What IS the Unforgivable Sin?

Dan McClellan Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation. About the same. How are things today, Dan?

Dan Beecher Things are good.

Dan McClellan Good.

Dan Beecher I'm ready for this one. This one's going to be a fun one because I get to find out if I am doomed.

Dan McClellan And that's- Or if you are unredeemable as the song from the recent movie, "Spirited" goes.

Dan Beecher And I might well be. We're going to have to find out because this week's What Is That? is about the unforgivable sin. So, let's dive in to What Is That?

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher So, what is the unforgivable sin? There's only one of them.

Dan McClellan It's being a Raiders fan.

Dan Beecher So... That's only slightly forgivable. But there is a thin margin by which it is forgivable.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It goes not out, but by much fasting and prayer.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan The unforgivable sin is something that we get in only in the synoptic gospels, interestingly enough.

Dan Beecher Yes. The synoptic gospels, because John is his own thing and just really is excited to not be-- He's not one of the crowd, that's all I'm saying.

Dan McClellan Yeah. He goes his own way. Follows the beat of a different drummer. And the earliest version of this is from the Gospel of Mark. I'm counting up verses. I think we have about the same number of verses in the little sense unit, the little- Mm ... story in Mark 3. The story goes from verse 20 to verse 30. And then in Matthew 12, the story goes from verse 22 to 32. In Luke, the story's shorter. It's Luke 12, verse eight to 12, but it kind of just comes out of nowhere.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And interestingly, Luke really entirely changes the position of this announcement of the forgivable sin, because it's embedded in a specific rhetorical narrative context in Mark and Matthew that kind of hints at what's going on here. And then Luke's like, "Nah, I don't like it there. I'm going to have it over here."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Just completely adrift.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's not going to have anything to do with the context.

Dan Beecher It's about sparrows now. Leave me alone. I can do what I want.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Do what I want. I think the context is telling.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan Because what we have in Mark 3 is we have Jesus's family comes out to restrain him, for people were saying he has gone out of his mind. And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem says, "He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons." And Beelzebul would be-- I don't know if we've talked about this before on the podcast, but Beelzebul is the New Testament's version of Beelzebub.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And Beelzebul is actually the accurate spelling of what the actual name of the deity would have been. Beelzebub is an editorializing, which means- Oh, right.

Dan Beecher I think we have talked about this a little bit when we did- Okay ... when we talked about Satan and these sort of are they Satan, are they not Satan entities.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And so Beelzebub, lord of flies.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Beelzebul would mean prince lord, which was a title that was used of Baal. So they say, "By the ruler of demons he casts out demons." And he's like, "That doesn't make any sense."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan "How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom can't stand?"

Dan Beecher Which is funny because it's like, if it were Satan and he did say, "Hey." If you're in tight with Satan and you're like, "Hey, Satan, get these guys out of here, and it'll make me look good."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Of course, Satan would be in on that deal.

Dan McClellan Yeah, you could exploit that a little bit. But in verse 27, he says, "But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man. Then indeed, the house can be plundered."

Dan Beecher In this case, the strong man is Satan.

Dan McClellan I guess, yeah. That- It's a weird metaphor.

Dan Beecher Yeah. But yes, apparently we're breaking into Satan's house and taking his stuff. But you got to tie up Satan first.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Because ropes work for subduing- Mm-hmm ...

Dan Beecher Satan.

Dan McClellan I almost said- Yeah ... the prince of thieves, and I was like, "Nope, that's- That's- ...

Dan Beecher wrong." Kevin Costner. That's different.

Dan McClellan Without an English accent. In verse 28, he says, "Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin." And then verse 30 explains, "For they had said, 'He has an unclean spirit.'" And so I think when we're looking at Mark 3, if the question is what is the unforgivable sin, it seems to be maybe calling God's spirit Satan.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Or attributing- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher God's good works to Satan- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan or something. So, it seems like what Jesus is saying is the biggest no-no is to attribute to what I'm doing the inspiration and the influence of Satan.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Because that's just not accurate. We've already talked about the strong man- ... and the house divided against itself. And this is the earliest account of this that we have. And so it seems like the original setting, the original context for this notion of an unforgivable sin, is the fact that what these folks are doing is basically blaspheming the work of the Holy Spirit through Jesus.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Saying what Jesus does is inspired and controlled by Satan. No, it's actually the Holy Spirit. How dare you call the Holy Spirit Satan?

