The mystery of iniquity is already at work. (2 Thess 2:7, KJV)
Amen, I say to you, all sins and all blasphemies that people utter will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the holy Spirit will never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an everlasting sin.” Mark 3:28-29 (NABRE)
Up until now, we’ve been considering the economy of grace, the mysterious plan by which God calls all people to salvation in the Church. We also considered our part in this as evangelists. Our purpose is to see that God knows how to save His children. Despite the sad state of the world around us, we know that God is not weak or unwilling to save; and that we can participate in His saving work. And in knowing these things, we can have profound hope for the salvation of a great many people; many of whom we might not expect.
But our Lord teaches in the Gospel that though He wants all to be saved, not all will be saved.[1] That’s why, at the end of the last lesson, we brought to mind the “bad thief” crucified next to Jesus.
Sin is a Mystery
Let’s talk more about the “bad thief.” God created this man out of love, sustained him, and provided for him. He gave him the witness of Moses and the prophets to guide him in the right path. He sent him trials in life to correct his errors and put him back on the right path when he strayed. Even more, God assumed flesh and was crucified for love of him, winning for him an abundance of grace. And here was this man, himself crucified for wicked crimes against others, at most only hours away from death. He’s less than (probably) 15 feet away from his crucified God … and what is he doing? He’s ridiculing and mocking Him.[2]
How do we make sense of this? Saint Paul wrote to the Thessalonians that “the mystery of iniquity is already at work.”[3] Evil is a mystery. It is a mystery that a man, created and redeemed by an all-good God, could so wickedly reject such a lavish love.
Any sin, really, is a mystery. How is it that someone would knowingly choose to do what they know to be bad — even to their own harm — for the sake of some minor payoff? And yet, we have all had the experience of doing just that.[4]
The Biblical story of Esau selling his birthright for a bowl of stew is a lesson on this “insanity” of sin. A mortal sin is essentially despising our divine birthright as sons and daughters of God, for the sake of something comparatively worthless. It’s usually a pittance: a momentary pleasure; a false sense of security; a shallow feeling of self-importance.
But praise be to God! Though we often sin, Our Good and Merciful Father does not leave us completely to our own devices. “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.”[5] We are always free to choose, but He gives grace, again and again, to attract and “woo us” to Himself. And He uses trials and tribulations to shake us into our senses.[6]
The Eternal Sin
There is no sin so evil that God is unwilling to forgive it. And in a sense, He actually will forgive all sins … all except one. In fact, Jesus solemnly declares this very thing: “Amen, I say to you, all sins and all blasphemies … will be forgiven.”[7] “But,” he continues: “whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.”[8]
At this point, once again, the mystery of evil is on full display. What does it mean to be guilty of an “eternal sin”? What does it mean to “blaspheme against the Holy Spirit”?
If we examine the passage of the Gospel in its context, and the tradition of the Church, we see that “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” is a complex reality. It is hardening oneself to the work of the Holy Spirit. It is defiantly refusing to recognize God working before one’s own eyes; even considering it evil.
But the work of the Holy Spirit is to manifest the truth of God’s love and convict our heart of sin. … And so “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” is also scorning God’s mercy. … By it, a person closes himself off to the inner working of the Holy Spirit who is seeking his conversion and salvation.[9]
Why is this sin called “unforgivable”? If a person stubbornly persists in this kind of knowing rejection of God; their choice would become hardened, and, at the moment of death … become permanent.
The Catechism teaches that “our freedom has the power to make choices for ever, with no turning back.”[10] In fact, no choice we make can be really, truly undone — once a choice is made, you can’t “go back in time” to undo it. At most, a choice can be “repented” by making a new choice which renounces it.
But what if someone chose, again and again and again, to resist and reject repentance itself? Repentance is the only thing by which we can, in some sense, “undo” our sinful rejection of God.[11] Saint John Chrysostom says, “Grace, even though it is grace, saves those who wish, not those who do not wish and who turn [grace] aside and constantly war against it and oppose it.”[12]
Speaking of the fallen angels, the Catechism says something that could also be said of the human being who “blasphemes the Holy Spirit” until death. “It is the irrevocable character of their choice, and not a defect in the infinite divine mercy, that makes [their] sin unforgivable.”[13]
An “irrevocable choice.”: … To put it again in our Lord’s words, there is something “eternal” in the sin of the wicked person who obstinately rejects the call to repent.[14] Like the sin of Satan and the fallen angels, the sin of such people, sealed at the moment of death, represents their fully-complete, fully-considered, free and permanent choice to prefer selfishness to love. Presented with the choice between death and life (as Moses presented the Israelites in Deuteronomy chapter 30), they chose death.
There remains a great deal of mystery here, no doubt. Surely, only God is capable of discerning when a person’s refusal to repent reaches the required extreme, and takes on the full meaning of “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.” And there are many other questions we could ask.
So the mystery remains. But even so, by examining what the Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church teach, we shed some helpful light on the mystery, and say with confidence that God is not responsible for anyone losing eternal life. It is one-hundred percent the fault of the person. As the Scriptures say, “Destruction is thy own, O Israel: thy help is only in me.”[15] In the next lesson, we will consider the mystery of hell.
