1 Corinthians 14:5 has Paul saying he wishes all the Corinthians spoke in tongues and that anyone who speaks in tongues edifies himself. A few verses later in 14:8-9 he ridicules unintelligible speech as a trumpet giving an uncertain sound — words spoken into the air. The same chapter both endorses and discourages the practice.
Proposed answers
People have answered this in several ways; GEBible presents them as equal peers.
2For he who speaks in another language speaks not to men, but to God; for no one understands; but in the Spirit he speaks mysteries.3But he who prophesies speaks to men for their edification, exhortation, and consolation.4He who speaks in another language edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the assembly.5Now I desire to have you all speak with other languages, but rather that you would prophesy. For he is greater who prophesies than he who speaks with other languages, unless he interprets, that the assembly may be built up.
8For if the trumpet gave an uncertain sound, who would prepare himself for war?9So also you, unless you uttered by the tongue words easy to understand, how would it be known what is spoken? For you would be speaking into the air.
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement— a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Usually considered reconciled
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
This entry overstates the conflict, and the chapter is better read as a single coherent argument than as a self-contradiction. The controlling thesis of 1 Corinthians 14 is announced in 14:1-5: Paul wants the Corinthians to pursue love and to desire spiritual gifts, "especially that you may prophesy." He is not weighing tongues for-or-against in the abstract; he is ranking intelligible prophecy above uninterpreted tongues in the public assembly because intelligibility builds up the whole congregation. The criterion throughout is οἰκοδομή, edification of others.
Within that frame Paul's affirmations of tongues are genuine, not grudging. In 14:2 ὁ γὰρ λαλῶν γλώσσῃ οὐκ ἀνθρώποις λαλεῖ ἀλλὰ θεῷ — the tongues-speaker addresses God, not people; in 14:4 he ἑαυτὸν οἰκοδομεῖ, "edifies himself"; in 14:5 Paul says θέλω δὲ πάντας ὑμᾶς λαλεῖν γλώσσαις, "I want you all to speak in tongues," immediately qualified by "but rather that you prophesy"; and in 14:18 he claims εὐχαριστῶ τῷ θεῷ, πάντων ὑμῶν μᾶλλον γλώσσαις λαλῶ, "I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you." These are not the words of someone discouraging the practice.
The 14:8-9 trumpet image, on which the "No" answer rests, is therefore being misread when taken as a blanket rejection. The figure — an indistinct bugle call leaves soldiers unprepared, so unintelligible words are "spoken into the air" — targets *uninterpreted* tongues in corporate worship specifically. Paul's solution is not to ban tongues but to require interpretation: "one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret" (14:13), and in the assembly tongues are permitted in order, "two or at most three, and each in turn, and let one interpret" (14:27). The whole regulatory apparatus presupposes the legitimacy of the gift it is regulating.
This reading is not a confessional special pleading; it is the consensus of critical and apologetic commentators alike. Gordon Fee, Anthony Thiselton, and Joseph Fitzmyer all treat the chapter as internally coherent once Paul's public/private and interpreted/uninterpreted distinctions are respected, and Christopher Forbes situates the phenomenon within its Hellenistic environment without finding Paul self-contradictory. The decisive datum against the SAB framing is the chapter's own conclusion: 14:39, ὥστε... τὸ λαλεῖν μὴ κωλύετε γλώσσαις — "so then, desire earnestly to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues." An author closing a passage by explicitly prohibiting any ban on tongues is not the same author elsewhere forbidding tongues; he is calibrating their use.
Where a residual tension can be located, it is not the yes-versus-no of this entry but the gap between Paul's evident personal enthusiasm for tongues (14:5, 14:18) and his firm subordination of them to intelligible speech in worship — a tension of priority, which Paul himself acknowledges and manages. Reading the chapter as a flat contradiction flattens a deliberate, pastorally calibrated rhetoric of "both/and, but in order."
Where the critical reading lands: overstated — the chapter is a regulated endorsement of tongues, not a self-contradiction.
