Prophecy Builds Up the Church

…to hear, or what profit will the words bring? For no one will understand except God alone, who knows all things. “For he speaks mysteries in the Spirit,” he says (1 Corinthians 14:2). Notice how the one who speaks to God speaks in the Spirit: so the Spirit is God. Therefore the one who speaks in a tongue, he says, speaks to God rather than to men; “but the one who prophesies speaks to men for building up, encouragement and consolation” (1 Corinthians 14:3).

Knowing, then, that “to prophesy” here means interpreting the writings of the prophets, through which the word of encouragement is made sure and the mind of those being instructed in the mysteries is led by the hand to the truth concerning Christ, he shows in another way as well that interpreting the prophets ranks incomparably higher than speaking in a tongue. “The one who speaks in a tongue,” he says, “builds up himself” (1 Corinthians 14:4), for he understands, but no one else at all does. But the one who uses the words and predictions of the holy prophets as testimony builds up the church (1 Corinthians 14:4). So prophesying is the greater thing and belongs among the highest grounds for boasting and among bright hopes, if indeed it is admittedly better to build up the church than to speak in a tongue to oneself alone.

“Now I want you all to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy,” and so on (1 Corinthians 14:5). It was something wonderful and truly God-given that men who were Hebrews could speak the languages of others. So that no one would think the apostle was rashly passing judgment on what had happened, by calling worthless what had been bestowed through the working of the Spirit (for it was given as a sign to believers), he welcomes the thing and says, “I want you all to speak in tongues.” But at once he plainly cuts short their eagerness for it and turns them to what is better, adding immediately, “but even more to prophesy,” and stating most clearly that the one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in a tongue (1 Corinthians 14:5). Yet he shows that the gift is not altogether useless either to those who have it or to those who hear, when he adds, “unless he interprets” (1 Corinthians 14:5), that is, unless he has someone always at his side to interpret for those being instructed in the mysteries.

Tome Five. Discourse Three.

“And none of them is voiceless” (1 Corinthians 14:10). Some people used to come into the churches who had been enriched, by the working of the Spirit, with the ability to speak in tongues. Then, when they ought to have offered the prayers in the churches, and before these the litanies or the psalmody, using the language of those present, which they were able to do, they did not do it. Priding themselves only on the gift of tongues, they offered neither prayers nor psalmody. Paul teaches this: if the hearers do not know the language in which the one who has the gift is speaking, nothing is gained from it. For there are countless nations and many human languages, and none of those once counted among rational beings, or among men, is voiceless.

He says that none of those counted among rational beings, that is, among men, is altogether voiceless. But if someone does not know the meaning of another’s speech, and the others in turn do not know his language, they will be foreigners to one another (1 Corinthians 14:11), even though each speaks correctly in his own tongue. So those who wish to teach others must utter speech familiar to their hearers. But if the sound has no clear meaning and the speech is unfamiliar, he has labored in vain, merely striking the learner’s ear with an empty noise (1 Corinthians 14:9).

Those who wish to teach, he says, must speak in words familiar to their hearers, since otherwise one labors in vain; for speaking in tongues alone does not build up the church. “For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays” (1 Corinthians 14:14). By “spirit” here he means the grace given through the…