Raf

Now, now. Certainly if man has an innate ability, there's nothing wrong with God energizing man's ability to produce something extraordinary. In my view, the extraordinary thing promised is a language. The mechanism could easily be the same. The output, however, in my view, should be different -- a human language versus a string of linguistically meaningless sounds. My argument remains: if God is energizing free vocalization to make it speaking in tongues, then where are the tongues (which is to say, where are the languages)? To borrow a term used by someone else (a term I have also used in this discussion), it is too convenient to assert that it's simple free vocalization whenever someone is looking into it objectively, but languages when no one can verify it. But obviously there is disagreement on that point. In any event, let's not mock the alternative viewpoint.

I think you need a license for that. Not sure.

Thinking more about WordWolf's post. Yes, TWI did seem to mix viewpoints that rendered their approach to Tongues with Interpretation confusing, to be charitable. On the one hand, we were told it was an interpretation rather than a translation, a "gist" or "sum and substance" rather than a word-for-word or phrase-for-phrase message. But then they had us comparing the length of the tongue with the length of the interpretation as a guide to whether the interpretation "went too far," for lack of a better term. The problen is, if someone from Malaysia were speaking in tongues and said, in English, "don't cry over spilled milk," the interpretation in their own language could well be: "there are times when the mistakes of the past cannot be repaired. Don't wallow in the mistake." The interpretation is considerably longer than the "tongue," but it is a fair interpretation. And what was the explanation if someone "went too far" with an interpretation? Why, you started prophesying, of course. Unless you used words like "muck and mire," in which case you let your understanding get in the way. The notion that 100% of it is made up extemporaneously by the speaker is never even briefly entertained. Convenient.

Ghost Story Alice Krige Star Trek: First Contact

But of course. Next...

Allan, If that's what SIT is, then it was misnamed. It should have been called speaking in noises or sounds. No one would argue that sounds are not produced. Besides, if SIT is SUPPOSED to be free vocalization, then how is it a manifestation of holy spirit? Is walking a manifestation of holy spirit? How about holding your breath for 20 seconds? Jumping jacks? It's not a manifestation of holy spirit of anyone can do it WITHOUT holy spirit.

WordWolf, No. An actor never would have said he couldn't do it.

Going to try, and fail to limit myself to things I haven't already said. At what point are you going to realize that you're the only person who thinks that assertion has been presented as "proven"? I haven't said it's proven. I believe it. I assert it. But I never said it was proven, and neither has anyone else. I don't mean to be snide in pointing this out, and please accept my apology if that's how it's coming off. I mean you have been getting on me over and over and over again for calling my assertion proven, and I never have. Semi-serious answer: if he couldn't do it, it would give me an indication (though by no means proof) that free vocalization is NOT an innate human ability. Just a little easy experiment. Do you realize that you accept SIT as language on FAR less evidence than we assert SIT as free vocalization? I agree. Go back over the thread (if you'd like) and see who was the first to bring mediums and psychics into our discussion. I'll give you a hint: his name does not rhyme with "Laugh," but it does rhyme with "Tockpull." Nothing else new to add.

Waysider, I think chockfull can clear up your misreading (if I'm right) by explaining what he means by "this group." i think he meant TODAY's Sola Scriptura proponents, not Lutherans.

Read carefully. That's not what he's saying.

Is this leading you somewhere, Chockfull? Or are you just making observations? TWI was never truly sola scriptura, though they would have wanted us to believe they were.