[1] “Many are called, but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:14). For a good argument for this interpretation of the passage, see Ben F. Meyer, “Many (=All) Are Called, but Few (Not All) Are Chosen,” in Christus Faber: The Master Builder and the House of God (Allison Park, Pennsylvania: Pickwick Publication, 1992), 81-90.
[2] Even as this thief experienced the punishment of death, imposed by the authorities in accordance with God’s providence, it seems that God’s attitude towards him remained one of mercy: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
[3] 2 Thessalonians 2:7 (KJV). In context, it refers to “the persistent effort of the devil in the midst of the human race.” Matthias Joseph Scheeben, The Mysteries of Christianity (New York: Herder & Herder, 2006), 267.
[4] Yes — in the moments we make such choices, we are experiencing a sort-of blindness. And yet, it’s a willful blindness. A kind of willful madness.
[5] Romans 5:20.
[6] For an explanation of how the Lord God afflicts grave sinners in order to shake them into their senses, see Saint Catherine of Siena on the “four winds.” Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1980), 174-176.
[7] Mark 3:28 (NABRE).
[8] Mark 3:29 (NABRE).
[9] See Mary Healy, The Gospel of Mark (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 78. See also John Paul II, Dominum et Vivificantem 46. See Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1980), 79: “This is that sin which is never forgiven, now or ever: the refusal, the scorning, of my mercy.” These explanations make clear that the core sin is the sin of unbelief: “The scandal which the mystery of the God-man is to the fallen angels and the men who follow them results in their refusal to accept God’s truth with the love and reverence due to His word, and in their rejection of faith in the proper sense of voluntary belief. But unbelief that repudiates belief for the sole reason that its object arouses resentment, does not diminish culpability; it increases culpability, it lays bare the full range of malice involved ….” Scheeben, The Mysteries of Christianity, 271.
[11] Saint Thomas Aquinas sheds light on this when he argues that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is unforgivable by its very nature, “insofar as it removes those things which are a means towards the pardon of sins.” Summa Theologiae IIa-IIae, q. 14, a. 3. In the previous article of the Summa, he distinguishes 6 types of “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit”: despair, presumption, impenitence, obstinacy, resisting the known truth, envy of our brother’s spiritual good.
[12] In Ep. ad Rom. Homil. 18.5. PG 60.579. Cf. § 199. Similarly, Arnobius writes, “‘But’ you say ‘if Christ came as the saviour of the human race, why does He not free all with equal munificence?’-Does not He who equally calls all, equally free all? Or does he reject or cast away anyone from His royal pardon when He, without distinction, gives to the lofty, the lowly, to slaves, to women, to children, the power of coming to Him? The font of life is open to all, He says, neither is anyone held off or repelled from the right to drink of it. If you are so haughty as to reject the kindness of the offered gift . . . how does He who invites [you] sin against you, for His function is simply this, that He presents the fruit of His kindness to your free judgment?” Adv. nationes 2.64. PL 5.910. St. John of Damascus writes, “There are two kinds of abandonment [by God], for there is one by dispensation which is for our instruction and there is another which is absolute rejection … Absolute abandonment is when God has done everything for a man’s salvation, yet the man of his own accord remains obdurate and uncured, or rather, incorrigible, and is then given over to absolute perdition, like Judas.” Orthodox Faith, 2.29. Again, Saint Thomas Aquinas writes, “The efficacy of the Incarnation is indeed sufficient to save all men: that not all are saved is due to their evil disposition, in that they are unwilling to receive the fruit of the Incarnation by adhering to God incarnate by faith and love. For man was not to be deprived of his free-will, whereby he can adhere to God incarnate or not adhere to him; otherwise, man’s good would be compulsory, and would be rendered unmeritorious and undeserving of praise.” SCG 4.55.
[13] CCC 393. Also, speaking of the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, the Catechism comments, “There are no limits to the mercy of God, but anyone who deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting, rejects the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit. Such hardness of heart can lead to final impenitence and eternal loss” (sec. 1864). All of this helps us to understand an important distinction: there is a difference between the person who sins gravely and is (or will later be) forgiven, and the person who sins gravely and is not (and may not ever be) forgiven because he obstinately rejects forgiveness. This distinction can be expressed well by using the terms “wicked” for the latter, and “sinner” for the former. This seems to be the distinction being made by the 20th century Catholic author Leon Bloy when he said, “There are no sinners in hell … there are only the wicked” (recorded by Jacques Maritain in his Notebooks [Albany, NY: Magi Books, 1984] on 29 March, 1910). Pope Benedict XVI also expresses the same idea: “With death, our life-choice becomes definitive … There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves. This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history. In such people all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we mean by the word Hell” (Spe Salvi 45).
[14] In this connection Saint Catherine of Siena speaks of an “infinite hate”: “If they do not correct themselves while they have time and can use their free choice, they will pass from this finite weeping into that which is infinite. That which is finite will become infinite for them because their tears are shed with infinite contempt for virtue, that is, with a soul’s desire grounded in infinite hate. … It is infinite insofar as the soul’s being and capacity to love are infinite. Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1980), 176.
[15] Hos 13:9 (Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition – DRA).