What's the big deal about the Holy Spirit?

Great Debates
21

As this and other threads demonstrates, the church (i.e. Christianity as a whole) does not have a consistent answer as to what it means to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, nor why it is unforgivable. It’s – well, “hotly debated” might e a stretch; let’s just say there are many different ideas but many scholars will admit that we don’t really know what the Gospel author meant here.

As for “who is the Holy Spirit” that could take books to explain. The Spirit is one person of the Trinity, co-equal with God the Father and Jesus the Son. The Nicene Creed says:

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son He is worshipped and glorified. He has spoken through the prophets.

The Holy Spirit is usually identified with the breath of God that moved over the formless void before the world was created (Genesis 1). Also with Wisdom (sophia) in other books of the Old Testament. It was the Holy Spirit of God who spoke to the prophets and it is also the HS who works in the hearts and minds of believers to prepare them for God’s Kingdom. Before Jesus ascended, he promised to send a helper and comforter after him - that is the Holy Spirit.

22

Holy shit! Is that what the Holy Spirit leaves behind?

23

No. It means you can say ‘Daddy-o’ and ‘Laddy-o’, but not ‘Spaced-out Spook’.

24

No, that’s what the Pope leaves behind in the woods. Or is that bears?

25

Using the holy spirit in actual believers to conduct fundraising so you can live like a king. Lookin’ at you Pat Robertson. These Elmer Gantry’s are going to burn for all eternity. Seems a bit harsh and too long a sentence, but I’m not the judge.

26

You mean those guys who" lay hands" on dead radios and sick folks are in BIG trouble?

27

While Luke screamed in anguish, Mark Hamill was not in pain at all. (Except for when he read the script and saw those lines, that is.) So, by your very apt analogy, Jesus the person/god did not suffer while Jesus the character did.

And let me just add that I don’t buy Casper the Holy Ghost. Which should pay my dues to continue this discussion in hell if the goys are right.

28

So I’m off the hook. Good. And too bad the Holy Spirit flunked science, based on what is in the Bible at least.

29

Dostoyevsky’s description of Baptist/Fundist doctrine can apply to most Evangelicals- The Holy Spirit is the aspect of God Who directly deals with us. God the Father and even the Son are distinct & remote, but the Holy Spirit is the God Who gets in our face, we deny & resist Him/Her as our peril. Now, the belief is that the Spirit, knowing us better than we know ourselves, will strive with us to get through to us, but a pattern of constant resistance & denial can harden into outright defiance, which can eventually make us unreachable. Basically, in fighting the Holy Spirit (literally “Holy Breath”), we are choking off our breathing in the life of God.

The actual context of Christ’s warning against HS Blaspheming- His religious opponents were accusing him of using Satanic power to cast out demons, which meant they were dismissing actual Divine miracles they were witnessing as being of the Devil. They did the same when the Apostles after Jesus performed the same miracles. This continued to the point where they opposed Jesus & the Apostles to their death, thus condemning their system - the Priestly-Sacrificial-Temple System to Divine Judgement & Destruction through the Roman Siege of 70 A.D…

Some Christians believe that this sin could only have been committed by those who witnessed Jesus & His Apostles’ ministry & thus, the 70 A.D. Judgement and passing away of the Apostles completed any risk of actually committing this specific sin, tho constant defying of the Spirit is still perilous & ultimately can be spiritually fatal.

One textual variant in Mark has Jesus saying that blaspheming the Spirit is an “aionian (aion-lasting or eternal) sin”, which I take to mean, not a sin one commits & is stuck with eternally, but a sin one persists in committing over & over, an ongoing sin, or- you could say, “the sin that keeps on sinning”.

30

Dixie Null was hotter… But, yes, K.F. is very, very hot!

Nah, Mark Hamill the actor is merely a medium. You might just as well observe that the celluloid that the movie was printed on didn’t scream in anguish, or that the sound-system speakers in the movie theater, which did scream in anguish, never felt anguish… If I burn a copy of the Bible, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John do not burn. But Judas and Haman are still hanged.

Although I’ve heard glurge to the effect that the nails that pierced Christ’s hands and feet felt pain, and repented, and were of much woe that they were wicked, wicked nails.

Is a container responsible for what it contains?

31

I’ve given this answer before, but will beat a dead horse a few more tmes.

In Jesus’ day, there were many people who hated him, mocked him, criticized him, condemned him, and even took part in killing him. And yet Jesus was quite clear on this point: he forgave them because “they knew not what they did.” Those people were attacking what they THOUGHT was merely a human troublemaker. People who called Jesus a charlatan or a madman, or who yelled “Crucify him” were not blasphemers, because they never thought Jesus was divine- they thought he was just a human criminal getting what he deserved…

As Chesterton put it, it’s HARD to blaspheme! In order to commit true blasphemy, one must recognize the sacredness and divinity of what one desecrates and STILL desecrate it. That’s why Chesterton offered this challenge: try to say something blasphemous about Thor. Sure, I can scream “Thor is a putz” at the top of my lungs, but am I blaspheming? Of course not, because I don’t even believe Thor is or was ever real.

