Hearing in Tongues
The original language of Christianity is translation
I think St Luke intends us to read the Pentecost narrative of Acts 2 through a lens of the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. Seeing the connections is not the stuff of advanced hermeneutics. It’s pretty evident. Less plain is how they are connected. As I said in one of my Pentecost sermons, I’m persuaded by Emilio Alvarez’s position that Pentecost is an Anti-Babel event.
Pentecost is the anti-Babel event in the life of the Christian church, and as such it contradicts and counteracts any divisive monopoly toward a spirituality lacking immersion into cultural and linguistic diversity. In doing so Pentecost promotes a multiethnic, multicultural, and multilingual approach to our Christian faith.1
Framing Babel Biblically
To grasp why this is the case we need to pay better attention to Babel. A common reading is that this story is set when everyone in the world just had one language, God is perturbed by the potential of his own irrelevance so “invents” lots of languages thereby hindering any attempts at human unity.
An accurate assessment of humanity, perhaps, but definitely a theological approach that should trouble even the alert 3rd grader upon whom this story is often inflicted.
Closer attention to the text reveals that in Genesis 10, on three occasions (5, 20, & 31), we learn that there were multiple families, languages, lands, and nations. Contrary to what we heard in Sunday School, the world was not one big happy homogenous family, but rather already a diversity of countries, ethnicities, and languages. Until Babel.
Because the Tower of Babel follows immediately after Genesis 10 it can only be seen as a commentary on the normalizing features of human power. Genesis 11:1 is presented to you as an imposition. In place of diversity has come uniformity, most dominantly displayed in a shared and single language. I had a language professor who always reminded us that ‘language was the outer skin of culture’ - change our language and you change us.
Read through this lens you can see the trajectory. From multiple languages, to the imposition of Babel, to God’s intervention which returns and resets the diversity of the city.
Before I move on, I think we should ponder that 11 chapters into the Bible and we already know Bible writers’ take on monopoly, normalization, colonialism and racism. They are not fans and they want you to know it.
Shema
However, the point that I really want to make hear is how the return and reset happens. We tend to say that at Babel people were unable to talk to each other. Technically that’s fair, but it’s not how Genesis tells us the story. Instead what the Lord does, in v.7, is makes it impossible for them to “hear” one another: “…they will not understand [Hebrew Shema] one another’s speech.” The confusion is not an inability to speak, but an inability to “hear”. The word for “hear” used is Shema which, of course, in Deuteronomy 6, is the opening word of the most famous of Jewish confessions calling us to “hear” that God is one and only.
To attempt to become one people with one language (Genesis 11:6) is to not “hear” the way of the Lord who is one. So God intervenes and makes them unable to hear one another so as to return and reset the always intended diversity.
How is it we can hear…?
Which brings us to Pentecost and speaking in tongues. Once again we see God intervening to stir up languages that have not been learned (Acts 2:4), and yet again the focus is drawn not to what is said, but what is heard: “…how is it that each of us hears them in our native language?” (2:8) and, “…we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” (2:11). So once again the locus of the divine intervention is observed not in the speaking but in the hearing. This time, however, in contrast to Babel, the intervention now allows them to hear without normalizing.
God wants us to hear each other, but not by normalizing us.
There is a tendency to see Pentecost as a ministry of speaking. The Spirit empowers us to speak, we say, but speaking was never a problem. Pentecost isn’t an invitation to speak more, humans have always had enough words. Pentecost is a new moment because through the Spirit we recover our ability to listen. To hear one another.
Pentecost is a miracle of hearing. The work of the Spirit is to make us hear. To resist that Babel tendency to make people understand us by making them us. In the Spirit we can now listen and hear.
Now if this was how the early church understood Pentecost and the work of the Spirit then this might be why in 1 Corinthians 14:27 Paul, when speaking about speaking in tongues says, “If anyone speaks in a tongue, two—or at the most three—should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret.” The limitation on speaking is because Paul is not primarily concerned with speaking but with hearing.
Our Language is Translation
In Whose Religion is Christianity? The Gospel Beyond the West, Gambian scholar Lamin Sanneh holds that “the original language of Christianity is translation.” Capturing the anti-Babel, hearing miracle of Pentecost that I’m arguing for here, Sanneh suggests that Christianity should not be a phenomenon of globalization or colonialism because it comes to us “translated”. Jesus spoke Aramaic, but our Gospels are in Greek. We cannot learn to speak like Jesus did in his mother-tongue we can only learn to “hear” him in translation. This is the genius of Christianity. Not only do we not need to learn to speak a sacred language, we cannot. Furthermore, there is no need to ever privilege one language over another. Rather the Spirit invites us to hear God in a way that allows us to “respond in our own culture, language, experience, and ethnicity.”2
“The original language of Christianity is translation.” - Lamin Sanneh
Faithful Christianity can be found anywhere anyone can “hear” regardless of the linguistic or cultural context. As Martin Luther noted, in 1534, when talking with Deacon Michael, an Ethiopian cleric,
“Although the Eastern Church observes some different customs…this difference does not annul the unity of the Church nor conflict with faith.”
Pentecost shows us what we quickly forget. What we were told as early a Genesis 11. God has no desire to make us all the same. As such we see that Pentecost is an Anti-Babel vision of God’s desire. It is not uniform but diverse, not normalized but different. Pentecost doesn’t invite the world to become “us” but allows everyone to hear in tongues - to join in worshipping the mystery of Christ in our own dialect.
What if we saw Pentecost is an invitation to listen. Something most of us are not as good at as we should be. But, of course, the Spirit knows this. So we do not learn to listen alone, we are taught to listen by the same Spirit who makes it possible for us to hear.
“Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” - Revelation 2:7
Emilio Alvarez, Pentecost, p.35
Margaret Orr Thomas - https://translation.bible/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/thomas-2006-review-sanneh-lamin-whose-religion-is-christianity-the-gospel-beyond-the-west.pdf
Our mother-tongue is love.
This is wonderful. Praise God for rich thoughts that lead to deep silence.