A Theological Manifesto against the Misclassification of the Holy Spirit
I. THE BURDEN OF THIS WORD
There is no such thing as “Pentecostal theology.”
There never has been. There never will be.
There is only theology—the indivisible, canonical revelation of the one
God who has spoken and still speaks. There is only the Church—the body
of Christ, animated by the Spirit, obedient to the Son, formed by the Word.
There is only the gospel—and Pentecost is not an innovation, a
tradition, or a spiritual experience. It is a day in the life of that
gospel.
We do not speak of “Ascension theology,” “Resurrection
theology,” or “Crucifixion theology.” We do not invent separate doctrines to
isolate events in the life of Christ from the whole counsel of God. And yet,
bizarrely, the Church today tolerates—indeed, institutionalises—a category
called “Pentecostal theology,” as though the outpouring of the Spirit was a
doctrinal franchise rather than a creational fulfilment.
This is not a semantic error. It is a theological
catastrophe.
The purpose of this article is simple and total:
To recover the voice of the Spirit as revealed in Scripture,
To expose the false categories that distort the truth,
And to proclaim that the gifts of the Spirit—especially the gift of tongues—are
not charismatic novelties but the ordered, ontological, prophetic normal of
the Church.
Let it be heard clearly:
Tongues are not ecstatic. Tongues are not Pentecostal.
Tongues are not performance.
Tongues are speech. Tongues are order. Tongues are the recovery of being in
the Spirit.
II. THE INVENTION OF A MISNOMER
Let us begin where the problem begins: with the false entity
called Pentecostalism.
Yes, there was a movement. Yes, people adopted the name. But
Pentecostalism is a man-made system, a reactive category, a late-modern
phenomenon that emerged in the early 20th century. Its existence as a
historical expression is not in dispute. But its status as a theological
category—as if it were a legitimate container for doctrine—is both false
and dangerous.
The phrase “Pentecostal theology” commits a categorical
error. It fuses a man-made label with divine revelation and claims to produce a
new theological entity. But no such entity exists. “Pentecostal” is an
adjective, not a noun. It is a tag, not a truth. It is nomenclature, not
ontology.
To accept “Pentecostal theology” as a real category is to
commit theological idolatry:
It creates a subset of the gospel.
It creates an identity apart from the Church.
It rebrands what God never branded.
But theology cannot be divided. The Spirit cannot be
franchised. And the Word of God is not subject to historical labeling.
III. THE GIFT OF TONGUES IS NOT A MOVEMENT
Nowhere is the confusion more destructive than in the modern
Church’s handling of tongues.
Contemporary readers of Scripture—whether churched or
unchurched—read “tongues” in 1 Corinthians 12–14 and immediately think of
ecstatic utterance, private prayer language, or dramatic manifestations of
spiritual excess. This is because the Church has lost its theology of language.
The word “tongues” does not refer to chaos. It refers to language—real,
spoken, intelligible language.
In Acts 2, those filled with the Spirit did not babble
incoherently. They spoke in the languages of the nations—languages which
could be heard, understood, and interpreted. That is not a spiritual
phenomenon. That is a theological event. And it is an anthropological
revelation.
Tongues are human.
Tongues are national.
Tongues are historical.
Tongues are covenantal.
Tongues are part of the creational structure of reality.
They are how image-bearers speak. Animals do not have tongues in this sense.
Angels do not speak in human languages. Only embodied, moral agents—those with
conscience and will—possess the gift of speech. This is what it means to be
human. To speak is to image God.
Psalm 19 declares:
“There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.”
The modern world cannot read this, because it has already
lost Genesis 1.
It cannot hear this, because it has already silenced Psalm 19.
It cannot believe this, because it has already accepted a theology where speech
is optional and ecstasy replaces conscience.
But if we recover language as sacred—if we recover tongues
as ontology—then we will see what has always been true:
The gift of tongues is not the loss of meaning, but the
recovery of it.
It is the Spirit restoring Babel. It is the nations being named.
It is the Church being born in the tongue of every tribe, people, and
language.
IV. TONGUES AND THE RECOVERY OF BEING
The apostle Paul, writing to a deeply fractured and
spiritually disordered church in Corinth, addresses the gifts of the Spirit not
as spectacle, but as manifestations of divine order.
“Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit;
and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord;
and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God
who empowers them all in everyone.
To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”
(1 Corinthians 12:4–7)
Every gift Paul names—wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing,
miracles, prophecy, discernment, tongues, and interpretation—exists
within a framework of coherence, relational purpose, and communal
edification. Nothing is given for personal enhancement. Nothing is given to
mark off spiritual elites. Nothing is given to fragment the Church into
categories.
And yet, the Corinthian church did exactly that. They had
become obsessed with self-exalting displays of spiritual “power,” creating
divisions, confusion, and chaos. What Paul writes in chapters 12–14 is not an
endorsement of ecstatic phenomena. It is a rebuke. He calls them back to
order. To intelligibility. To love.
In fact, Paul says explicitly in 1 Corinthians 14:9:
“If you in a tongue utter speech that is not
intelligible,
how will anyone know what is said?
You will be speaking into the air.”
This is not a celebration of tongues as mystery—it is a rejection
of tongues as unintelligible noise.
Because speech that does not build up the body is not a gift—it is a
distortion.
And so, Paul calls them back to two things:
- Interpretation—tongues
must be translated into language the body can understand.
- Love—gifts
must be grounded in the self-giving character of Christ.
The so-called “love chapter” (1 Corinthians 13) is not a
poetic aside. It is the rebuke and reset for a church misusing the very
gifts they were meant to steward.
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have
not love,
I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” (1 Cor 13:1)
Tongues, then, are not a private elevation into ecstatic
union.
They are not spiritual technologies.
They are speech restored—speech that must be interpreted, intelligible,
ordered, and grounded in the gospel of love.
V. FROM BABEL TO PENTECOST: THE LOGOS RESTORED
To understand tongues rightly, we must read canonically. The
story of human language does not begin in Acts—it begins in Genesis, and it
climaxes not in Corinth but in Revelation.
In Genesis 11, human speech is shattered at Babel because it
was weaponized against God.
In Acts 2, human speech is restored at Pentecost because it is surrendered to
God.
At Babel: “Come, let us make a name for ourselves.”
At Pentecost: “We hear them declaring the mighty works of God.”
The difference is not linguistic. It is ontological.
It is not what is spoken. It is who is speaking, why, and in
whose name.
Pentecost is not a miracle of vocal acrobatics. It is the re-commissioning
of humanity as bearers of divine speech.
It is Genesis 1, “Let there be,” echoing forward through the Church.
It is Psalm 19, “Their voice goes out to all the earth,” becoming
literal.
And this voice is not ecstatic. It is ordered, prophetic,
communal, missional.
The Word of God became flesh not to explode language, but to
redeem it.
And the Spirit of God was poured out not to bypass tongues, but to baptize
them.
The Logos restores the logos.
And in the Church, every tongue that confesses Jesus
is Lord
becomes a part of that new creation speech.
VI. TONGUES AND THE THEOLOGY OF THE BODY
To divide “tongues” from the rest of the Church is to divide
body from body part. It is ecclesiological heresy.
Paul's metaphor in 1 Corinthians 12 could not be clearer:
“The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of
you.’”
“If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing?”
“If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell?”
(1 Corinthians 12:17–21)
Tongues are part of the body.
They are not special.
They are not embarrassing.
They are not elite.
They are not fringe.
They are a gift.
And the gift is for the common good.
If the modern Church rejects tongues as irrational, it
amputates part of itself.
If the modern Church elevates tongues as a mark of true spirituality, it
distorts its own unity.
If the modern Church labels tongues as “Pentecostal,” it fractures theology
into tribalism.
But if the Church receives tongues as speech redeemed—
As language restored,
As prophecy made audible,
As nations named,
As conscience vocalised,
As ontology sanctified—
Then we will hear again the voice that was in the beginning:
“Let there be.”
And there will be light.
VII. DISCIPLESHIP IN THE AGE OF WORD AND SPIRIT
The contemporary Church is not merely confused about
tongues. It is confused about speech itself. It has severed the voice from the
soul. It has detached language from being. It has forgotten that to speak
truly is to be truly—and to be truly is to be in Christ.
In a world of noise and echo chambers, the Church must
rediscover its voice. But that voice is not found in cultural relevance or
rhetorical skill. It is found in the Spirit. Not the spirit of the age, but the
Holy Spirit—the Spirit who speaks the Word of God into the body of
Christ and sends that body to speak into the world.
Tongues, in this context, are not spiritual phenomena. They
are discipleship reconstituted.
To be a disciple is to:
- Hear
the Word of Christ.
- Receive
the Spirit of Christ.
- Speak
the truth of Christ.
- Live
the life of Christ.
And this cannot happen apart from language. Not merely vernacular,
but logos. Not merely phonemes, but ontology. To be formed in Christ is
to have one's conscience aligned, one's speech sanctified, and
one's being spoken into obedience.
