The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Luke 12:8-10 speaking and denying? The difference!

Evangelical Universalism Arguments against Evangelical Universalism
#21

No, unbelief done in ignorance is forgivable, but to continually resist the HS convicting power by hardening your heart through the deceitfulness of sin to the point of searing your conscience…is not. Both unbelievers and believers can commit this unforgivable sin that has eternal consequences.Since we are condemned because of unbelief does it not follow that we should turn from our unbelieving mind and not our sins? We are not condemned because of sin. Repenting of sin prior to salvation is meaningless because God has already judged Jesus for them already. Sin has been dealt with. Changing your mind about Christ is repenting which is salvation. We partake of this forgiveness and salvation when we believe in Christ.

How does this all tie in with the sin to blaspheme the Holy Spirit? Luke 12:8-10 has established a connection between denying Jesus and to blaspheme the Holy Spirit. To deny or renounce Jesus is to blaspheme the Holy Spirit. All sins have been paid in full by Jesus. God is no longer imputing sin to anyone’s account. All sin, but the one Jesus said shall not be forgiven… If you deny Jesus you cannot partake of this “paid in full”, salvation. Believing is a non-meritorious act and requires nothing of us except a change of mind. Unbelief in ignorance Jesus paid for, but those who persist in unbelief will never receive the pardon that is yet possible for them. It is “a state of hardness of the heart in which one consciously and willfully resists or renounces God’s saving power and grace” (Holman Bible Dictionary, p. 198). To again quote the Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Jesus is “not speaking of an isolated act, but a settled condition of the soul” (vol. 8, p. 645). Dr. Gerhard Kittel, in his classic Theological Dictionary of the NT, said, “It denotes the conscious and wicked rejection of the saving power and grace of God towards man. Only the man who sets himself against forgiveness is excluded from it” (vol. 1, p. 624). Your guilty of the eternal sin which has eternal consequences. 2 Cor 5:19 has established that all sins are paid for by Jesus and sins are no longer being imputed unto anyone’s account. But there is one sin that is not included and does not have forgiveness in any age, to deny or renounce Jesus is to blaspheme the Holy Spirit or remain in UNBELIEF! There are those who say we have to repent of our sins in order to be saved. No, we have to repent ( Change our minds) only of the thing that makes us unsaved, and that is unbelief.

#22

Peter denied Jesus though, A37. And he certainly didn’t do it in ignorance.

Anyway if believing is a non-meritorious act then a sinner being condemned to ECT must be merely a matter of tragic circumstance. For, if it is their own fault that they suffer such, then it is by lack of the virtue (even if only slight) that believers have in believing unto eternal life. Thus belief would have merit behind it. But if it doesn’t then it is not the sinner’s fault that they were condemned. But then it seems as if we’ve left the realm of free will. Free will determining one’s destiny implies merit, A37.

#23

Sure he did…anything you do outside of faith is done in ignorance and is sin.( Rom 14:23) What you seem not to understand that mankind is condemned already by unbelief ( John 3:18). God requires mankind to repent( change their minds) of their unbelieving minds and accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. It was Adam’s fault we were condemned ( Rom 5:12) God does not see an individual reponding by faith to appropriate his grace into their lives as earning ones salvation…God sees it just receiving what He has already provided by grace. If you don’t stick out your hand to take a 20 bill from my hand that I’m offering to give you…you will not receive it. The same with God’s grace… if you don’t appropriate God’s grace you won’t receive it.

#24

So then, nobody’s guilty of the eternal sin? Unless you think that someone can sin in faith. Because you believe that the unforgivable sin isn’t done in ignorance, but you have to have faith to not do something in ignorance. So either the unforgivable sin doesn’t exist, or it’s done in faith. Which is it?

So it’s more of a “if you wanna come, hop on the bus now, otherwise we’re leaving you behind. No big deal, just your choice”?

Does this imply that the person is left in a hell of their own making? I know that this is the belief of many, but I didn’t realize it was yours, with all of your talk of God’s judgment. Because if it’s God’s willful judgment for them to experience suffering without end, and it’s yet nothing worth merit to choose life instead of death, then He must be rather malicious. But if the individual is the lord of their own destiny, then we’re merely encountering a question of God’s impotence to persuade and lead and guide. God hasn’t purposed us for death. You believe that God intended for all mankind to come to know and enjoy Him forever, yet it didn’t turn out that way. Is this willing powerlessness on God’s part (since He’s all-powerful, He’d have to be intentionally limiting Himself)? If so, then again, this is rather uncaring on His part.

#25

So you have to go with one variety of the next option, then (not the one you quoted): God never intended to save everyone and did not act to save everyone but only provided the opportunity for all to be saved (in some fashion that does NOT involve intending, much less acting, to save everyone).

