Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit may find expression and come to its culmination in some specific way, but essentially it is a settled attitude of mind and heart. No one can stumble suddenly into irremediable sin; but men may drift into it after the fashion of the Pharisees. Selfishness and pride, and not least religious selfishness and pride, may slowly harden the heart and sear the conscience and seal the eyes, until men come to call good evil and light darkness" (Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, vol. 2, p. 788)
Nonsense. Calling the Holy Spirit evil does not spring from a ‘settled mind.’ Christ’s warning is to the insane, especially, the religiously insane, who are most apt to say such things.
Acts 7:51 speaks of those who “are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears,” who are “always resisting the Holy Spirit.” Such continual resisting of the Spirit’s efforts to impact one’s life will in time lead one to become so hardened that the Spirit will no longer be able to enter and transform the life of such a person. Such a one is said to have reached “the point of no return” – they cannot be brought to repentance, and thus are lost. ( Al Maxey)
All speculation, trying to conform reality to one’s interpretation of the good book instead of just observing reality in the Spirit of truth and trying to see how scripture makes sense in light of that.
Jason,
I’m not sure Calvinists would agree that this paragraph of yours agrees with their pov. As far as I’m aware, a Calvinist would probably argue that all people deserve hell and are because “all though they knew God, they did not glorify him …” The Holy Spirit works generally in the world, making them without excuse–therefore all people are condemned. Everyone has enough knowledge of God to be guilty of rejecting Him, and “all have turned aside, there is none righteous–no not one.” The grace of God, to a Calvinist, is that He chooses some people for special treatment and interferes, so to speak, with their natural choice, actively changing their hearts so that they are able to love Him and accept His salvation.
At least, that’s what I would have said a few years ago (even though I was never a true calvinist, since I always believed that Christ’s sacrifice was for all). I would never have agreed that the sin against the HS could possibly imply any sort of universalism… However, one of the biggest objections to that would, I think, have come from my belief that any opportunity for repentance was strictly limited to this lifetime, where we can obviously see that not all come to Christ.
Sonia
Everyone
I welcome to continue this discussion over to my new post: Believers and Unbelievers committing the Irremediable sin!
Certainly, they’ll usually (always?) acknowledge this, too. But it still conflicts with their basic explanation for why the non-elect have NO POSSIBILITY WHATEVER of repenting and coming to Christ: because the Father does not send the Holy Spirit to them to empower them in any way whatever to do so. Calvs, in my experience, will go pretty far in denying any meaningful operation of the HS in a sinner’s life, if that sinner is supposed to be non-elect. But that denial of operation stands in contrast to what they have to otherwise admit, that the Holy Spirit testifies in the heart of everyone concerning righteousness.
Consider it from this angle: a Calvinist acknowledges that although the non-elect know God they did not glorify Him. Okay, but how could they even possibly glorify Him? Only if the Father chooses to send them the Holy Spirit: only if God goes Himself to them to empower them to do so. To judge someone for not doing what they could only do if you gave them the ability yet you chose not to do so, is… well, no polite description comes to mind.
But just as much to the point, the non-elect (just like the elect) wouldn’t even be able to know God without the express operation of the HS in their lives. So the HS is being sent after all to operate in their lives–as Calvs have to acknowledge eventually. But it makes no sense for the HS to operate to lead a person to acknowledge God (which doesn’t happen immediately for anyone, even among the elect, as Calvs are well aware), or even to basically acknowledge some real goodness, yet not to empower the person to choose one way or the other. The only way out is for Calvs to say that God refuses to work any good at all, even remotely, in the lives of the non-elect. Yet clearly the HS is still acting!–so the HS must be totally acting against or without goodness in regard to the non-elect. (Some Calvs are content with this, and will cite scripture along that line; others, realizing that such a position can only involve God being a direct worker of iniquity, will then back off and try to claim the HS doesn’t remotely operate at all in the non-elect, thus cannot be operating against or without the good in them.)
Well, of course not; not without becoming a universalist. 
If one is ideologically committed against that, first and foremost, then one will have to look for some other way around it; perhaps by going Arm. And, to be fair, it’s an obscure line of thought which requires putting together several pieces in an unexpected way.
I remember that some univs say that the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is not forgiven in this age or the next, but that the ages will end (Hebrews, I believe) and that Ephesians says that there are “ages” (plural) to come. ANyone familiar with that argument? Aaron? Jason?