I don't see any fair way to conclude that the "muck and mire" line was inappropriate in any way. It is inconsistent to say that following this method will produce a word of prophecy, then dismiss what that person produced using that method because it didn't sound Biblical enough to the hearer. If God can make up an undetectable language out of your glossolalia to produce something that's a language to Him and to no one else in the universe, I can think of no good reason God would not use those words in that context to resonate with that particular audience. The criticism was made up, pure and simple. What was happening in the Intermediate Class was improv training, pure and simple. We spent several nights learning how to manufacture these messages on the spot. We were told what those messages would sound like (this doesn't even mention the "pre-training" that consisted of however many meetings we attended before the Intermediate class: Let's put the number at 20, a ridiculously low estimate that accounts for those who decided to take PFAL and TIP back when it was one class and assumes they did so after only a handful of fellowship meetings). That's quite a few live examples, fresh in the minds of the new Intermediate Class students, of what TIP should sound like, followed by several nights of instruction and strong social reinforcement. This "training" exceeds the training given to aspiring actors. Improv is a technique taught to beginners in acting schools, and they're taught to handle far more complicated situations than "What do you think God would tell the people in this room right now? Go!" I think both sides have conceded that it would be impossible to prove or disprove that a prophecy was really a prophecy. Even if the speaker never contradicted the Bible, that would show his/her competence with the Bible. Nothing about the anecdotal evidence serves to prove or disprove the veracity of prophecy as taught by TWI. Stumbling is to be expected, either way. Growing ability and confidence is to be expected either way. The occasional mistake is to be expected either way. That people would be impressed with the quality is to be expected either way. Give CES credit for this much: by injecting the notion of "personal prophecy" into the mix, they boldly asserted something that was actually testable. They fell flat on their face and exposed that particular doctrine to be a flat-out embarrassing lie, in my opinion, but it was bold and confident. One might say cocky. Personally, I am coming to the belief that when a natural and a supernatural explanation exist to explain or describe the same phenomenon, I am inclined to believe the natural unless the supernatural asserts itself in a way that cannot otherwise be explained. Thus, a prophecy that says "I am God. I love you and will always be there for you. I will never leave you nor forsake you," really, really doesn't make the case for supernatural inspiration. On the other hand, "I am God. The wallet you can't find is behind the couch. You're welcome," would impress the heck out of me (only, of course, if that's where my wallet was, and the person who uttered the prophecy wasn't the one who hid my wallet in the first place, after taking the cash). You know what would have impressed me in prophecy? "I am God. Heed my words this night. Martindale was a really, really bad choice to lead a ministry that purports to do my will. Get out. Get out now. Also, you guys worry a lot more about gay people than I do. Let me handle them, k?" THAT would impress me. Instead we got one prophecy after another that, more often than not, seemed to attempt to out-Ephesians the epistle to the Ephesians. So yes, I think it was all improv. No, I can't prove it, nor do I think anyone can "prove" it was real.

I understand your objection to free vocalization, but I do believe it is misplaced. Perhaps if it is presented in a different way, you can better see the point that is being made: 1. Free vocalization is a label that Poythress put on man's ability to string a bunch of sounds together to create something that, to outward appearances, has a superficial resemblance to a real language. Samarin describes the same ability, but doesn't call it free vocalization. He doesn't call it anything, in fact (well, he calls it glossolalia, but that's begging the question for the purpose of our discussion. You've called it circular reasoning. Most folks don't realize that begging the question IS circular reasoning. But I'm straying from the point). The ability to free vocalize is there. Poythress didn't just make it up. He just called it something that, in my view, facilitates discussion about it. Anyone can perform this action. It's just a matter of getting over the inhibition of sounding silly. I had a recent conversation about this with an atheist. I told him anyone could do it, and he told me he could not. So I accused him of not being an atheist. I explained: for an atheist, free vocalization describes all SIT by definition. To conclude that a Christian can free vocalize but an atheist can't is to concede a supernatural energizing of SIT. Within minutes, he was "speaking in tongues." That is, he was free vocalizing. He's never been a Christian. I simply told him to pretend he was a foreign prime minister giving a speech in front of the United Nations. Boom. It was that easy. It doesn't take great training. All it takes is a lowering of inhibitions. Poythress would likely conclude that was free vocalization but not glossolalia (and everyone in heaven and earth would have to agree). 2. SIT is claimed by Christians today. Linguistic analyses have failed to find any distinction between what people produce when they SIT and what other people produce in free vocalization. That was the conclusion of Poythress after reviewing linguistic studies. He found the connection so strong, in fact, that he calls SIT a form of free vocalization that is only distinguishable in two respects: its setting, and the hypothetical possibility that it is energized by God, which he declines to dismiss. Because Poythress defines that hypothetical possibility in terms that are impossible to test (by his own assertion), it creates problems for both our views. The problem in my view is that it redefines SIT to make it untestable, which I contend is unbiblical. You disagree with me on that, and our disagreement here is doctrinal: what should SIT produce? I've said all along that if we can't agree on that question, we have nothing to argue. The problem Poythress creates for you is that by lumping SIT with free vocalization and not finding any testable distinction, Poythress creates the "guilt by association" that has troubled you. I can easily resolve my problem with Poythress by attributing it to a doctrinal disagreement on what SIT should produce. The problem for you is greater when looking at the evidence (if setting and an untestable hypothesis that relies on faith are the only things distinguishing SIT from free vocalization, then the evidence will always favor the argument that there really is no distinction). But the problem for you is lessened by "taking it on faith." One aspect of that faith will have to be that SIT is not testable: You would consider it a fulfillment of I Cor. 14:2 every time a linguist failed to find language in SIT! That is a premise I do not accept. We are at an impasse here. But I don't think anyone has said or claimed that "SIT is free vocalization" is something that's proved. It is not proved. It is more accurate to say, if anything, linguistics has not identified a distinction between them. As such, "SIT is free vocalization" is an assertion, not a claim that this link is proved. 3. Some people have claimed non-Christian, pagan, spiritualist, psychic xenoglossia. In certain cases that we have been discussing, those people actually gave enough information to evaluate their claim. What they produced was not the foreign language they claimed it to be. In fact, to put it in Poythress' terms, what they produced seems very consistent with free vocalization. So it's not that free vocalization was created as an umbrella label to capture these disparate phenomena -- it's that free vocalization exists independently, and the claims of these other phenomena fail to show any distinction from what we know free vocalization produces. Now, I'm not sure Poythress actually says that last sentence. He might. It's been a while since I read his article. But the conclusion is inescapable of you read Samarin and adjust what he says using Poythress' language. When Samarin concludes that Helene Smith and Albert Le Baron actually produced glossolalia, we, as educated readers, need to recognize that what he's really saying is that he sees no distinction between what they produced and what Poythress would later label free vocalization. I am confident that Samarin would have appreciated the "free vocalization" framework that Poythress provided. It surely would have made his articles and his book a heck of a lot more readable, in my opinion. There is no need, in my view, to be concerned with what a person claims to produce via his psychic connections, spirit guides, etc. when all they are producing is free vocalization. I would be far more concerned if they produced actual languages. But they didn't. So I call them con men. I don't say the same of Christians claiming to produce SIT. In some cases, like mine, the fakery is recognized at the outset and suppressed. I really, really wanted to believe this is what I was doing. But I knew all along it wasn't. In previous threads, I've come thisclose to admitting it. But I never took that last step of saying, "Ok, I faked it." But in most cases, I think we were fooled. We may or may not have known this was "just us" at the outset, but the positive reinforcement easily drowned out the doubts we may have had (sure helps to call that doubt "the devil trying to talk you out of it"). Naturally, you have little use for the preceding two paragraphs. I can live with that. In any event, Poythress manages to believe in the possibility of SIT even while recognizing that free vocalization exists as an innate human ability. I don't think it's that great a leap to believe in the reality of SIT while recognizing free vocalization as an innate human ability. I believe SIT is free vocalization and nothing more. You disagree. I believe an unbiased analysis of output would reveal any difference between the two. You disagree. These disagreements are impossible for us to resolve without one or the other changing our minds on the Biblical presuppositions we hold. Stalemate. And I'm good with that outcome if it's on doctrinal grounds.

Response to post 1845: From what I can tell, and the reason I contacted this particular linguist, is that he's going into much, much more detail than Samarin ever described. I could point out that so far, he has seen no indication that the glossolalia he has studied matches any known language, but at this point that finding can be taken in opposite directions by us in accordance with differing doctrinal presuppositions. ... On a different note, I've been thinking about EB's Improv... I mean, Intermediate Class. Anyone else remember the part where they analyzed an interpretation or prophecy that included the expression "muck and mire of the world"? Burton (I think it was him) taught that this was an example of the speaker's injection of his own words into the prophecy, and that we should ignore it. WHAT? Can anyone give me one solid reason why God can't use that expression in a particular setting where and when it will resonate with those present? I keep thinking about that poor guy, who probably followed every instruction given to him in the TIP class, only to have his word of prophecy cruelly and disingenuously dissected as an example of what NOT to do in prophecy, based on NOTHING. Just thinking out loud.

Dang. Now who was in the Cannonball Run? Anyone famous?

That is correct

I've been thinking, and something just occurred to me: Newberg's study proves that free vocalization is an innate human ability. Hear me out: Newberg found that it is possible for someone to speak a string of syllables unknown to the speaker as any kind of language without activating the language centers of the brain. That IS free vocalization. The problem with this view, of course, is that last line: Newberg's test subjects would adamantly deny that this is what they were doing, and Newberg did nothing to address that question. So for those who hold that Newberg's test subjects were, in fact, doing something supernatural, it's not possible to draw the same conclusion from Newberg's study that I'm drawing here. It would be interesting to see what would happen if Newberg performed the same series of tests on someone who knew he was faking it. Would such a person also be able to utter a meaningless string of syllables without activating the language centers of the brain? I'd bet the mortgage the answer is yes. The emotional centers might show differences, but not the language producing centers. Time to find Newberg's e-mail.

Liam Neeson Batman Begins Morgan Freeman

Ah! Now I see. Thank you. TWI did not teach that it bypasses your mind. If I recall correctly, what TWI taught was "The Great Principle," which in sum says that God's spirit teaches your spirit, your spirit teaches your mind, and you speak it forth. This Great Principle is clearly articulated in the Bible verse... in the verse... CARP! I know I left that verse around here somewhere!

Without going into a detailed reading of this article and the articles linked (VERY nice find, by the way. Should have included it in the reading room), I think the position that best reflects what I've been saying would be "empirical cessationist." That is, I'm not dismissing SIT on principle; I just see no evidence of it. I put myself in that category with some reservation -- you may find an aspect of that position that I totally disagree with, and I don't want to align myself with it completely without having thoroughly reviewed it. Very nice find. Looks fair to both sides.

