Mark 3:28-30: “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven all their sins and all the blasphemies they utter. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven, but is guilty of an eternal sin. He said this because they [the Pharisees] were saying, ‘He has an evil spirit’.”
Luke 12:8-10: "I tell you, whoever acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge him before the angels of God. But he who disowns me before men will be disowned before the angels of God. And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.
I just saw the movie “The God that Wasn’t There”. Needless to say, it is a provocative film, though it didn’t provoke me very much since I stopped believing a long time ago. The film-maker does point out something that I had only had a vague idea about: the one unforgivable sin. I had always thought that blasphemy against God got you an automatic ticket to Hell, but that’s not right. You can blaspheme against God and Jesus and still go to heaven as long as you repent. But denial of the Holy Spirit (or Ghost, as I was taught) will curse you to eternal damnation.
Which means that even if I returned to the church and became born again, I would still be going to hell.
Why?
And another question: Do moderate Christians of the non-fundamentalist variety believe this? If not, on what basis do they reject this notion. The language seems pretty unambiguous.
And while we’re here, let’s discuss this:
Luke 19:27: “But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them–bring them here and kill them in front of me.’”
The person who supposedly said these words? Jesus of Nazareth. How do we resolve this message with the idea that we’re supposed to love our enemies?
Blaspheme–#987 (Greek) in Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance–
“to vilify; specifically to speak impiously:–defame, rail on, revile, speak evil.”
I looked up what Adam Clarke has to say about the unpardonable sin. He, and a lot of other commentators, think that the unpardonable sin is knowingly and deliberately attributing the works of God to the Devil. God in the person of the Holy Ghost is probably used because after Jesus ascended back to heaven, the Holy Ghost came as the promised Comforter at Pentecost. The Holy Ghost is the form in which God is considered to do most of His work here on earth from Pentecost until the Second Coming.
Mark 3:30 is often considered the key to understanding it–
“Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit.” (Emphasis added.) In other words, Jesus said this in response to what the Pharisees said.
This line from the OP–“Which means that even if I returned to the church and became born again, I would still be going to hell.”
Quite frankly, it makes no sense. Sure, anybody can attend church. But somebody who has truly committed the unpardonable sin CANNOT become born again. That’s sort of the whole point! On the other hand, if you become born again, and stay that way, you’re going to heaven, not hell.
The typical explaination I have seen is that the “unforgivable sin” is seeing a miracle performed directly by Jesus (in the NT, castimg out deamons), kowing it was performed by god (in the form of the holy spirit), and attributing it instead to the devil, simply to deny the truth - in short, to deliberately and with malice mistake good for evil. Though that explaination does not fully satisfy, as it does not explain why “blasphemy against the son” isn’t so bad.
I have no real idea, but offer this up for what it is worth: the early Christians were attempting to convert the Jews, who were pretty strongly monotheistic. One of the main objections Jews had (and have) with Christianity is the notion of the Trinity - in particular, the status of Jesus as part of the diety. The exact nature of Jesus-as-part-deity continued to be a problem for Christians as well (hence, numerous so-called “Christological controversies” and the splintering of Christianity into numerous sects, each with a different opinion - part man/part god, all god, all man with special relationship with god, etc.).
Now, each of these positions could be considered a “blasphemy” from another POV - Jews, various sects, all having a different view on what “the son” is or was. If such blasphemy was unforgiveable, the religion would be a tough sell.
OTOH, the holy spirit arouses little if any commentary - it seems to be identified with the diety as the Jews understand it. Thus, blasphemy agaisnt it should be equally repugnant to the main early Christian audience (the Jews).
This is along the right lines, as I understand it.
The Holy Spirit is the living connection of God to each individual. If someone, through their own free will, refuses that connection, then God will not reestablish it. That does not mean that someone cannot come back to God after denying the Holy Spirit, but that they must initiate it, not God.
“God is nothing but a sky fairy riding a pink unicorn.”–ask for forgiveness and you’re going to heaven.
“Jesus was a dork who was born from a whore.”–ask for forgiveness and you’re going to heaven.
“All that speaking in tongues and writhing on the floor mess is an act designed to make people happy so they’ll shell out money to a bunch of crooks and thieves.”–your ass is going to burn for all eternity.
What is strange to me is that belief in God isn’t that hard. Belief in Jesus as Son of God is a bit harder, but not too much of a stretch. But the belief that there’s a spirit that allows people to perform miracles? Out of them all, this is the one that you’d expect to be manifested in tangible, irrefutable evidence and thus subject to the most skepticism. Yet simply thinking about this too hard might put you on the road towards the event horizon of hell.
If I have asked for forgiveness, presumably I am trying to reestablish a connection to the whole of the Trinity.
But according to Scripture, I will only be forgiven for denying two parts. No matter how many times I send God and Jesus a bouquet of flowers, I will not be forgiven if I have denied or besmirched the Ghost.
I think it is nice to think that perhaps Mark and Luke got it all wrong and this is not what Jesus really said or what he intended. But I don’t know why we should think this. It is not contradicted by anything else in the Bible.
If you’re asking for forgiveness, then you’ve already accepted the Holy Spirit.
Denying the Holy Spirit does not mean you can’t come back, it means God is not bringing you back–you are bringing yourself.
Or, think of it this way: one cannot accept God’s forgiveness and grace until one accepts the Holy Spirit. Or, while denying the Holy Spirit, God’s forgiveness and grace are gifts that cannot be accepted by an individual.