Dan Beecher So. And the whole concept of the Holy Spirit is still very mysterious to me. It's still very confusing to me, and I see why we might want a triune God, because it seems like the Holy Spirit represents God, but isn't God, but is God, and all of that sort of thing.

Dan McClellan Well, it is mostly isn't at this point.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan We don't get the is until later when we're working on the Trinity and somebody was like, "You forgot to incorporate the Holy Spirit." "Oh, shoot. We've got to get the Holy Spirit in there, too."

Dan Beecher But in this one, it does seem like the Holy Spirit is somehow almost a synecdoche for God in general in some way- Yeah ... or for the divine or something.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It is the extension of God's agency.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Because in this time period, the kind of anthropology of this time period is that people are made up of an assemblage of parts, and a spirit is one of those parts, and that's kind of the executive function.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And just like your spirit can leave, you've got your dream soul, and your spirit departs when you die and hangs around your tomb as long as you're getting fed and having your name pronounced and all that kind of stuff. So your spirit is an agent that can depart from you. And so God's Spirit is kind of the means of God's activity in the world, while God's own self is elsewhere. So yeah, the idea that the Spirit is an extension of God's agency is definitely active, and had been for quite some time. It was just not identified as the very God of Israel itself in this time period.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And that's something that comes later.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So let's move on to Matthew.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Because Matthew has a similar but slightly different take on it, or maybe an expansion of the concept.

Dan McClellan Yeah. They bring to him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and he cured him so that he could speak and see, and the crowds were amazed, saying, "Can this be the son of David?" But the Pharisees say, "It is only by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons, that this man casts out the demons," and he, having perceived their thoughts, said, "Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand." We have the Satan cast out Satan thing.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan And then he says, "If I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your own exorcists cast them out? Therefore, they will be your judges."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And this reminds me of-- Did you watch any of-- Now I forget the name of the series. The one about Jesus that's been popular now for- Oh, "The Chosen?"

Dan Beecher "The Chosen."

Dan McClellan Have you watched any of "The Chosen?"

Dan Beecher No, I haven't seen any of it.

Dan McClellan I tried to watch the first episode, and I think it's that first episode where they bring the-- First or second episode, they bring the priest in, and they're like, "Hey, this lady's nuts. You've got to cast the demons out of her." And it doesn't go as well as he would've liked. And then he does the strong man's house and plunder his property. "Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. Therefore, I tell you, people will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come." So yeah, we got a bit of a-- We're adding to it.

Dan Beecher He's like- Right ...

Dan McClellan "And what's more, you can give me a hard time all you want. I can handle it, but- I can take it.

Dan Beecher Yeah. But the Spirit is really sensitive- Yeah ... and hates that. So- Yeah, it is interesting. And point of order, it does feel like that verse is an excellent argument for Son of Man being distinct from Holy Spirit.

Dan McClellan Oh yeah.

Dan Beecher 100%. Like a totally different entity.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher However, yeah, we have roughly the same idea of blaspheme. In this case, it says speaking against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.

Dan McClellan Mm.

Dan Beecher I think we should acknowledge that none of these are tremendously clear- No ... in what we're talking about. Whoever blasphemes-- Looking back at the story that this erupts from, it seems like just, yeah, don't attribute the good works of the Holy Spirit to an evil being, is what we're talking about. But yeah, Mark says, "Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit," Matthew says, "Whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's still very unclear because it feels like just accusing Jesus of using Beelzebub as his way of casting out the demons, that doesn't feel like an irredeemable sin to me.

Dan McClellan No, and I think the And I think what's going on here is we've got one of these, this is a costly signal. This is something that it's like we're drawing a line here just arbitrarily. And an example from the Hebrew Bible of something where the punishment doesn't seem to fit the crime. You have the idea in the Hebrew Bible that a man who picks up sticks on the Sabbath gets executed. It's harsh, but fair.

