out the love of Christ in a greater way (Eph 3:16-20), Paul recognizes here a miraculous work of the Spirit that will be evidenced by the way renewed people behave toward one another. Whatever else, the Spirit was experienced in the Pauline churches; he was not simply a matter of creedal assent.
On the other hand, Paul also assumes the closest correlation between the Spirit’s power and present weaknesses. Such passages as Romans 8:17-27; 2 Corinthians 12:9; and Colossians 1:9-1159 indicate that the Spirit is seen as the source of empowering in the midst of affliction or weakness. In Paul’s view, “knowing Christ” means to know “both the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings” in which life in the “already” means to be “conformed to his death” as we press toward the “not yet” — the final prize (Phil 3:9-13). This, after all, is almost certainly how we are to understand the double kai (“and”) that follows “to know him” in this passage. There are not three things that Paul longs to know; rather it is one thing: to know Christ. But in context that means to know him simultaneously in two ways, in both the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings.60 Suffering means to be as one’s Lord, following his example and thus “filling up what was lacking in his sufferings” (Col 1:24).
Even so, Paul also expects God’s more visible demonstrations of power through the Spirit to be manifested in the midst of weakness, as God’s “proof” that his power resides in the message of a crucified Messiah. In 1 Corinthians 2:3-5, therefore, Paul can appeal simultaneously to the reality of his own weaknesses and the Spirit’s manifest power in his preaching and the Corinthians’ conversion; and in 1 Thessalonians 1:5-6 he reminds these new believers that they became so by the power of the Spirit, but in the midst of suffering that was also accompanied by the joy of the Holy Spirit.
All of this reflects Paul’s basic eschatological understanding of Christian existence as “already/not yet,” a tension that Paul was able to keep together in ways that many later Christians have not. For him it was not simply a tension in which the present was all weakness and the (near) future all glory. The future had truly broken into the present, evidenced by the gift of the Spirit; and since the Spirit meant the presence of God’s power, that dimension of the future was also already present in some measure. Thus present suffering is a mark of discipleship, whose paradigm is our crucified Lord. But the same power that raised the crucified One from the dead is also already at work in our present mortal bodies.
It is precisely this paradox in Paul’s own understanding that creates so many difficulties for moderns. Indeed, as much as anything else, it is the church’s subsequent failure to embrace both power and weakness, simultaneously and vigorously, that has led to so much of the ebb and flow of Spirit life in the church over the centuries. Paul — and the rest of the New Testament writers — held these expressions of Spirit and power in happy tension.61 Thus Paul in particular steered a path through the “radical middle” that is often missed by both evangelicals and Pentecostals, who traditionally tend to place their emphasis on one side or the other.62
I propose in this paper that Paul’s stance in the eschatological “radical middle” is the key to his understanding of glossolalia, not simply because he himself stands so squarely over against the Corinthians, whose enchantment with tongues and apparent triumphalism apparently went hand in glove, but also because what Paul says positively about tongues leads in this same direction. Thus we turn once again to a (very) brief examination of the Pauline data.