So God would like universal reconciliation, but it (somehow) never entered His mind to even intend it?!–much less to act to save everyone?

Your reply about God honoring the free choice of individuals is fine and all, but you’re talking to me, not to one of the universalists here who deny the free will of man. I don’t have the slightest problem with God honoring the individual’s free will choice and not violating it–insofar as God can be said to honor any choice to sin without violating it. There are, however, limits to that honoring, as even you have to admit. (Otherwise God would let sin run rampant forever everywhere, rather than acting in judgment against sin.) The sinner would naturally rather be free to sin forever without any negative consequences to himself–and you certainly admit God doesn’t honor that free choice.

Moreover, insofar as God honors free choice, He would surely act to ensure that the sinner’s choice to repent remains free–even if that meant imposing some things (like healing) on the person at some point. But you think God is either powerless to stop the sinner from destroying his own ability to freely choose or else acts to take that free choice away from the sinner.

So, when your theology actually involves God providing for and protecting as much free choice for the sinner as mine does, be sure to let me know. Until then, if you really want to have a theology that honors free choice, I recommend rejecting a theology where the sinner loses the free choice to repent and return to God. I mean, if you think that that’s really important.

Also I recommend trying to remember, when answering me, that my version of universalism does not involve Jesus “mysteriously changing their minds in the lake of fire”–no moreso than it is mysterious for Jesus to lead us to repentance (the changing of our mind in regard to sin) at any other time, including through any other teaching and method of chastisement.

As to Simon Peter: Justin is correct, your attempt to get around Simon Peter’s repeated denial of Christ (same Greek term used in the sin against the Holy Spirit), up to the point of calling curses against Himself, could not have been done in ignorance–at the very least, it makes less than no sense to try to claim that Judas and Caiaphas and the Pharisaical enemies were sinning in knowing unbelief without ignorance and yet somehow Simon Peter was more ignorant than they were. Unless you want to say that the sin against the Holy Spirit is done in faith!–which would be ludicrous.

It would have been better to simply point out that Peter repented, and apparently before Jesus came to forgive him. But then you’re directly back to something you have elsewhere denied is crucially important, namely the sin not being forgiven so long as it is persistent in impenitently; which means that you have to come up with some way to shut down the possibility of repentance.

And the only way you can do that, is to either have God act to violate the free choice of the sinner (taking away his ability to repent), or else to have God impotently fail to protect the free choice of the sinner from the sinner’s own destruction of it (which is hardly a gospel of the greatness of God’s salvation!) We’re back to a total and permanent violation of free will being essential to your notion of hopeless damnation. (I would say of any notion.)

#26

The danger was that rejection of Jesus was an indication not of misunderstanding or ignorance, but of willful, malevolent opposition to the Spirit of God. Such willful opposition could lead to irreversible hardening of the heart.

Sometimes people who curse God in a moment of despair think of Jesus’ warning about the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit and are gripped by a satanic obsession that their sin is unforgivable. This is a shame, considering the fact that their very repentance (or desire for repentance) is a demonstration of the fact that the Holy Spirit is still working in their lives.

A good example is Peter.

Jesus had given a somber warning to His disciples: “Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven” (Matthew 10:32-33 NIV).

Peter was brash and confident that he would never deny his Lord: “Peter declared, ‘Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you.’ And all the other disciples said the same” (Matthew 26:35 NIV).

Jesus knew Peter’s weakness much better than Peter did, and told him: “ ‘I tell you the truth,’ Jesus answered, ‘this very night, before the cock crows, you will disown me three times’ ” (v.34 NIV).

Jesus was right. Peter not only denied his Lord, but he also denied Him with curses. “Then he began to call down curses on himself and he swore to them, ‘I don’t know the man!’ Immediately a cock crowed” (v.74 NIV).

The sin against the Holy Spirit is a consistent and continual denial of the truth, hardening one’s heart against God and His revelation of Himself in Christ. No one has committed the sin against the Holy Spirit if he or she is concerned about having committed it. A person who sins against the Holy Spirit has no love for God or any desire to be reconciled to Him.

If you are concerned about the wrong you have done, you are eligible for forgiveness. Just like Peter, David, and Paul (who were likely greater sinners than you). rbc.org/questionsDetail.aspx?id=58912 (I do not endorse all doctrines of this website)

Do you see and understand the difference, Jason?

#27

Well, you’ve got two completely different concepts here that you’re jumping back and forth on:

1.) the person hardens their heart themselves (i.e. they cannot repent because they’ve damaged themselves to the point where even the Holy Spirit cannot possibly help them any more.)