If you don’t see Jesus’ divinity (which means you don’t see or feel the presence of his Spirit), you can’t blaspheme against him. You can only blaspheme against him if you DO believe he was God.

A few years back, there was a fad among college age atheists to go on YouTube and say “F— the Holy Spirit.” They were trying to show how daring, transgressive and blasphemous they were. So, DID they commit the unforgivable sin? IF, in the unlikely event one of those kids eventually had a change of heart and wanted to become a Christian, would he be told, “Too late, you’re damned already for committing THE unforgivable sin”?

Of course not. To THEM, saying “F— the Holy Spirit” was on a par with saying “F— the Tooth Fairy.” They’d only blaspheme if they thought God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit were real, and they STILL said the same contemptuous things. If they were merely insulting what they THOUGHT was a fictional character, then “they knew not what they did.”

32

Thanks for the replies so far, interesting reading. One thing I do wonder is why Christian Churches don’t make a bigger deal of these passages, since they are quite a big deal - you’re dooming yourself forever. Everyone knows about the Ten Commandments (or 613, strictly), but Eternal Sin is more obscure. Yet the blood of the risen Christ will redeem you even if you take the Lord’s name in vain while murdering your neighbour and banging his wife on the Sabbath.

Is this intentional? If someone thinks they have already blasphemed against the Holy Spirit, Christianity has absolutely nothing to offer them.

33

blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is not defined precisely in the Bible. It is typically thought of as persistent refusal to come to Jesus for salvation and in response, God abandons the person to his/her own devices.

34

What I don’t understand is how there can be any equivocation about these passages. What I mean is, how could God allow there to be any equivocation? If a town passed a law that everyone who is caught wearing red shoes at the stroke of midnight will be executed, the townfolk would demand a clear definition of “caught”, “red”, “shoes”, and “midnight” before they accepted the ruling. Just so there’s no chance an innocent would make an erroneous assumption (“Pink isn’t red!”) and get themselves killed.

It doesn’t seem like there’s universal agreement on what constitutes blasphemy or the Holy Spirit. I might have committed the sin in my previous post, and there is absolutely no way I would ever know for sure. Nor is there any way that I can petition the courts and ask for forgiveness. What kind of crazy law is that? (Oops. I’m blaspheming again!)

35

It’s semi-intentional IMHO. I have been reading the Qur’an, which I believe is a book written by God, but respecting the rights of the slave owners (the people of Islam are ‘slaves’ or ‘servants’ as such there are restrictions places that the slaves do not have the right to know of as a condition of their enslavement. Such as knowledge that God can have a child.

There are some such concessions in the Bible as well, while not as enslaved as those under the Qur’an, there is some claim of Satan on the people on earth that God does respect (and already has a plan to overcome).

The reason is it not well defined AFAIK is that Satan has requested it as such and has been granted such right, God has a plan to overcome this, but it may delay some people and cause great distress.
And that is the purpose of the ‘eternal sin’ that even if you try to build your own kingdom, and produce your own book (by divine right by your link -aka the Holy Spirit - to call your way the way of God in the name of God), and have millions of souls following and worshiping you, you will fail, and fail hard, you may live a good life and be loved by many, but that will fade and you will eventually, though very hard circumstances, be refined and desire reconnection after 2 ages has passed.
And personally, yes I once believed I committed this sin, it cause me not to look for any help from God. I felt may as well live as long as I can here, but one that is over nothing matters. It is used as a weapon in Satan’s bag of tricks to confuse and delay the God’s children, and hence the ambiguity - that for some reason God allows.

36

Isn’t the HS the only part of the Trinity that people experience? Jesus returned to the father; the father is in heaven. that leaves the HS…as the only part of the Trinity that interacts with humanity.

37

Yes this is true … all three are the same God. Jesus is not God Jr … the Holy Spirit is not a little something that feels good when you sing “Standing on Holy ground”. The Holy Spirit is God too.

One of them is in me at all times (in every believer) and He does not have to go ask the other two anything. God is in heaven sitting on the throne, Jesus is at His right hand side and the gift of the Holy Spirit lives in the heart and soul of every believer.

Jesus said over and over again in St John 17 (the true Lords prayer) that He (meaning Jesus) would live in us even as the Father lived in the Son.

When we answer questions like this … it is the witness of the Holy Spirit giving the answers.

This quoted scripture says a lot.

Acts 7:51 (NKJV)

38

The best pastoral advice on this-

If you are worried that you committed the unforgivable sin, you haven’t.