NOTES for Co1 14:15

The apostle seems to contrast praying “with the spirit” and praying “with the understanding.” What does he mean? By “spirit” Paul means what today, without any theological background, we would simply call breath. This may be the “breath of life” God gave humanity at creation or God's breath, whose presence the prophets feel within themselves during ecstasy. In any case, this is precisely an ecstatic experience, the sensation of a certain power of God that acts upon a person and sometimes not only embraces him from without but also enters within. As a rule, God's power is felt as something impersonal, so a person can only surrender himself to it, assuming that behind it stands God Himself, who abides beside him and leads him after Himself. It often happens that while under the influence of God's power, a person not only lacks control of himself but does not always remember everything that happened to him after the ecstasy ends. Glossolalia may, or may not, be an element of such an ecstatic state.

Such ecstasy, however, is of little benefit to those around the person. It can only become a vivid demonstration of how God's power works and what it can do with a human being. That is why Paul calls such phenomena a sign for unbelievers: by observing such an ecstasy, a person with no idea what God's power and action are can form a more or less clear impression of them. But such an ecstasy brings nothing new to Christians themselves.

Praying “with the understanding” is another matter. By understanding, the apostle means here not the intellect but the spiritual center of the human person that the Bible usually calls the heart. Greek philosophers called it the “mind,” and Paul uses this word in his epistles, which were written in Greek. This is conscious prayer, conscious communion with God, which may also become prophetic if God gives a person such a revelation. Here not only God's power but also His will is revealed, a will the person senses and recognizes as part of his own spiritual space. He can therefore follow this will consciously, commune with God consciously—in short, live a conscious spiritual life. And if God entrusts this to him, he can therefore also instruct others: he does not merely experience certain ecstasies but understands the meaning and significance of what is revealed to him and what is happening to him. This is how an inhabitant of the Kingdom should live.

Continuing the discussion of prophecy and glossolalia, Paul points to the importance of interpreting the revelation received by the one who "speaks in tongues" (vv. 13-15). He understands perfectly the difference between spontaneous ecstasy, which can pass without any spiritual consequences for the one who experiences it, and revelation as such, which necessarily touches a person's spiritual "I" or "mind." Ecstasy sometimes is indeed the result of the direct action of God's breath on human nature, but a person's own spiritual "I," which makes him himself, may remain entirely untouched. Then such a person will be able neither to understand the meaning of the revelation nor to pass it on to others (vv. 16-17).

Meanwhile, for a Christian, if he considers himself and truly is an adult, spiritually mature member of the Church, the primary task should be his own spiritual development and the spiritual development of his church community, not joy over his ecstatic experiences, like the joy children feel over a toy they like (vv. 17-20).

Of course, sometimes, especially for unbelievers, glossolalia, like any other obvious action of the Spirit of God, can become a kind of testimony to the reality of the spiritual world, about which most people, as a rule, do not think. But for Christians themselves glossolalia is not testimony, because it adds nothing to the spiritual experience either of those who undergo it or of those who observe it from outside (vv. 21-22). Prophecy in its traditional form is a different matter: here the spiritual benefit is evident, because in this case revelation takes a form in which it can be received and assimilated.

Once again, what comes to the foreground for the apostle is not the experiences of individual people in themselves, even if they are connected with their spiritual life, but the measure of the experiencers' participation in the life of the Church, and therefore in the life of the Kingdom, connected with those experiences. Indeed, any spiritual experiences, even the most intense, come and go in themselves. Only the Kingdom remains, and that measure of real participation in its life which determines a person's destiny in eternity.