For those unawares blaspheming against the Holy Spirit is *the *one unforgivable sin in the Bible and Christian doctrine. The blood of the risen Christ Jesus redeems all from original sin or any other sins they may have committed; rape, murder, you name it. But blaspheme against the Holy Spirit and according the the Bible it’s a burning lakes of fire for you if you accept Christ as your saviour or not:
"But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven, but is guilty of an eternal sin. "
Mark 3:28-30
“And so I tell you, people will be forgiven every sin and blasphemy. But the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.”
Matthew 12:30-32, also Luke 12:8-10
Have a go at Jeezy Creezy and that’s cool, but against the Holy Spirit is not? I would have thought it would be the other way round, surely God the Father would be more annoyed if you take the piss out of his son who died for us as opposed to the Holy Ghost, which, let’s be honest, has always been the most vague part of the Trinity.
Why did the compilers of the Bible decide to make this the absolute no-no as opposed to kiddy diddling or something, and doesn’t it undermine Christ a bit if he died for nothing once you’ve blasphemed against the Holy Spirit? You might as well go the whole hog then, in for a penny in for a pound as they say.
Oh, and fellow atheists, feel free to join me in the Stygian pits for committing Eternal Sin.
A religious friend of mine suggested (but does not provide doctrinal evidence for this) that “blaspheming the Holy Spirit” might mean doing magic with it. Using the miraculous power (the power of faith to move mountains) for greedy personal purposes.
Jesus raised the dead…and the Apostles also could. But if a TV “reality show” host did it just to get ratings… Whoo… God would not be pleased!
I would watch that. And if they raised Michael Jackson from the dead, I would go back to church and become an evangelist. I’m sure a slew of other people would too.
Not that I can answer the whole question, but the “son of man” can be interpreted as the human nature of Jesus and the “holy spirit” is the divine nature. Make fun of Jesus, the man, and that’s OK. Making fun of Jesus, as God, is no bueno.
God is a Spirit … He lives in the heart of every believer even as the Father was in the Son so is the Son in his believers … this is done by the power of the Holy Spirit.
John 17:20–21 (NKJV)
Many people believe that God wrote the bible in the men of old. That they were inspired by God and the only way they could’ve wrote the bible was with the Holy Spirit in them. God himself is a consuming fire and at no time has anyone ever seen his face …
The Holy Spirit is actually a gift to the believer and unless God calls you to believe … you won’t believe. No one chooses God it’s the other way around God chooses you.
Perhaps i’m remembering wrongly, but I seem to recall that there actually are a couple of point in the Bible where people do see the face of God (and also don’t immediately die).
Anyway, the way i’ve heard it is that the Holy Spirit is the part of God that actively interacts with people (Jesus excepted). So if you blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, there’s no other way for God to reach you; he’s the communication channel, as it were, so while there are big crimes that you can be forgiven for, there’s no way you can be forgiven if you’ve already cut the phone line, so to speak.
Here’s the fuller Mark quote: 28 “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”— 30 for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.” “He” refers to Jesus: “According to Mark, the blasphemy against the holy spirit refers to those who claim that Jesus is being controlled by an unclean spirit”, according to The Five Gospels.
These quotes were tacked on after the crucifixion. There were lots of people speaking in tongues. Paul tried to gently scale them back in Corinthians. Here, they are propped up, as nobody possessed by the holy spirit should be accused of -er- I’m guessing satanic possession is the implication.
You can see the reasons for strong language, as the practice of speaking in tongues and the like was controversial. Imagine a movement or political party trying to manage some of their more fanatical elements. They don’t want them to go away, but they don’t want their antics reflecting poorly on the wider group.
I’m still trying to figure out exactly who or what the “Holy Spirit” is.
Closest I have come is that it is the sensation/concept known as spirituality to non-believers; the sensation that there is a life force beyond mortality.
My background with the Pentacostals taught me that the Holy Spirit is the “force”. God is the president and CEO of the universe. Jesus is the liaison officer who connects God to humans. And the Holy Spirit is the “magical” manifestation of both. The Holy Spirit is behind speaking in tongues, healing the sick, prophesy, and–more commonly–jumping up and down and writhing on the floor like you’re having an epileptic seizure.
Interestingly, the Holy Spirit seems to tailor itself to the proclivities of the people it visits. I’ve never seen people speaking in tongues in Methodist or UU congregations. Not a whole lot of shouting and writhing going on in your Lutheran or Episcopalian churches. Even in the Pentacostal church, it’s always the same people who seem to catch the Ghost every Sunday. And the speaking in tongues and dancing/writhing/shouting crowd seem to outnumber everyone else by 100 to 1. Those who speak in tongues are never accompanied by interpreters (rendering the whole thing a pointless spectacle, if you ask me). And the dancing/shouting crowd always seem to be the kind of folks who would normally go to the club, but won’t because they are “saved”.
You are far from the first to ask What does it mean to “blashpheme against the Holy Spirit,” and why is it unforgivable? We’ve had threads on this question before, but none of the ones I found gave a really satisfying answer. And, in fact, a bit of searching will find articles and columns all over the internet where various people have attempted to address the question. Here, for example, is Wikipedia’s article.