My belief is that today's SIT is nothing more than free vocalization wearing Christian clothes. I trust Chockfull would disagree with this assessment. As for inspiration vs. revelation, that is a TWI distinction that I'm trying and failing to find in scripture. My belief is that Biblical SIT always produced a human language. The only thing in question in the Bible is whether the people hearing could understand it (hypothetically). I Cor. 14:2 says no, not because it's not a human language, but simply because the audience typically didn't know it. The first incidence of SIT fairly clearly establishes that human language is produced, and nothing about the word "glossa" changes from human language to indecipherable utterance from Acts through Revelation. This leads me to conclude that I Cor. 14:2 is set in a context of meetings, not a blanket statement. Chockfull disagrees and considers I Cor. 14:2 a statement of the very change in definition I deny. We are at an impasse there, on a doctrinal question. No discussion of linguistics is relevant any longer, for if he's right, linguists will never detect a language in glossolalia because God won't allow it. If I'm right, linguistics will never detect a language in glossolalia because there is no language to detect. When both sides can look at the same evidence and come to opposite conclusions based on presuppositions, then the problem isn't the evidence: it's the presuppositions. One of those presuppositions must be wrong. We would know Chockfull's presupposition is wrong if a linguist detects a language in SIT (he'd lose the battle over I Cor. 14:2, but win the war on the existence of valid modern SIT -- interestingly, however, it would still prove nothing about any particular person's claim of SIT: it would only say that someone else did it. Still doesn't mean we didn't all fake it, but certainly would weaken that argument). I wish I had staked out a position that would allow me to claim victory no matter what the outcome of independent, unbiased research. Instead, I chose a position that can hypothetically be proved false... and hasn't been. So, back to inspiration vs. revelation: I'm guessing here, but this is always how I understood it blended with how I now understand it. Revelation would be God telling you "Say this," and you just repeat what He tells you to say. Inspiration removes the "hearing voices in your head" part: you just speak, and trust God to give you the next sound (SIT) or the next word (TIP). It's extemporaneous. You don't hear anything ahead of time. You just go... ...and improvise. There is nearly no distinction between what TWI taught as "inspiration" and "making it up as you go along," also known as improv with your understanding, free vocalization without it. There is, to the best of my ability to look through scripture, no documentation for inspiration as described by TWI as the mechanism for interpretation and prophecy. (This is not crucial to my argument; if someone can prove me wrong here, please go right ahead).

Here's the thing, TnO: What you appear to be asking is, why SIT if it's not producing a language that the speaker understands? Practically, there's no benefit to your understanding. Empirically, there may be some comfort to you to feel this connection with God, to know that he's working in you and with you and for you (I feel like I'm prophesying). But even Chockfull would probably agree that the main benefit you get out of it is what scripture says you'll get out of it, which in my view makes your question doctrinal. Off topic? I only insisted on staying ON topic when the scriptural discussion threatened to overwhelm the practical one we've been having here. That's not the case now. But if you're saying "I KNOW what the Bible says, or what TWI says, and even if I take those things for granted, I still don't see the point of SIT," then your question is purely practical -- and unanswerable. In other words, best as I can tell, the answer to your question is either scriptural or a shrug.

I've been fortunate to encounter a linguist who is conducting the exact kind of phonemic inventory comparison I earlier shared would be an ideal, objective way to identify whether a sample of "unknown" language actually corresponds to a known language. This, I am assured, is how linguists go about identifying languages they encounter with which they are not familiar. Here's the (rather simplistic) answer I got. I don't think it begins to address the depth of the conversation we've been having on this thread. Ok, maybe begins: This was specifically in response to a question about me producing a known language through glossolalia if the linguist investigating were unfamiliar with the language. It's a bit of a superficial answer, and I can't tell yet if it crumbles on close examination or if it is restrained in its confidence of linguists' ability to detect language. I'm at this guy's mercy in terms of him choosing to respond to follow-up questions, and I'll share what I think is relevant as the responses come in.

Ah! I have no exposure to the WAP series, but if Craig said it, that settles it. I just believe it.

I do not recall those anecdotes from the Intermediate class [Earl Burton], which I only took once. I don't believe I ever took the TIP class [VPW], but I may have. But the anecdotal assertion that the language was spoken perfectly (a running theme in many of these anecdotes) seems to me to run counter to the assertion that the reason linguists do not detect languages from a phonetic analysis is because of the "accents" of the people speaking. Samarin used the term "accent" to mean something different from what we typically mean when we use that word. We see this in his placement of quotation marks around the word "accent," and we know from further study that glossolalists lose their regional accents when they SIT. In other words, you cannot tell a New Englander from a Texan based on their glossolalia. So "when" you speak in tongues and produce a language, you sound like a native speaker of that language according to the anecdotal evidence. Unless a linguist is listening. Then you sound like a gringo asking for directions to ell banyo and the linguist is too boneheaded to recognize the language.