Speaking in Tongues: The Evidence, Part 1 of 7
You’re grabbing coffee with a friend after church. The conversation drifts to the Holy Spirit, and your friend says:
“Yeah, that whole tongues thing? Stopped after the apostles died. Like 2,000 years ago.”
Casually. Like it’s settled.
If you’ve heard it enough times, part of you starts to wonder. Maybe a pastor you respect said it. Maybe Google confirmed it. I’ve been there.
Here’s what I wish someone had told me earlier. The claim that tongues vanished for 1,500 years and randomly reappeared in 1901 doesn’t survive the historical record. And I didn’t learn that from a Pentecostal preacher. I learned it from the church fathers themselves.
Let me walk you through it.
The First 200 Years: Nobody Even Debated It
In the earliest centuries, no surviving record exists of anyone arguing that the gifts had stopped. The debate didn’t exist. The conversation was about how to manage them.
The Didache (70–100 AD), one of the oldest Christian documents outside the New Testament, gives instructions for telling true prophets from false ones. Not whether prophets still existed. How to evaluate the ones showing up.
The Shepherd of Hermas, written in Rome around 100–150 AD, does the same thing.
Then the heavy hitters arrive.
Irenaeus of Lyon matters more than people realize. He was a student of Polycarp, who was a student of the Apostle John. One generation from an apostle. Around 180 AD, he wrote:
“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.”
Present tense. In his churches. One generation from John.
Tertullian in North Africa, around 200 AD, challenged a heretic named Marcion to produce the same gifts active in orthodox churches, including “interpretation of diverse kinds of tongues.” He wasn’t being theoretical. He was pointing at 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…”
Active. Real. Happening now.
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 around 360 AD.
The Cappadocian Fathers Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa gave us Trinitarian orthodoxy. The theology behind the Nicene Creed? They built it. And they testified to the ongoing operation of the Spirit’s gifts.
But Cyril of Jerusalem might be the biggest deal of all.
Cyril wasn’t looking backward. He was a bishop preparing new converts for baptism, telling them what to expect from the Holy Spirit: wisdom, prophecy, healing, the power to drive away demons. 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 concluded the fourth-century church still expected the Spirit to show up.
The Honest Part: Chrysostom
I’m not hiding the hard stuff.
John Chrysostom, 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 and were “henceforth superfluous.”
Real quote. Real church father. You should know.
But the context matters. Chrysostom’s statement was a passing remark in a homily, not a developed theological argument. He never wrote a treatise on cessation. His single voice stands against a chorus of contemporaries, Hilary, Cyril, the Cappadocians, Ambrose, and even Augustine (who started as a cessationist, then watched almost seventy miracles in his own diocese and partially retracted his view in his Retractions).
One voice doesn’t make a consensus.
The Medieval Question
I’ll be straight. The evidence gets thinner here. 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.
Still, the testimonies span centuries and continents. Pachomius in Egypt reportedly spoke unlearned languages after extended prayer. Hildegard of Bingen composing hymns in what she called an “unknown language” she attributed to divine inspiration. Anthony of Padua reportedly understood by speakers of multiple languages at once. Francis of Assisi. Vincent Ferrer. Dominican missionaries in South America.
Is all of this airtight? No. I’m not going to oversell it.
But the sheer breadth across centuries, cultures, continents, and religious orders tells you the stream never fully dried up. Maybe it went underground. It kept flowing.
Why Did the Gifts Decline?
This is the part that flipped a switch for me.
Historian Ronald Kydd started in the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada, later became Anglican, and is respected across traditions. After studying the decline carefully, his conclusion was that the gifts didn’t fade because God withdrew them. They faded because the church changed.
Clericalization. The influence of Greek rationalism on theology. The shift from intimate house churches to formal basilicas. The church was chasing respectability in Roman society.
His summary lands hard: “The gifts declined when the church stopped expecting them, not when God stopped giving them.”
That distinction matters.
Cessationism doesn’t just claim the gifts faded. It claims God deliberately withdrew them. The historical evidence points elsewhere. The church changed. The expectation changed. 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.”
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. Saying tongues stopped because we don’t have continuous documentation is like saying people stopped singing in church because we don’t have recordings from every century.
Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.
The Bigger Point
Hear me on this.
The case for continuation doesn’t depend on proving an unbroken chain from the apostles to now. The historical evidence is stronger than most people think. But the case doesn’t rest there.
It rests on Peter’s words at 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: no text in Scripture explicitly teaches that God withdrew the gifts. None. The burden of proof sits with the people claiming it happened. Two thousand years in, they still haven’t produced the verse.
Back to the Coffee Shop
Maybe you’re the one at the coffee shop. 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 a mark of orthodoxy. About Cyril preparing baptismal candidates for what was coming from the Spirit. About 600 million Christians around the world today who practice it.
You can be honest about the medieval evidence being thinner. You can acknowledge Chrysostom. You don’t have to pretend the history is perfect.
Then ask one question:
“Where in Scripture does it say the gifts stopped?”
And see what happens.
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 and the free research guide PDF, visit the overview post.
Next: What Does the Bible Say About Speaking in Tongues?
Sources
- 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; The Holy Spirit: Medieval Roman Catholic and Reformation Traditions (Hendrickson)
- Eddie Ensley, Sounds of Wonder (Paulist Press, 1977)
- Robert P. Menzies, Pentecost: This Story Is Our Story
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 in the free research guide.
