Speaking in Tongues: The Evidence, Part 1 of 7
You’re grabbing coffee with a friend after church. Somehow, the conversation drifts to the Holy Spirit, and your friend says something like:
“Yeah, that whole speaking in tongues thing? That stopped after the apostles died. Like 2,000 years ago.”
Casually. Like it’s settled.
And maybe you’ve heard it enough times that part of you wonders if they’re right. Maybe a pastor you respect said it. Maybe you Googled it once, and the first few results confirmed it.
I get it. I’ve been there too.
But what I wish someone had told me years ago is this: the claim that tongues disappeared for 1,500 years and then randomly popped back up in 1901? The historical evidence doesn’t support it. And I didn’t learn that from a Pentecostal preacher. I learned it from the church fathers themselves.
So What Does the Historical Record Actually Show?
Let me walk you through the centuries. Not as a theologian, just as a guy who got curious enough to check. I want to introduce you to some people. Real people. Bishops, theologians, monks, and missionaries. People who wrote about what they saw with their own eyes.
The First 200 Years: Nobody Even Debated It
In the earliest centuries of the church, there is no surviving record of anyone arguing that the gifts had stopped. That debate just doesn’t exist in the early sources. The conversation was about how to manage them.
The Didache, one of the oldest Christian documents outside the New Testament (dating to around 70-100 AD), gives instructions for telling true prophets from false ones. Not whether prophets still existed. How to evaluate the ones showing up in your church.
The Shepherd of Hermas, written in Rome around 100-150 AD, does the same thing. It was so widely read that some early churches treated it like Scripture.
Then we get to the big names.
Irenaeus of Lyon. This one matters. Irenaeus was a student of Polycarp, who was a student of the Apostle John. That’s one generation removed from an apostle. One. Writing around 180 AD, he said this:
“We do also hear many brethren in the Church, who possess prophetic gifts, and who through the Spirit speak all kinds of languages, and bring to light for the general benefit the hidden things of men, and declare the mysteries of God.”
Read that again. “Speak all kinds of languages.” Present tense. In his churches. One generation from John.
Tertullian in North Africa, around 200 AD, challenged a heretic named Marcion to produce the charismatic gifts active in orthodox churches, including “interpretation of diverse kinds of tongues.” He wasn’t arguing for something theoretical. He was pointing to what was happening in his own congregation.
Novatian in Rome, around 250 AD, listed the Spirit’s gifts as ongoing realities: “This is he who appoints prophets in the church, instructs teachers, directs tongues, brings into being powers and conditions of health, carries on extraordinary works…”
Present tense. Active. Not memories.
The 300s: Still Going
Hilary of Poitiers, one of the most respected bishops in the Western church, affirmed the “gift of tongues” and the “gift of healing” as ongoing provisions for the church around 360 AD.
The Cappadocian Fathers (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa) are the guys who gave us Trinitarian orthodoxy. The theology you recite in the Nicene Creed? They built it. And they testified to the ongoing operation of the Spirit’s gifts, including healing and prophetic speech.
But Cyril of Jerusalem might be the most significant of all.
Here’s why. Cyril wasn’t looking backward. He was a bishop preparing new converts for baptism, and in his catechetical lectures he told baptismal candidates what to expect from the Holy Spirit: wisdom, prophecy, healing, the power to drive away demons. Not nostalgia. A fourth-century pastor telling ordinary people: “Here’s what’s coming for you.”
Two Catholic scholars, Kilian McDonnell and George Montague, studied Cyril’s teaching and came to the same conclusion: the fourth-century church still expected the Spirit to show up.
The Honest Part: Chrysostom and the Medieval Question
I’m not going to hide the hard stuff from you. That’s not how this works.
John Chrysostom, “Golden Mouth,” Archbishop of Constantinople and one of the greatest preachers in church history, is the strongest early voice for cessationism. Around 400 AD, he wrote that the miraculous gifts had served their purpose in establishing the faith and were “henceforth superfluous.”
Real quote. Real church father. You deserve to know about it.
But here’s the context.
Chrysostom’s statement was a brief remark in a homily, not a developed theological argument. He didn’t write a treatise on cessation. He made a passing comment. And his one voice stands against a chorus of contemporaries: Hilary, Cyril, the Cappadocians, Ambrose, even Augustine. Augustine started as a cessationist, then personally witnessed almost seventy miraculous healings in his own diocese and retracted his broader cessationism in his Retractions. He still maintained that tongues specifically had ceased as a widespread phenomenon. But the point stands: the evidence changed his mind.
One voice doesn’t make a consensus.
And the medieval period? I’ll be straight with you: the evidence gets thinner. Most of what we have comes from hagiographic sources (devotional biographies of saints, written to promote their veneration). Not eyewitness journalism. More like spiritual resumes.
We have accounts of Pachomius in Egypt, reportedly speaking in unlearned languages after extended prayer. Hildegard of Bingen composed hymns in what she called an “unknown language” she attributed to divine inspiration. Francis of Assisi. Anthony of Padua, reportedly understood by speakers of multiple languages simultaneously. Vincent Ferrer. Dominican missionaries in South America.
Are all of these claims historically airtight?
No. Some are devotional traditions, not critical history. I’m not going to oversell them.
But the sheer breadth of these claims, spanning centuries, cultures, continents, and religious orders, tells us something. The stream never dried up completely. It may have gone underground. But it kept flowing.
Why Did the Gifts Decline?
This is where it gets really interesting.
Historian Ronald Kydd started in the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada, later became Anglican, and is respected across traditions. He studied this question carefully. His conclusion? The decline of charismatic gifts in the third and fourth centuries wasn’t caused by divine withdrawal. It was caused by institutional factors: clericalization, the influence of Greek rationalism on Christian theology, the shift from intimate house churches to formal basilicas, the church’s desire for respectability in Roman society.
His summary is deeply challenging to the cessationist position: “The gifts declined when the church stopped expecting them, not when God stopped giving them.”
That distinction matters.
Because cessationism doesn’t just claim the gifts faded. It claims God withdrew them on purpose. And the historical evidence points the other way. The church changed. The expectation changed. The institutional structures changed. And the gifts became harder to find.
Sound familiar?
The Absence of Evidence Problem
Sam Storms, a Reformed theologian and not a Pentecostal, makes a point that should make everyone pause:
“It may surprise some to discover that we have extensive knowledge of but a small fraction of what happened in the history of the church. It is terribly presumptuous to conclude that the gifts of the Spirit were absent from the lives of people about whom we know virtually nothing.”
Think about it: we don’t have detailed records of what was happening in most Christian communities for most of church history. The vast majority of believers who ever lived left behind zero written testimony. Concluding that tongues stopped because we don’t have continuous documentation is like concluding people stopped singing in church because we don’t have recordings from every century.
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
But the Real Point Is Bigger Than History
Here’s what I need you to hear.
The theological case for the continuation of tongues doesn’t depend on proving an unbroken historical chain from the apostles to now. That would be nice, and the evidence is stronger than most people think. But the case doesn’t rest there.
It rests on Peter’s words at the very first Pentecost:
“The promise is for you and your children, and for all who are far off — for all whom the Lord our God will call.” — Acts 2:39
No expiration date. No asterisk. No “until the Bible is finished” clause.
It rests on Paul’s expectation that the gifts continue until Christ returns (1 Corinthians 1:7; 13:8-12).
And it rests on this: there is no text in Scripture that explicitly teaches God withdrew the gifts. None. The burden of proof is on those who claim it happened. And after two thousand years, they still haven’t produced the verse.
So What Does This Mean for You?
Maybe you’re the person at the coffee shop. Maybe someone just told you tongues stopped, and you didn’t know what to say.
Now you do.
Tell them about Irenaeus, one generation from John, hearing tongues in his churches. About Tertullian, pointing to tongues as proof of orthodoxy. About Cyril telling new believers what to expect. About 600 million Christians worldwide who practice it today. Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, and independent.
You can be honest about the medieval evidence being thinner. You can acknowledge Chrysostom. You don’t have to pretend the history is perfect.
But you can also ask them one simple question:
“Where in Scripture does it say the gifts stopped?”
And then wait.
Because that’s a question worth sitting with.
The promise is for you. It always has been.
This post is part of the “Speaking in Tongues: The Evidence” series. For the full overview, the free research guide PDF, and links to every post in the series, visit the overview post.
Next week: What Does the Bible Actually Say About Speaking in Tongues?
Sources
The following scholars and works informed this post:
- Sam Storms, Practicing the Power (Zondervan, 2017)
- Craig Keener, Gift and Giver: The Holy Spirit for Today (Baker Academic, 2001)
- Ronald Kydd, Charismatic Gifts in the Early Church (Hendrickson, 1984)
- Kilian McDonnell and George Montague, Christian Initiation and Baptism in the Holy Spirit (Liturgical Press, 1991; rev. 1994)
- Stanley Burgess, The Holy Spirit: Ancient Christian Traditions (Hendrickson, 1984); The Holy Spirit: Medieval Roman Catholic and Reformation Traditions (Hendrickson, 1997)
- Eddie Ensley, Sounds of Wonder: Speaking in Tongues in the Catholic Tradition (Paulist Press, 1977)
- Robert P. Menzies, Pentecost: This Story Is Our Story; Christ-Centered: The Evangelical Nature of Pentecostal Theology
- William W. Menzies and Robert P. Menzies, Spirit and Power: Foundations of Pentecostal Experience
Primary sources cited: Irenaeus, Against Heresies; Tertullian, Against Marcion; Novatian, On the Trinity; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures; Chrysostom, Homilies on 1 Corinthians; Augustine, City of God; The Didache; Shepherd of Hermas.
Full citations with page numbers are available in the free research guide, which you can download from the overview post.