Sources for this reading
Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, rev. ed. (New International Commentary on the New Testament; Eerdmans, 2014) pp. 690-740on 1 Corinthians 141 Corinthians 14
Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NIGTC; Eerdmans, 2000) pp. 1074-1110on 1 Corinthians 14:8-91 Corinthians 14:8-9
Joseph A. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians (Anchor Yale Bible 32; Yale University Press, 2008) pp. 510-528on 1 Corinthians 141 Corinthians 14
Christopher Forbes, Prophecy and Inspired Speech in Early Christianity and Its Hellenistic Environment (WUNT 2/75; Mohr Siebeck, 1995) pp. 75-94on glossolalia in its environment
Clint Tibbs, Religious Experience of the Pneuma: Communication with the Spirit World in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 (WUNT 2/230; Mohr Siebeck, 2007) pp. 121-180on glossolalia in 1 Corinthians
Examining the tension
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement — a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Usually considered reconciled
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
This entry overstates the conflict, and the chapter is better read as a single coherent argument than as a self-contradiction. The controlling thesis of 1 Corinthians 14 is announced in 14:1-5: Paul wants the Corinthians to pursue love and to desire spiritual gifts, "especially that you may prophesy." He is not weighing tongues for-or-against in the abstract; he is ranking intelligible prophecy above uninterpreted tongues in the public assembly because intelligibility builds up the whole congregation. The criterion throughout is οἰκοδομή, edification of others.
Within that frame Paul's affirmations of tongues are genuine, not grudging. In 14:2 ὁ γὰρ λαλῶν γλώσσῃ οὐκ ἀνθρώποις λαλεῖ ἀλλὰ θεῷ — the tongues-speaker addresses God, not people; in 14:4 he ἑαυτὸν οἰκοδομεῖ, "edifies himself"; in 14:5 Paul says θέλω δὲ πάντας ὑμᾶς λαλεῖν γλώσσαις, "I want you all to speak in tongues," immediately qualified by "but rather that you prophesy"; and in 14:18 he claims εὐχαριστῶ τῷ θεῷ, πάντων ὑμῶν μᾶλλον γλώσσαις λαλῶ, "I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you." These are not the words of someone discouraging the practice.
The 14:8-9 trumpet image, on which the "No" answer rests, is therefore being misread when taken as a blanket rejection. The figure — an indistinct bugle call leaves soldiers unprepared, so unintelligible words are "spoken into the air" — targets *uninterpreted* tongues in corporate worship specifically. Paul's solution is not to ban tongues but to require interpretation: "one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret" (14:13), and in the assembly tongues are permitted in order, "two or at most three, and each in turn, and let one interpret" (14:27). The whole regulatory apparatus presupposes the legitimacy of the gift it is regulating.
This reading is not a confessional special pleading; it is the consensus of critical and apologetic commentators alike. Gordon Fee, Anthony Thiselton, and Joseph Fitzmyer all treat the chapter as internally coherent once Paul's public/private and interpreted/uninterpreted distinctions are respected, and Christopher Forbes situates the phenomenon within its Hellenistic environment without finding Paul self-contradictory. The decisive datum against the SAB framing is the chapter's own conclusion: 14:39, ὥστε... τὸ λαλεῖν μὴ κωλύετε γλώσσαις — "so then, desire earnestly to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues." An author closing a passage by explicitly prohibiting any ban on tongues is not the same author elsewhere forbidding tongues; he is calibrating their use.
Where a residual tension can be located, it is not the yes-versus-no of this entry but the gap between Paul's evident personal enthusiasm for tongues (14:5, 14:18) and his firm subordination of them to intelligible speech in worship — a tension of priority, which Paul himself acknowledges and manages. Reading the chapter as a flat contradiction flattens a deliberate, pastorally calibrated rhetoric of "both/and, but in order."
Where the critical reading lands: overstated — the chapter is a regulated endorsement of tongues, not a self-contradiction.
Sources for this reading