2.) the Holy Spirit operates in the heart to lead a person to repentance, up to a point at which the Holy Spirit voluntarily and authoritatively quits, thus leaving the person unable to even desire repentance anymore (i.e. they cannot repent because the HS gave up on them.)

In the second case, the HS didn’t give up because the person made the situation impossible for the HS to succeed at, but for some other reason (e.g. grieving the HS to the point of abandoning the person forever). In the first case, the only reason the HS leaves is because the sinner has made himself unable to be led to repentance anymore.

Neither version could possibly be said to be maximally evangelical, of course. :wink: But they’re two different ways that different categories of Arminians try to explain a hopelessly fatal result.

That “good example of Peter” (which we’re all well aware of, and which we have been bringing to your attention), is a good example because it demonstrates what’s lacking in your attempt to get a hopeless result out of the Synoptic declarations about the sin against the HS. There’s absolutely nothing in those verses that states, or even necessarily implies, that someone who disowns Jesus will always continue to disown Jesus.

I have exactly no disagreements with this quote, and have said as much myself multiple times. But neither is there anything necessarily hopeless (especially from God) in affirming such statements. Nor are such statements read out from the Synoptic declarations about the sin against the HS, by the way; they’re a result of inferences about the data (there and elsewhere).

Trying to appeal to inferences being made about the data beyond what is actually stated, while shutting down appeal to inferences being made about the data beyond what is actually stated when someone else is drawing the inferences, is to contradict one’s own principles in order to oppose the other person without a cause.

I see and understand the difference between the sin against the HS and what Peter did very well, and always did. The problem is that when we were talking about the importance of impenitent persistence as being a crucial element of the sin against the HS, you wanted to shut down that importance in various ways, so that you could shut down the possibility of repentance and being forgiven of that sin and blasphemy. One of the ways you tried to shut that down was by mocking us for “adding words to the text” (as though you weren’t doing exactly the same thing yourself); which is why we started pointing out that taking the text purely at face value then Peter (and Paul) should have been guilty of the sin against the Holy Spirit–and yet their case still wasn’t hopeless!

Taking the texts at purely face value, the sin is demonstrably not hopeless–especially thanks to GosLuke’s version, where the wording for the lead-in about denying Christ (which you yourself referenced as being parallel to the sin against the HS) is exactly parallel with what St. Peter did. Taking the texts with reasonable extensions of principle explaining why there would be no forgiveness so long as the sin is being continued with, is still not demonstrably hopeless. You have to read a constraint of hopelessness into the texts (including in the Lukan version) by doctrinal fiat. The most that such a tactic can result in, is to demonstrate (maybe) that your theology can be consistent with the texts; which is of course important, too. But the texts absolutely cannot then be marshaled as demonstrable testimony in themselves to any hopeless failure of the gospel.

And that’s what we’ve been trying to get you to see and understand.

#28

Jason

I think what your not understanding is that to balspheme the HS is not speaking of an isolated act, but a settled condition of the soul. They have constantly and consistently denied the HS to the point of searing their conscience and having no desire to repent but only to blaspheme and remain in unbelief.( Rom 1:18-32; Rev 16:8-11) You can only play paddy-cake with the HS for so long, Jason.

#29

Yeah, Jason, you should change it up a little. Try asking the Holy Spirit to play hopscotch with you instead.

#30

OK. So all fat people (gluttons) are going to eternal torment. They certainly meet your criteria. They didn’t get that way overnight.

#31

Ran, only because the fat makes great fuel. I don’t think it implies anything about them as a person, after all, they’re not there through any particular lack of merit on their part.

#32

Gluttony is a sin. It’s a form of greed and avarice. It’s not done in ignorance. (There are mirrors).

So to be consistent, Aaron, must doom them to eternal hell-fire. Does he?

#33

Aye, not only a sin, but one of the seven deadly ones!

#34

The wages of sin is DEATH, not the wages of the 7 most deadly sins is death. You’re watching to many religious movies, my brother. :wink:

#35

OK. So willful fat people and universalists (especially fat ones) are doomed to eternal torment. Any others in your paradigm?

#36

There is something very wrong with you, Ran. :neutral_face:

#37

Thank you, Bud. I think Aaron needs to understand that for an argument to stand up, it should consistently stand up. But he keeps blaming us for punching holes in it.

#38

Jason said: “Taking the texts at purely face value, the sin is demonstrably not hopeless…”

My response: “However, Jason, your lack of certainty in interpreting the verse about there being an “eternal sin” takes away any claim to there being a “face value”. The word aionios having never been translated with any degree of certainty takes away any claims to a superior interpretation to Aaron37!”

#39

:wink:

#40

Don’t be smug, you don’t have absolute certainty either :smiley: