I wasn’t saying that Hitler’s strumming a harp these days- all I was saying is that if he was mentally ill, then possibly he wasn’t culpable. That’s all.
My personal opinion is that he wasn’t quite frothing at the mouth insane until sometime after the Stauffenberg bomb plot- things seemed fairly stable until that point, and after that, he seemed to come apart at the seams.
I’m not a Nazi or Nazi sympathizer either- just someone who likes reading history books!
eoZ:
Yes, God is merciful, but I think you are misunderstanding mercy. God’s mercy doesn’t mean that everybody gets to go to heaven with their “get out of hell free” cards. It means that God provided a way for sinners (you and me) to be saved from our sin and be with Him.
In this respect, JD is correct. According to Christian doctrine, humanity suiffers from congenital estrangemetn from God due to the sins of Adam and Eve, so that no matter how hard one may try to be virtuous, one must fail. Christ’s atonement on the cross and His victorious resurrection provided the path to redemption that erases the block between sinful creation and the perfect Father.
Not that she and I will EVER agree on sin (Sorry, but my love isn’t sinful, period) But at least she and I can agree on Christian teaching.
Because Jesus said so - he was doing miracles, and some of the Jewish leaders said he was using demoinc powers as his source instead of God’s Holy Spirit. This upset him. For some reason, cursing God can be pardoned, but not His Spirit - I don’t pretend to understand why but there you are…
Grim
The exact meaning of “Holy spirit” ( Holy “breath” would actually be more accurate) is still kind of elusive. Different denominations define it in different ways, and it’s hard to know what Jesus meant by it, or what the writers of the Gospels thought he meant by it.
References to the Holy Spirit are sparse in Hebrew scripture but it’s usually referred to in the context of divine inspiration or the feeling of the presence of God within.
Jesus told the apostles that the Spirit would give them “power.” Other references in Acts seem to associate it with an state of ecstasy or inspiration.
It’s never called a part of the Trinity in the Bible (not explicitly anyway, it’s extropolated from Jesus’ instruction to baptize in the name of the “Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” It’s far from clear, though, that he intended to imply a triune God), and it’s not likely that the Jews would have thought of it as synonomous with God. The NT also associates the Holy Spirit with certain rituals such as healings, exorcisms and baptisms.
My own semi-informed guess is that, for the Jews, the Holy Spirit described an altered state of consciousness, religious ecstasy, divine inspiration, etc, and that Jesus may have been in this state when he performed healings and exorcisms. I think that he may have felt that he was under the control of God at these times and that his injunction against blaspheming the Spirit was a warning about resisting God’s attempt to enter one’s “heart” as it were. If the Spirit was God’s personal presense within, then it would be logical to assert that one cannot be forgiven if one is unwilling to surrender to that presense, influence, whatever. It’s a logistic obstacle. Jesus was saying “God will forgive you but you have to let him in first.”
That’s my half-baked opinion anyway. It’s based on some degree of study and thought, FWIW. I didn’t just pull it out of my ass, but YMMV.
Catholicism teaches us that two criteria are required for absolution. First, you must be truly repentant. Without this confession is meaningless. This is the part that is between you and God. And second, you must confess this sin to God through his appearance in the person of the priest in the confessional.
Saying you’re sorry isn’t a get out of jail free card. True repentance is.
Err…Not that I’m a specialist, since I’m atheist…But it seems to me that as far as the catholic theology is concerned, he wouldn’t have spent any time in the purgatory if he sincerely repented. I believe that the purgatory is “reserved” for people who didn’t sincerely repent or did only out of fear of going to hell. So, in the hypothetic, he would get a direct ticket for Heavens, regardless of his crimes…
I’ve no clue about the actual theological answer, but for some reason (probably because even when I was a young boy I had an issue with Judas being damned) I clearly remember what our priest told us roughly this when at sunday school (which woiuld be “wednesday school” in france, but whatever…) : that nobody could know whether someone who commited suicide would be saved or not, since he could have repented at the very last moment (while falling just after he jumped from the bridge, for instance)…
But I must admit this particular sin makes repentance quite difficult…you’ve to make your mind pretty quickly…