Dan Beecher Rough. That's rough.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And this kind of becomes the identity marker. It's like, "In this family, we don't pick up sticks on the Sabbath." And it's like, "Don't you think that is a little disproportionate?" And it's like, "It doesn't matter. This is the identity marker." And so I think there's a degree to which it's kind of functioning like that.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan And where it's coming from is something that scholars have been talking about for a while, and I don't think we're going to have an answer. But I think that you point out that it is a bit ambiguous, it's not clear, which I think supports the notion that it's not like a specific word or a sentence or a statement. It's not like, "I declare blasphemy against the Holy Spirit."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then it's like, "Okay, well, you done it. You've gone and done it now."

Dan Beecher Though I have met and heard people say that that's what they believe it to be. And so there are people who believe that if you say the sentence, "I defy," or, "I deny the Holy Spirit," or whatever, you can't get into heaven.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher That's locked in now. It's the eternal sin. It's unforgivable. You just did it. It's over for you now.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's been over for me for a while.

Dan Beecher But- Which is a good way to get rid of pesky fundamentalists- ... if they're bothering you.

Dan McClellan But I think the ambiguity serves interpreting this as more of kind of a general, we don't speak ill of the Holy Spirit. You can speak ill of Jesus, you can speak ill of God, you can get forgiven for all that, but just not the Spirit.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah, which is peculiar. Why is suddenly the Spirit so sensitive about this?

Dan Beecher And- Yeah.

Dan McClellan I, for me- I don't know that we have a good answer.

Dan Beecher Yeah. For me, the vibe that I get, and this is not based on any kind of scholarship, obviously, but the vibe that I get is that in this case, the Spirit means God. Or at least the active agent of God.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan You can't speak against God's- Because Jesus doesn't say, "You can speak against the Son of Man, or you can speak against the Father, just not the Spirit." He just identifies the Son of Man as the one it was okay to blaspheme.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And that- So- ...

Dan Beecher that's echoed also in Luke 12.

Dan McClellan Okay. Let's go to Luke.

Dan Beecher So let's jump to there, where it says, I think verse eight's interesting sort of context. He says, "And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God. But whoever denies me before others will be denied before the angels of God." He's basically saying, "Hey, if you're cool with me now, I'll be cool with you when it counts.

Dan McClellan And if you're not cool with me-" Which could be understood to conflict with the notion that you can speak any manner of ill against the Son of Man, and you'll be forgiven. Here, he's like, "No, you deny me, I'm still going to deny you."

Dan Beecher Well, yeah.

Dan McClellan But then verse 10- But then he does say, yeah ...

Dan Beecher gets confusing because it says, "And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven." It's very final- Uncomfortable ...

Dan McClellan language.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan The lang- And it doesn't quite fit the context, it feels like.

Dan Beecher Yeah. And by the way, we do not have, as we mentioned before, the context of the Pharisees claiming that they, or the scribes or whatever, claiming that Jesus's miracle belongs to Beelzebul instead.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher That's nowhere near here.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So the likely catalyst for the statement has been divested.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan For the author of Luke, anyway. He just wrenches it out of context, but still kind of leads into it with this, "Deny me," kind of thing.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then goes on, "When they bring you before the synagogues, the rulers, and the authorities, do not worry about how or what you will answer or what you will say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour what you ought to say." So it's almost like this is supposed to be comforting for the faithful- Right ... followers of Jesus, because he's saying the Holy Spirit's going to be there. Oh, by the way, the unforgivable sin is to blaspheme the Holy Spirit. Just in case you didn't already know.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It's a very strange thing. I went through and went to many different sort of apologetic websites trying to- Oh, yeah?

Dan McClellan ...

Dan Beecher get at what they believe this means. What is the unforgivable sin?

Dan McClellan Because- And, yeah ...

Dan Beecher even though it seems to be spelled out, it's wildly unclear.

Dan McClellan And they have some creative eisegesis that they engage in to try to make it about anything that annoys them. They're like, "Oh, that's the unforgivable sin."

Dan Beecher Well, but also they're in a precarious position, which is that they want converts, they want people who aren't believers to join up. But if me having said, as an atheist, "I don't believe in that guy," or, "I don't believe in the Holy Spirit, I don't care about the Holy Spirit," or any number of things that I could've said. If I then want to join, they don't want me to just be- They don't They don't want to be in the position of saying, "Okay, well, we like that you joined, but you're sentenced to eternal hell-" Yeah "... no matter what."