Roooooof!
Yes. And it has some merit - Christ did come bearing a sword against that generation. The Jewish age did come to an end in 70ad with the destruction of sacrifices and the temple. It’s over and it’s been over for 2000 years.
But all Israel will be saved. Even religious crazies. While IT may be unforgivable, the rest of man’s sin are forgiven.
The sin is so special that Christ must warn specifically about it. The vindictiveness against life-itself (every man knows it and has his being in it) is so self-destructive that forgiveness is not the cure. It must be eradicated by annihilation. God will do right in this - He will save the self-destructive crazy per His will and love.
I have only met one person who was convinced they had committed this sin and he committed suicide. But he was more sinned against than sinning - a product of an upbringing that produced a self-destructive insanity. If I can say a prayer for him now and then certainly Christ will - ‘Forgive them - they don’t know what they are doing.’
Those who condemn their fellow human beings are just as insane in my book. A blasphemy against life-itself and all the promises of it. But being is extended to all beyond death.
I’m familiar with the argument. It has quite a bit of scriptural merit, although it has at least two problems: first, it depends totally on a particular eschatological schedule being true (broadly similar to the one popularized in the Left Behind series for example.) To the extent that that schedule has problems, so will this argument.
Second–and most problematic to me–I can’t see it accounting well with the use of multiple-age phraseologies for punishment, and while they’re rare they do occur in the scriptures. Usually multiple eons are referenced for other purposes, the most common perhaps being the glory of God. The three multiple-eon punishment duration statements that occur to me offhand (and that I can find in a quick concordance run-through) are all in RevJohn–which will doubtless please RanRan and any members of the Church of the East. 
For those of us who accept RevJohn’s canonicity, though–which naturally includes those who go with an LB-ish eschatology schedule–the phrase does indicate punishment continuing past any hard cutoff point. (And I should caution, that I am not sure there aren’t other places in the NT, not to say the OT, where multiple ages of punishment are in view.)
Put another way, the view explains well enough why the kings of the earth might be going into the city at the end of RevJohn: they remained impenitent through the age to come, Christ’s 1000 year reign, but repented in the age to come after that (namely after the lake of fire judgment). The view doesn’t explain well enough why Satan, the Antichrist and the False Prophet will be pounded on “into the eons of the eons”.
…And, lest we forget, tattoo artists.
I don’t see how everyone who believes in some type of dispensational theology necessarily believes in the entire LB schedule. I believe in dispensations to a degree, just not in an ultra-strict sense, but the LB books are very disagreeable to me.
Being a Southern Baptist by training, I’m pretty familiar with the basic tribulation narrative and variations; I’ve been studying it off and on since the mid 70s. And no, one doesn’t have to take Jenkins & LeHays’ fictional way of solving for the ranges particularly. But the limited-punishment-age theory does totally require the basic eschatological structure of:
this age (no forgiveness for sin against HS here);
the 1000 year reign of Christ after the Trib finishes up (no forgiveness here either);
the age of the Day of the Lord (kicked off by the general resurrection of the evil and the good, the emptying of hades, and the lake of fire judgment for the impenitent wicked–but forgiveness is possible here).
Different interpretations of RevJohn might yield different results for trying to take the GosMatt statement very literally (no forgiveness this or next age, but nothing about the age after the next one.) And, as noted, the same text which offers most weigh for the rationale also takes about punishment for at least some sinners going on for ages of ages. That’s an indeterminately vast time, far beyond the limited count being aimed at in the theory.
On the other hand, a resolution for this particular theory with the data might be by appeal to the very defensible notion of nested aging. Pretty much everyone agrees that sooner or later there’s going to be a Day of the Lord which constitutes an age that has no end; and yet the biblical evidence (OT and NT both) tend to indicate that there will be an ongoing number of ages within that final Day. In fact, insofar as the Day of the Lord started (in some real fashion–which is also highly defensible) with the first coming and ministry of the Messiah, there would have to be at least two sub-ages within that Day (the age of His first coming, which isn’t over yet, and the age of His second coming which by most although not all reckonings hasn’t happened yet. Note that there are those who take the age of His second coming to have started with the destruction of Jerusalem, though, in 70CE. But still at least two sub-ages, even then.)
In that line of reckoning, the forgiveness of the Great Day to come includes the option being open (but just not taken yet) during all the multi-numerous ages of ages in which some sinners will be disciplined, since those ages are all included under the Great Seventh Day.
However, this could also be considered an over-convenient reading of the data. 
At best, the theorist can no longer apply directly to a hyper-literal argument from silence (so to speak) regarding the GosMatt phraseology of the sin without forgiveness: because the text only works as something approaching positive data if there are three clearly definable ages in view at about par with one another (i.e. this pre-millennial age, the millennial age to come, and the Day of the Lord after that.) But the defense against reference to “ages of ages” requires that the Great Day be a super-age nesting those ages of ages; meaning that the two ages in view (per this theory) for GosMatt’s version of Christ’s declaration of no forgiveness, are themselves nested under a prior Great Age–and then suddenly we’re back to only two ages of no forgiveness without a third one to follow! 
So the theory ends up being quite possibly self-destructive when pressed as a predictive hard limit to the punishment.
In the end, I think it’s safer to regard the saying (whether in GosMatt or in the other two Synoptics) as a prescriptive warning, not as a tacitly predictive limit: there won’t ever at any time, now or later, be forgiveness for the sin against the Holy Spirit. Similarly, to the apostles themselves (no less!): unless you repent and turn around and become as this little child, you shall by no means whatever be entering into the kingdom of the heavens.
Jason
I totally disagree with your “age of the day of the Lord” theory saying there is forgiveness of the sin to blaspheme the HS Jesus said had no forgiveness.( so would most bible scholars) Why would Jesus distinctively separate this sin from all other sins and waste his time to warn us not to blaspheme the HS because it shall not be forgiven… only to change his mind later and forgive it? That makes absolutely no sense. Jesus does not say one thing and say “Syke” and do another.
Jesus said eternity is in the world to come in Mark 10:30; Luke 18:30. Lets look at Mark 10:29-30
We see the same use of the word “age” in another passage in Mark—chapter 10, verses 29–30:
“Jesus said, “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel’s sake, but that he will receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions; and in the age (aiwni) to come, eternal (aiwnion) life.”
Jeremy(from wordpress.com) said:“Note what the Lord says the reward will be in the age to come: eternal life. If there is eternal life in this future age, then the age itself must be without end. On the other hand, if that age to come is not without end but only temporary, then the life that is rewarded to these believers would also be temporary. That, however, contradicts the Lord’s statement in this passage.”
“As appealing as universalism is to many, it never entered the mind of God. Scripture clearly teaches that not all will be saved.”
In conclusion: Jason, you’re wrong on your identity of the people in Rev 15:2-4…you’re wrong on your identity of the kings of the earth in Rev 21:24…you’re wrong on your theory of the age of the day of the Lord…you’re wrong on your theory of one soul repenting and being plucked from their torment from the lake of fire and being added to the Lamb’s book of life…all of these are theories of desparation to hold on to a UR doctrine that doesn’t exist in the bible.
Unless, of course, he never said that in the first place…?
Btw, that wasn’t Jason’s theory, he was just mentioning it.
It “never entered the mind of God”? I wonder if that guy is a Calvinist, because the simple fact is that if you believe in the universal scope of atonement (which Arminianism generally does) then you definitely do believe that it entered the mind of God, although sadly enough, it isn’t able to be made a reality for Him. Which means you should be in disagreement with that quote.
Also, I simple love the “Jeremy from wordpress” bit. 
That totally lets us know all about the author. 
And yet you can’t show us where he was proved wrong…? It looks like he won all those arguments. Right now you’re just waving a staff with the flag of victory blown off.
Jason
Here is the reason why you probably won’t get a reply from Matt Slick : carm.org/samples-universalis … sion-board
Matt says that those universalists (and sometimes implies all) aren’t true to their theology of infinite love, then says that the theology itself produces such behavior. Well which is it, brotha?
Thanks for everyone’s posts. I have to admit candidly that this matter of the Sin Against the Holy Spirit is still difficult to me from a universalist perspective. Many, many thoughtful Christians (I would imagine the C.S. would be in this camp) throughout the ages have felt similarly. The argument that it is simply unbelief seems difficult to maintain, for is not unbelief forgiven throughout the scriptures?
Would it not be true that *any sin", unrepented of is unforgiven?