Sins Against the Holy Spirit

There are several so-called “hard verses” in the New Testament, passages where Jesus is quoted as saying things that seem out of character for him and/or in conflict with the overall trajectory of Biblical teaching.

One such verse concerns the forgiveness of sins: “…Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never have forgiveness…” (Mark 3: 28 – 28)

Matthew adds an interesting gloss: “Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven…” (12: 32)

Jesus does not drill down on what constitutes ‘blaspheming against the spirit’ and so appears to leave us guessing: Are my sins ‘sins against the Holy Spirit’ and therefore unforgiveable? That there could be sins that cannot be forgiven is understandably off-putting for many would be believers. So what might Jesus have meant?

God is ineffable. No words, no thesaurus of words can begin to exhaust God’s nature. On the other hand, we can and do associate certain virtues with God ‘by analogy’. In that sense, we say, “God is good,” and we can define Good by reference to certain values. These ‘values’ are essentially applications of Good in concrete circumstances.

So what patchwork of values best represents God’s goodness in our world? I have settled on Beauty, Truth, and Justice as the three values that primarily characterize God’s presence for me. This list is not meant to be exhaustive, and I freely admit that people of goodwill might propose an entirely different and perhaps equally valid list. 

On the other hand, there is an intriguing parallel between Jesus’ self-characterization, God’s values, and these sins:

“I am the way, the truth, and the life.” (John 14: 6) Presumably, Truth is Truth, whatever the context. Life and Way, together, embody the essential features of Beauty and Justice. How so?

Beauty is an application of Good to a concrete state of affairs; justice applies Good to process. Beauty is never changing; justice is never static. Beauty refers to order, structure, and form; justice refers to change, redistribution, and remediation. In real life they appear unrelated; in fact, they are both just applications of the Good to different phenomena. 

Similarly, the Way is structure, direction, and order; Life is balance, homeostasis, flux, and generation. Together, the Way and the Life are a homologous representation of ‘Beauty + Justice’. 

Here Matthew’s gloss is helpful. Sins against Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, are not unforgiveable. Those who abused and crucified Jesus can be forgiven (“Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” Luke 23: 24). Those who persecuted the early Church (e.g. Paul) can be forgiven. In our age, those who entertain doubt, lack faith or lose it have done nothing unforgivable. 

So what’s left? Sins against the Holy Spirit are sins, not against God per se but against God’s values. In the Trinitarian economy it is the Holy Spirit, ‘the giver of life’, who reveals God’s values to the world. Life, to the extent it is worth living, is the pursuit of Beauty, Truth, and Justice. 

“Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it…people say in Boston even beans do it…romantic sponges do it…Oysters down in Oyster Bay do it…Even lazy jellyfish do it…” (Cole Porter re love). All living things have an innate attraction to Beauty, Truth, and Justice and support and pursue those values, each in its own way. So do we!

What can’t be forgiven then are sins directed against these Divine Values, specifically:

• To destroy Beauty

• To distort Truth

• To pervert Justice

Scripture uses the word ‘blasphemy’ in this context, because these values collectively constitute God’s essence (i.e. the Good), and God’s essence is his name. 

In this context, it is easy to see why these activities would be regarded as sins; what is less clear is why these sins specifically should be unforgiveable. I propose that the destruction of Beauty, the distortion of Truth, and the perversion of Justice leave indelible marks.

The 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics guarantees that order, once destroyed, can never be reproduced…without sacrificing even more order in the process. Manifestations of Beauty, while everywhere, are always unique, never repeatable. The beauty is ‘one and done’. The destruction of Beauty is unforgivable because it is irreparable. I prefer to believe that the sinner may yet experience redemption, but the sin itself can never be forgiven because its consequences can never be remediated. You can’t stuff entropy back in its box.

The same applies to distortions of Truth. Once a false statement enters the noosphere, it becomes a meme with the capacity to persuade others and a tendency to enter into the collective chain of reasoning…like the ‘forever chemicals’ polluting our environment. Remember that per Jacques Derrida, ‘97% of what we think we think consists entirely of the thoughts of others. Giants sit heavy on our shoulders!

Finally, Justice. In the Book of Job, God replaces Job’s lost sons and daughters and his possessions with more children and even greater riches, but it's not the same. What is lost can be compensated but it can never be replaced, much less restored. Some losses are simply irreparable. Injustice can be reformed but its effects can never be entirely erased from the social record. 

So, sins against the Holy Spirit are indeed unforgivable. In colloquial terms, the sinner may be forgiven but the sin itself (in these cases) can never be forgotten. 

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Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1818–19) depicts the desperate survivors of a French naval shipwreck clinging to a makeshift raft after being abandoned at sea. Géricault’s monumental composition captures the raw extremes of human suffering, hope, and despair as figures oscillate between death and a final wave of salvation on the horizon. Painted with intense realism and political charge, it serves as both a harrowing meditation on grief and a searing indictment of governmental negligence.