Dan McClellan Now, if you had murdered someone or raped someone, you can be forgiven for that.

Dan Beecher Yeah. But- They'll get you off the hook entirely on that one.

Dan McClellan Yeah, but if you have said these words, I'm afraid there's nothing we can do. Yeah, that's pretty ridiculous. And anyone who, and when you see apologists out there, they'll frequently, if they have an answer, it's usually something specific that has nothing to do with blaspheming the Holy Spirit. Yeah, well- It is usually, they're three interpretive steps away- ... where they're like, "It's really about not doing what Trump tells you to do," or something like that. That's ultimately what the unforgivable sin is for some of these folks, but- Well, some of them said things like, this is from Got Questions.

Dan Beecher We've visited Got Questions before. But they say, "The blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, specific as it was to the Pharisees' situation, cannot be duplicated today." You can't even do it- Yeah ... because their sin was that they were in the presence of Jesus, and they still denied it.

Dan McClellan Mm.

Dan Beecher So, you couldn't do it. Unless you're in the presence of Jesus, you couldn't even... There's no chance. But then they turn around. They have this weird turnaround a sentence later, and then they say, "The only unpardonable sin today is that of continued unbelief." "There is no pardon for a person who dies in his rejection of Christ." Well, you literally just said that we can't duplicate that today.

Dan McClellan Yeah. But we're going to arrogate to ourselves the authority to declare what it is.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And even though the text says you can deny Christ- ... and be forgiven, what we're going to do is we're going to flip it- Yeah ... and we're going to say, "No, it is denying Christ that is unforgivable," even though you can't commit the unforgivable sin.

Dan Beecher Even though it's specifically not about Christ. It was about the Holy Spirit, but there you go.

Dan McClellan Well, that's the intellectual integrity and rigor that you get from- ...

Dan Beecher Got Questions.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I looked at some other ones. I looked at what Billy Graham Evangelistic Association- Ooh, yeah ... had to say, and they were weird about it.

Dan McClellan They just, it never- They were like, "Stop bothering me." Yeah, basically.

Dan Beecher It's just like, they said, "The sin of the religious leaders, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, was a refusal to accept the witness of the Holy Spirit to who Jesus was and what he had come to do, and then submit their lives to him." It's basically the same thing. Most of the sites that I visited craft their decision about what this means into saying, "Don't worry, all the Christians are safe. If you care at all about Jesus, if you're one of us, you're safe.

Dan McClellan You can't-" Yes "...

Dan Beecher possibly commit this sin. But those atheists are probably pretty bad, so no."

Dan McClellan Yeah, and this is where, and I've talked about this before, where everybody who treats the Bible as authoritative is trying to make it meaningful and useful to them.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan It's not clear precisely what's going on here, and so they're like, "Well, we've got to figure out some way to make it meaningful and useful to us. What are our concerns? Okay, let's leverage it as a way to authorize and validate our concerns," even though it probably isn't going to have much at all to do with what was actually going on for Mark and Matthew and Luke.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Or at least the authors of those texts.

Dan Beecher Yeah. So, there you go. I don't think I've committed an unforgivable sin in my life. I hope not. But that depends on your interpretation of whatever the heck those scriptures mean.

Dan McClellan I still contend it has something to do with the Raiders, but- It's probably that, and you're going to need to do the Broncos fan translation of- ...

Dan Beecher the New Testament.

Dan McClellan Well, where are they now, Las Vegas? City of sin?

Dan Beecher Boom.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Boom.

Dan McClellan Need I say more?

Dan Beecher They might as well be the Sodomite Raiders- ... if we're going to go with sin cities.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's just unwelcoming. Don't worry. Well, that's it for this week. Thank you so much for joining us. If you would like to become a part of making this show go, head on over to patreon.com/dataoverdogma, where you can get early and ad-free access to every episode. You can get access to the after party, which is bonus content that we do just for our patrons every week, and it's a lot of fun. And you can have that warm, fuzzy feeling of knowing that you helped us keep going, which we really appreciate so much. Thanks so much to Roger Gowdy for editing the show, and we'll talk to you again next week.

Dan McClellan Bye, everybody.