In this light, tongues are no longer a topic of curiosity or
controversy.
They are a prophetic rebuke to speechless Christianity.
They are a liturgical recovery of Psalm 19: “Day to day pours out
speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.”
They are a continuation of Romans 10: “How can they believe in the
one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone
preaching?”
To disciple the Church today is to recover the speech of
the Spirit, not as technique or genre, but as identity.
To disciple is to reintegrate language, Spirit, conscience, and community
into one body—holy, articulate, sent.
VIII. TONGUES AS WORSHIP AND WITNESS
The gift of tongues is not a tool for ecstatic spirituality.
It is a witness to divine presence.
Tongues are not performed. They are received. They are not mystified.
They are interpreted.
They are not private. They are public. Even in prayer, they are
directed toward God in the hearing of the Church.
The modern worship environment often commodifies the
“spiritual” in order to produce affect. But biblical worship is not built on
affect. It is built on truth, Spirit, and speech.
“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in
spirit and truth.” (John 4:24)
Tongues without truth are noise.
Tongues without interpretation are confusion.
Tongues without love are clanging gongs.
But tongues rightly practiced—ordered, interpreted,
submitted to Christ—become a witness to the Word.
They are not “Pentecostal.”
They are biblical worship.
They are mission.
In Acts 2, tongues are not a display of spirituality. They
are the Spirit’s method of declaring the gospel to the nations.
They are missionary speech. Missional translation. Ontological revelation.
And if the Church today were to recover tongues as
witness—not as performance, not as novelty—but as speech restored for the
sake of the world, we would again become what we are:
A prophetic people, speaking not to be heard, but to proclaim.
IX. THE CHURCH AS PROPHETIC BODY
The gift of tongues cannot be separated from the prophetic
identity of the Church.
To speak in tongues is not to say something new, but to say something true—again,
and in every tongue.
This is what Joel foresaw: “I will pour out my Spirit on
all flesh... and they shall prophesy.”
This is what Peter proclaimed: “This is that.”
This is what Paul longed for: “I wish that all of you would prophesy.”
Prophecy is not ecstatic foresight. It is the true Word
of God spoken in the power of the Spirit for the building of the body.
Tongues, then, are one mode of prophetic speech:
- Not
spontaneous disorder, but ordered Word.
- Not
private language, but public interpretation.
- Not
a sign of arrival, but a summons to obedience.
In this sense, tongues are a sign of the Spirit,
yes—but not because they are dramatic. Because they are linguistic acts of
covenantal fidelity. They show that God is not silent. That Christ is still
Lord. That the Spirit is still speaking—through what He has spoken.
“Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart.”
(Hebrews 3:7; Psalm 95)
This is not theology of sensation.
This is theology of speech.
And speech is ontology.
And ontology is Christ.
X. WHY “PENTECOSTAL THEOLOGY” IS A CATEGORY ERROR
We now arrive at the root of the misdiagnosis: the phrase
“Pentecostal theology” itself.
This is not just an imprecise term. It is an ontological
contradiction. A linguistic betrayal. A theological fracture.
“Pentecostal theology” commits four fatal errors:
- It
treats a day as a doctrine
Pentecost is not a theological framework. It is an event within the gospel—the outpouring of the Spirit on the body of Christ following the ascension of the Son to the right hand of the Father. To extract this moment from the gospel whole and elevate it into a distinct system is to fracture the unity of salvation history. - It
treats an adjective as a noun
“Pentecostal” is a descriptor. It is not a self-existing entity. To speak of “Pentecostal theology” is like speaking of “Crucifixion theology” or “Resurrection theology” as if these events could be parsed out from the whole of divine revelation and repackaged into institutional brands. But theology does not traffic in fragments. Theology is not modular. Theology is not multiple. - It
creates a sub-gospel for a sub-community
The moment theology becomes segmented by movement, the gospel becomes tribal. “Pentecostal theology” implies that the gifts of the Spirit are somehow the domain of a subset of the Church, rather than the universal inheritance of the saints. It turns what was meant for all into what is claimed by few—and in doing so, denies the very nature of ekklesia. - It
divides the indivisible
The Spirit is not separate from the Word. The Word is not separate from Christ. Christ is not separate from the Church. The Church is not separate from the Spirit. To create a category like “Pentecostal theology” is to drive artificial wedges into the Godhead and the gospel, creating distinctions where none exist.
This is not a call for doctrinal uniformity. This is a call
for theological honesty.
The Church must repent of its branding of the gospel.
The Church must stop labeling itself by what God gave without distinction.
XI. THE WORD, THE SPIRIT, AND THE CHURCH
The Spirit is not a movement.