It seems as if you defining the sin as an on-going act. As in, as long as you are actively blaspheming, you cannot be forgiven. Which is facile statement. The same logic can be applied to blaspheming God or Jesus. If I’m cursing God, I’m also distancing myself from him. Same with Jesus. Yet these sins are distinguished from the cursing of the Holy Spirit.
Reducing Jesus’ message and all of Christianity into a simple binary decision between heaven and hell is really missing the point of Christianity, although you wouldn’t know if to listen to many Christians.
You asked for the opinion of a moderate Christian, so here is mine: I believe Jesus came to save all of us, and that he succeeded. Do you think that by uttering some ineffectual curse against the Spirit you can thwart the will of God to bring you into reconciliation with Him? Not only will your sins be forgiven, they are forgiven.
Now what did Jesus mean when he said that blasphemy against the Spirit is unforgiveable? My short answer is I’m not sure. My longer answer is IIIII"mmmm nnnnot ssssuuurrrrrrre. The explanation that it means willfully ascribing to the devil the work of the Spirit is reasonable, but it also smells like fanwanking to me. I suspect it was included by the Gospel authors to counter a specific heretical teaching of the day, but who knows.
Ah, yes, that is our misunderstanding. (For clarity, in Trinitarian discussions, please use “the Father” instead of “God” if that’s what you mean.)
Yes, denying the Holy Spirit is an ongoing state. The act of saying some words is not the sin, it’s the rejection of the Holy Spirit in one’s heart that’s the sin. That can be reversed by not doing it. And God (by granting us free will) will not make us stop. We must take that first step back by not denying our hearts the Holy Spirit.
Sinning against the Father or the Son does not remove one from God’s grace, because the Holy Spirit is the conduit for God’s forgiveness. By denying the Holy Spirit, one is refusing forgiveness. By asking for forgiveness, one has already accepted the Holy Spirit.
Well sure . . . for a person who already believes. But just try believing in something that you believe is not true. Perhaps through some kind of mind control . . . but barring that, how do you make the transition from non-belief to belief, without some intervening additional evidence, or a re-evaluation of my epistemology?
So if I’m being punished as a non-believer, perhaps someone should throw a little more evidence this way . . . or provide me with a lobotomy.
“What is strange to me is that belief in God isn’t that hard. Belief in Jesus as Son of God is a bit harder, but not too much of a stretch. But the belief that there’s a spirit that allows people to perform miracles? Out of them all, this is the one that you’d expect to be manifested in tangible, irrefutable evidence”
It’s about faith.
To each their own but I can’t help but think that most atheists try to provoke and antogonize believers out of a sense of insecurity. It’s not enough that they “don’t believe” but they have to ridicule believers…why? Live and let live no?
FWIW, according to the upthread link, the Jesus seminar agreed it didn’t sound much like Jesus.
In the commentary on the Matthew version of the story (19:12-27) they opined that the last bit was tacked on commentary alluding to the second coming of Jesus, not part of the original parable.
See also the Didache Did 11:7
“11:7 And ye shall not tempt or dispute with any prophet who speaketh in the spirit; for every sin shall be forgiven, but this sin shall not be forgiven.”
The Didache was a 2nd Century Christian manual.
Jesus Seminar:
“All these options look back on Jesus from the perspective of the later community, which sought to set limits on its ecstatic leaders without inhibiting intrusions of the spirit.”
Moderate Christians may have as many opinions as there are people. They don’t all believe the same thing. Some moderate Christians do not believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. That may be because they are familiar with how the Bible was written, mistranslated, had many, many writers. These writers were human beings who made mistakes. Also, some people have a quarrel about how it was determined which books would go into the Bible and which would be left out. And there are contradictions within the Bible.
In my own opinion, you should simply follow what you believe to be the great Truths of the Bible. Jesus taught mostly about loving God and others. His words are very sensitive and kind. When something pops up that seems to contradict all of that, I just ignore it. That is what I believe that the Holy Spirit would have me do. The Holy Spirit might have something else in mind for those who think differently from me.
BTW, I was taught that the only “unforgiveable sin” was to turn away permanently from God. That makes sense to me. I don’t believe in hell, by the way, but I do believe in a conscious life after death. I believe that it will be totally different from what most believe. I think that mortals can’t comprehend a God that big or a reality that different from life as we know it on Earth.
[hijack]The way I see it, the use of the word “sin” tends to bog discussions down. There’s many things that people are perfectly willing to accept “have negative consecuencies” or “are mistakes” or “can cause a lot of trouble”, but call them “sins” and out come the forks and torches.[/hijack]
“Rejection of the Holy Ghost” is linked to “rejection of God-triune” (note that this isn’t the same as “lack of belief in God-triune” - “I don’t believe in the Trinity” is not the same as “there is no way the Trinity exists”) and also to “rejection of God’s connection to Creation”, but the way I see it is that when one rejects God, God (triune, single or monochloridian) simply cannot connect with one, because that’s a power God has chosen not to exercise. Like the vampires of movies, God can’t come in if you close the door.
The epistemology of faith is different than that of science. Faith is not based on objective evidence, it is based on subjective evidence: experiences that are irreproducible, feelings about “why”. And looking for evidence is probably the wrong approach–like carefully listening to a symphony in order to determine the color of the conductor’s tie.
Maybe a good starting place is thinking about why you want a particular sort of evidence. Just because science is our best approach for studying the universe does not mean it’s the best approach for understanding the human experience. (And despite their noise, anti-humanist extremists are not representative of most Christians.)