In Christianity, the Holy Spirit is part of the Trinity, and thus one of the three “persons” of God (though it may not be a fair assumption that that’s what Jesus or Mark meant to refer to in the verse quoted in the OP).
God the Father is the author of the drama. (George Lucas)
God the Son is the protagonist of the drama. (Luke Skywalker.)
God the Holy Spirit is the identification that the author has for the protagonist, the “projection” he has. (No, not The Force. More like the “Mary Sue” effect.)
This is why authors can truly love their characters…and still do really horrible things to them. It’s why George Lucas can leave Luke Skywalker screaming in anguish…and still bear him love as deep as any parent for a child.
Another example: God the Father is the guy who writes your favorite comic strip. (“Girl Genius,” let’s say.)
God the Son is you, reading the strip.
God the Holy Ghost is the love you and the strip’s creator share for the characters: the worry you have when Agatha Heterodyne is threatened, the hope you have that she’ll choose wisely between her two suitors, the glee you have when she storms onto the scene in a gigantic radioactive clank and kicks enemy butt from Mechanicburg to Sturmhalten and back.
In an old “B.C.” comic strip, one of the characters asked another, “What is it that makes us real? What makes us walk, and talk, and live, and breathe?” The other character said, “Satisfied readers.”
The Holy Spirit is your own spirit that connects you to your eternal life. It is making you one with God as that is His Spirit as well.
If you blaspheme this spirit, make modification of that power for your glory, you broke the connection, as that can no longer be the Spirit of God that is in you, but you have created your own. Much like on the Apollo mission once on the moon using the LEM’s fuel to make a great fireball so the people on earth can see you, you effectively stranded yourself.
However I do not believe the scriptures speak of this being eternal, just for this ‘present age’ and the ‘age to come’, after which I feel that the ‘refining fire of God’ will lead you to repentance - therefor your disconecting from God leads you back to connecting, giving up your ways of trying to make your self a kingdom and seeking to reconnect with the kingdom of Love, it just takes hotter fire then what we have hear and now.
In the case of ‘blasphemeing Jesus’ that was the plan, any reason to condemn this man was unjustifiable but was done because of the flaws in humanity being projected onto him. Most people who accuse others are normally guilty of that them self, but they can’t see it in them self, but see others doing it (this is the ‘mote in the eye’ passage - before you try to remove the speck in your brother’s eye, first remove the mote (log) in your own). The other part of this is a curse that is unjustifiable will not alight but will be returned to the sender. So when you blaspheme Jesus you are taking your flaws, making Him suffer and die, the Father reverses that because you were unjustified and in that will come to realize that you just put to death a innocent man.
The Holy Spirit is basically the presence of God in your life. The Holy Spirit is what gives you your faith.
Blaspheming probably isn’t the best word for it. What they’re saying is that the unforgivable sin is denying the Holy Spirit. Christian belief is that every sin can be forgiven as long as you accept God into your heart - but not accepting God cuts you off from this sole avenue of redemption.
So it’s not that you become guilty of eternal sin by denying the Holy Spirit. The idea is you’re already guilty of eternal sins and accepting the Holy Spirit was your only means of being forgiven. So by denying the Holy Spirit, you remain guilty.
Very conservative Baptists, or at leasts the ones that I was raised with, describe blaspheming the Holy Ghost as follows:
There’s only one sin that’s unforgiveable, the sin of unbelief.
Blaspheming the Holy Ghost is unforgiveable.
Therefore, we have an identity claim: the sin of unbelief = blaspheming the Holy Ghost.
Why is the Holy Ghost thought to take particular offense to the sin of unbelief? Because, per very conservative Baptist theology, the Holy Ghost is the member of the Trinity who directly deals with people today in this “dispensation.” (Dispensation means a theological time slice that’s distinct in some way from other theological time slices. Fundies debate how many there are, but most fundies acknowledge at least two dispensations: the dispensation of law in the OT and the dispensation of grace in the NT.) For instance, in the OT, God the Father directly interacted with people (miracles, speaking audibly, etc.) during the dispensation of law. In the NT, Jesus the Son directly interacted with people in the dispensation of grace. Post NT days, the Holy Spirit is the member of the Trinity who directly interacts with people in the ongoing period of the dispensation of grace. The Holy Spirit is the only member of the Trinity who is “present” in the world today in an active sense, and his job is to convince you to believe what the Bible says about Jesus and God. His role is to communicate truth to your soul, in an attempt at converting you. So, since his job is belief oriented, when you disbelieve in the kind of theology that very conservative Baptists subscribe to, you’re committing the unpardonable sin, that of unbelief, and you’re committing it against him directly, since he’s the member of the Triune God that you’re interacting with when you reject “promptings” to believe. Most Southern Baptists you know probably believe what I’m describing. Many fundies who aren’t Baptists also believe this. It’s a common way of thinking about blaspheming the Holy Ghost to those who want you to “pray the sinner’s prayer.”
One major problem with this interpretation of blaspheming the Holy Ghost is that Jesus seems to be warning the Pharisees not to do it, which would mean that the active presence of the Holy Ghost isn’t necessary for one to commit this particular sin, as (most) dispensationalists believe that there’s only one member of the Trinity interacting with humankind at a time and the Holy Ghost clearly wasn’t the member of the Trinity that the Pharisees were dealing with.