The Word is not a denomination.
The Church is not a brand.
They are one. Always have been. Always will be.
“There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to
one hope when you were called—one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and
Father of all.” (Ephesians 4:4–6)
To recover a biblical understanding of tongues, prophecy,
and spiritual gifts, we must recover the indivisibility of theology.
There is no Spirit-theology apart from Word-theology.
There is no Word-theology apart from Church-theology.
There is no Church apart from the Spirit who breathes it into being.
Theologians must stop separating the events of the gospel
into boutique dogmas.
Pastors must stop treating the gifts of the Spirit as personality traits.
Movements must stop inventing spiritual hierarchies based on unbiblical
categories.
Tongues belong to the Church because speech belongs to the
body.
Prophecy belongs to the Church because revelation belongs to the Word.
Gifts belong to the Church because the Giver belongs to His people.
The Church is not Pentecostal.
The Church is not Reformed.
The Church is not Charismatic.
The Church is one.
And the Spirit who speaks is the Spirit who speaks through Scripture, through
the body, through tongues, through conscience, through the
Son.
XII. THE FINAL WORD IS STILL BEING SPOKEN
The Holy Spirit does not speak new truths.
He speaks the same truth in every tongue,
through every member,
into every generation.
“Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart.”
(Hebrews 3:7)
“The Spirit says.” (Revelation 2:7, 11, 17, etc.)
“The testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy.” (Revelation 19:10)
Not said. Says.
Not spoke. Speaks.
The Spirit is not a past event.
He is the now of God.
The voice still heard.
The breath still blowing.
The Word still alive.
And in every age, in every church, in every tongue, in every
conscience,
He calls forth a people to speak—not to perform, but to prophesy.
Not to claim a tradition, but to confess a Lord.
Not to exalt a gift, but to glorify Christ.
XIII. THE CHURCH MUST REPENT
The confusion is not academic. It is ecclesial. It is
spiritual. It is pastoral.
It is not just a wrong name. It is a wrong understanding of God, Church,
Spirit, and speech.
The Church must repent:
- For
calling Pentecostal what God calls Church.
- For
treating tongues as spectacle rather than speech.
- For
commodifying the gifts of the Spirit into badges, brands, and movements.
- For
severing Word from Spirit, speech from conscience, prophecy from Christ.
- For
believing that theology can be plural, fragmented, or optional.
It must repent not just of doctrinal error, but of ontological
heresy—
of constructing artificial categories that divide what God has joined.
We do not need new theologies.
We need to return.
Return to Genesis, where speech orders the world.
Return to Psalm 19, where creation pours forth knowledge.
Return to Acts, where tongues are sent to the nations.
Return to 1 Corinthians, where gifts are for the body.
Return to Hebrews, where the Spirit speaks through what He has spoken.
Return to Revelation, where every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is
Lord.
This is not about language. It is about truth.
And the truth is this:
The Spirit still speaks. And He has never spoken
Pentecostal.
XIV. LET THE CHURCH SPEAK AGAIN
Let the Church speak again.
Not in jargon. Not in tribal dialects. Not in brand names.
But in tongues—real tongues—
tongues of the nations, tongues of the prophets, tongues of conscience, tongues
of covenant.
Let the Church prophesy again.
Not in frenzied showmanship, but in truth-telling that convicts and heals.
Let the Church interpret again.
Not just tongues, but the times. The Word. The signs. The world.
Let the Church listen again.
To the Word of the Lord, spoken in Jesus, confirmed in Scripture, revealed by
the Spirit, made manifest in the body.
Let us stop pretending there are “types of churches.”
There is one Church.
Let us stop pretending there are “forms of theology.”
There is one truth.
Let us stop pretending the Spirit is optional.
He is the breath of the body, the voice of Christ, the river of fire and
water.
Let us be what we are.
Let us speak with the tongues we were given.
Let us call back the prodigals not to denominations, but to the Father.
Let us prophesy not about the future, but from the resurrection.
XV. DOXOLOGY: THE SPIRIT SAYS
Come, Lord, who is the Spirit!
Not as a movement, but as fire.
Not as a tradition, but as wind.
Not as confusion, but as speech.
Not as noise, but as truth.
Come, voice of the Father.
Come, breath of the Son.
Come, river of judgment and river of life.
Speak in every tongue.
Interpret every lie.
Prophesy through every body.
And glorify Christ in His Church.
Let no more false names be spoken.
Let no more categories divide.
Let theology be whole again.
Let the Church be one again.
Let the Spirit speak.
And let the Church answer:
“Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.”
