I agree with Campolo. The Bible clearly does not teach the doctrine of cessation of tongues. It is a sovereign gift of the Holy Spirit given to some Christians for reasons that only God knows.

The problem in dealing with tongues in the current context is that because the Pentecostal movement has tended to lump all tongues together, so do Evangelicals and so do critics like Campolo. However, discernment must be exercised and criticism must be tempered in order to actually deal with the issues at hand. I particularly don’t like Campolo’s rhetoric, throwing around terms like “Fundamentalist” and “Anti-Pentecostal” when those terms must be qualified and re-qualified in order not to simply be used as ad hominems against his opponents, which seems to come through, especially in this short passage.

As for his story regarding the monk, I am glad to see Campolo is struggling with this issue rather than actually going the way of most moderates and liberals in this day and age. What Campolo doesn’t point out here (though I recognize you probably didn’t cite the entirety of his argument) is that inclusivism has the same problem as advocation of homosexuality – it runs contrary to the universal witness of Church History. In fact, any time when inclusivism was introduced in the history of the Church, it was soundly defeated by means of Biblical argumentation (as was the case with Trinitarianism), not simply shouted down or suppressed, as some would have you believe. Inclusivism has a hard time dealing with many texts, but what I find most damning to it is the central doctrines of the faith, such as Christ’s Atonement, the Role of Christ in the Trinity, and the Role of the Holy Spirit in salvation, which I wrote a short treatise about entitled, “The Holy Spirit and the Exclusivity of the Gospel.” I think it clearly outlines the fact that the job of the Holy Spirit in salvation is to bring glory to Jesus Christ by revealing Him to the hearer in His full glory and then guiding the new convert in an ever-growing knowledge of Christ, so that Jesus is glorified more and more.

The IMB condemned the private prayer language practice even though president Rankin admitted to doing it. This set up an embarrassing situation for them.

This is shaping up to be the next battleground.